Play It Safe(102)

More red drifted into her face and her friend shifted on her feet and there was my answer.

Buddy Sharp didn’t do it for her and for over seven years she’d been pining for Grayson Cody.

She didn’t speak so I did.

Saccharine sweet, I commiserated, “Oh honey, you know, I understand your pain. You…”

I trailed off as my eyes moved to the girlfriend who still wasn’t looking at me.

And that was when I knew. It hit me like a rocket.

I knew that Cecily had helped Buddy separate Gray and me, I didn’t know how but she either helped or he’d told her about it.

And she’d told her girlfriend, a woman who lived in Mustang. A woman who knew that everyone was gleeful we were back together. A woman who was uncomfortable that her friend had a hand in tearing us apart. A woman who might even be wondering why she had a friend who would do something that despicable. And even though she was friends with Cecily, she was a decent enough person not to like it.

My eyes went back to Cecily as everything I had went into stopping myself from launching a full on bitch smackdown in the chiller cabinet aisle of Plack’s.

Instead, locking eyes with her, I finished on a whisper, “You know.”

The girlfriend shifted again, this time differently. Her discomfort had ratcheted up and there was fear wafting off her.

And the red was now draining with all the rest of the color in Cecily’s face.

Yes, the bitch had a hand in it.

I kept speaking and doing it quietly.

“I don’t think you’re getting this but, even back then, when you strutted your ass right up to me happy to be a complete bitch, I wasn’t a pushover. And I’m even less of one now. So I advise you to learn from then, from this and from what I did to foil your troll of a husband’s plans to take down my man, we’re impossible to defeat. That happens when you’ve got good and right at your back and not greed and envy. So I suggest you share that with your husband and you two stop focusing your energies on Gray and me and instead convincing yourself that his money and your big house make up for not having the care and respect of your neighbors.”

“You bitch,” she hissed.

“You would know,” I replied and tossed the cheese into my cart before looking at her friend. “As for you, you should be careful the company you keep. Sometimes a stench shifts and it might be a kind that’s impossible to wash away.”

She didn’t look at me as I spoke to her but she knew I was talking to her. I knew because she swallowed nervously.

And with that, I was done. I put my hands to the handle of the cart and rolled it down the aisle toward the meat without offering my fond farewells. I needed to get the rest of what was on the list, get it in my car and get home before I blew a gasket.

I did this and, wheeling our groceries packed in the canvass tote bags I bought at Hayes to my Lexus, I saw them moving to an SUV. I would do it anyway because that was me but then I did it for different reasons. I put the top down, slid my fabulous shades on my nose and buzzed my expensive, flashy convertible behind their SUV.

Luckily, the uncontrollable urge didn’t strike to reverse it and slam my bumper into theirs. My car was new but it was paid for, I loved it and, if Gray’s truck was anything to go by, I’d need to keep it awhile.

I drove home fuming and as I was coming up the lane, Gray, in a tight, wine colored tee, one of seven (yes seven, I’d investigated, all were equally battered like he inherited them from his father or something) of his tatty baseball caps on his head, leather workman gloves on his hands, came sauntering out of the stables as I did.

This was something I was discovering that I loved about Gray. Not only the fact that he was so hot he could look delicious wearing a ragged baseball cap but also when he knew I was going to the grocery store and I got back and he was around, he always stopped what he was doing to bring in the groceries for me. I might take in a couple of totes but I stayed in and put the groceries away while he went back and forth and lugged them in.

So I drove around his truck (thus closer to the backdoor to the kitchen) and parked. Then I got out. Then I slammed my door and planted my hands on my hips.

Gray stopped two feet away from the other side of the car and took me in.

Then he muttered, “Oh shit.”

“Oh shit is right!” I snapped. “Guess who I ran into at the grocery store?”

“Osama bin Laden?”

That was funny but I was not laughing.

“No, Gray, he’s dead,” I told him something he already knew then leaned in and hissed, “Cecily.”

His torso swayed back an inch as he crossed his arms on his chest. “You know she lives here, dollface, you knew it would happen eventually. What the f**k?”

Something about Gray then and now, he was rational and logical to a fault and mostly very easygoing. Unless it was Buddy Sharp, my brother (back then) or his uncles (then and now), he didn’t get riled easily.

Which sometimes sucked and I discovered that at that very moment when I was in rant mode and I wanted someone to understand exactly why and commiserate with me.

So I explained why.

“She had a hand in the play Buddy made to get me out of Mustang.”

And there it was. I got someone to commiserate with my rant.

The problem was, in my snit I had temporarily forgotten that when Gray wasn’t being rational, logical and easygoing and he got pissed, he got pissed.