Bad Things(80)

“Don’t be an ass.”

“I’m not being an ass. I’m not saying this because I don’t care. If I didn’t give a damn, I would just say those words. Don’t you get that? I don’t make promises because I’m honest, and most damned promises are a lie.”

I felt my lip quiver. He’d done it now. I wouldn’t hold back on him. I felt how ugly the words were before they’d even left my lips. “You think you’re such a perfect guy, just because you tell women the score, and they love you anyway. You think your dad was any different from you? You think your mother named you after him because he was a bastard? He was probably just like you, just as charming, just as fun, just as irresistible. Your worst nightmare is to become like your dad, but what would you do if some woman came up to you tomorrow, and told you she was pregnant?”

“I always use protection—”

“Which doesn’t always work. You’re dodging the question. I’ll answer it for you. You’d run away. Just like your dad.”

His jaw clenched, and he shook his head at me, looking pissed now. “That was low.”

I knew it was. I felt low for saying it, but I didn’t take it back.

“If you’ll recall,” he bit out. “This was just as much your idea as mine. Remember when you promised me that this wouldn’t ruin our friendship? Was that a lie?”

I couldn’t answer that. I didn’t know how, and the idea that he’d allow our friendship to end just broke my heart.

He cursed, a long, loud, fluent tirade. “We should have stuck to our don’t list.”

I felt my face turning red with temper. As though that asinine list had magic powers, to keep us from making stupid mistakes.

I exploded. “It wasn’t a don’t list, you douche bag, it may as well have been a f*cking checklist! Your f*cked up mind just saw it as a challenge!”

His eyes were so cold as he studied me. It was a new experience for me, watching that warm golden gaze that I loved shoot ice at me. “I’m leaving. How about you give me a call when you grow the f*ck up?”

I blinked, feeling almost numb as he started to gather his things, shoving them into his large duffle with short, angry movements.

I sat heavily on the bed as he just continued to pack without a word.

“Tristan,” I said once, a soft plea in the word.

He ignored it. He ignored me.

In fact, he never uttered another word before he walked out.





CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX





The next week was more hellish than any breakup I’d ever been through, which scared the shit out of me, because it wasn’t even a real breakup.

He was never even yours to lose, I told myself, at least a hundred times a day.

He didn’t call, he didn’t text, and he didn’t come back to the house.

The one ray of light that seemed to appear as a result of the fallout was Frankie.

Two days after Tristan left, she started calling. Calling, and texting, and just showing up.

Frankie was good company. She was funny, and irreverent, and just plain easy to talk to. I had no idea why, but she’d decided that we were fast friends, and so we were. Between her and my usual nanny duties, I should have been adequately distracted.

Too bad that still left the nighttime for tossing and turning, and rehashing all of the stupid things I’d done and said.

I told Frankie as much one day over the phone. Her response was to take her distraction campaign into the evening hours, and we so we started hitting the clubs.

She was so persistent about monopolizing all of my free time, that I started to worry she might be interested in me.

“You know I’m into guys, right?” I asked her one night, on the way home from a great dancing my way to distraction session.

She laughed. A lot. And then laughed some more.

“I know what happened between you and Tristan, so yeah, I figured.”

“Okay. Sorry. I know I sounded like an idiot. I just didn’t want to be a tease or anything.”

She was driving, but she was laughing so hard she had to pull her car over to the side of the road. “Fair enough. I wasn’t offended. That just surprised me. I didn’t realize that you thought I was hitting on you.”

“I didn’t think that. I just wasn’t sure…” I cleared my throat, uncomfortable. “Do you know Tristan very well?” I asked her.