“Why would he want that?” she says on speakerphone.
My mood begins to darken the closer I get to my apartment. It’s all I can afford on a waitress’s salary, and even then it’s difficult some months. I remind myself that there are people who would be extremely grateful to even have an apartment and to stop being a brat.
“Kyra?”
“Yeah, I’m here. Sorry. I don’t know. Maybe I got someone’s coffee order wrong or something. I honestly have no idea. Even when we shook hands…”
My body gives another ridiculous shiver. It races through me, my heart telling me it wasn’t anger… it was lust.
Kayden wanted me as achingly as I wanted him.
When I held his hand, I never wanted to let go. He felt so strong, so firm, so confident, so ready to make me his.
Even if that’s impossible.
“Even when you shook hands?” Zadie prompts.
“Sorry.” I laugh. “I know I keep doing that. Yeah, it was like he wanted to squeeze just a little bit harder.”
“I don’t know,” Zadie muses. “Maybe that’s just how he is with everyone. I’m sure he has more important things to worry about than trying to get a runner fired.”
“You’re right. Of course, you are.”
But it doesn’t feel true as my mind goes over the scene again, Kayden standing so close to me he could crush me against the car. His chest heaving, his breath coming hard, his emerald green eyes bright and penetrating. His square jaw tight.
Everything pointed to rage… or desire.
The latter is unrealistic, so he had to be angry.
But he didn’t have to be angry at me. Maybe he was just having a bad day. Zadie is probably right. Why would he concern himself with me?
We talk about Zadie’s college courses for a while, and then I pull up outside my apartment building.
With a sigh, I notice that Quinn and a bunch of his friends are hanging around the entrance. They do this every now and then, sitting out in foldout chairs, drinking and playing music into the early hours of the morning.
The music is annoying but tolerable. It’s the comments they always make when I enter the building, little cruel jabs, that make me want to stay in the car.
“Zadie, would you mind staying on the phone until I’m in my apartment?”
“Of course not. Is he there again?”
I’ve spoken to Zadie about Quinn so many times, I’m surprised she hasn’t driven here just to give him a piece of her mind. In high school, she was always the one who would stand up to the bullies, slinging insults back at them anytime they called me names.
But I’ve never been great with confrontation, preferring to disappear into a movie and pretend the real world doesn’t exist.
“Yeah, but it’s fine. He’s with his friends.”
“I’ll stay on the phone.”
I step from the car and walk across the street.
Quinn has positioned his foldout chair right in front of the door. He’s a tall broad man, his hands and neck covered in tattoos. His arms are too, but he’s wearing a big puffy jacket at the moment. Grimy spilling down his back and a sick grin smearing across his face when he spots me.
“If it isn’t the princess herself.”
I ignore him, holding the phone to my ear, pretending I’m listening to a conversation.
“He’s such a dick,” Zadie says a moment later, as I walk around him to the door.
“Hey, princess, aren’t you going to say hello?”
I cringe at his gruff words. He calls me princess because once I apparently made a face when I had to step over one of his drunk buddies. I didn’t even say anything, not wanting to get involved, but clearly, he didn’t like my frown, or my raised eyebrows, or whatever the heck it was. He’s been a douchebag about it ever since.
His buddies laugh as he moves his chair back, scraping it along the ground as I squeeze past him.
“Easy there, hot stuff, you might fall into my lap… and break the chair.”
He clearly thinks he’s a comedic genius. The second he says this his friends break into laughter. I push into the apartment building and head for the stairs – the elevator’s always busted – trying to fight the tears rising in my eyes.
“He’s a fucking jerk,” Zadie rages in my ear. “Don’t listen to him. Really. He has no idea what he’s talking about.”
“I know,” I reply, hoping she can’t tell how difficult it is for me not to cry. “He’s just an asshole. I get that.”
Except it’s more than that.
I can tell myself he’s just a jerk and there’s no truth in his statements, but I’ve always been self-conscious about the way I look.
It’s not that I don’t like the way I look. And, if it wasn’t for billboards and magazines screaming at me that I should be thin and athletic, I wouldn’t even mind the way I look.