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“These are not mine!” she said shrilly, tossing the skimpy thing at Damon, who was currently standing still as a mannequin, his olive complexion bleaching before my very eyes.
Her questions didn’t register for me. She was asking him the same questions I had locked and loaded, ready to fire at will. Questions like, how could you? and, how many were there? and, why?. Questions that were irrelevant.
I stood there in my panties as the Damon I’d fallen for peeked out from behind the clouds, his color returning as he looked right through her to me. The other girl was screaming her head off, a sea of arms and profanity. But in the stillness, he said two words that meant next to nothing coming from him.
I’m sorry.
I had two words of my own. I threw my middle finger up, just in case he missed it over the other girl’s histrionics: Fuck off.
I pulled my clothes back on piece by piece, throwing him a murderous glare when he had the nerve to reach his slimy hand toward me. I dodged a flying mug as I slipped my backpack on and made my exit.
He was suddenly full of apologies, or maybe he was just trying to escape his crazy mistress. He wisely stopped following me when we hit the parking lot. The tears I’d been so sure would be a bitch to keep locked away when I confronted him fell in the midst of laughter as I watched him hastily climb into his Wrangler. I stopped laughing when she literally ran after his SUV, giving up after he peeled out of the parking lot, nearly taking out a jogger to get away from her.
I made a promise to myself while I watched the sorority girl drop to the ground in a sobbing, gasping heap.
I’d never chase after a man.
Ever.
***
I was breaking a promise I’d made after I found out my first love was cheating on me. My first college boyfriend, my first everything, shat on everything my junior year of college. ‘No more running after a man!’ I’d proclaimed. But here I was, saying to hell with the whole not chasing after a man thing.
I told myself rules were made to be broken. I’d been breaking them from the start, anyway. It began when I decided to write the story on Hush on my own, cutting my magazine right out of the loop. I kept up the trend when I promised myself that I’d be the consummate professional, then I went and broke the cardinal rule of reporting: I fell for the subject of my story.
As I tugged on my disguise, a plain white T-shirt I’d pulled on and a non descript black ball cap, I hoped that my raggedy hair and the honest-to-God fatigue that was scrawled all over my face would make me believable. This was my last ditch effort. This was me chasing after a man that I believed was worth chasing after.
I hadn’t slept at all the night before, breaking yet another rule by blowing up Desmond’s phone. It wasn’t enough that I’d texted after he left lunch yesterday, asking the dumbest question I could’ve possible asked.
“Are you okay?”
The fact that I saw that he read said text, then got the ensuing ‘...’ like he was typing a response, then never received said response, was solid proof that he wasn’t. Well, that, or we weren’t at a place where I was supposed to be texting him anyway.
I’d dodged Peter’s pointed questions about lunch when we got back to the office, insisting that Desmond and I didn’t know each other. But from 1PM until I finally put my phone out of texting reach at 4AM, I’d laid out all my regrets to Desmond like I was making my final confession. That it wasn’t all a lie. That he’d awoken something fierce and wild and naughty in me. That now that I’d lost him, I realized that I needed him in my life. That being so close to him at lunch and not being able to touch him was torture.
Every text was read, and still, no response.
So I decided to dial up the crazy. There was no going back to Hush now, after all. Mary had reached out to me last night. I’d expected her to tear me a new one, and she made sure I knew that was her first reaction and she was mad as hell, but she’d convinced Desmond to not pursue any further action, as long as ‘Sin’ or Sophia didn’t return to the club. And Desmond’s apartment complex was as secure as the freaking White House, which left only one option. Sneaking onto the set of America’s Chef.
I saw a huddle of similarly dressed people, decked out in T-shirts and jeans and hoodies and ball caps gathering near the security gate. I hustled over, falling in step with the zombie shuffle. The gravel beneath my feet crunched as loudly as my nerves, trying to talk me out of doing something that could land me in jail. I focused instead on the people around me, all talking in grunts, barely looking at each other because their attention was locked on their cellphones. I shuffled along with them, a knot forming in my throat when I realized they were all scanning their badges. My disguise had its limitations. I didn’t have the time or resources to secure identification, short of knocking someone over the head and swiping their badge.
We inched along and I forced the worry from my face, focusing on the fact that I was bone tired and irritated and had a long road ahead of me if I was going to convince the most stubborn man I’d ever met to let me back in.
The person in front of me tapped their badge on the reader, then I was up. I stole a look at the security guard, a burly man who could tackle me without breaking a sweat, but was barely paying attention. His eyes were squarely on the newspaper in front of him.
I pretended to shuffle through my purse, precariously balancing my cup of coffee.
“Sorry,” I murmured with a groan, digging deeper in my bag. “I know it’s in here somewhere.” It wasn’t, but I’d been behind myself a million times; some unprepared woman or man who held up the line. The only thing worse was when they dumped the entire contents of their bags onto the counter, taking up even more time.
The gaggle behind me let out a round of agitated sighs and I cast another ‘sorry’ over my shoulder before I looked at the guard. I hoped he would be on the ‘sympathetic’ end of the spectrum instead of the ‘thoroughly annoyed’ end.
He didn’t look up from his paper at all. Indifferent? I could work with that.
I read the name tag affixed to his chest. ‘Frank’. With his wrinkle lined face and salt and pepper hair sticking out from his cap, he looked like a Frank. Unappreciated. Unseen from shift start to shift end.
“Frank, I think I left my badge at home,” I confessed, my voice a hushed whisper like I was about to die of embarrassment.
That got him to lift his eyes from his paper. When I flashed him a toothy grin with a wince following quickly behind, he returned it with a smile of his own. I started babbling, begging for his forgiveness, trying to exude utter incompetence and that I was completely at his mercy.
