“I’m visiting. For now.” She said with a tight smile.
Martinez beamed, clueless to the tension. “She’s thinking about sticking around.”
Instead of confirming that, she glanced at her watch. “I’ve got to get going.”
“Already?” Martinez whined, as if he weren’t already twenty minutes late for work and counting.
Celeste slipped from his arms smoothly as if she were shedding a jacket, not the touch of her lover, and turned away without another glance. “Positive. Lovely meeting you all.”
Martinez watched her go like she hung the moon from her G-string.
I puked in my mouth a little and rolled my eyes. “You’re punching above your weight with that one.” I muttered.
Martinez, too obtuse for his own good, stared off after her as she tore out of the parking lot without so much as a wave. “That’s what ambition looks like.” He replied absently.
“That’s what acting looks like,” I replied under my breath as I walked away.
He laughed it all off, clapping backs in an overly manly way as we all headed inside, talking about how Celeste called Cedar Bluff things like ‘ripe’, and ‘full of potential’.
But even though those words rubbed me all the way in the wrong direction, I didn’t keep going on with him. I had other things on my mind.
Like Goldie.
Tanner.
And how everything in my life felt like it was going to tip over and fall off the edge of a cliff at any second. Little did I know my shitty morning was going to morph into a downright lousy day.
The universe could bea real cunt when it wanted to be. And it was serving me a steaming platter of karma and bullshit like it was her fucking job.
I wasn’t trying to run into Tanner; I wasn’t trying to actively avoid him either. But at every turn, there he was.
Four different calls in the same shift left us existing in the same air. And as hard as I tried, I couldn’t look away from the easy, relaxed tension in his shoulders as he did his job. Or the smug smirk on his lips when he caught me staring at him—again.
I hated him.
I wanted to wipe it right off his face with a wide-open fire hose.
Okay, maybe not that extreme, but I wanted to get the upper hand on him to level us back out. Goldie spent the night at his place last night, and it was throwing me off. Not because I was jealous, I wasn’t, not really. Not because I was mad, I was definitely not that either.
Hell, I didn’t even know what I was.
Envious? Sure.
Longing for another hit of Goldie’s attention? Most definitely.
But there was something else there, under the surface of my skin, making me itch and burn with every glance the golden boy’s way.
Curiosity.
I hated that.
I hated wanting to know how they spent their time.
I hated the images that burned in my mind as I wondered if they fucked.Howthey fucked.
Did she like it? Did he? Was it better than when we were together?
Was she hooked on him and uninterested in me?
