“He must have been hurt pretty bad in the past to take the bet this far,” Carla admitted and Muffy hated that she was being reasonable. She didn’t want her best friend to be the voice of reason. She wanted her to curse Alex out, to say horrible things about him, to call him a dick and a lying sack of shit. “Maybe he was going to confess everything. Maybe it was a bet, but honestly, it sounds like he really needed to do this for himself. Neither of us have liked being hurt by assholes in the past. It was probably the same for him.”
“Stop!” Muffy jumped up. “Stop it! You can’t defend him. There isn’t anything anyone could say, including him, that would make any of this better. He’s a lying bastard. That’s who he is deep down. It doesn’t matter if he was hurt in the past. Oh, I’m sorry, Mr. Rich Billionaire had a few women want expensive shoes and purses or whatever. They probably still put out. He got what he wanted from them. He doesn’t have a right to play the sad abused man who can’t find real love because he’s so fucking rich! He didn’t have any right to do what he did. He used me. He used me to win a stupid game with his stupid friend who was actually really fucking ugly, even though he thought he was super hot.”
Carla blushed to the roots of her hair and Muffy’s mouth dropped open.
“What? No! Don’t even! God, Carla!”
“Well, he was already mostly undressed. After he was done telling me about the bet, he got all weepy and said that he’d been trying to find someone for years and women just view him as a thing and a bank account and it’s destroyed his hopes of having a family or kids or being any kind of normal. He just wanted something real for once.”
“Seriously? You fell for that bullshit?”
“No- well- I thought he was pretty attractive. Asshole or not, I’m never going to see him again. We both just- er- needed something and we were there and uh- okay, it was wrong. It was wrong of me. I’m sorry. His clothes were just taking a long ass time to dry in the dryer and I- he was just sitting there, and he really seemed sorry and like I was the first person he’d ever said a genuine word to.”
“Because they’re both master liars. Carla! Did you ever stop to think of that?”
“No. I can tell he wasn’t lying. He’d come clean about the bet, what reason did he have to lie?”
“To get you in bed.”
“Honey, it takes more than that to get me in bed. It wasn’t pity sex. It was sex because I wanted it. He was hot. I haven’t been with anyone in a while. I’m sorry, okay! I wasn’t going to tell you that part, but I thought you should know.”
“Where?” Muffy knew her eyes were popping out of her head, but she couldn’t stop it. “Where did you sleep with him because I’m sure there wasn’t actually sleeping involved. The dryer only takes an hour, at most.”
“Please don’t hate me.” Carla closed her eyes and clasped her hands tight in front of her.
“No!” Muffy cursed. She glanced towards the couch where she’d just been sitting. “No! Not the couch! Carla!”
“I cleaned it after, okay? I seriously like disinfected everything!”
“Yeah, well, you can’t disinfect my damn brain now! Thanks a lot! You were supposed to be on my side, not on team douchebag!”
“I’m not on their team,” Carla protested, but Muffy was already stalking away.
She made it out of the room and down the hall, into the safety of her bedroom, where she could lock the door. Of course, Carla pounded on it, begging to be let in, apologizing a hundred times. Of course she did, because she was Carla and she probably truly was sorry. Muffy knew that her best friend never meant to hurt her. She’d been brutally honest because that was also just Carla. She wasn’t ashamed of her sexuality. She wasn’t ashamed of being independent. She wasn’t ashamed that she was very different from most women, that she didn’t want to be married or have a family or do what everyone else was doing. She’d always been upfront about that.
But this…
Muffy threw herself onto the bed. She slammed a pillow over her head, so she wouldn’t have to hear what Carla was saying through the door.
She knew she wasn’t actually angry with Carla. She was just collateral damage in the whole horrible scheme of things.
Alex. Cheating, lying, bastard, betting, scheming, asshole supreme, super duper crazy rich billionaire Alex.
He was the one to blame.
After a few minutes that were spent trying to stop another deluge of unwanted tears, Muffy grabbed her phone. There was no way she was going to let herself be a victim. No way at all. She didn’t even hesitate before she fired off a text to Alex. She hoped he wasn’t up yet. That his phone woke him, and that he had to face what he’d done first effing thing.