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I arched a brow. “Yeah, none taken.”
I was surprised that I meant it. I didn’t care what she thought of me and I was chubby. Why should the truth be an insult?
“No, Bex. It’s not because I’m a ‘chubby chaser’, it’s because you’re a bitch.”
She took his barb in stride. “Hmm. I guess there is that.” She grabbed a chair and pulled it up to the table. “I’m Rebecca, by the way. Only this tool calls me Bex.”
“I kind of like it.” I shrugged. “It fits you.”
She narrowed her eyes. “I can’t tell if that’s an insult or not.”
“No offense,” I added with a smirk.
Bex grinned. “Fair enough. I like you. What’s your name?”
Ryan interrupted. “This is Claire Howard.”
“Oh! The Chubbalicious girl.” She turned toward me. “You need to put that on a shirt. Pink, black lettering.”
“Chubbalicious girl?”
She nodded, serious. “I’d wear it.”
“But you’re not…”
“So?” She grabbed my hand like we were fast friends. “You have to tell me where you got the guys.”
“What guys?”
“In the shoot. I saw a couple pictures.”
Jealousy surged, but I tamped it down with ruthless precision. I’d decided not to feel that anymore, so I just wasn’t going to. I was done. “Actually, they all work at The Rooster.”
“The strip club?” Her voice pitched higher.
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“So, which one of them are you fucking?” She didn’t even bother to try and keep her voice down. I liked how brassy and forward she was. She seemed to mock everyone equally.
“None.”
She lifted a brow in a universally recognized motion of calling bullshit.
“Now. None now.” I grinned.
“What happened?” Ryan asked. “The big guy?”
I felt on display, but they didn’t seem to be asking because there was any malice.
“Come on, I told you my dark secret,” Ryan prodded.
“Wait, you have secrets? Why am I just now hearing this?” Bex demanded.
“That’s why they’re secrets, blondie.”
“Fine.” She wrinkled her nose. “So, what happened? The tall one looks like a cheater. Is that what happened?”
“Kind of. He was my roommate and—” I proceeded to spill the whole sordid tale. I only kind of knew Ryan, and I’d just met Bex. It was crazy that I was spilling my guts so readily, but it was cathartic. It was like vomiting with the flu. You knew it was going to suck, it tasted bad coming up, maybe even burned, but after it was out, you felt better.
Bex’s eyes kept getting wider. She choked on her coffee when I got to the part where I’d slept with Brant and Kieran at the same time.
“You’re my hero.” She nodded.
I laughed. “Yeah, not so much.”
“No, really. Do you not realize what you’ve done?”
“Screwed up my life?”
“You’re living in the fire, not watching it burn to nothing.”
“Bex here is afraid she’s going to miss something, so she does everything. And everyone.”
“Shut up.” She sniffed.
“Do you deny it?” he asked.
“I wasn’t trying to deny it. I just told you to shut up.”
From the look on her face, I suddenly felt like I needed to tuck her under my wing like a mama bird. “Hey, nothing wrong with taking what you want.”
“Thanks for saying so. I’ve been called a slut more than once.”
“Of course you have. You’re a woman who is comfortable in her own sexuality. That necessarily means you must be labeled, categorized, and filed away for everyone’s safety.”
That felt profound to me. I’d been guilty of it too, of doing it to myself, my friends—I thought of Brant. I’d thought somehow he couldn’t possibly make me happy because he was shorter than me.
But really, happiness? That was my choice. Being with him felt good. I hadn’t really given him a chance, I’d just kept pining for Kieran.
I’d even labeled myself fat.
Chubbalicious. That was a label too, literally and figuratively, and I needed to make it a good one.
“You look like someone just turned on a light you didn’t know was off,” Bex said.
“Something like that.”
“So, show me what you have of this website so far.”
“No peeking.” I wasn’t quite that enlightened. All I had were a couple pictures, I wasn’t ready for the layout and I sure as hell wasn’t going to use those pics of me.
“Come on, I’m dying to see what you do with them,” Ryan nudged.
