July (Calendar Girl #7)(9)
Lightning fast, I pulled up my Internet app and typed in the word Player. Google helpfully supplied the following.
Not the type of player definition I was going for. Just under that definition was a link to a different website named “Urban Dictionary.” I clicked the link.
player
A male who is skilled at manipulating (“playing”) others, and especially at seducing women by pretending to care about them, when in reality they are only interested in sex.
Hmm, is the term player only used to describe males? My get-out-of-jail-free-card holding side wants to cash in that coupon as fast as you can say go, collect my two hundred dollars and buy Park Place. Unfortunately, my self-loathing, guilty conscience wouldn’t allow me to think so highly of myself. That niggling simpering twit within had me visiting Wikipedia. It never let me down before.
The first definition said it all in black and white, noting exactly what I feared.
Player may refer to:
Player (dating), a man or woman who has romantic affairs or sexual relations or both with other women or men but will not marry or commit to any one relationship
That was all I needed to see. Confirmed. Mia Saunders, honey, you are a PLAYER.
***
After spending an ungodly amount of time scalding my skin to a tantalizing and oversensitive pink hue, I made my way up to the elevator. The text I’d received from Heather directed me to dress casually and meet Anton on the roof. Why the roof, I had no idea, but I was on their dime, so followed the request without response. It had been an hour since my text to Wes, and he hadn’t yet responded. I didn’t know what I wanted him to say. Would he push back and force his way into my heart? A part of me wanted that so badly I could hardly breathe. Another part of me wanted to continue with the way our relationship was, at least for now. No expectations, no rights to one another, just friends. With benefits.
Friends with benefits.
Was that the relationship I really wanted with Wes? My Wes? Shit. And when did he become my Wes? I suspected somewhere between admitting I was falling in love with him and thinking of home being California. No, not just California. His place in Malibu. That’s where I felt most like myself. Free to just be Mia.
With a snarl, I smashed the elevator button so hard my thumb smarted. I shook it out and watched the numbers climb. Why now? After dealing with a shitty experience, licking my wounds in Boston with Rach and Mace, to come here, find a hot guy who is overt in showing his appreciation for me, or at least my body, and everything builds up to this? Had it always been coming to this point? Where I felt as though my emotions and fears were simmering like lava under the Earth’s surface, a volcano that could erupt at any moment?
The elevator dinged and I was catapulted into a very strange world. Plants, trees and the humid air blasted against my skin, making it hard to breathe. The humidity was so thick you could cut it like a pat of butter.
“Jesus...” I swallowed reflexively trying to bite back the fish-out-of-water feeling.
“Lucita! Over here.” I heard Anton call but only saw a man’s form, a blur of white as he moved from plant to plant. On closer inspection, his shirt, linen pants, even his boat shoes were white and smattered with dirt, marking up the toes. A huge, Asian style sunhat peeked up over a large shrub as I made my way closer.
I stopped and stared at Anton as he pulled weeds, twisting the bottom and yanking them out, scraggly, webbed roots and all. “What are you doing?”
“Gardening. There’s gloves over there. Do you have a green thumb?” he asked, with what sounded like hope in his tone.
I shook my head. “ ’Fraid not. I kill most things.”
He stood tall, the linen shirt forming around all his muscles. A stirring of excitement started low in my belly but fizzled out when he stepped closer, within touching distance. Look but no touch. Interesting.
“Guess we’ll have to change that, won’t we?”
Shrugging I pulled on the gloves. “Never gardened before. Back in Vegas we have what’s called zero-scaping. Rocks instead of lawn, cacti instead of bushes and succulents instead of flowers. You don’t have to do much to keep those suckers alive.”
“Ah, but the joy comes from the tending and caring for something other than yourself.”
Lovely way to think of it.
“Here, you see this plant?” I followed his fingers and assessed the wild green sprout that didn’t look like the others. “This weed will end up infiltrating this entire box of Pawpaw.” I crinkled my nose not sure what the heck a Pawpaw was. He grinned. “It’s a shrub, but it flowers. See this?” He held up a stem that had a flower unlike any I’d ever seen. It was a deep, dark eggplant color at the center, with three long petals that were light, greenish yellow in color. Unique for sure. “The weed will infest the entire lot and destroy the beauty growing within. Kind of like negative thoughts.”
Negative thoughts. “How so?”
He smiled softly, his eyes a bright green. “Sit with me, Lucita.” I did as he bade. Planting my bum on the small edge of the flower box. “Negative thoughts are planted like a seed in the brain, and then once they grow, they take over the whole mind. Infecting your ability to see truth and beauty clearly. To see the honesty behind a person or situation. In the end those thoughts take over, and you lose sight of the joy of having that person in your life. Like the weed. It will grow and infest the entire planter box until all the beauty is destroyed and all that remains is the one thing you didn’t want in the first place. The weed or in this case, the negative thought.”