I looked at her across the room. I watched herdance.
She looked back atme.
And late in the night, when my back was turned, sheleft.
Chapter Eleven
Roni
Iputin my hours at the display suite office on Monday, and while I did, I worked on the New Year’s Eve event as much as I could. I kept working on it over Indian takeout at my dining room table, afterwork.
And all the while, I put Jude and what we’d done last night completely out of my mind. Or almostcompletely.
Because I was determined to keep the New Year’s event and what happened last nightseparate.
Work.Play.
Work wasserious.
Play wasnot.
The last thing I needed was to get serious about screwing JudeGrayson.
Brody had already emailed me some sample contracts, and by the time I’d finished dinner, I’d sent a detailed outline of the terms I needed drafted into a contract to my lawyer. I’d worked out a rough schedule for the day of the event, beginning with the time security and crew needed access to the venue, and including the tear-down in the hours after theshow.
And I wondered, as I stared at the schedule on my laptop, if that night—as we finished up with the event, the crew packing the gear out of the venue and Jude sending his guys home—would be the last time I ever sawhim.
I’d had so many moments in my life that I’d thought would be the last time I ever saw him. And yet… somehow, he just kept comingback.
Or Idid.
When I walked into my bedroom, it was so empty of him it actually hurt. When I woke up this morning, he was already gone. Actually, he was gone long before morning came. But he’d been here, in my home. When I woke up, I could smell him on mysheets.
I could smell him onme.
I didn’t even want to take a shower this morning because ofit.
Idid.
But yeah. Notgood.
I sat down on my bed and stared, for a while, at the glass of water on the bedsidetable.
So strange, how a man and a woman could act like such animals together. Naked and raw and so ridiculously intimate, and afterwards get dressed and go about all the polite niceties oflife.
After Jude fucked me so hard and so good my eyes watered and a vase on my bedside table smashed on the floor and my neighbors probably hated me, he sat on the edge of my bed and asked me if I wanted a glass ofwater.
Then he went into my kitchen and poured me a glass of water. He put it on the table by my bed, where the vase had been, then went into the bathroom to cleanup.
The water glass was a generic tumbler with an ugly pattern of yellow flowers on it, which I’d held onto somewhat ironically when I moved out of my mom’s home for the first time. It was one of those glasses they used to give out for free at the gas station at the end of our street when you filled up your tank with gas. I was proud the first time I could afford to fill my mom’s gas tank all by myself. I’d brought the tumbler home toher.
That very same night, her boyfriend used it to drink whatever shit he was drinking, got drunk, and broke it. Not on purpose, but just as a side effect of generally being an idiot and adrunk.
One month later, when I could afford to, I filled up the tank with gas again, got another tumbler, and kept it in my room. It was a symbol of a whole lot of shit to me at the time; my independence, my ability to take care of myself, the places I was headed in life with or without my mom’s help. I barely even noticed how ugly itwas.
As it sat on my bedside table where Jude had put it, I wondered if he noticed how ugly it was. I wondered why he picked that one ugly glass from a cupboard filled with much more beautifulglasses.
* * *
