“What?” He spun me around so I was facing him, still wrapped around his waist. “No, it’s not.” He flipped the water to Hot with a grin and stepped us backward into the steam.
I’d like to say that I staunchly refused sex as a form of protest, but what can I say—I’m not that strong. Blame it on the hormones.
Chapter 10
The only genuine problem I had with permanently leaving the apartment in East Hollywood behind was how to tell Amanda. Neither she nor I had really been living there anyway—I’d been spending all my time at the mansion, and she’d already quasi-moved in with Barry—but as long as we both continued paying the rent, it still felt like we hadn’t really said goodbye. That at any moment, we could come back together on the living room floor with a bottle of tequila, a handful of slasher films, and settle in for a night of best friend/roommate fun.
I paced back and forth, biting my lip anxiously as I dialed the phone and listened to it ring.
“Don’t be nervous,” Marcus said soothingly, perching on the edge of the bed. His hair was still damp from our impromptu shower, and he smelled like that delicious sandalwood I loved so much. “It’ll be fine. You’re pregnant now; she has to know this is coming.”
“Don’t tell me not to be nervous,” I said in a hushed voice. “You don’t know anything about it, Marcus. You don’t know anything about us.” My gesticulations grew increasingly wild the longer the phone rang, and before long, he was fighting back a smile. “You just swoop in here one day, with your karaoke skills, and all your money—hey, Amanda!”
There was a pause on the other end.
“What’s wrong? You sound weird.”
She never asked these things as questions. They were certainties. And without fail, they were always right.
“You sound weird—what a stupid thing to say to me,” I countered defensively. I’d have said it anyway, but to be honest, she did sound a little off. Pouncing on the opportunity to deflect, I homed in on whatever fault or weakness I might uncover. “What did you do?”
“Nothing,” she bristled back. “Grow up, Rebecca.”
It was like clockwork. Whenever the two of us felt sorry about something, we adapted by lashing out with bursts of irrational rage. If a stranger happened to walk by and hear us talking, they’d probably think one of us had just stabbed the other’s puppy. Already, Marcus was staring at me with a look of slight confusion, trying to follow the one-sided dialogue.
My eyes narrowed suspiciously, but I let it slide. “Whatever. I was actually just calling you to say that…well, I was heading to the apartment and—”
“The apartment?” she interrupted. “I’m already there.”
“You are?”
Marcus raised his eyebrows knowingly, and her meaning suddenly clicked.
“Amanda, are you by chance…moving out of the apartment?”
There was a much longer pause, before—
“Gotta go! Bye!”
The phone clicked dead and I hurled it to the bed in a rage. “Oh, that little deceptor! She’s over there right now—moving out! Can you believe that!”
“Well, that’s a good thing, isn’t it?” Marcus asked cautiously.
“A good thing?” I asked.
He looked at me and then the cell phone twice before nervously clearing his throat. “It’s just…you were about to go and do the same thing, right? So…if she’s already over there, then she can’t be angry with you for moving as well?”
I took a sudden step forward, and he flinched back. But I grabbed him on both sides of the head and planted a huge kiss on his wet hair. “Marcus—you’re a genius!”
He relaxed infinitesimally.
“We’ll go over there at once and head her off!”
Fifteen minutes later, we were pulling into the grimy parking structure behind my old apartment complex. The familiar putrid smell of the dumpster hit me the second I opened the door, and I smiled in anticipation. She would not be sneaking away so easily.
I thundered loudly up the stairs, Marcus following meekly behind, so distracted that I almost ran right into Barry as he crossed paths with us on the second floor, laden down with what looked like bags of shoes.
“Aha!” I cried, pointing a finger.