Page 35 of Knight
“Did I miss anything?” I asked Sketch as he rounded the corner into the kitchen a few minutes later fully dressed.
“Nah,” he replied as he poured himself a cup of coffee and opened the fridge. “Was quiet in there.” I watched as he poured creamer into his coffee until it turned a color that coffee should never be.
“Why the fuck do you drink coffee if you gotta put that much shit in it?” I asked, shaking my head.
“Eh, just better this way. I can drink it without, but the thing is, I don’t have to. It’s all about the little luxuries in life. And I, for one, will take advantage of them all.” He shot me a smirk that was half cocky and half joking, but I could see the intensity in his eyes of how he felt about what he’d just said.
I may not have had a personal understanding of how it would feel to go without in life, but I got what he was saying.
“Eggs?” I asked pulling the carton out of the fridge.
“Fuck yeah.”
I got busy working on a full breakfast. Eggs, bacon, and some premade biscuits. Sketch sat at the island and we both seemed to be lost in our thoughts for a long while.
“So, whatcha gonna do about that?” he asked with a jut of his thumb in the direction of Gwen’s room. I set a full plate down in front of him. I stood and leaned back against the counter as I looked at him.
“What can I do?” I blew out a harsh breath and rolled my bottom lip between my teeth. “She made it very clear last night that she wasn’t happy with me. I fucked up yet again and apparently, I’m the reason she came home in that state.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. Tara came out and basically ripped me a new one right after you scurried away like a bitch.” I let out a short laugh.
“Not sorry, bro. Something about that chick…” He looked down and shook his head.
I wanted to know what the hell he was trying to say but I could tell that words escaped him right then. I wasn’t sure if he was saying something good or bad. Hell, for all I knew he had a crush on her and didn’t know how the fuck to deal with it. He wasn’t giving anything away.
I hadn’t really given much thought to Tara other than her being Gwen’s friend. She seemed nice enough and Gwen seemed to be happy around her. That should have been enough for me, but maybe I was somehow wrong about the whole thing. Maybe I needed to open my eyes.
My gaze shifted to the doorway as the sound of bare feet walking across the floor hit my ears. Tara appeared looking a bit out of place as she stood just beyond the threshold to the kitchen. She still had on the dress she wore last night, though it looked a bit rumpled. Her hair and makeup were a mess, but she didn’t seem to care as she looked at Sketch then me. It seemed like the heels had been long left behind and I wondered if she had something to go home in. Or if she was even planning on leaving.
Truth was, I wanted her gone. I needed to check on Gwen without the little guard dog around. And at that moment, I didn’t give a shit if Gwen wanted to talk to me or not. There were things that needed to be said. Words and actions that had happened that needed to be addressed. And while I didn’t think I was completely in the right, I knew I wasn’t all the way in the wrong either.
“Um, hey,” she said in a timid whisper and actually looked a bit sheepish. Maybe she regretted her words to me last night. I didn’t care. I didn’t put much stock in her or what she thought. If she wasn’t Gwen’s friend I probably wouldn’t look twice at her. I wasn’t trying to be mean, it was just the way it was. “I need to head home and…”
I waited for the rest of the sentence but got nothing. Her eyes darted to the floor for a second, then her spine straightened as she looked back up at me.
“Well, she’s still asleep. I would leave her alone. I don’t think she wants to see you.” She bent down and pulled on her shoes which I hadn’t even realized were next to the door. “Okay, bye.”
Then she was gone and Sketch and I were left looking at one another with confused looks plastered on our faces.
“Weird,” he mumbled as he shook his head and took a big bite of his biscuit. “You’re not going to listen to her, are you?”
“Nope,” I said, placing my plate in the sink then wiping my hands off on my jeans.
“Yeah, fuck. I’m not sticking around for whatever shit is about to go down. What the fuck happened anyway?”
I blew out a long breath and pushed my hair off of my face.What did happen?I barked. She yelled. She said some things and left. What more was there really to say? Okay, so there was a lot more to it than that but I didn’t even know how to start. Truth was, what happened had come with a lot of history. A history that I wasn’t in the mood to share.
“I don’t even know where to begin.”
“Well, from where I stand, it’s fucking obvious that the two of you mean more to each other than either one of you will admit. But, not my business, right?”
With that, he slapped me on the shoulder and headed out.
The silence around me was suffocating. My head spun and I wondered what things would be like if she hadn’t come back into my life. Which was worse, to always imagine what she was doing or to be right there seeing it but not actually being a part of it?
“Fucking shit,” I mumbled to the empty room. “When the fuck did I turn into such a pussy?”
