Seductive Chaos (Bad Rep #3) (18 page)

“That’s great, but. . .” I began but she just kept going.

“What’s my favorite food, Cole? How about the movie that makes me cry every time I watch it? No? Well, it’s Old Yeller. That damn dog gets to me. But you didn’t know that, did you? Let me try something else. Maybe something a little easier. What panties am I wearing right now?”

All right, this I could answer.

“Purple satin. The ones with the bows on the side,” I said without pausing. I grinned, proud of myself for getting something right.

Vivian sighed and started to close the door.

I pushed it open again.

“Wait, I got that one right!”

Vivian shook her head. “Yeah, you did. And you just proved my point.”

“Which is?” I prompted.

“That you don’t give a shit about
who
I am. You don’t care about the things I like or the stuff I’ve done. You don’t even really care about why I got upset earlier. You just care about the fact that I spread my legs whenever you want me to. You care about the color of my underwear and whether my skirt is short enough for you to get your hand up where you want it.” She placed her hand on her chest, palm flat.

“Who I am in here, doesn’t matter. I thought it didn’t bother me. But it does. I can’t keep doing this. I can’t keep pretending that I can have sex with you and be okay with you using me. Because I tried to convince myself that I was using you too. But that’s not true.”

My mouth was hanging open unattractively but I was knocked stupid.

“I have never used you. Because every time we’ve been together, it has meant something to me. And I can’t continue allowing this to happen when you have no intention of this becoming something deeper. You’ll never do that. And I can’t keep pretending that’s okay.”

“Vivian,”I started to say. I didn’t know what would come out of my mouth next. I had no idea whether it would be to tell her she was wrong or right. I didn’t know if I would let her walk away or fight for her to stay.

But she took the choice from me.

“Goodbye, Cole,” she said and firmly shut the door.

Not
goodnight
but
goodbye.

Oh
hell no!

I pounded on the closed door. “Vivian! Open the fucking door! We’re not done!” I yelled. There was nothing but silence. I pulled my phone out of my pocket and dialed her number.

I heard it ringing in Gracie’s room but she never answered it. I started alternating between banging on her door and obsessively calling her.

“Fucking hell, Vivian! Just open the goddamn door!” I screamed at the top of my lungs, kicking the wall with my foot.

“Sir, you are being a disturbance. I need to ask you to leave this floor.” A pimply faced, middle-aged twat that I recognized from the front desk put his hand on my arm. I hadn’t noticed him come off the elevator.

“Get your fucking hands off me!” I roared, knocking his hand away as I started pounding on Vivian’s door again.

“Vivian!” I yelled.

Pimply-faced dude pulled out a walkie-talkie and started talking into it. I didn’t pay much attention; I was too focused on taking Vivian’s door down.

Then two guys Pimply dude said were hotel security were dragging me into the elevator.

I gave up fighting after that.

Garrett came down to the lobby to talk to the night manager on duty and took me back to his room, because according to him I couldn’t be trusted on my own.

“Just let it go, man. You’ll get us all kicked out,” Garrett warned, obviously pissed at being woken up in the middle of the night.

I tried calling Vivian again and when she didn’t answer, I threw my phone against the wall where it smashed into pieces.

“What the hell, Cole?” Garrett asked, looking as worked up as he ever had.

I shook my head and lay down on the couch in his room. I flung an arm over my eyes.

“It’s nothing. It’s done with,” I muttered, not wanting to talk about it anymore.

Fuck Vivian and her bullshit.

I didn’t need the head-trip.

And she said I was the mind fuck? Whatever!

There were plenty of girls to take her place. I’d make sure to find a couple after the show tomorrow night. Hell, I might not even wait that long.

I’d get over it and move on. Not that there was anything to move on from.

Vivian Baily didn’t mean shit to me.

I repeated that over and over again even as her face danced across closed eyelids.

And I swore I didn’t care even as I thought about the look in her eyes when she said we were done.

And I ignored the pang in my chest when I realized she was right.

I
had done it. I had severed the proverbial cord. I had cut ties. I had put a fork in it, we were done. I was every crappy break up metaphor out there.

Because I had officially ended things with Cole. Our hormone driven, lust-fueled, so-much-angst-it-might-kill-me relationship was finished once and for all.

And I was relieved.

Wasn’t I?

I mean, I didn’t feel
good
per se, but I felt
okay
about it.

Okay was fine, right?

Of course it was fine! It was great! I was Vivian Baily, woman able to resist the sexual allure of Cole Brandt! That deserved its own brand of commendation.

Yep, I felt
okay.

So maybe I had slept like crap in Gracie’s bed. I had tossed and turned and thought about going back to Cole’s room with my tail tucked between my legs. That look on his face when I told him it was over had been stuck on replay in my head. It was on an endless loop.

What did that look even mean?

Because he didn’t look happy. He didn’t look angry either.

He looked…
devastated?

Well that certainly couldn’t be right. I didn’t matter enough to be a blip on his radar, let alone
devastate
him. Psh.

But that didn’t stop me from wanting to run back to him. The familiar chaos was even more tempting now that I had made the decision to let it go. Then I chastised myself for being such a loser.

My internal battle had left me exhausted and irritable. I wanted to talk to Gracie. I wanted my friend’s affirmation that I hadn’t overreacted. That the honey fiasco had just been the tipping point in our dysfunctional coupling.

But she didn’t show up until the next morning. I had bitten my nails to the quick and gone through the entire contents of her mini-bar. I was hung-over and pissed off. Though I hadn’t been sure if I was pissed at Cole for being an asshole or pissed at myself for wanting the asshole so damn much.

I was so caught up in my boy troubles I never thought to wonder about where my wayward friend had been for the entire night. It wasn’t unlike her to shack up with someone, though it was unusual for her not to talk about it afterwards. Gracie believed whole-heartedly in kissing and telling.

She had been entirely too discreet. But she was in luck, because I wasn’t in the mind frame to care much where she had parked her v-jay for the night.

After Gracie had returned to the room, we packed up our stuff and checked out of the hotel like we were on the run. I sent a quick text to Maysie, making a lame excuse about our neighbor needing us to watch her cat and then we hightailed it back to Virginia.

Gracie listened to me bitch and moan the entire way. She offered little in the way of advice, because honestly I wouldn’t have wanted to hear it anyway. But she agreed I had made the right choice.

So I was feeling better by the time we pulled up out front of our apartment. I was feeling down right euphoric about my supreme act of girl power. Cole would not bring me down. He could keep his hunky rock god body far away from me.

And then my phone chirped in my purse. I made the mistake of looking at it.

You forgot to say goodbye. ☹ I thought we had some making up to do.

And my heart had fallen straight into my adorable kitten heels.

Had Cole really just used a frowny emoticon? And why was he texting me from Maysie’s phone? Did she know he had hijacked it?

My finger hovered over the screen as I thought of some snarky response. Before this weekend I would have called him a wank nugget. He would have retaliated with some sort of sexual-laced innuendo. Then the door would have opened to phone sex and plans to screw at a later date.

Not this time. I was a new woman full of awesome!

So I erased his text rather than give into the urge to write him back. And I thought that would have been the end of it. I had little doubt that Cole would move on to the next warm body with a pulse in no time.

I hated the twinge of disappointment when I was proven right.

I hadn’t heard from him since.

I arrived at work on Monday morning in a not so cheerful mood. It was virtually impossible for me to pretend I was hunky-dory when I wasn’t. I wore my emotions all over me like baby vomit.

When I arrived at The Claremont Center to find Theo waiting for me with coffee in hand, I wanted to turn back to my car and leave. Not that I didn’t want to see him, I just wasn’t sure I could affect a professional demeanor in the state I was in.

Not with my humiliation and minor heartache fresh and raw.

“White with sugar. I figured you had a sweet tooth,” Theo said, handing me the Styrofoam cup. I took a sip and couldn’t help but be pleased that he had read my coffee choice so perfectly.

I had been ready to swear off men. But when they come baring coffee and smiles that pretty, a girl could be tempted to re-think her stance on the subject.

“Thanks, Theo. Please don’t tell me I forgot another meeting,” I said, walking through the glass doors and heading to my office.

“No, nothing like that. I just, well, I felt like I should come by and apologize in person for how inappropriate I was the last time we spoke.”

My mind jogged backwards in time, trying to identify exactly what he was talking about. My head was still a soggy mess from my weekend spectacle. There wasn’t room in my grey matter for much else.

I must have looked perplexed because Theo’s lips quirked into a shy smile.

“When I asked you out.”

Oh
that.

I set my free coffee (the absolute best kind of coffee) on my desk and held up my hand. “You really don’t need to. It’s fine,” I assured him. I wasn’t entirely sure whether I wanted him to repeat the offer, though I wasn’t repulsed by the idea.

It was nice to know that walking away from Cole hadn’t turned me into a nun.

One thing I was sure of, however. Scoring dates on the clock had to be frowned upon.

Theo looked relieved and I stood there appreciating how adorable he was. He was the complete opposite of Cole in every possible way.

He was fair and buff. I could make out the defined lines of his muscles under the expensive cut of his suit.

He young enough that his obvious success and responsibility were impressive. He seemed to want to spend time with me. And not in the naked and sweaty kind of way. And he brought me coffee.

The only thing Cole ever bought me was a box of condoms and a hard time.

It would be so easy to fall into something with Theo. I liked being with someone. I know that wasn’t very feminist friendly. Riley would have smacked me across the face right before she took my girl card away and shredded it.

But it was the truth. I couldn’t remember a time in my life when I hadn’t been involved in some way with a guy. Sure, my relationship with Cole was questionable at best, but he was still someone I had devoted spending time with. He provided regular sex and even conversation when it suited him.

I enjoyed feeling wanted and desired. I liked knowing I had someone I could call when I was feeling lonely. I liked knowing that there was someone out there who wanted to spend time with me. For whatever the reason.

I was social and I enjoyed attention. And I knew, subconsciously, that perhaps that said quite a bit about the state of my self-esteem. Though I knew I was pretty. I liked my body and I thought that I was intelligent. I had friends and family that loved me. But there was still something inside me that craved what a relationship could give me.

I wanted to be happy. I wanted to be cared for. I wanted my fairy tale happily ever after. I blamed Titanic and every 80’s power ballad ever released. Though how I had allowed myself to think Cole could offer me anything I was looking for was beyond me. Call it two-year insanity.

I was by no means some depressing ingénue who cried over the state of her love life and wrote bad poetry. I wasn’t deep. I didn’t think about world hunger or how to end the conflict in the Gaza strip. I liked to watch bad reality television and I was unashamed to admit that I enjoyed pop music beyond acceptable levels.

I was a drama queen. I was a bitch if you crossed me. If I didn’t like you, I wasn’t one to hide it. You’d know it. And I was addicted to infatuation. The anticipation I felt when I knew I was going to see the guy I wanted.

So there.

However, call it a growing maturity or maybe a lingering lack of closure where Cole was concerned, but I didn’t jump at the chance to let this beautiful, strapping male buy me dinner.

I could flirt with him, let him adore me with his eyes, but I wasn’t ready to make it more than that.