She didn’t know whether to be sorry or grateful he’d given up.
Maybe she could dodge forever the “It was fun while it lasted conversation” until he was gone.
One more text rang in. She lunged for it.
Britt, I’m coming over
She texted back:
DON’T.
It was a brutally satisfying word to type.
Don’t.
The air went out of J. T. as surely as if Britt had jammed a pool cue between his ribs.
He couldn’t have moved if the roof was caving in.
He sat frozen, feeling half dead. The remnants of a delivered pizza, half veggie, barely eaten, sat on his coffee table next to the script.
He was an actor. Surely he had the skills to keep it together right now. Because Rebecca was watching him and she was the last person in the world he wanted watching him if he was going to fall apart.
Rebecca had once made him feel a lot of things, but devastated was never one of them. And that seemed somehow absolutely significant right now.
“Pizza didn’t agree with you?” she asked softly.
He must look like hell if she was concerned. Or felt the need to feign concern.
“Yeah,” he said abruptly.
He was savagely hurt in a way he could never quite recall feeling. He had no experience with accommodating this kind of pain. It reverberated through him, and he was as stunned, as if he’d crashed headlong into a wall.
And then the anger began to singe and curl all the other emotions up at the edges.
If he meantanythingat all to Britt, she should have the common decency to just talk to him.
She was a grown damn woman.
He realized Rebecca was still watching him.
“Why are you still here, Becks?” he said wearily. “Aren’t you heading up to Napa?”
“My app tells me there’s no room at the only B and B here in town right now. The Angel’s Nest? There’s only one motel within ten miles of here, and my reconnaissance tells me they sell meth in the parking lot the way crafters sell handmade soap on Venice Beach. I figured we could ride up to Napa together. It’s only a couple of hours. You going to kick me out?”
He stared at her.
This was Rebecca. She was always either about presumption or strategy or some combination thereof.
His fault. He should have asked her what her plans were sooner.
And he would have, if he hadn’t been worried about Britt calling him back.
Women.
For God’s sake. Possessing a penis was nothing but a burden sometimes.
And then, to his amazement, Rebecca laid a soft, persuading hand on his knee.