Page 92 of Love Me Like It's Real
He’s wearing a suit and tie and his hair is slicked back with gel as if he woke up in the wrong decade, and his cologne is strong and overpowering. Even if he were handsome, he would so not be my type. He reeks sleazy and desperate and that only becomes more obvious when he lifts his hand and attaches the pink heart to my chest.
“You’re sexy,” he says and before I can even say or do anything he grabs me by the back of the neck and kisses me.
Or tries to anyway.
“What the fuck?” a familiar voice says and the man stops merely an inch from my lips and we both turn to find Hayworth staring at us in utter disbelief.
“Hayworth,” I say and reach for him but he backs away from me.
“I should have known,” he says and even though it’s loud and chaotic around I can hear the hurt in his voice. “You’re just like the others.”
He spins around and runs out of the bar before I can stop him and even when I try, the man grabs me by the arm and wiggles his eyebrows.
“Don’t go before I get my kiss,” he says in a voice he probably thinks is sensual but is just creepy as fuck.
“Dude, fuck right off,” I shout at his face and knee him in the groin. “Ever heard of consent, asshole?”
I push him back as he tends to his injured manhood and rush out of the Forbidden Maple wondering, once again, how the hell I’ve gotten myself into this drama.
I catch Hayworth’s car just as it speeds out of the parking lot, heading east and stop to catch my breath.
Fuck.
This is such a mess.
But it’s a mess I have to fix.
I don’t care if Hayworth can never love me back but I’ll be damned if I let him think I’m like the men who broke his heart.
TWENTY-NINE
HAYWORTH
I’m a fool.
I’m such a fucking fool.
I knew what people are like. I knew what happens when you get attached and I went and did it anyway.
Yeah, maybe it wasn’t supposed to be a real attachment but I guess I forgot to tell my stupid little head.
“Stupid, stupid, stupid Hayworth,” I shout and throw the TV across the bus.
The glass display cracks into a million pieces and the impact makes the whole Smash Bus creak. I pause for a moment, glancing at the entrance, looking for him and waiting. Waiting for everything around me to collapse but it doesn’t. And he doesn’t show up. Of course he doesn’t. Why would he? I mean nothing to him.
I take a deep breath and hold on, waiting for everything around me to crumble but once again, nothing does. The bus is built to last. I, on the other hand, am not so sure if I can take this hurt. But the bus is okay. I’ve made sure of it, otherwise I wouldn’t have gotten the license to use it as a rage room. Which works to my advantage right now because I don’t know if I can stop. Or if I even want to stop.
It’s my fault. It’s all my fault and no one else’s. It’s not Wells’s fault for messaging me yourboy is at the Valentine Tagor Felix’s for being human. It’s mine and mine alone. I fell for a guy. Simple as that. And now I’m paying the price.
Silly me thought if I distance myself from him, if I stopped getting us tangled in each other’s limbs and beds I’d avoid the heartache, but nope. Heartache came to twist my insides anyway.
I grab the bat and beat the plushies with their cute little noses and their button eyes and their stupid heart-shaped bellies. I’m sick of it. Sick of them all. Sick of this world that refuses to recognizethisis what happens when you allow yourself to fall in love. This is the kind of monster it creates. The one that stares at me every time I look into the mirror.
It doesn’t matter how many times and ways I bring the bat down on the plushies. They remain unscathed so I turn around ready to break some other crap when I see him there, like an illusion. A wonderful illusion threatening to bring me to my knees.
“What are you doing here?” I have to be strong. I have to be logical. I can’t…
I can’t let my heart guide me even if it skips a beat when I see him standing there. Even if all I want is to take him in my arms and savor this moment. Because…he came after me. He did.
