Page 3 of Wrong Car, Wright Guy
“Shouldn’t I, um, get your details too?”
“How about you just wait for my call?” he returns, his voice sounding a little like a growl that startles me and turns me on at the same time.Scary hot.
Nodding, I stand back as he gets into his Porsche and drives off. I’ve really messed up this time. I can’t pay for a paint job to fix a Porsche! I’m barely making rent as it is. Crap.
“You crazy bitch,” Darren calls out, laughing as I make my way back to them.
Theo looks pissed. He’s giving me that big brother glare of disappointment that he has no right giving me, since he’syoungerthan me by nearly ten minutes.
“What? I’ll pay to fix it,” I snap, my arms held out defensively to the side.
“Oh yeah, with what money?”
Having no substantial retort, I go for the most grown-up response I have and poke my tongue out at him.
“I can help pay,” Tahlia puts in. “You did it for me.”
I reach out and give her arm a squeeze. “No, sweetie, that was all me. I’ll deal with it.” There’s no way she can afford it either. She lives in the same crappy building I do and earns even less than me writing about fashion accessories forIconmagazine. I guess that’s how she got so blind-sided by that jerk of an ex. I mean, who doesn’t want some wealthy Prince Charming-ish guy to come along and wave his magic money wand so all your struggles go away? I’d probably fall for it too. But in my case, the only hot rich guys asking formynumber are also planning on taking my money too.When am I ever going to get a break?
As we walk the rest of the way home, blisters form on my feet and a cloud of doom nestles over my shoulders. I sense a lawsuit and bankruptcy in my future. My life as I know it is now over—all because of a dick pic.
Two
Ruby
Over the coming days, every time my phone rings, I about jump out of my skin for fear it’ll be Sir Rumpled-Sexy-Skin demanding all my paychecks for the next eleventy-billion years. The anxiety is giving me nightmares, and every time I go outside, I’m scared I’ll be arrested for vandalism, or that I’ll have some court clerk serve me with a notice that I’m being sued.
I’m on edge.
I’m not sleeping.
And I’m never drinking again.
By the time another Monday morning rolls around, the bags under my dull-brown eyes have bags of their own. And when I try to hide them with concealer, they look more like an old man’s testicles than the smooth skin the anti-aging products promised. It’s times like these I wish it was socially acceptable to wear sunglasses inside.
Dragging my feet into Starbucks at the ass crack of dawn—pitfalls of working breakfast radio—I yawn so wide my jaw hurts. I should probably call in sick, but the distraction of working helps keep me from worrying.
“Hey, Andy,” I say through my yawn, lifting a hand to wave at the usual dude behind the counter.
“Want me to make that a double today?” he asks, arching a dark eyebrow.
I nod, noting that the messy bun I twisted my hair into is loose. “Please.” I yawn again. Breakfast radio is a cruel mistress. It demands we get to the station by five every morning. Thankfully New York really is the city that never sleeps and there are twenty-four-hour Starbucks all over the place.
Andy is literally my favorite person in the world at this time of the morning.
“There you go,” he says, handing me my usual Americano.
I wrap my hands around it and hold it to my nose, trying to inhale the caffeine before I taste it. “You’re a god among men, Andy.”
He grimaces. “Tell Karen that.”
“The silent treatment again?” I ask, placing my cup on the counter then upending four sachets of Sweet’n’Low into it. Andy and his girlfriend have a very one-sided relationship that I’ve heard all about over the last couple of years. One time, he didn’t notice she’d had her eyebrows waxed, so she quit speaking to him for a week and wouldn’t tell him why. All I can think is that she must be amazing in bed, because he puts up with a lot from her. That, or he’s an emotional doormat since he seems to let her walk all over him. I feel bad for the guy.
“She’s got a lot of opinions on the things I do,” he says with a sigh, his eyes looking up to the ceiling. “How I dress; what I eat; the times I go to the bathroom…”
That wakes me up. “Excuse me, the times youwhat?”
“She’s angry because I used the bathroom before she went in to do her hair and, you know…it smelled a little. I mean, Isprayedair freshener. But she has a lot of opinions about air freshener too, and I bought the wrong one this time, sooo…” Another sigh.
