Page 5 of Unofficial

She may not be able to see Noelle, but she knows her jaw has dropped as low as hers did when she realized who Lena was while in his condo. "He boinked his cousin?"

"She's not really his cousin. Just who he said she was when I asked him. Like a skeeze."

"Jess! You walked into the bedroom you sleep with him in to find them going at it like horny gorillas? You didn't just put the soup in the fridge and hightail it out of there, did you? You confronted him and scalded his naked unfaithful dick with it, right?"

"Well, it was hard not to just put the soup in the fridge and leave when he was doing her in the kitchen, so..."

"He pulled a Shaggy? Did he turn and say 'it wasn't me?'"

Letting out a small laugh, she feels more grateful than ever to have this sassy woman as her best friend. The moment Jess is ready to give in and throw in the towel, Noelle reminds her there's always humor in any situation. Even the ones that feel like stabs to the chest with a nine-inch blade. "No, but I kind of wish he did."

"Tell me you hit her."

"No."

"Is she still there? I'll go hit her. Hell, I'll hit him, too!"

Swallowing, Jess lets out a breath. "It's not Lena's fault."

"The hell it's not!"

"She didn't know about me. When she realized Kade and I had been seeing each other for five months, she freaked out. Got pissed at him, and then she broke down in tears, begging for my forgiveness."

"Oh, come on, Jess. That's the oldest trick in the book. She did it to stop you from beating her ass."

Jess shakes her head. Noelle frequently references whatever this book with old tricks is, but Jess has a funny feeling these opinions are just made up by Noelle on the fly. She never really read the same books as her best friend.

"No, it wasn't a trick. She was really pissed to find out he'd told me they were cousins. And then she got after him for stringing me along for five months before leaving when I did."

"Okay, do we like her or hate her?"

"It's weird, but I think we like her. She was more upset than I was at the time. I think I was in shock, and she got dressed and moved to stand by me in a weird show of solidarity."

"What'd he do when this happened? Was he just standing there naked in the kitchen, his thing shriveling from the cold and humiliation? Did you both point and laugh?"

Chuckling, she leans back on her bed. "He grabbed a pot from the stove to cover him. Which is kind of stupid because we've both obviously seen all of him."

"His little guy has seen the inside of both of you, so, yeah...."

"I hate you."

"You love me."

Jess sighs and rests her arm over her face. "The worst part is how damn attractive he still looked. No one deserves to look that good, like that, after what he did."

"Did you take a picture of him with the pot covering his shriveling manhood? Please, tell me you thought to take a picture. What I'm envisioning can't actually do the scene any actual justice."

"I didn't think to do it. It took Lena walking over to the door for me to realize I should and could leave. He called after us to get one of us to stay, but we both left."

"What kind of explanation did he have? Just look and say, 'whoops' or something equally stupid? I can't really think of anything else he could say in this situation."

Tears stream down her face again. "He said he wasn't cheating."

"The hell he wasn’t!"

"In his mind, it wasn't cheating. We never talked about what we were or weren't. Where we stood with each other. There were no titles, and I guess that meant spending the past five months together and clawing each other's clothes off every chance we got meant we weren't committed to each other."

"Are you serious? He thinks semantics makes it okay?"

---