Page 50 of Sweet Chaos
“Well, at least it will give her something new to obsess about.”
I should tell her. Now was my chance. I kissed your ex-boyfriend. He gave me two orgasms. Okay, three. He nursed me back to health. He brought me spicy Pho and ice cream last night and we binge-watchedStranger Things.
How could I tell her any of this? What words could convey how deeply sorry I was that I’d fallen in love with the very last guy I should have? I was a skank. A ho. Candidate for worst sister ever.
“Um, so… you and Chase are happy, right? You really love him, don’t you?”
Coward.
She hesitated a moment before answering, or I could have imagined that. “I wouldn’t have said yes if I didn’t love him. We’re really good together. We’re good for each other.”
“In what way?” I darted over to Corbin who was huddled inside a sleeping bag in his usual spot behind the dry cleaners. He was a war vet, one of the forgotten, and had lost his mind somewhere in a desert half a world away.
I set the plastic carrier bag next to his army green duffel bag and slipped away before he woke up. Sometimes he got angry. Sometimes he cried.
One of the cooks from the taco joint next door winked at me as I hurried past him in the alley, like we were conspirators.
“We come from similar backgrounds and you might not think that’s important, but it is,” Sienna said. “And we have the same core values.”
Not exactly the answer you’d expect from someone who was madly in love. It sounded more like something a shrink would say. What were core values?
“Oh. Okay. That’s good. Core values are good. I’m just glad you’re happy and that you moved on and found someone… who’s right for you,” I finished lamely.
“It makes life a lot easier. I mean, with Dylan, everything was just so exhausting. He was hard work whereas Chase actually talks and acts like an adult.”
Relief flooded my body. Dylan had been exhausting. She didn’t want to go back for more of that. She was over him. “Well, I guess that’s how it is when you find the right person. It’s not supposed to be so hard, right?”
“I guess not.” She was silent a beat. “Have you met anyone special?”
Yes, and sometimes he even talks to me. “Nope.”
God was going to strike me down. I looked up at the sky. The clouds were getting darker.
“Maybe you’ll meet a hot surfer dude at work. Hey, I have to run. I need to get to a meeting. Talk soon, brat,” she said, using her old nickname for me but her tone was affectionate.
After we ended the call, I picked up my pace, trying to beat the rain. Seconds before I reached the front door, the skies opened up and the first lashings of rain hit my face.
Was this my punishment for lusting after Dylan St. Clair? How biblical.
Or it could be my punishment for justifying my behavior. Sienna had sounded happy. She was getting married to a man she loved. She had moved on. Why shouldn’t Dylan be able to do the same? There was absolutely nothing wrong with what we were doing.
Keep telling yourself that. One of these days you’ll actually start believing your own lies.
18
Scarlett
This wasn’t a date. It was just two friends eating a casual dinner together. At a little sushi place in Santa Ana. Thirty miles from Costa del Rey, where it was unlikely we’d run into anyone we knew.
Dylan had picked me up right after he finished work and was dressed in black jeans and a steel gray button-down shirt that brought out the gray in his eyes. They looked like summer lightning. Smolderingly hot. Like him.
When I’d climbed into the passenger seat, my fingers had itched to run through his thick, dark hair and make it messy and disheveled. But I’d refrained.Just barely.
On the drive to the restaurant, I told Dylan about Sienna’s engagement and had watched his face closely to gauge his reaction. But as far as I could tell, he hadn’t been distressed or surprised by the news. All he’d said was, “Sounds like she found the kind of guy she should have been with all along.” Then he’d cranked up the music, and that had been the end of that conversation.
Now, I watched Dylan across the blond wood table as he slathered a piece of salmon sashimi with enough wasabi to clear his nasal passages for an entire decade. He guided the quivering raw fish to his mouth and I laughed when his eyes widened and started to water. “Whoa,” he said, with a shake of his head that made me laugh harder.
The funny part? He loaded up the next piece of sashimi with even more wasabi than the last one. His eyes were streaming now. It was so ridiculous I couldn’t stop laughing.
