“Word to the wise. If you want people to believe you, you might want to try to sound like you mean it.”
With that, though, he made his way out front, leaving me alone with my moody-ass thoughts.
I threw back my drink, then took my damn self into the cleaning supply closet and gathered up supplies.
I’d officially graduated past the prospect phase. I was fully patched in. But during the prospecting phase, I’d found a certain kind of catharsis through the menial tasks the other members of the club made us carry out: sweeping, mopping, dusting, scrubbing. They let your body work through excess energy and your mind drift away.
I needed the distraction.
So I cleaned until my fingertips ached and my skin felt dried out from the chemicals.
Just as I was getting out of the shower, I heard the high-pitched laughs of women in the common room before someone put on music that thrummed through the whole clubhouse.
The party, it seemed, had arrived.
I knew the guys would start to talk if I stayed my ass in my room. And I couldn’t risk any of them coming to the conclusion that after I saved Gracie, I suddenly changed.
So I got dressed and made my way out.
The prospects had scored at the bars. There were enough girls for each of the guys… and then some.
While I was able to see that they were all pretty in their own way, I didn’t feel that familiar biological urge to go over, to chat one up, to get her to the point where she was interested in going to bed with me.
So I poured myself a drink and orbited the party without singling any women out to talk to.
I played beer pong. I shot pool. I hung around the hot tub without getting in with the girls. Then when the party made its way back inside and got a little calmer, more intimate, I slid out from under a redhead who tried to sit on my lap.
“Where are you going, man?” Croft asked as I made my way toward the door.
“Walk.”
“Weren’t you supposed to be staying off the street?” Rune asked. They knew it wasn’t their place to police me. That was for Fallon or Brooks, neither of whom were around.
“I’ll be fine,” I said, shrugging. “Don’t worry. If anyone asks, I’ll tell ‘em you tried to stop me,” I said, ripping the door open, then moving outside.
I sucked in a deep breath that didn’t smell like beer, booze, or women’s perfume.
I usually liked that shit.
Now, the chemical scents of the perfume gave me a headache.
I tried not to let myself think how much I would prefer the coconut smell that clung to Gracie’s skin.
God, I was fucking hopeless.
I moved down the front yard, barely even noticing the grass that had been my obsession for years now, and took off down the sidewalk to walk toward the center of Navesink Bank.
But that wasn’t enough.
So I kept walking.
And walking.
And trying like hell not to think.
At all.
But especially about her.
