“I don’t know. Big guy like me, it seems like I would have a soft spot for like a rescued pit bull or something. But I don’t have time for a dog. I don’t have time for anyone.” She flinched a little like the last part stung her, but it was the truth. It was the reason that I couldn’t tell her that I thought that she was beautiful. I didn’t have time to waste on a girl like her, not when every goal in my career was finally within my grasp. I was too focused on my job for love. Not that I loved this girl—I hardly knew her—but she seemed like the type that I could fall in love with, if I was able.
But love was out of the question, regardless of any feelings I would ever have.
“Now tell me something interesting about you.”
She shrugged, “I go to BU, and my dad was a governor. That’s about it.”
“You are a college girl?”
“Yeah, why?”
I laughed, “Let me guess, sorority?”
“How did you know?”
“Just a lucky guess. So do you have pillow fights in skimpy underwear?” I built the mental image in my mind. Berkley in sexy pink undies, her bouncing breasts as she messed around with her sisters.
“No!” She protested. “That’s not how it is. I have a roommate, Naomi, and that’s it. No underwear parties, sorry.”
“I can’t say I’m not disappointed.”
“Why’s that?” She countered seductively.
“I would have liked to see you like that.” I paused. “You’d probably be good with a pillow.”
“Rude.” She gave me a playful scowl.
Suddenly I heard a banging on the window next to me. A girl with brightly colored hair had her face smashed up against the glass and was pointing at Berkley. I looked across the table to see her smile and wave back.
“Those are my friends. I have to go, but it was nice meeting you, Dillon. Thanks for the company.”
I waved at her as she grabbed her wristlet and bolted out the door, hugging the girl that had just been pounding on the window. At least she was reunited with her friend. I watched as they put their arms around each other and walked away out the night. She turned around and looked at me once, those blue eyes catching my gaze immediately. But then she turned away and I knew I would never see her again. I sat and ate the rest of the pizza alone. I was the last one in the shop when they announced it was closing time. I grabbed my belongings and walked out into the night. I had twenty five hundred dollars sitting in my pocket, a wad of cash that could get me mugged on the streets.
But I wasn’t worried.
Only one thing plagued my mind: I hoped that Berkley got home okay.
For some reason she was my only worry now.
SIX
BERKLEY
“I can’t believe you just walked off like that. How drunk were you?”
Naomi was grilling me for the third time since we got home from the fight. She asked me twenty questions at least before we went to bed last night and that had started up again as soon as we were eati
ng breakfast the next morning. “I told you, I wasn’t drunk. I don’t know how I left my phone with you. I was congratulating that fighter and then all of a sudden I turned around and Josh was gone. And those two guys said that they knew where he went, he’d been talking to them earlier about a bet. I assumed they were telling the truth.” My naivety had surely gotten the best of me last night. There was something about all the chaos and the tension of the fight pumping through my system that put my guard down. Those guys could have beat me to a pulp or worse. I’d been so lucky that Dillon had found me when he did. I was completely indebted to him. Pizza and beer didn’t seem like it had been enough. But I didn’t have any way to get in touch with him to say thank you again. I had just left, like a complete idiot. I had an amazing conversation with the most attractive guy I had ever met in my life and yet I had nothing to show for it. Not even his goddamned phone number. I was a female failure.
“Girl, you are so damn lucky I can’t even tell you. I asked Josh and Elliott about those guys and apparently they were trying to shake them down for some bets that they never made. They were thugs.”
She had also told me that little piece of information about eight times. As soon as she sobered up last night and realized what happened, I thought she was going to call Josh and Elliott herself and ream them out for ever letting me out of their sight. When I left the pizza shop, she was hardly concerned with my absence, but by the time we grabbed cab and headed back to the sorority house she was a wreck. Completely annihilated after eight or more beers, and the guys were nowhere in sight. What assholes.
“I guess you won’t be seeing Elliott anytime soon then?” I asked as I sipped on orange juice and picked out some fresh fruit.
“Too loud,” she said, putting both of her hands on either side of her head. I couldn’t imagine her hangover was anything less than massive, and the only reason she was out of bed before noon was because we had a house meeting. First Saturday of the month, like clockwork.
I lowered my voice to a whisper. “I said are you going to see Elliott again? Because you can leave Josh and I off the guest list. There was zero spark there. Besides the fact that he was hot, he had nothing going for him. And then he lost me! I’m a goddamn person. How do you just lose a person?”