I grab another beer and take a healthy sip of it to get the bitter taste out of my mouth. Making me lose almost every friend I had in high school and the early days of college wasn’t enough; he had to take my parents too.
He’s replaced me on all the annual family vacations to our summer home on the lake. He shook my aunt’s hand after she got her PhD. And he wakes up at five in the morning to drive out of the city with my father to pick out the Christmas tree.
My parents put him on a fucking pedestal, and he’s not even blood.
Time continues rolling by until one of the many girls who frequent these types of events spots me from across the crowd and beelines straight toward me.
Here we fucking go.I feel my patience wither into nothing like it’s a physical being.
“Thanks for being tonight’s entertainment.” Mitchell clinks his drink to mine when she’s a couple feet away.
I glower.
“I never see you around anymore.” She runs her hand over my chest. Rachel, I think. Or is it Amy?
Don’t care.
“I know. That was intentional.”
I send her a withering look because apparently peeling her hands off my body makes for bad press, and I simply cannot be fucked having another conversation with my agent about how I need to appear “ready and available”to all women at all times, while simultaneouslyactinghard to get. It’s a compromise I’ve had to deal with because I can’t be a cunt toeveryonewithout getting shafted.
The tactic is healthy for our wallets. And because the media has a massive hard-on and decided that I’m on the market as Detroit’s catch of the season—like a fucking fish—I’m meant to bewelcomingtoward physical advances.
The fact that their touch makes me nauseated is completely irrelevant in everyone’s eyes—comical, in fact.
Rachel throws her head back with a grating laugh and rubs her very fake tits against my arm.
Wait, her name is Kelly, I think.
Fuck this. Why can’t two a.m. come sooner?
It’s loud. It smells. It’s too crowded. But I’m stuck here because either Coach, the boys, the media, or all three, will be up my ass if I don’t show up to celebrate our “outstanding win” and sour the atmosphere with my less-than-sunny disposition.
My presence is hardly necessary. All I do is watch the guys get shitfaced and/or laid, while waiting for time to roll by until it’s an appropriate hour for me to leave.
“You’re so funny, Leo,” she drunkenly giggles, even though I know for a fact that she’s faking the whole tipsy act.
It’s not vodka and soda in her glass; it’s straight soda. I heard her order.
“Duval,” I correct. “NotLeo. We aren’t friends. Don’t act like it.”
Mitchell watches the scene unfolding and gives me an overly enthusiastic thumbs-up. So much for having a best friend whoalways has my back.
Thank God Sabrina isn’t here. Otherwise she’d be quick to put on her PR hat to defuse the situation before someone rats on me to Coach or the media again—because Lord forbid I have boundaries.
A nauseating lilac smell fills my nostrils right before a redhead puts her unnervingly bony hand on my other arm. Oh,this oneI know all too well. Lexi, aka Alexandra Melissa Rosenwell, is the daughter of one of the electoral candidates, and the second biggest irritant that this green Earth has spawned. Shenearlypisses me off more than Jack.
Yet she’s someone Jack hates like no other. I’d usually like anyone who gets under his skin, but she’s the exception. She understands the definition of rejection as poorly as he does.
I’m off my game. I can usually smell her five minutes before I see her.
If I could physically recoil from her touch—and every other person’s touch—I would. But no, I have to remain tense, nauseated, and unimpressed, counting down the seconds until they get the hint and leave me the fuck alone.
“I’ve been looking for you everywhere,” Lexi, the self-proclaimed queen bee, purrs as she runs her unnecessarily long nails down my arm to the hand that’s holding my drink.
Is it her hobby to try to breach my comfort zone? I’m certain it’s so someone can snap a picture that she can run to the press with and turn it into a political maneuver.
Or to send it to a woman so they can get the wrong idea.
