that I managed to shake off my stupor. “Son of a bitch!” I shouted. When I looked down, the beady-eyed rat/dog bastard had just finished unloading its freakishly large bladder all over my shoes.
“HE’S ENGAGED!” I SHOUTED through the phone as I paced the alleyway behind the shop.
“What? Who’s engaged? What are you talking about?” Devon asked. The moment I got out of the room with that cheating asshole, I’d called my best friend, needing to vent and yell out my rage since I’d never been one for fighting. I just wasn’t built for a fist fight. My delicate bones would snap like twigs. That was why I always let my older brother fight my battles all through school. I might not have been a fighter, but Jace sure as hell was, and I was all too happy to stand back and let him pummel any ex-boyfriends who broke my heart. Those assholes got what was coming to them, and I never had to lift a finger.
“The hot guy from the club!” I shrieked. “The one I had sex with! He’s engaged!”
“What?”
“Yes!”
“Okay, just… hold on. Back up a second. Are you sure he’s engaged?”
I nodded my head before realizing she couldn’t see me through the phone. “Seeing as he came in to pick up a sample bouquet for his fiancée, I’d say yes. I’m pretty freaking positive!”
“Holy shit! What a prick!” she screeched through the line, then, “Make your own damn copies, Jimmy! Can’t you see I’m on the phone?”
I rolled my eyes. “You know, how you’re still employed is beyond me.”
Devon worked as an admin for one of the ambulance chasing attorneys you saw on billboards and the sides of busses. He was slimy and unethical, and those were on his good days, but he paid Devon well and seemed to let her walk all over him. A win-win as far as we were concerned.
“Oh please,” she scoffed. “He’d be lost without me.” Then, “Oh, for the love of Buddha, I don’t know where the discovery file is! You were the last one to have it. Look in that mess you call an office…” There was a short pause, followed by, “That seems like a you problem, not a me problem. Sorry, Jimmy, I could give a shit, but I’ve already met my quota for the day.”
“How have you not been fired by now?” I asked in all seriousness.
Devon groaned. “Ugh. I have to let you go before that vein in Jimmy’s forehead ruptures, but we’ll finish this discussion tonight at home.”
I let out a slow exhalation, the adrenaline that had been pumping through my body since I first laid eyes on the hot guy from the club… Richard, had finally started to wane. “Okay.”
“I’ll stop by the store on my way home. Pick up some ice cream. I’m thinking tonight is a BJ dance party kind of night.”
“No.” I stated firmly. “It’s not a BJ dance party kind of night. It’s a wine and pity party kind of night. And you know what?” I mused. “I really think we need to rename the Ben & Jerry’s dance party. Seriously, it sounds like something you’d see in a sex club when you shorten it like that.”
Devon laughed. “That’s what makes it so fun to say. The name stays. The tribe has spoken. I’ll see you tonight, sweets.”
“Kay, bye.”
I hung up the phone and dropped my head as emotions I wasn’t all that familiar with warred inside of me. Jealousy that the guy who’d rocked my world was getting married… to another woman… who wasn’t me, while I suffered from a chronic case of asshole-itis, picking shitty men at every turn. Guilt that I’d unknowingly slept with an engaged man, betraying a woman I’d only met one time but still managed to really like. Navie was sweet and funny, she didn’t deserve to be cheated on by some douchebag who didn’t deserve her. Embarrassment that the guy I hadn’t been able to get out of my head for the past three months didn’t even recognize me after having run his tongue across every inch of my naked body for hours. And finally, utter disappointment that the man I’d built up in my head since our one and only night together turned out to be such a prick!
I was so through with men.
NAVIE RUSHED ME THE moment the door closed behind me.
“Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you,” she said in a high-strung flurry as her socked feet skidded along