The three of them laugh, drawing the attention of everyone else in the room, while I want to melt into a puddle and disappear through the cracks in the laminate wood floor. “Oh my god.”
“I’m sorry,” Isla says, her face twisting into an exaggerated grimace, even as her eyes sparkle with mirth. “It’s just… Logan told the guys a little about what happened, and we’re all curious. Especially since he’s so clearly butthurt about whatever wentdown, and that’s not like him at all. Logan doesn’t get butthurt over women. Ever.”
My face heats. “I doubt he’s even given me a second thought.” At least not a secondgoodthought. He definitely thinks I’m a liar and that I’m trying to… Well, I don’t know what exactly he thinks I’m trying to do. Entrap him? What decade does he think this is? I make my own money. I’m sure as hell not going to try to snag a man because he’s rich. Especially not when he’s such a self-righteous, pompous douchebag.
“Oh, he’s definitely given you a second thought. And probably a third and fourth too.” Isla says as she dips her brush into a little pot of brown paint. She glances up at me before dragging the brush along the canvas. “He seems to think that you knew who he was when the two of you hopped into bed. Though, I don’t know what he thinks you were trying to accomplish, considering you haven’t given him the time of day since.”
My stomach flips, and annoyance rises in me. “I had no idea who he was, and if I had, I sure as hell never would have slept with his arrogant ass.”
Mira snort-laughs. “He is definitely arrogant.”
“He is. I wasn’t even the one to approach him. He approachedme. I tried to brush him off at first. But he was hot, and I’d gone to the club looking for a hookup—lesson learned, by the way. I won’t be doing that again. I am so not a one-night-stand kind of woman—so I figured, why not? I thought he lived in LA, and I was moving, so even if the sex was bad, I’d never have to see him again. Hell, I told him I didn’t even want to exchange last names or talk about our lives in any way. It didn’t matter to me what he did for a living, because, as far as I was concerned, that would be the first and last time I’d ever speak to him.”
“You really didn’t recognize him?” Lexi asks.
I groan. “I’ve never watched a hockey game in my life before the other night. I didn’t know who any of the players were, and it never would have crossed my mind that he could have played for the Rogues. Why would it? We were in LA.”
“That’s crazy,” Mira says, shaking her head. “What are the odds?”
“Tell me about it. And I was so thrown off by seeing his face on my first day of work that I pretended not to recognize him and told him he must have mistaken me for someone else when he tried to talk to me.” I take another big swig of my wine, needing to relax.
“Oh, he must havehatedthat,” Isla says almost gleefully. “That man thinks his dick is god’s gift to women, and if you pretended not to recognize him after a night of sex, it probably rocked him to his core.”
I wince. I almost feel bad about that. Or I would, if he hadn’t been such a colossal asshole. “Unfortunately for me, his dick really was fantastic. Did you know it’s pierced?”
There’s a beat of silence, and then a chorus of “What?”
“Oh yeah. Big and pierced. He has a Jacob’s Ladder piercing, and he definitely knows how to use it.” I can feel my face burning, and I can’t make eye contact with the women around me, but I also can’t hold it in anymore. I’ve been desperate to talk to someone about this.
“Ohmygod, Iknewthat slutty man had his dick pierced,” Lexi says, laughing and fanning her face. “I wonder if I could get Ryder to pierce his dick…”
Mira shakes her head. “Then you’d have to abstain from having sex for a couple months, right? Not worth it.”
“Oh.” Lexi frowns. “That’s true. I can’t live without the D for a couple ofdays, let alone a couple months.”
Everyone laughs at that, even me, and as the tension in my body loosens, I relax in my chair and let myself soak up my timewith these women and enjoy their offer of friendship. It’s why I’m loose enough to say something I instantly wish I could take back.
“Logan was the first guy I’ve slept with in almost two years.”
The metaphorical record scratches and everyone goes silent. Three sets of eyes widen and stare at me, and my mouth goes dry.
I shouldn’t have said that.
“I’m sorry. Did you just say you hadn’t slept with anyone in almost two years?” Mira gapes at me, incredulous.
“Um, yeah.” I twirl a curl around my finger, and a manic little giggle slips past my lips. “Haven’t really had the opportunity.”
“That’s bullshit. You’re gorgeous. All you’d have to do is casually mention that you’re looking to hook up with someone in front of a hot guy, and he’d fall at your feet, begging for the chance to sleep with you,” Mira says.
I have to laugh at that because my new friend has a much higher view of how desirable I am to men than I do. My mind wanders back to my college boyfriend.
Noah and I began dating halfway through freshman year, and things got serious quickly. We were inseparable, and I was completely gone for him. There were a few late nights in bed where we even talked about getting married. I thought he was it for me.
Then my parents died.
It turns out that Noah’s love for me had limits. And those limits were distance and the reality of being with a woman who was now the guardian of her little brother. I was devastated when he broke up with me, but the most humiliating part of the whole thing was that I tried to convince him to hook up with me a few months after our breakup. I was desperate for someone to hold me and touch me, and Noah reacted as if the idea was disgusting.
Clearly, I’m not as hot or desirable as my new friends think. I couldn’t even get the man who’d dreamed about marrying me to give me a pity fuck when I practically begged him for it.
