Page 41 of The Third Girl

Stop. Don’t go there.Unwilling to let my heart have a say in the matter, I shut my brain off as I hustle through the apartment, dropping my keys on the kitchen table on my way to the bathroom. I want to erase the evidence of the mistake he thinks we made.

Getting the shower going, I wait until it’s steaming hot, then step in. I would have thought I’d be sick of water at this point, after practically drowning in it earlier, but I stand under the warm spray for a long time after I clean myself up. My mind wanders right to Matt. I wonder where he went after dropping me off. Probably home, actually. He’d want to get back to Sailor.

Moaning at the fact that I’ll have to face him tomorrow, I get out of the shower and wrap a towel around myself.And that, my friends, is why you don’t screw your boss.I’m a goddamn cliché. I draw in a disturbed breath. Yeah, this totally sucks.

After working some curly-hair products through my locks, I grab my phone and sit on the edge of the tub with my diffuser. It’s a time-consuming process to dry my hair without making a complete frizz ball of it, and I always end up scrolling through social media while I do it. Before I open any of my accounts, though, I glance at my messages. I have three texts that must have come in while I was in the shower. Biting my lip, I jab at the screen and pull them up to read.

Laney:I got a couple of texts from Kennedy about Craig.

Laney:Are you okay?

Laney:She’s worried about you.

I pinch my eyes shut for a second, then carefully type out a response with one thumb while still working on my hair.

Me:Yeah. I’m fine. I’m home.

Laney:Kennedy said Matt laid into the guy.

Laney:Then Matt showed up at home looking like a drowned rat.

Laney:And boy was he not in the best mood.

Laney:Not that he ever is, but you know what I mean.

Laney:He said he was the one who took you home.

As each text comes in, my chest tightens because I can read the unspoken thoughts and questions between the lines. Things like,Holy shit, Matt came to your defense.And,Why was Matt in such a foul mood?Also,Why was he drenched?And, probably the most important,Is something going on?

Laney’s the only one who knows that I’ve been struggling to understand how I feel about Matt. But I don’t know if I can admit what happened tonight. Especially since we didn’t exactly part on the greatest of terms. So, what do I say? This is dangerous ground because Laney is very close to Matt, too. And now that she and Logan have gotten back together, she actually has dinner with his family all the time. It puts me in an awkward spot for sure.

Not to mention … Matt probably doesn’t want me to bring it up. Not that it’s not my right to speak my truth, but— I don’t want to cause him trouble. Because I do like him, no matter what has transpired between us. He’s a good person. Dammit, I could go around in circles all night thinking one minute about how much I do like him… how much I appreciated him coming to my rescue… how good it’d felt to finally have him see me… and how much it’d hurt to have him shut down on me afterward. Wrenching myself from those thoughts, I tap out another response.

Me:He had Craig by the neck.

Me:That probably explains the mood.

Me:And we got caught in the rain getting to his car.

Laney:I’m available all weekend if you want to talk.

Me:Okay. Thank you.

I don’t know if I’ll call, mostly because I don’t know what to say. I got a taste of what I wanted. And it wasn’t nearly enough. But it totally feels like Matt is going to pull the plug on everything, seeing as how he regretted what we’d done almost as soon as he pulled out. That’s the way it’d felt, anyway, with the way he’d hurried me home.

A dramatic sigh falls from my lips. Go figure, the one guy I really want is the one I can’t have… and I’ll continue to work for him five nights a week while knowing what it feels like to have him inside me, kissing me, and touching me.

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