Page 57 of No Romeo
“I don’t want him anywhere near you.”
We stared at each other for a few seconds before she sighed. “What are we doing, Hendrix?”
Being the same possessive, crazy people we’d always been with one another.
When I didn’t answer, she pushed to her feet and took her mug to the sink. “You shouldn’t get murderous overfriends.”
“I shouldn’t fuckfriendsin the shower….”
She flipped on the faucet. “That was a one-time thing.”
I dropped my spoon against my empty bowl with a clink. “Why are you so hellbent on this friend's thing?”
“Because I hurt you!” She whipped around, a torn expression on her face. “And whatever you think you want right now, you haven’t thought it through. You haven’t forgiven me—”
I shoved out of the chair with a screech of wood over linoleum. “You don’t know what the fuck I’ve done.” Honestly, I thought I may have forgiven her more than I’d forgiven myself. Which was messed up.
We stood on opposite sides of the kitchen in a silent draw.
“Anything outside of friends means uncorking a bottle of shit neither of us is ready to deal with,” she said.
Like that bottle hadn’t been opened the first time I finger fucked her in the restroom, or when I buried myself balls deep in her on my bed and then again in the shower… Let her move into my house.
“Hate to tell you,” I grabbed my bowl from the table and moved past her to dump it into the sink. “Shit’s already been uncorked.”
A horn blared from the driveway, and Lola’s attention snapped toward the front of the house. “I can’t give you what you want, Hendrix. I’m sorry. I really do want to be friends.” She pushed away from the counter, tears building in her eyes. “I’ve missed you,” she said before ducking into the living room.
The line she’d carved on the treehouse wall flipped through my head like a tattered movie reel. Seeing those words a few weeks ago pissed me off because she had no right to miss me, not when she was the reason we had split up. I doubted she’d gone through the emotional shitstorm I had—the betrayal, the fucking heartache.I miss youseemed like a swift kick in the balls. It felt too insincere and selfish.
And it still did.
The dying embers of anger over the situation fanned back to life.
I stormed through the living room after her, tired of playing these stupid games. Tired of hurting and hating myself over her. “Too bad. You missing me and trying to be my friend isn’t good enough for me, Lola.”
She grabbed her backpack from the bottom step and shouldered it before stopping by the front door. “Please, Hendrix.” Her voice wavered, and the desperate look in her eyes damn near broke me. It was regret and hope, devastation all mixed into one. “Let it go.”
What the hell had I missed? “What are you not telling me?”
The horn blared from the drive again. “Nothing,” she whispered, then opened the front door and left.
Nothing? That was a damn lie.
Chapter20
HENDRIX
Half past four on a weekday, and there were only a handful of cars in the parking lot of The Squealing Hog—every one of them with a Barrington High decal hanging from the rearview mirror. Wolf rounded the front of his truck, glancing at an electric-blue Mercedes convertible. “Cooter Scooter,” he laughed when he read over the license plate. “Rich people are weird.”
I shoved through the double-doored entrance. The old-timey, country-western music blaring through the speakers gave me an automatic headache. It was almost as obnoxious as the thick scent of smoked meat hanging in the air.
“Damn…” Wolf nudged my shoulder, jutting his chin toward the girl in the plaid shirt at the hostess stand. “I wanna ride on her cooter scooter.”
I gave her a once over, not the slightest bit interested. Lola had broken me. I snatched a handful of crayons and one of the coloring pages from the stand. “She has a freckle on her nose that looks like a flake of shit, man.”
He furrowed his brows. “You’ve got issues.”
Shit Flake strutted up with two menus, grinning as she showed us to our table. I glanced around the restaurant for Lola but didn’t see her blond pigtails anywhere. The girl dropped the menus on the table and walked off, and as soon as she did, a balled-up piece of straw paper hit the side of my face.
