The Lion's Den(47)
“Whatever,” he returned. “It feels good.”
An Uber pulled up to the curb outside my building, and a blond head emerged from the back. “Is that who I think it is?” He peered over the top of his sunglasses.
We watched as the driver helped Summer heft two huge bags from the trunk. “No way is that tramp getting my spot on the couch,” he said through his teeth as he waved to her with a bright smile.
“Oh, come on. You know you’re gonna pick up one of these hikers this afternoon and I won’t see you again for months.”
“You mean until you drive my ass back to LAX next week. ’Cause you know you ain’t getting out of that, girl.”
I laughed. Despite his bravado, Hunter was a gentleman, and he bounded down the stairs to help Summer with her bags.
She dragged herself through the door and flopped on the couch, looking the worse for wear.
“What happened?” I asked.
“Ugh.” She sighed. “Brian found out about Eric and kicked me out.”
Finally. I’d been wondering how long that would take.
“How did he find out?” I asked.
“A freakin’ condom.”
I stared at her, incredulous. “You did it in his apartment?”
“But the good news is, you were using protection,” Hunter chimed in.
“So stupid, I know,” she admitted. “But I’ve hardly seen him, I swear! He wanted to shoot pictures of me for this series he’s doing, and the view there is so amazing, and then, you know how it is…We got carried away.”
“So what are you gonna do?” I asked, as though the answer weren’t obvious.
“Can I stay here for a sec? Just until I get a job. I may die if I have to stay with Rhonda in the Inland Empire again. Pretty please?”
“You’ll have to duke it out with Hunter,” I said. “He has dibs on the couch.”
“I can just sleep in your bed with you.” She must’ve seen the hesitation on my face, because she added, “For just a little while, I swear.” She threw her arms around my neck and gave me a kiss on the cheek. “Thank you for having my back.”
“You don’t wanna stay with your new boyfriend?” Hunter asked.
She shook her head. “He lives in his art studio downtown, and he’s traveling a lot right now. I wouldn’t want to be there alone.”
For the past year I had mostly avoided discussing Eric with Summer for fear she might sniff out my sensitivity surrounding the subject and become suspicious. But finally the question begged to be asked. “What’s the deal with you guys, anyway?”
“I mean, he totally wants to be with me,” Summer said. “But he’s, like, broke. So I don’t know if it can go anywhere.”
“But he’s a successful artist,” I said. “He doesn’t make any money from that?”
“I guess he does.” She shrugged. “He’s super weird about money. He never spends anything—he doesn’t even have a car. But he owns that entire building his art gallery is in. Apparently his family is, like, superrich, and I guess he has a trust fund and everything that he won’t even touch.”
“I can help him with that,” Hunter offered.
“Believe me,” Summer said, “if I can’t get him to spend money, no one can.”
Besides her nasty habit of stealing the sheets, Summer wasn’t a terrible roommate. It was nice to have someone to chat with over a glass of wine in the evening, and she was a neat freak, which meant she did the dishes and cleaned the place before I could even think about it.
Much to my relief, Eric never came around. Though I wouldn’t in a million years have admitted it to anyone, I’d been unable to ever totally let go of the time we spent together on the roof. I knew it was foolish—my logical mind recognized that he was a player and, even without Summer in the picture, he’d likely never have been with me—but my heart still curdled at the idea of the two of them together. In the beginning I’d tried to replace any errant thoughts of Eric with Dylan, but it hadn’t worked. Sure, I’d liked Dylan—and I imagined I would’ve been far more into him if I hadn’t met his brother first—but it wasn’t Dylan who turned up in my dreams. My obscenely sexy, stubbornly recurrent dreams.
Luckily, my dreams were the only place Eric turned up. He rarely seemed to be in town, and when he was, Summer preferred to stay at his place unless they were fighting, which they did regularly. I gathered both of them were incredibly jealous, but neither was particularly faithful. She threatened never to see him again over nudes he’d shot of other women or amorous text messages in foreign languages. He broke it off with her over dates she went on or new Jimmy Choos bought by a suitor. I could hardly keep up.
The theatrics were unusual for Summer; normally she had her guy wrapped around her little finger, and when she crooked it, he bought her baubles—or she dumped him for another man who would. But Eric had staying power regardless—or perhaps because—of his failure to bow before her. She was obviously more smitten with him than she cared to confess, and I daresay (in spite of her claims to the contrary) he was less with her, which drove her nuts. I had no doubt that if he actually wanted her to be his girlfriend, she’d have turned down the French Laundry with millionaires in Lamborghinis to eat ramen and ride the subway with him. For once in her life, the tables were turned. And this, I was ashamed to acknowledge, made me more than a tiny bit gratified.