Chapter 8
Bridget
Victoria wouldn’t look at me.
I was desperately confused wondering what I’d done wrong, but it wasn’t like I could ask her, because she didn’t necessarilydoanything. I found her already cleaning up from breakfast when I got to the kitchen in the morning, and the first thing she said was, “We’ll be leaving at two thirty today.”
“Sounds good,” I said, dropping out of a yawn in surprise. “Good morning. Everything okay?”
“Mm-hm. Good morning.” She still didn’t look at me, finished washing her plate and set it on the rack, and she walked past me, not even a glance my way. “I’m getting to work on that gig. Text me if you need something.”
“Hey—are you all right?” I said, taking a step after her and thinking better of it. “Are you stressed about dinner? You can talk to me, you know.”
“Doing fine,” she said, breezy but forced. “Just want to get ahead on things. I don’t like being unemployed. Talk later.”
She stepped into her room, and I stared at the door, my pulse pounding uncomfortably. It wasn’t that I’d done something to make it obvious I had a crush on her. Was it? Had I been too… I don’t know, cutesy with her yesterday, while she was on that call? I’d been squished up against her side, giggling and sharing snacks and talking about her family, and then I knew I’d kept stealing long glances at her while we were cooking together…
I made the mistake of asking the wrong friend, Erica, the hopeless romantic of my friend group, a full-time erotic romance author, and she jumped to the same conclusion she always did, gasping that Victoria had probably caught feelings for me and was shy around me now, and she started workshopping grand gestures to win her back. Sexy grand gestures. As if what I needed right now was to think about presenting myself naked and wrapped up with a ribbon under the Christmas tree?
Okay, I was going to think about it a little. I shouldn’t have, but, like, you couldn’t blame a girl for thinking it.
I asked Nikki next, who seemed unbothered.
“Family is the hotbed of your oldest learning pathways. Going around them triggers our most base experiences and can pull up behavioral patterns that make us change as people in a blink.”
“Sometimes I forget you studied psychology.”
“Just be there for her however you can, okay? Give her the space to be messy through this.”
I sighed, slumping back in the chair. “So I’m guessing you disagree with Erica’s idea that she’s fallen in love with me and I should win her back with a sexy grand gesture and rose petals leading to where I’m naked in a ribbon under the Christmas tree.”
“Yeah, no, but I can tell you’re turned on by the idea. If you want to get off…”
She was clearly offering to keep me company, and normally I’d have been all for it, but I was… not… interested. I knew it was because I just wanted Victoria for company, but we weren’t up and admitting that, now, were we? “I’ll go take care of it myself,” I sighed. “That new grip vibrator showed up yesterday, so I guess I’ll get in a product review.”
I shouldn’t have been getting myself off thinking about Victoria hours before I went to see her family, but sometimes a girl did some things she shouldn’t. And I thought about her finding me under the tree.
Props to Erica, it was a fun one.
∞∞∞
The drive to her family’s house was low-key miserable. I turned the music one tick louder than usual to cover the fact that there was zero conversation, and Victoria stayed on her phone the entire time in the passenger seat, not even looking at me once. She’d dressed beautifully in this sleek black-and-white dress and her wool coat over top, her hair pinned back into a low, romantic bun, soft contoured makeup, and it was a lousy combination, finding her even more attractive while she clearly wanted nothing to do with me.
The house was huge—not like stupid-money levels of big, but bigger than it needed to be, from the sounds of who all lived here. I was curious if there was more family who had been regularly around when her parents had been together, but that was a thorny subject to ask about even when she liked me. Instead, I just parked the car, and I said, “Home sweet home. Er,well, unless it’s not that sweet. I mean, not to tell you how you should feel, but…” She looked at me, one eyebrow raised, and I cleared my throat. “I’m shutting up now. Are you ready? Um… doing okay?”
She met my eyes for an instant, and she looked away sharply with a sigh, and I withered. After a beat, she said, “Do you have lip balm?”
“Oh, yeah, for sure.” I reached across to open the glove compartment in front of her, and I slammed it shut again when I realized I’d left a dildo in it. I’d forgotten about the discreet public product review video I’d done. “Hold on, I’ve got some, uh, work stuff. Private things. I’ll go through it—”
She tightened when I saidwork stuff,and she opened the door, stepping out of the car, speaking too quickly. “Forget it. I’m sure they have some inside. I won’t bother you for more of your things.”
I let out a short, aggressive sigh, slumping back into my seat once she shut the door. “Fuck me,” I said. “What the hell did I do?”
Normally, when I was feeling down, having a dildo on hand close by would be a win. But I couldn’t evenuseit right now. Talk about lose-lose.
“Guess who,” a voice said when I got out of the car, and I turned with some brightness coming back into me at the sight of Kevin’s boyfriend Sam, dressed in a cute burgundy suit jacket with a bowtie, wearing that grin that seemed like it was permanent. I relaxed, leaning against the car—Victoria was meeting Kevin up at the front door, so Sam and I had a second over here under the flurries of snow that drifted off the roof, light-up decorations shut off for the daytime around us.
“Well, well, if it’s not Pizza Thief Samuel Clark,” I said, and he put a hand to his chest, mock-scandalized.
