Once I was sure Arizona had gone inside, I made my presence known. It turned out I hadn’t been that stealthy.
“Eavesdropping, Fisher?”
“Excuse me?”
“I saw you lurking around the corner when I backed the rig in.”
“Your point? I was getting some fresh air.”
“Sure you were.” He scoffed.
“What’s your problem, man?” I straightened my spine, prepared to get in his face if need be. It wouldn’t be an even match, given that I stood six foot four and weighed around two twenty-five with just ten percent body fat, while he barely reached my shoulders and likely couldn’t even bench press his own weight.
“You.”
“Me? What the fuck have I ever done to you?” I questioned, minus the fact that I loathed the guy simply because he was Arizona’s partner. I was envious of the time he got to spend with her.
“It’s not about me, it’s Ari.”
“Arizona,” I damn near growled.
“See, it’s that, right there.”
“What?”
“You seem to be under some misguided impression that you only get to call her by her nickname, and yet you’re not even friends.”
“The fuck we aren’t.” If I weren’t on the job, I wouldn’t have thought twice about laying the fucker out for his comment.
“Listen, Jameson, I might be new here, but I’m not blind. Shit or get off the pot.”
My blood was past boiling at the gall of this guy. Who the hell was he to pass judgment on my friendship with Arizona? He didn’t know her. He hadn’t been around long enough to pick up on all the idiosyncrasies that made her who she was.
However, the real meat and potatoes of my anger was I had only ever been an outsider in her world. An outsider who would give anything to step one foot into her inner sanctum, and he just called me out on it.
Hell-bent on finding her, I headed for the locker room only to nearly choke on my tongue when I saw her sinfully curvaceous curves covered only by a terrycloth towel. I wanted Arizona more than my next breath, but fuck if I knew how to penetrate her titanium re-enforced walls without forcing the barricades up further.
“Jesus, Jameson.” She jumped from the sound of the door clicking closed behind me.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean?—”
“Sure you didn’t.” Ari huffed with an unimpressed sigh.
I stood utterly thunderstruck. Motionless minus my eyes that worked swiftly, committing every inch of her flawless beauty to memory while my attempts to articulate the reason I sought her out fell short, leaving me at a loss for words.
“But let’s be real for a second; I’ve got nothing you haven’t seen a thousand times over.” She dismissed my presence and turned back toward her locker.
Wait, what?
She couldn’t be more wrong.
Her presumption of how I viewed her jerked me out of my stupor. “Don’t do that.”
“Do what exactly?”
“Diminish how beautiful you are.”
“Jameson.” Her eyes met mine again, however, this time through the reflection in the mirror of her locker door.
