The fucking bastard.
My passenger’s door opens.
“Talk,” Alison demands, shutting it after sitting in the seat.
“Drive,” I mutter back, jamming my key in the ignition and turning so the little TT starts with a roar.
I pull away from the house and take the turns to my house, not speaking a word to Alison as I drive. She doesn’t push me though. She stays quiet as I fume and breathe and sigh and clench my hands around the steering wheel over and over.
I pull into my driveway far too quickly, angrily slamming on the breaks at the last minute. Bekah opens my front door, and it’s now that I notice her car parked in front of my house. Shows how observant I am.
“There’s cupcakes and wine,” Bek offers, opening the door wide.
I storm through, grab a glass of wine, and drink it in a handful of gulps. “Who the fuckin’ hell does that total douchecock think he is?”
“Drake,” she replies, shrugging.
“What did he do?” Alison asks.
I recap our brief conversation. “Like he thinks he gets to do that! Like he thinks it’s fucking okay to tell me what to do when he can’t even respect me as a person, let alone a woman with a mind of her own!” My voice cracks halfway through my rant, and I clear my throat.
I am a fucking strong woman, dammit. I won’t cry.
“Y’all are so screwed up you don’t even know it,” Bek says. “You’re like gunpowder and a match. You don’t even notice it, but it’s suffocatin’ to be around you both. You just bounce off each other, and when you start fightin’, sweet Jesus! It’s like there’s nothing else other than you two.”
“That is not a good thing!” I raise my voice. “I don’t even like him, okay? He pisses me off all the time. I wish he would literally disappear from my life and leave me the heck alone.”
Alison smiles. “Ah, I remember hating Trent once, too.”
“Don’t,” I warn her, pointing my finger at her face. “I like Gio, okay? He’s sweet and thoughtful and easy to talk to.”
“You say the same thing about your niece,” Alison snorts.
“And Drake is arrogant and pigheaded and stubborn!”
“From the woman who makes backing down and admitting she’s wrong a habit.” Bek grins. “You don’t like him because he challenges you, babe. And that’s okay. But for reals, when you two start arguing, I feel like I’m intruding on some freaky foreplay. Then I think I should look away, but it is literal word porn, and hell, if that’s voyeurism, I have a new hobby.”
Alison bursts into giggles. “It’s true. Even you standing there in the kitchen just now… You had that turned-on kind of anger. You know? Where you’re so angry you want to shoot them but fuck them at the same time.”
“Hey, you should just fuck him,” Bek suggests. “You know, angrily. Bed-shakin’ kind of angry.”
And isn’t that the problem? I really, really hate Drake Nash, but I want to jump his bones. In the bed-shakin’, headboard-breakin’, body-rockin’ kinda way.
And that’s rather annoying.
“I’m not sleeping with him,” I say in a softer tone. “I really do wish he’d leave me alone. He doesn’t have a right to tell me who I can and can’t see. He doesn’t have a right for anything. He’s just a guy whose path I happen to cross on a regular basis.”
“Yep. And in my next life, I’m a two-headed, three-tailed armadillo,” Alison replies.
I inhale deeply through my nose and drop to my sofa.
I am a strong fucking woman. I will not cry.
I am a strong fucking woman. I will not cry.
I sniff, pressing the heels of my palms into my eyes. “Why do I let him get to me, huh? All the time. He’s like a goddamned stink bomb in a basement.”
Bek trembles next to me, and I hear a tiny giggle from Alison.
“Stink bomb in a basement,” Bek mutters, her voice wobbling with her laughter. “That’s it? That’s the best you have?”
My lips twitch, but I fight it. “Shut up. I’m in a crisis here.”
“Denial isn’t a crisis. Comparing a man to a stink bomb in a basement is!” Alison laughs her way through it, and when she sits next to me, I’m sandwiched by my two closest friends, who are laughing like crazy, and it’s too infectious.
I wipe the angry, frustrated tears from my eyes and let my own laughter break through. It wins out over my emotions, and I rest my head on Bek’s shoulder, letting the amusement run free.
Alison leans forward and pours me another glass of wine. She hands it to me, passes Bek hers, and then grabs her own. “To douchebags.”
“Even Trent,” Bek adds, lifting her glass.
I want to argue that, but, eh… “To douchebags. They’re a great excuse for wine.”
Bang. Bang. Bang.
“Go away,” I mumble, rolling over and burying my head beneath my quilt.
Bang. Bang. Bang.
Ring. Ring. Ring.
“Screw you!” I yell, shoving my head beneath the pillow.
Ring. Ring. Ring.
“What?” I snap into the phone.
“Noelle?” Trent asks. “Your office was broken into.”
In all seriousness, can people just stop fucking breaking into my buildings?
Is it really that much for a woman to ask? That people just don’t infiltrate her privacy? I’m not a fucking Kardashian. I don’t want my ass across the Internet. I just want to wake up, eat cupcakes, do my job, and sleep.
That’s literally it.
“It’s six a.m., and I’m hungover as fuck. This better be a goddamned jewel heist,” I tell Grecia when she meets me at the office door.
Yeah, did I mention we cleared out two bottles of wine and a bottle of sangria last night?
Apparently, emotion makes me do dumb shit.
“No jewel heist,” Drake says, sitting on Grecia’s office chair.
“What in the hell are you doing here?”
“This is relevant to my investigation.”
I look at my feet and then pinch the inside of my arm. “Fuck me, I’m not a ghost. Again, what are you doing here?”
“Like I said, this is relevant to my investigation,” he repeats, standing up.
“Whatever. Can I get coffee or have your rookie bitches ripped my kitchen apart?”
His lips curve up into a highly dangerously sexy smirk. “You can get your coffee, cupcake.”
I’ll cupcake his ass pretty soon.
I storm downstairs and into the kitchen, which has clearly been ripped apart. “Y’all gotta teach your bitches how to tidy the hell up!” I shout out the door, slamming it behind me as I turn back into the room.
I put all the plates and bowls back in their places in the cupboard above my head and pull the clean dishes from the rack on the draining board. Mugs, plates, cutlery—they all have their place here. And I put them all back exactly where they belong. Then I pull down the “boss” mug Marshall bought me as a joke for Christmas and turn the coffee machine on.
I rifle through the box of pods and pull a latte one out. It’s full of freakin’ mochas and cappuccinos and whatever the hell other kinds of coffee you can get. I just drink lattes. Dad calls them a coffee milkshake, but it’s coffee. And I can have it strong still. And it’s coffee. Who the hell cares what else is in it?
After filling the hot water, I press the on button and lean against the counter as the machine hums to life. The door opens, but I refuse to turn because I know that it’s Drake.
The emotion in the room has changed. It’s gone from flat with anger to buzzing with tension and conflict and a myriad of feelings I can’t decipher while my head is pounding this way.
I’m never drinking sangria again. Or wine. Or alcohol.
I am a dreadful liar.
When the coffee machine stops, I stir in some milk and throw the spoon into the sink behind me. My lips are twitching with the desire to ask what’s happened this time. Why I’ve been hit again. Why people can’t just leave me alone.