I should not be here.
But Carson is sitting near the largest television, her back to me, as a guy with an uppercase body and a lowercase head talks at her. Nottoher, because for most of the time I’ve been here, his mouth has not stopped moving. He’s definitely talkingather.
Carson and I have been to gym twice more since our initial lesson. She’s getting stronger and more confident. She no longer looks like she’s second-guessing her every move.
And watching her use her body, even under fluorescent lighting in a smelly public gym, hasn’t gotten any easier for me.
Which is why I’m in this fucking bar on a Friday night.
“Cucumber melon IPA?” The bartender slides a coaster in front of me.
I grimace. “That can’t be real.”
“It is, and it’s awful. Hence why it’s two dollars a pint today,” the bartender says.
I glance at the taps and pick the one that looks least like it’ll taste like something someone threw up at a tailgate. “B-Town IPA,” I say.
“Good choice,” he replies. “Anyone joining you?”
I glance back over my shoulder. Carson has slumped lower in her seat, but her date doesn’t seem to have noticed. He’s still yapping and gesticulating like he’s giving a private TED Talk.
“Just me,” I say, turning back around.
The bartender slides my pint across the bar to me, then leaves me to my own insanity. I glance back over my shoulder for the ten thousandth time, then pivot back on my stool so fast I nearly tweak my neck. In an effort to calm my nervous energy, I reach for a napkin and the bartender’s pen and start doodling—swirls and flowers and a couple of lemon slices—imagining each ink stroke on skin.
Onherskin.
She’d look gorgeous with a cluster of strawberries on her arm or a wisteria vine climbing over her shoulder. My fingers twitch as I think about the needle traveling across her skin, marking her forever.
I shouldn’t be here.
But when she said her date was in the MBA program, all I could imagine was every douchebag I went to grad school with. The guys with their two-hundred-dollar haircuts and their boat shoes. The guys who used to talk unabashedly about the women they wanted to make their wives and the women they wanted to make their mistresses. The guys who had favorite strip clubs, the guys who talked about women like they were commodities to be traded. I imagined Carson ending up in the bed of a guy like that and suddenly wanted to throw the biggest dumbbell in the gym directly at the mirror.
At least that’s what I told myself.
But the truth I pushed down—the truth I hid away, the truth I barely want to admit to myself—is that imagining Carson inanyone’sbed makes me want to break things.
And that’s fucked up.
Because she’s not mine. She didn’t ask for my protection. She full-ontoldme she just wants to be fucked, and I have absolutely no right to get in the way of that. Maybe she shouldn’t be with this guy, but I don’t think she should be sitting across from me, either.
It’s getting harder and harder to remind myself of that.
I groan, wadding up the napkin in my fist. I’ve got to get out of here. If she sees me, I’ll have no explanation. Not one that makes sense, anyway.
But then my phone lights up with a text, and the name on the screen makes a smile spread across my face.
Carson
I see you over there at the bar, you creeper. And thank god, because this guy is a grade A douche canoe. Please come save me so I don’t have to fake pass out and go to the ER just to get out of this date. That would be very expensive.
CHAPTER 18
CARSON
This man is polite and kind and clean, and he smells like fresh laundry, and he isboring.
“And then I clicked the wrong Zoom link, so I’m sitting in a meeting trying to talk about crypto markets when these guys are only interested in bonds.Bonds!”
