Page 13 of Flaunt
“Same, butwithbeans andwithoutthe extra shot,” Rebecca says.
“Sure. I’ll be back with your drinks,” Jenny says, waving at a new set of customers sitting down at a table across the room from us.
Rebecca dunks the corner of a chip into the salsa. “For the record, I agree with you on the Joshua thing. You both knew it was just a fling. I don’t know why he had to flip the script like that.”
“Because he could. And, honestly, I’m not super surprised. He can be a total dick—which is precisely why he was relegated to being a side piece.”
“He can’t be a side piece if you don’t have a main piece.”
I consider that. “All right. Good point. But if I were to have a main piece, he would never be a contender for the honor.”
“Are you insinuating that someone would?”
“Absolutely not.”
She smirks, chewing her chip while watching me with amusement.
I roll my eyes. “What about you? Who would be in contention for the honor of settling down with Rebecca?”
The smirk melts off her face. “I don’t know.”
“See? Don’t act like I’m a maniac because I’m not into long-term relationships.”
“I didn’t say I wasn’t into one. I just said I don’t know who that person would be. I’m just … picky. I’ve had my share of traumatic personal relationships.”
I grab a chip and scoop up a healthy amount of salsa. A part of me wants to poke her about that, push her to share like she does me. But Rebecca closes, builds a wall, and hides when she’s prodded for information. It’s like it physically makes her ill.Very different from me. I have no interest in making her uncomfortable.She’ll talk when she’s ready.
“And I would like to avoid them,” I say, watching salsa drip into the dish from the edge of the chip. “But, for once, I have bigger issues on my plate than men.”
“How does that feel?”
“Odd yet refreshing.”
She laughs, the severity clouding her features just moments ago now gone. “What can I help you with?”
“Nothing.” I pause while Jenny places our drinks on the table and then scurries away. “I have to handle one thing at a time. Today, I was finishing up getting out of my apartment. Tomorrow, I will find a job. Next week, I’ll settle into my new place and then continue my job hunt. And thank God for Maddox helping me find someone who will rent to an unemployed person—for cheap, at that.”
“Have any job leads?”
“Actually, no. No one seems to need an accounts rep right now. I’m sure I’ll find something but it’s harder than I thought to find something decent.”
And that’s not bothering me at all. Ugh.
She takes a sip of her drink and sighs happily. “Damn, that’s good.”
I slide my margarita toward me.
“How did the move out go?” she asks. “Was that at least as simple as you thought it would be?”
My heart skips a beat.
Instead of answering her, I take a long slug of my drink and hope it cools my insides.
“But Banks is here.”
I don’t know what I expected to happen, but it wasn’t him showing up at my door. The last time we saw one another, we were mid-argument about whether spending money on high-octane fuel for vehicles was worth it or a scam. To be honest, I don’t know why I was even in that conversation. Not only am I not that concerned about which gas goes into my car, as long as it isn’t diesel, I’m also unbothered about what anyone else, let alone Banks, thinks.
Yet there I was, standing on Maddox’s front porch, holding down the line that it’s just a way for gas companies to make more money from consumers. Why I chose that hill to die on, I’ll never understand. All I know for sure is that I was smack dab in the middle of it, and I wasn’t backing down—especially to him.
