PULSE (Part Four)(3)

"They were married." I still can't absorb the fact even though I heard it firsthand last night. I spent hours after Nathan's friend, Garrett, dropped me off trying to decipher exactly what happened.
"I never met the ex." She takes a generous mouthful of coffee. "She's still hung up on him."
"On Drew?" I almost burst out laughing. After learning that he was shirking his child support duties, I can’t imagine what Cassandra sees in him.
"How can it be Drew?" She leans both elbows on the table as she shakes her head. "She talks about her ex like he's the best thing that ever happened to her. His name is Andrew. Ah, that makes sense I guess."
I shrug my shoulders. "Nathan knew all along. He knew when he made the bet." The word slips out with my thoughts. I didn't want to confess any of this to my best friend.
"What bet?"
"I can't talk about it." Technically I won't. I don't want to humiliate myself even more.
"Jess." She inches her chair on the floor so she's sitting next to me now. "Spit it out. What bet?"
It would feel amazing to just let this all out. I'm just not in the mood for all the reminders that she warned me that Nathan was just using me for sex. "You're going to tell me that you knew he was a mistake all along."
"Fingers?" A thin smile covers her lips. "That goes without saying. Spill the beans. What the hell is going on?"
"Do you remember that night when we went to the club with Bryce? Right after he moved in?" I don't want to make Nathan the centerpiece of this recounting. "That was the night when I met Drew."
"I remember." She rolls her eyes. "I was drinking Bloody Marys and trying to get a pharmacist to prescribe his dick to me."
I laugh out loud. "That was the night."
"What about it?" She reaches for a peach from a bowl in the middle of the table. "Who bet what on what?"
I just need to say that Nathan and Drew bet money on who would nail me first. I wish I could just say it without feeling like my heart is falling out of my chest at warp speed.
"Apparently, when we were in line, Drew and Nathan wagered a bet on me." There that's it. It's out in the universe now and Rebecca can have at it and me for being so reckless.
"Those bastards." She bolts to her feet so fast the entire table jerks upwards causing the peach to roll off the edge. "He's an *."
Sadly, I feel the need to clarify which of the two *s she's referring to. Such is the life of Jessica Roth in the big city. "Which *?"
"Fingers." She once again reaches to mop up the stray coffee that spilled over the rim of her mug when she upset the table.
I take the towel from her hand as I wipe the area directly in front of me. "What about Drew?"
"Yeah, him too." She storms off leaving me with even more questions than I had before she sat down.




Chapter 4

"Don't even bother." I point directly at Nathan's receptionist as I scoot past her on my way to his open office door.
"Ms. Ross, he's not…" her voice trails behind me just as I reach the doorway.
"Jessica?" The surprise in his tone is unmistakable. "What are you doing here?"
Normally I'd take offense at his reaction to my showing up unannounced at his office, but seeing how I almost decked him alongside Drew at the bar two nights ago, I can't blame him for the question.
"Come in." He motions towards one of the chairs in front of his desk as he closes the door. "I need to be in a meeting in a few minutes."
"We do this now, or we don't do it." I don't move my gaze from the bank of windows behind his desk. I haven't slept more than an hour since I saw him with Drew at the bar. If I don't get answers now I'm going to cease to be responsible for my actions. Call it a plea of temporary insanity or better yet, a plea of sanity. Who in their right mind wouldn't want to torture these two bastards after what they did?
I don't make eye contact with him as he picks up his desk phone and punches three keys. "Cancel the rest of my day." I feel his gaze burning into me as he pauses before continuing, "I don't give a shit, just do it." He slams the phone down before sitting in front of me on the edge of his desk.
"Why?" It's really the one and only question I have.
"Why what?" His tone is even and controlled. He's not going to make this easy for me.
I pull my eyes up the lapel of his navy suit jacket before settling on his icy blue eyes. "Why do this to me? Why?"
"Do what?" he chirps back.
I run my hands over my face trying to erase the distress from my expression. "Seriously?"
"What you heard at the bar was out of context." Naturally, he'd say that to me. It's what any good lawyer says to someone when they're trying to win a case. The only problem is that this case is my life and he's already f*cked it up so badly that I can't tell up from down anymore.
"I heard you say that you f*cked my sweet little body," I sneer as the words leave my lips. I've replayed those five words in my mind repeatedly every second since I first heard him say them. "You talked to him about f*cking me." I point my finger into my own chest as if to distinguish my body from all of the hundreds of others he's f*cked over the years.
"Jessica." He takes a heavy swallow. "None of this was about you."
It couldn't sting more if he would have slapped me directly across my face. "It was all about me."