Page 40 of Stacked
There they were—the two most toxic words in the English language, especially when spoken by a woman in a context like this. I was a guy, but not a dumb guy. I knew what they meant. Whenever a woman said them, she meant the exact opposite. Anya wasn’t fine; she wasn’t okay.
She was pissed.
“It’s just a contest,” I said. “There will be other ones.”
She recoiled. Her expression contorted, and I knew that in the space of two sentences, I’d somehow ripped off a Band-Aid and exposed a place rawer and more sensitive than I realized. There was no turning back, no stopping what I’d just done.
“Just... leave,” she said.
I stopped short. “What?”
“You heard what I said.” Her voice grew stronger, putting power behind her words. “Go back to New York.”
“What?”
She braced her hand on the lip of metal curling around the back of the vehicle. “I’m not taking it back. Do you want me to go further?”
“Sure.”
“Well, um... just... um... eff you.”
I stared at her for a beat, biting back a laugh before deciding I’d remain the calm one. Normally, if someone said, “fuck you,” that should—and would—spark an instant fight. I’d thrown more than one punch at someone who made that kind of comment to me in the past. But I didn’t want to punch Anya. I didn’t want to attack her. I only wanted to knowwhy—why she seemed like she hated me so much, why she wouldn’t allow herself to be nice to me even though some part of her obviously wanted to, and why she always acted so angry, so on edge, sobitter.
Besides, she hadn’t said thewholeF-word. Just the first letter. And honestly, it was kind of cute, in an I-don’t-want-to-cuss-but-I’m-furious sort of way.
“Do you want to explain why you’d say that to me?” I asked.
Anya folded her arms and puffed her chest. “You just don’t get it, do you?”
I shook my head. I most certainly didn’t. “Nope.”
“That’s the problem with you,” she said, her words turning angry. “You’re so... entitled, so arrogant, and so annoying.”
“Am I?”
Her jaw hardened. “Yep. That’sexactlywhat you are. A mediocre, entitled man who thinks wherever he goes, people should bow down and worship him just for existing.”
I bit back a laugh and noticed a change in the air around us. A decent-sized number of people from the award ceremony had followed me to this section of the parking lot, and they fanned around us, gawking and staring as Anya and I argued. More than one had a cell phone out, and I knew that meant they were recording every bit of this exchange. I decided to pretend I didn’t see them.
“Quite a takedown,” I said instead.
“Goddamn it, that is the problem with someone like you. Withallmen.”
I laughed. Couldn’t help myself.What a ridiculous thing to say.
Still visibly ticked off, she uncrossed her arms and threw up her hands. “I’ll bet nobody has ever spoken to you this way and nobody has ever told you who you are and what you really do to people.”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
“Guys like you think they can have anything they want.” She advanced a few steps. “You think youdeserveanything you want.”
“It’s just a float.”
Anya’s eyes hardened, her frown deepened, her shoulders curled in a defensive hunch. “It’s not just a float. Why can’t you see that? It’s not just about the damn float.”
“Then whatisthis about?”
“Everything.” She raked a hand through her hair. “This is about the store, about your move back here, and about the way you think you can just show up and win.”
