Page 35 of The Auction
Lies. I asked him for every brand name he liked and then I made sure to pick the opposite. Fucker was still eating Miracle Whip because that’s how I rolled.
He pulled up in front of the hardware store and I hesitated.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing,” I said, squirming in the passenger seat. Trying to see if I could see past the sales signs plastered on the storefront window into the store. Maybe it would be Kevin’s dad working the register today.
“Who are you looking for?”
“No one.”
He sighed and stretched out his arm along the back ofthe bench seat. “You know, it occurs to me, I never did ask about your situation.”
I glared at him. “What situation?”
I knew what he was asking, but it was just one more reason to get pissed all over again. No, he hadn’t asked anything about me before he agreed to Herb’s offer. Didn’t ask me if I had a beau or if I actually wanted to saddle myself with a husband at twenty years of age.
“If there was a guy in this town who was interested in you, he would have heard about the auction. He could have stepped up. He didn’t. So anything that happened before me is water under the bridge.”
“Can you hear yourself right now, Conan the Barbarian? If someone was interested in me, then maybe they were freaked the fuck out by the fact that my father was selling me to the highest bidder and they lost interest in me.”
His face gave nothing away. “Results are still the same. You’re m-”
“If the word mine or my wife comes out of your mouth right now, I swear I’ll dick punch you.”
“Jules, it’s getting to be about that time where you start to soften up. You need me to make you come again yet?”
I squished up my face. “Don’t say that.”
I knew I was probably turning red, too. That’s what happened when you’d been sheltered your entire life from anything even remotely sexual, only to have some dude show up who has zero filters.
He chuckled darkly and it made me scowl even more.
“There’s a kid in there I’ve seen a few times,” Creed said. I’m sure Kevin was the kid he was referring to. “Always gets a funny look on his face when he sees me. Was it him? I know you didn’t fuck him, but maybe you were…”
“He took me on a date,” I admitted, because that’s right.I had dated before Creed. “Well, not really a date. It was just coffee at Ruby’s diner. Still, it was a start, and then everything got ruined. You, being the ruiner.”
“That kid still has pimples on his face,” Creed pointed out.
“So! Look at your face. Besides, he’s twenty, my age. Not some old cradle robber like you are.”
“Cradle robbing is stretching it.” He leaned toward me then, his eyes pinned on the same storefront window mine were. “You still think about him?” he asked, softly.
The lie was there. Like all the other lies I’ve told him. But I just didn’t see the point. Kevin was no threat to Creed and Creed knew it.
I shook my head. “It’s not that. It was just one date. But…everybody thinks we were writing letters the whole time, which means he thinks that, too. The fact that I went out on a date with him while I was supposed to be mooning over you, sort of makes me a cheater.”
“Ah. I get it. You’re ashamed.”
“Not ashamed,” I corrected him. “I didn’t do anything wrong because were weren’t writing letters. I just hate the idea of someone thinking I would do that. I’m not a cheater.”
“No, just a liar and a saboteur.”
I shrugged. He wasn’t wrong.
“I’ll go in with you,” he offered. “We’ll pick up our shit here first, then hit the grocery store. I’ll stop at the post office before we leave town.”
I sighed. That meant we would have to double back, because the grocery was on the other side of town and the post office was just across the street.
