Bad for You (Sea Breeze #7)(16)

“You ever gonna come listen to me play?” he asked, then took a bite of his pizza.

No. More than likely not. Going to a club where I knew no one other than a guy on the stage did not sound appealing at all. It sounded terrifying. However, I didn’t want to hurt his feelings.

“I’m not sure. I don’t do that scene, or I never have. I wouldn’t even know anyone.”

Krit studied me a moment. “You could bring a friend,” he finally said.

A friend. I had two of those. At least I thought I did. I was still trying to figure out what constituted a friend.

“I’ll see if I have one that wants to go with me,” I told him, wanting to change the subject.

“You have that public speaking class yet?” he asked.

I nodded. I had suffered through it and somehow made it out on the other side alive. But that didn’t mean I would always get out of being called on to go up front. “Not my favorite,” I admitted.

“You really have a problem with attention don’t you?” he asked as he finished off his first slice of pizza.

He had no idea how much of a problem I had with attention. He loved it. I hadn’t seen him perform yet, but I could tell by the look on his face when he talked about it that he adored having all eyes on him. I had no doubt those eyes on him loved every minute of it too. Having a reason to look at Krit was always nice.

“I just don’t have good experiences with it. . . . I like to go unnoticed.” I wasn’t telling him anymore. My past needed to stay in the past. This was my now and my future. I didn’t want to bring all the ugliness and pain from my past into the life I had now.

“Problem with that, love, is that you’re really f**king hard not to notice,” Krit said with a small smile on his lips, but a sincerity in his gaze that made me think he didn’t mean that in a bad way. Almost as if he was saying he liked what he saw.

“I try to blend in,” I replied, not sure if I was misunderstanding him or not. I wanted to believe he meant that as a compliment, but how could he?

“That’s a shame,” he said, then reached for another piece of pizza.

I decided to change the subject and asked him about how he learned to play the guitar. Our conversation became easy then and relaxed. I loved hearing his voice and listening to him laugh.

What I didn’t expect was that Krit would show up every evening like this and eat with me for the next two weeks. But he did. And I liked it. No, I didn’t just like it . . . I planned my day around it.

KRIT

It was becoming a habit. That was all. Nothing more. I was not addicted to her. I wasn’t. Just a nice little distraction. Seeing Blythe in the evenings before I left for my gigs was a way to have a moment to just be me. Blythe didn’t require me to be anything else.

Last night she had actually rolled her eyes at one of my jokes and thrown her napkin at me. It had taken every ounce of strength I had to stay in my seat and not grab her face and taste those full lips. She wasn’t nervous with me anymore. She smiled at me and let me in when I knocked on her door.

Somehow she had become my level ground. The place I could go to find myself before I went out and entertained everyone. She didn’t hang on me and beg me for anything. It was easy with Blythe.

Or at least I kept telling myself that.

If I acknowledged the truth, I would panic. So instead I was going to believe this was all I wanted from her. Just seeing her was enough. Hearing her laugh made my f**king day.

“Hey,” she said with that smile from heaven as she stepped back and let me inside her apartment.

“I got the pad Thai you like,” I said, holding up the bag from the Thai place down the street. After watching her make those sweet little moaning noises as she ate it the last time I picked it up, I decided I needed to watch her eat it again.

Her eyes lit up, and she clapped her hands and bounced on her feet like a little girl. Women who looked like Blythe were not supposed to be so damn cute. Seeing her get excited over food made me want to feed her three meals a day.

“I made sweet tea just like you showed me. Come, taste it. I think I got it right,” she said as she hurried to the kitchen.

Two nights ago she had said she loved sweet tea, but she didn’t know how to make it, and buying it was too expensive. So I’d taught her how. You would have thought I was brilliant by the way she watched me and asked me questions. It was as if I was conducting a science experiment. Another thing about Blythe: she made me feel important. Needed. Like I was a part of her life that she relied on.

That felt f**king good. Too good.

But I was not addicted. I didn’t care what Green said. Blythe was not an addiction. I hated that he had started accusing me of that.

I sat the bag down on Blythe’s kitchen table and followed her to the bar where she was filling up a glass of ice with tea from the gallon-size plastic pitcher I had brought her when I taught her how to make sweet tea.

“Taste it,” she said with excitement dancing in her eyes.

If this tasted like shit, I wasn’t going to be able to tell her. Not with her looking like that. Hurting Blythe was something I was incapable of. I would lie to make her smile. I had done just that last week when she had made me a grilled cheese and burned it. She had seemed so worried about what I thought, so I swallowed every last bite like it was the best thing I had ever put in my mouth.