Page 124 of Yellow
CHAPTER 19
No Fairy-Tale Ending
Adam
“Don’t show him that.” Rick threw an empty soda can after his sister, Kiara.
“Why not? She looks really pretty, doesn’t she?” Kiara asked and handed me the magazine.
The stabbing pain of seeing Chloe on a date, laughing and flirting with another celebrity, should have made me give back the magazine, but like a goddamn masochist I read the article and looked at all the pictures.
He was classically handsome and extremely well groomed in his perfectly fitting suit. And of course he’d taken her to the most fancy restaurant in LA.
A dinner for two in that place would probably cost the equal of a month’s salary for me.
Chloe looked happy and glowing in the pictures where he helped her into his Ferrari.
“Why would you do that, sis? The poor man has been trying to move on and now you’re making it worse,” Rick told Kiara.
“I’m sorry, I just thought he’d want to know,” she apologized. “Besides, that magazine is like two weeks old.” She paused and batted her eyes at me. “It’s just that me and my friends think it was super romantic when you dated Cleo, and we want you to snatch her away from that guy and bring her here.”
“Have you lost your mind?” Rick exclaimed with exasperation.
“But we really want to meet Cleo,” his sister defended herself.
“This isn’t some fucking fairy tale.” Rick pointed to the magazine in my hands. “People like them don’t date people like us. How many times do I have to tell you?”
“But Cleo dated Adam.”
“No, Kiara,” I said through gritted teeth. “She never dated me and we were never a couple.”
“But I heard Rick say that you slept with her.”
I shook my head. “Rick talks too much.”
“But it’s true, isn’t it?” Kiara wanted to know.
I gave the preteen her magazine back. “I don’t want to discuss it, but I can tell you this much. Happy endings are for love novels; it doesn’t happen in real life.”
“Yes, it does,” Kiara insisted. “I’ll have a happy ending.”
I gave her a sad smile. “I hope you’re right.”
“I am,” she said firmly and walked away with her magazine in her hand.
Rick stretched his back and removed his cap to ruffle his hair. “We need to go to the garden center and buy more soil.”
“Okay,” I said and looked around his front yard, which we were working on. It had been two years since we built Rick his house, so it was past time that we made the garden presentable.
“Let’s take my truck,” he said and dusted dirt off his pants as he got up.
The roads were bumpy and the music was loud, but Rick still insisted on having a conversation.
“I ran into Wildcat yesterday.”
Turning my head, I looked away, but Rick didn’t take the hint and simply continued.
“She couldn’t even look me in the eye.”
