Now I knew there was no point in putting it off any longer. I had to end it. I was trying my best to convince myself that it had nothing to do with the emerald green eyes of the young beauty in the room down the hall, when she flipped the script on my ass.
“So, how is the babysitting going?” I didn’t miss the off-color tone in her voice. I’m accustomed to her being upbeat and fun, never heard a bad word from her as far as I can recall and she always saw things my way. Now there was a distinct note of…something, in her voice. “I’m not a babysitter Zeta.”
“Oh don’t get your tits in a twist, it was just a figure of speech. So, how is she?”
“You know I don’t discuss my job.” I figured it was just a touch of female jealousy, no one marks their territory like a fucking woman, fuck a dog, dogs have nothing on them.
“Oh I see, I guess I’m not important enough.” What the fuck? Where was this shit coming from?
“I don’t follow. I’ve never discussed my work with you.”
“Did you tell her about me?”
“What, what the… what’s on your mind Zeta?”
There was a moment of silence before she hit me between the eyes. “What’s on my mind is that I have to hear from someone else that my man is off sniffing around some Hollywood skank without a by your leave. I saw those pictures online.”
There was too much going on in that one sentence for me, but that last bit caught my attention. “What pictures?”
“The ones from a few days ago when you were looking at her like you wanted to fuck her.” What the fuck! Okay, granted my inner feelings towards Tara had changed in the last few days, but I hadn’t done anything different.
“Where’s this picture? I have no idea what you’re talking about.” She gave me the name of some online gossip site. One of those rags that have nothing better to do than follow stars and other celebrities around like lovesick puppies, spreading their shit all over the place in the name of free press.
I booted up my Mac and found it and got gut punched when I saw my own face looking back at me. Damn she was right. There were about five shots of us leaving the studio. As usual there was a throng waiting to get an autograph and I was just there doing my thing, wishing them all to hell.
Most of the shots were innocent enough, but she was right, there was one that did indeed look like I was hungry and my gaze had been trained right on Tara’s face. Damn! That shit did say a fuck of a lot.
I didn’t know what to say, what could I say? “So, are you fucking her?”
“No, and you know I’m not about to have this conversation. If I were it would be none of your business remember? We both agreed a long time ago that we are free agents. And this little conversation has convinced me that maybe I should do something that should’ve been done a long time ago.”
“Yeah, and what’s that?” I never had any intention on ending shit this way. She’d been there for me in the past as well as I her, and apart from this little out of body experience we’d both been cool with each other and respected one another’s space. But she’d crossed a line with this shit and I wasn’t the most forgiving fuck once crossed.
“I think we need to call this quits.”
“Oh I see, you string me along all this time and now you’re gonna drop me for a fresh piece of ass. Do you really think she wants you?” I was listening to her with half an ear as I scrolled through the rest of the photos and that’s when I got it.
I knew it wasn’t my interest that had set her off, or even the fact that Tara was a celebrity. In the five years we’d been fucking around I’d bedded other women and she never gave a fuck. But when I came across the picture of Tara looking at me, that’s when it clicked.
The by-line was right. Looks like someone else had read between the lines of that look too. If there was hunger in my eyes, there was something more in hers, in the way she looked at me.
It was taken on the same day, but we had left the lot and were heading through the door of her favorite coffee place. I remembered it well, as I was now in the habit of saving every fucking moment with her to memory. Like I was planning on pulling them out later once she was no longer in my life or some shit.