Page 71 of Wanting More
Running both hands over his face, Joel looked at Vic tiredly. "We…we slept with Sapphire."
Vic didn’t move a muscle, but Hayden watched as his eyes went wider than he had ever seen them. Hayden groaned.
Slamming down the bottles on the shelf, Hayden turned around to look at Joel. "Goddammit, Joel, tell it to him, right."
"I'm fucking trying," Joel shot back before looking back at Vic's still stunned expression. "Okay, let me explain."
For ten minutes, Vic just stood there with his arms crossed and his feet bolted to the floor, as Joel explained from the beginning, while Hayden finished restocking the bar. With nothing left to do, Hayden leaned against the counter and listened as Joel practically yelled how Sapphire spent the last few days hanging out with Finn and ignoring them altogether.
After a while, Vic shrugged. "Yeah, I kind of don't blame her," he confessed to Joel's horror. "One minute, you two are giving her your undying attention, and the next, you're avoiding her."
The chair beneath Joel skidded along the wood floor as he abruptly stood up. "We're not avoiding her, just putting up a boundary! I still want to talk to her, have breakfast, and shit. But now she barely even smiles at me," he said, flinging out an arm. "She just watches me with that cold ass stare of hers, as if she's waiting for me to run up and kick her or something."
"Mmm, or maybe kick her out?" Vic murmured and watched as Joel's expression mutated to one of shocked horror at the very suggestion. Vic continued before Joel could form his sputtering sounds into words. "If I were her, that's what I would think. Like, maybe these two dudes are tired of me and are giving me a subtle hint to get the hell out."
Joel looked sick.
Hayden could hear the blood rushing in his ears like a crashing ocean. He shook his head at Vic. He was wrong. "We would never…she knows we would never…"
Hayden's words trailed off because the more he tried to deny it he could see Vic's point. He could see Sapphire's beautiful face when she first moved in and the dubious expression she wore each day as she doubtfully looked around her new home.
Vic made a deep sound as he shook his head in thought. "But does she, though?"
"I still don't know how we pulled that off," Hayden grumbled as he stamped his rain-soaked boots at the mat just inside the kitchen at the back door.
Unlike most Saturday nights, they somehow managed to get everyone out and close the bar early that night. Partly due to the raging thunderstorm and the last two rounds being on the house, they were able to usher the smaller than usual crowd out the door.
"Yeah. I know Vic was more than happy to have the night off. Probably went anywhere just not to go home and deal with that old shit of a father for a night."
Hayden cursed under his breath and ran a hand through his dripping hair. "He deserves it too. Guy wears far too many hats working on that farm and our shit to have to deal with that old fuck too."
Joel agreed as he slipped out of his wet boots just as another boom of thunder rumbled outside. When he had first got his bike years back, he thought riding in the rain was the coolest shit. The rain pelting off his jacket and the exhilaration of the charged air around him was like a surge of adrenaline to the bloodstream. Now, it just felt dumb as hell and left you soaked head to toe. Walking the short distance to the laundry closet, Joel flipped on the lights and smiled at the sight of Hayden's clean clothes folded in his basket.
"Hey, I'm borrowing some of your shit," he announced as he grabbed a familiar grey shirt and pair of jeans.
Hayden, right next to him now, made a sound of disapproval under his breath as he grabbed some clothes too. Silently they changed from their wet clothes into the dry ones. Since their conversation with Vic earlier, all that had been on their minds was Sapphire. Vic's thoughts on Sapphire's behavior had struck something inside of Joel and had eaten at him every moment since.
She couldn't think that he told himself for the hundredth time.
Pulling on a pair of socks, he straightened, impatient to get upstairs and surprise her at their early arrival. Earlier, as they drove up in the pouring rain Joel had seen the lights on in her room, so he knew she was awake.
Joel glanced over to Hayden and saw that he was completely changed as well. Good, they wouldn't look like drenched dogs as they eagerly raced up the stairs.
Their sock-clad feet made no sound as they walked through the dark kitchen. There was a lingering of something sweet in the air. Joel glanced over to the stove with narrowed eyes. He had seen and heard about her new side business. At the beginning of the week, Julie had texted both him and Hayden seeking permission to sell Sapphire's baking. The childish urge to demand that she come and ask him herself had nearly overpowered him, but Joel found the strength to refrain. Instead, he had to watch as the sheriff and his men, practically fight over the cookies he himself never got to taste.
Pushing away the burn of jealousy, Joel took the stairs two at a time up to the second floor. Opening the door at the top, just across from his room, he turned the corner and paused. The living room and kitchen were completely dark save for the occasional flashes of light from the storm outside. Joel looked to Hayden, who tilted his head and listened.
There were sounds coming from upstairs. Setting his phone and keys carefully at the edge of the table, Joel silently moved to the entrance to the second stairs that led to the third floor.
Joel frowned at the loud clap of thunder that shuddered through the air. It sounded as if it were inside! He looked back at Hayden, who shared the same confused look. Slowly they began up the stairs, the sounds becoming clearer with each step. It was the sound of music combined with the outside sounds of the storm. Cool air wafted around his face as he carefully ascended, and Joel realized she must have opened her window again. What was with her and her obsession with opening windows, he mused?
Suddenly the music stopped just as their heads breached the wall where they could see through the railing that guarded the stairs.
"What do you want?" Sapphire's irritated voice echoed off the walls, and both men froze.
Directly across from the stairwell's opening was the open door to her room. The lamp by her bed dimly illuminated the empty bed with soft yellow light while the open window next to the bed let in the cool storm air. But it was the open door directly to the right of the stairs that held both men's attention. With just the tops of their heads peeking over the floor, they stared through the wooden rail posts to the figure in the tub. Her back was to them, and they could see her bare, slick shoulders and piled-up curls on the top of her head as she lounged in the clawfoot tub.
"Are you naked?" the man's voice asked with almost painful wonder, and Joel could see from the glimpses of the phone she held up that she was video calling him.
