“Yeah, well…” He launches into a spiel peppered with techno-jargon that I don’t understand for a good three or four minutes until the restaurant is in sight. My phone chimes with a text alert from my purse as we approach the building, so I pull it out.
Jude: Where are you? What’s with the cat?
I can’t help but smile.
I tuck my phone away. I hope that pretty baby is making him break out in itchy hives. Maybe he’ll go home tonight and leave me in peace.
Even as I think it, my traitorous heart drops at the idea of this game of his being over.
And it shouldn’t. I shouldn’t want anything other than for it to be over. I definitely shouldn’t want to lose the bet and have to have sex with him one more time because while losing the bet would get me one more night with Jude, it’d also mean I have to leave town. For sure.
After Bill and me have been seated and ordered drinks, I get another ping, so I look at my phone.
Jude: I need to hear from you. I’m about to start dinner.
“Got to get that?” Bill asks.
“Sorry, one sec. I’ll just deal with something real quick. My apologies.”
“No worries,” he says. “Be right back.”
Bill heads to the bathroom so I answer Jude.
Me: I’m out on a date. Laterz.
He answers within seconds.
Jude: Bullshit.
Me: What’s that supposed to mean?
Jude: A date like you had the night I watched you buy men’s shoes and cologne at the mall? The Barry White and NIN night?
My face burns and must be turning crimson.
I glare at my water glass while processing this.
Bill is back and after a minute, my eyes bounce up to him because he’s making noise. His lips are moving while his eyes work over my chest. Another of my push-up bras is to thank. He knows I’m not well-endowed, so I wonder if he’s currently asking himself how little they actually are while he stares at them.
I’m not hearing a word he’s saying though; he’s just a talking head on a slouchy body – because I’m instead thinking about Jude’s words and the fact that he clearly knows I faked the hookup that night. He was tailing me? The nerve! How did I not see him? Not like a tall, built, tattooed guy that looks like a male model with facial hair hot enough that any woman whether she’s a beard girl or not will drool can hide in plain sight.
The whooshing sound pulls my eyes to my phone screen.
Jude: Prove it.
I turn sideways and interrupt Bill. “Selfie time,” I turn, engage the camera, change the setting and he’s smiling, leaning into me. “Back straight,” I order, my voice coming out in a deeper, more dominatrix-like tone – a tone I don’t ever remember using.
Bill immediately straightens, so I snap.
“Thanks. One sec,” I chirp, then lean back to my original position and forward the picture to Jude.
Take that!
I shove my phone into my bag and lift my menu.
The server is coming over with my long island iced tea and what’s-his-face’s beer.
19
Jude
Saturday night can be a good night for hate sex. Frankly, any night can. But tonight might be especially good for it.
A lesson in actual hate sex is just what that little vixen might be getting when we get back here.
I’m storming down the street, headed for Buchanan’s Steakhouse because I recognized the interior in her picture text of her with that schmuck she’s out with. He had his fucking arm around her, touching her goddamn shoulder with his grimy paws.
I haven’t even driven, just immediately started walking, thinking the walk might tamp down my anger a bit.
***
I’m there and it hasn’t.
I know who he is. I investigated that guy the day before yesterday for the Carmichael project, so I recognize his mug.
When I get through the door of the restaurant, I spot them at a cozy corner table and he’s leaned in as he talks to her. She looks bored.
Doesn’t matter that she looks bored; she shouldn’t even be here.
I tell the hostess I see my party and then I make my way there. Before she spots me, she dips her hand into her bag slyly, lifts her phone halfway out and her eyes scan the screen while her date keeps talking.
Yeah. Lookin’ to see if you’ve got more texts from me, Vixen? I’ll do better than that.
She’s a knockout tonight in a dress I’d like to peel up over her tits. She’s showing a fuckuva lot of thigh in that dress. The slender curve of her throat on display under a black choker has my mouth watering.
I get there.
“Oy,” I interrupt.
The guy yammering stops talking and his eyes bounce from me to her. She stares at me in shock.
“You and me need to have a talk,” I say.