“Why did you do it?” I cross my arms over my chest and wait for her to turn around and face me.
She glances over her shoulder as she pulls a bottle of vodka from the freezer. “Do what?”
“Text Legend from my phone! And how the hell did you get his number?”
Instead of looking sheepish, a cat-got-the-canary smile spreads over her face. “Did he reply?”
“Oh my God, Monroe! What the hell were you thinking? And why didn’t you tell me? I thought he was coming afterme,but then I open the text to see he was only replying to some dirty message you sent him! What am I supposed to do now?”
“Untwist your panties from the bunch they’re in and thank me.”
“You don’t even feel bad about it, do you?” I ask her, my voice rising with my temper. “Why would you? You never feel bad about anything you do. This isn’t a game, Monroe. This is my life.”
She sets the organic bloody mary mix on the counter so hard that the bottle lands with acrackagainst the granite. “And you’re the one who decided you had to bring his club back to life and wouldn’t tell any of us why. Don’t you think that makesyouthe one going after him from the beginning?”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell her about the kidnapping and what happened next, but I can’t. Because right now, I don’t trust Monroe any farther than I could throw her, and considering she’s all of five foot ten, that’s not very far.
“You had no right to do that.”
Monroe rolls her eyes at me. “Get off your fucking high horse, Scarlett. I did you a favor. You should be thanking me, not bitching at me first thing on a Sunday morning before I’ve even had a drink.”
My head feels like it might explode, so I suck in a few deep breaths that help calm me down a degree or two. Monroe’s inability to see that what she did waswrongshouldn’t surprise me.
“Here, have a drink.” She shoves a shot of vodka across the counter to me as I glare at her.
“I don’t drink at ten a.m.”
“Whatever.” She adds a dash of Tabasco, followed by a few sprinkles of celery salt and a grind of pepper. Monroe pops a leafy stalk of celery into her concoction to stir it before taking a swig. “God, that’s good. Almost worth being woken up at the ass crack of dawn by an ungrateful friend.”
Those couple degrees of calm I felt? They evaporate.
“Why would you do that? What the hell am I supposed to do now?”
“Fuck the man so you finally know what it’s like to have decent sex? Then maybe you’ll get the memo that you’re supposed to thank me later?”
I drop onto the white sculpture-like stool on the other side of her expansive kitchen island and bury my face in my hands. “I can’t believe this.”
“That you’re finally single and interested in a guy who can show you what it’s like to be with a real man?”
“Stop. Just stop,” I mumble into my cupped hands, but Monroe doesn’t listen.
“I know you think you have to plan every minute of your fucking life, Scarlett. I get it. You’re perfect, and the rest of us are just a hot mess.”
I jerk my head up to face her. “I don’t think that at all. I’m not perfect.”
Monroe responds with another eye roll and a big drink.
“Plus, I’ve been single for less than a day, and Chadwick broke into my apartment last night to return his key and left a shitty note on my counter, so it’s not like—”
The glass smacks against the countertop. “That motherfucker did what?” Monroe snaps out the question.
“He left his key. Last night.”
“Did you call the cops? Report him? That’s fucking stalking, Scarlett.”
Monroe’s instant protectiveness calms my earlier annoyance at her more than I thought possible.
“He had a key. There’s nothing they’d be able to do.”