Scored(23)

“It’s not an excuse!”

“When’s the last time you had a date?”

“Last month.”

Her eyes narrow. “Try six months ago.”

“If you know, then why are you asking?”

“What happened with him?”

“He told me I owed him a blow job since he paid for dinner,” I remind her.

She makes a face. “Okay, bad example. What about Davis—nice looking, full-time job, and wanted a serious girlfriend. Y’all dated for eight months and then poof, he was gone.”

“I discovered he had a serious foot fetish.”

Her nose scrunches. “We’re all… weird, Paige.”

“His foot was not going up my vagina or ass. Or any other orifice he could think of.”

“Ewww, my brain.” She closes her eyes and then opens them. “You never told me that. You just said things didn’t work out.”

“I didn’t want that image in your head. Bad enough it was in mine.”

She grabs my hand. “You’re so sweet.”

“He did cheat on me, though, with a foot model he’d met online.” I shiver and pretend to gag. “That’s how I found out about his foot fetish. He left his browser open and his web cam on.” My only consolation was that he not only was a virgin who had only been intimate with me, in all things… but he also hadn’t met the foot model in real life yet, so I didn’t have to worry about what I could have caught from him, or them.

Or his feet.

Or her feet for that matter.

“Oh, dear Lord. I don’t envy you at all.” She digs into the bowl of her guilty-pleasure box of Chocolate Puffs.

Unlike Layton, who has been with her fiancé since they were practically kids, I was unapologetically late to the dating scene. I didn’t want to be like my mom, in love with love so much that men took advantage of her. I didn’t want to be like my sister either, jaded and unwilling to let any man get close to her. So I waited until after college to start dating and didn’t lose my virginity until I was twenty-four.

No, it wasn’t with Davis, the foot-fetish guy. My first time was with my very first boyfriend. A sweet guy from Alabama, who, as it turned out, had an even sweeter fiancée waiting on him back home.

Let me just say that it did not feel good to find out I was the other woman—right after meeting his family at his grandmother’s eightieth birthday party. Apparently, only whores wearing slutty dresses tempted men into sinning.

Okay, so maybe his fiancée wasn’t that sweet and maybe he wasn’t either, considering he was not only a cheater, but he was also a coward who didn’t know how to defend me.

“Are you thinking about the birthday party again?”

I flush. “Am I that easy to read?”

Layton eyes me. “Well, you are wearing your slutty pajamas to breakfast.”

Grabbing my box of cereal, I dig in it and toss some her way. She only ducks and laughs in response.

“Why are we friends again?”

“Because whores need saving?”

This time, I threaten to throw the entire box at her. “Excuse me?”

She waves her napkin like it is a flag of surrender. “Because we always stick up for each other, no matter what, and you’re the best friend a girl like me could ever have?”

Mollified, I set the box down. “Don’t you forget it.”

“I think you should give Dallas another chance.”

“Can we stop talking about him? I’d like to eat in peace.”

“You’re the one who’s going to have to be around him, not me,” Layton points out. “Nolan can’t help him with the charity event.”

She has a point. “I didn’t say I wouldn’t do my job.”

“You know I love you,” Layton begins.

Here we go…

“But you have really unrealistic expectations of men. You want them to be like the guys you read about in romance novels, but honey, they’re mere mortals.”

“I’m not looking for someone who doesn’t exist,” I point out as I finish my breakfast. “Here’s the thing—for a guy like Dallas, I’m new and shiny. I’m a nice girl. The kind you take home to meet your parents and help you win a bet. That’s not the start of a relationship.”

Layton eyes me. “Have you actually read all those romance novels on your shelf?”

“Yes, but they’re not realistic.” Okay, so I might be pushing things since a lot of authors do have realistic meet cutes in their novels. Also, I can’t believe I just used the very thing said to disparage them. Pretty sure this requires paying homage to the great Judith McNaught by creating a display dedicated to her books at the library in order to attain forgiveness.

“You can have realistic any day of the week, Paige.” She pushes her bowl away and picks up her phone, eyes roaming over the screen. I focus on pushing around the crumb floating in my pinkish-orange milk. “Try a guy who offers excitement and fun, and…” Her nose wrinkles. “What in the world?” she mutters, then raises her voice. “A guy who wants to get to know the real you and will only go as far as you want, as long as you admit you want to be with him.”

“That sounds like something Dallas would say,” I mumble, then jerk up my head to find Layton looking at everything but me.