“It was meant as one.” I cupped her elbow. “Let’s go eat.” So my mouth is busy and can’t get me in trouble.
The menu was in Italian. Despite traveling around Europe, I’d never really picked up many of the languages. What I did know wouldn’t help me, as I doubted the menu had many curse words or pickup lines. I ordered a ninety-dollar pizza with no idea what the toppings were, and Cassidy went conservative for a pasta and chicken dish.
Then it got awkward.
Like, your mom is driving you and your date to the school dance and you can’t really talk because she’ll butt in with something embarrassing kind of awkward.
“So,” Cassidy said, finally breaking the silence. “Gifts again. Do you always try and sweeten up your dates?”
I gave her a lazy smile. “I never had to before.”
Her hand paused as she reached for the water glass. “At least you’re honest, I guess.”
What the fuck is wrong with me? “I try. Do you like the flowers? I figured you’d get smaller, budget-type flowers from patients.”
Cassidy’s eyes went stony. “I appreciate their intent. Anyway, subtlety is more my thing. Not screaming, in-your-face bragging.”
My gaze dropped to the hint of cleavage her dress showed. “I hadn’t noticed.”
She scoffed. “Jesus, did you really just say that?”
“What?” I asked with a smile. “You’re a contradiction to yourself. You like subtlety, but you wear bright scrubs. You appreciate well-meaning behind a gesture but you constantly look for a punchline with me. And seriously, you can’t have missed all the looks you’ve had tonight in that dress. I’m pretty sure me, and most of the guys in here, have your body committed to memory by now.”
For a second, nothing happened. Cassidy blinked slowly as though figuring out how she was going to react. She cleared her throat and sipped her water. And now, she was going to get up, tip the rest of the glass over my head and storm out. And rightly so. I was a fucking asshole.
Instead, the waiter arrived with our food. My stomach churned at the sight of it. When he left, Cassidy sighed and picked up her fork. All I could do was stare at her.
She glanced up. “What? Expecting me to pitch a fit and leave? I’m hungry. I’m eating. Then I’m leaving.”
Okay. Good. Then there was still time to salvage what I’d just ruined.
“I have to ask. Do you hate women?” Cassidy asked, spearing a piece of pasta on her fork more forcefully than was necessary.
I swallowed. “Why would you think that?”
Cassidy shrugged. “You give off this cocky attitude, like you’re God’s gift to women and you’re doing us all a favor just by existing. I can’t help but wonder if you go through so many, or use that cocky charm to actually be derogative toward women because deep down you think we’re all sluts who deserve to be used.”
My breath left me in a rush. “Jesus Christ…you don’t really think that, do you?”
“I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t.”
Shaking my head, I willed her to look at me. She didn’t. “Cass, I don’t hate women. I’m just a fucking idiot.”
Finally, she looked up, a smirk at play on her lips. “What, so that makes it all better? You don’t know how to treat people right, so you do what you want and use ignorance as an excuse?”
I gave up on the pizza and scrubbed a hand over my face. “How’s your food?”
Cassidy shot me a look. “Better than the company.”
Ouch. Totally deserved, but ouch. “If you can’t handle me at my worst, you don’t deserve me at my best.”
“Excuse me?”
“Nothing, sorry. Stupid quote. Monroe, I think. What the hell does she know?”
Cassidy put her silverware beside her half-eaten meal. “No one deserves you, Seth. That much is clear.”
I tossed my napkin over the barely touched pizza. “I’ll go take care of the bill.”
Cassidy scoffed. “Are you kidding? I can pay for my own meal, for Chrissakes.”
I was done. I was so done. This whole thing had been a catastrophic mistake from the beginning. My patience was gone, my energy depleted. I was taking none of her shit now. “I bet you could. And you’ll live on noodles for the rest of the week, right? Check your pride. I’ve got it.”
She folded her arms across her chest. “And if this was a date, I’d be more than happy to let you pay for me. But you could never, ever, call this a date, so I’m paying for myself.”
Standing, I moved to her side of the table. Placing my hand on the back of her chair, I leaned over her so she had no choice but to look up at me. “Will you get over it already? This isn’t some bullshit feminist put-down or me asserting my masculinity over you. I can afford it. You’re a goddamn nurse.”
Cassidy’s lips pulled into a sneer. “And you’re the fucking manager of a nightclub. Am I supposed to be impressed your paycheck is moderately bigger than mine?”
I smiled. “I don’t earn a lot, but I’m loaded, sweetheart. My bank account looks like a foreign phone number. Family fortunes are swell, aren’t they?” I left her like that, with eyes searing in anger, body stiff with adrenaline and irritation. When I paid for the most expensive meal I’d ever not eaten, the table was empty.
Cassidy was already gone.
I couldn’t blame her.
* * * *
Marley found me slumped on the couch at three a.m. when she came home from work. Shirt and tie ripped off, wearing just pants and an undershirt. An empty bucket of chicken was beside me and a few empty beer bottles.
She sat next to me, looking at the trashy reality show I was watching. “What happened?”
“I flunked on purpose.”
Chapter Nine
The date with Cassidy put me in a serious funk. I’m not the kind of guy to be in bad moods all the time, so when one really hits, Jesus…it’s like the tsunami of pissy moods. At work, I reamed out one of the guys for dropping a bottle of vodka, even though it was something I myself was guilty of doing a time or two in the past. Asshole customers were tossed out quicker than they could blink and two floor staff out sick meant everyone was picking up the slack. That week, nobody was happy.
Around one a.m. the following Sunday night, a week and a half after the disastrous date, fate really decided to give me a craptastic hand. I was working behind the main bar, slinging drinks and not even enjoying the banter that usually accompanied it. Most of the staff weren’t talking to me—not surprising given I’d been acting like a world-class douche.
Which was probably why it took someone three hours to tell me what was going on.
“Seth?”
I turned to see Jess, a barmaid currently not talking to me because I’d put her on floor rotation for two shifts in a row, leaning against the bar. “What’s the problem?” Wouldn’t be the first time she’d complained about the unfairness of the world.
“I wasn’t going to say anything, but you should go check out bar two.”
I frowned. “Why? What’s going on?”
“You’re going to have to scrape your sister-in-law off the floor if she has another margarita.”
“Marley’s here?” I scanned the area around bar two but couldn’t see anything past the crowd of people. “On her own?”
“Yeah, and hitting the drinks hard. Has been for a while.” Jess grimaced. “She’s not looking too great.”
“And no one thought to fucking tell me?” I asked, slamming the drink I’d been making in front of the customer. Shoving the money in the cash register, I vaulted over the bar and pushed my way to bar two.
Sure enough, there was Marley, propping up her head in her hand and an empty margarita glass in front of her. Some dude was leaning real close to her, not even disguising the fact he was eyeing up her rack. She still wore her usual office clothes, so she must have finished upstairs and come straight down here.
I muscled in between them, making the guy almost fall on his ass. He started to mouth off, but one g
lare shut him up real quick. She turned back to Marley, and closed one eye to focus on me. “What are you doing?” I asked her.
She smiled a drunken smile, her eyes unfocused and makeup mostly worn off, a sweaty sheen to her face. “I’m enjoying myself for once. Got a problem with that?”
“If you were actually enjoying yourself, no, I wouldn’t. What’s going on?”
Marley shrugged. “What does it matter?”
Leaning on the bar, I inched closer to her so I could talk a little lower. “Because it matters, Marley. Has something happened? Did Blake—”
“I don’t want to talk about him,” she interrupted. Marley waved for the bartender and held up her empty glass.
Glaring at Damien, who had no doubt been serving her all night, I flat out dared him to mix her another drink.
Marley let out a shaky breath. “I don’t feel too hot.”
Sliding an arm around her waist, I supported her weight and guided her in the direction of my office. The back areas of the club were quiet. Music pulsed in the hallways, but not in the can’t-hear-yourself-think way that it was like back inside. I unlocked my office door and led Marley over to the couch.
She slumped down into the cushions, groaning.
“Regretting that last cocktail?” I asked, opening the fridge and pulling out a bottle of water.
“Shut up,” Marley mumbled, slowly inching down until she lay flat on the couch.
I gathered what snack food I had littered around the office and set them in front of Marley, along with the water and some aspirin. “Eat, drink all the water, and try and get some rest. This place is going to shit and I can’t leave tonight. Will you be okay until we close?”
She closed her eyes and nodded once.
There was more I wanted, needed, to say, but she did not have the mental faculties to answer any questions. On my way out, I doubled back and put a trashcan by the couch and hoped to hell she would have the sense to aim.
The rest of the night passed quickly enough, but I was even more short-tempered and now distracted to boot. Some of the team shot me curious looks, no doubt wondering what the hell was going on with Marley.
Which was exactly what I wanted to know.
It didn’t take a genius to know it was Blake-related, but what could have happened? I’d seen her at lunch and she’d been fine. Well, whatever level of fine she was operating at these days. Maybe he’d finally grown a pair and told her the truth.
I didn’t earn myself any favors when I rushed the restocking of the bars and cleaning. At this point, I couldn’t have cared less what the rest of the team thought of me.
Cracking open my office door, I peered inside, eyes going first to the bucket and noting with relief that it was empty, and that she didn’t appear to have puked and just missed. The water bottle was half empty, but nothing else had been touched.
“Marley,” I said, touching her shoulder.
She stirred, a frown in place before she even opened her eyes. “God, leave me alone.”
I snorted a laugh. “No can do, Sis. Get your ass up. We’re leaving.”
It took her a full twenty seconds to heave herself into a sitting position. One side of her hair stuck out so much it would have been funny if the situation was anything but fucking funny. Marley refused to let me help her on the walk to the parking lot, the easy-going drunk phase having slipped into the pissed-off-and-defiant drunk phase.
At her car, she shoved her purse at me and crawled into the passenger seat where she promptly fell asleep.
It was the first time I’d ever driven Marley’s car, despite my incessant begging. She probably would have caved by now, but Blake with his giant stick up his ass vehemently refused to let his little brother loose in the hundred-and-thirty-grand convertible he’d bought for Marley. I didn’t altogether blame him, not when he knew just how many cars of Dad’s I’d totaled in my carefree youth. But I was different now. Mature. Careful. Whatever.
Back at the house, Marley was still catching flies, so I did the gentlemanly thing and carried her inside and deposited her on the couch. If she wanted upstairs to bed, she could damn well carry herself. It was after I pulled off her shoes, one of those weird pairs that girls loved that somehow defied logic and physics and didn’t snap their ankles, when Blake appeared.
He took one look at me standing over his fiancée, who was passed out cold, and jumped straight to fucking pissed. “What the fuck, Seth?”
I glared at him. “You so do not get to be mad at me.”
“What did you do to her? Convince her to go on some bender like one of the questionable girls you use?” he asked through clenched teeth.
Okay, I wasn’t doing this. My week had been hell, Marley had taken it to new levels and now attitude from Blake.
So. Not. Doing. This.
Pushing past him and heading for the stairs, I said, “You know, I think it’s real funny you think it was something I did. Couldn’t possibly be because of you, could it, big brother?”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing, none of my business.”
“Sure looked like your business.”
Spinning around halfway up the stairs, I jabbed a finger in the direction of the living room. “Because she chose the club we both fucking work in to drown her pretty little sorrows. Did a good job too.”
“And you just let her? Nice. Your concern is touching.” Blake’s mouth twisted into an ugly sneer that made me want to wipe it right off.
That moment—that was it. My shit-pile limit. “Not that I owe you a goddamn thing, but I didn’t even know she was there. I’m busy, Blake. That club has been hell all week. When I found out what was going down, I took her to my office until I could take her home. End of fucking story.”
All the adrenaline seemed to have fled Blake’s body. He visibly aged right in front of me, his face drawn and weary, his body exhausted from the fights. Blake scrubbed his hand over his short hair. “Jesus, I’m sorry. What the fuck is wrong with me?”
Letting out a heavy breath, I slowly padded back downstairs. “It’s pretty clear there’s something wrong with both of you. The same something.”
Blake dropped down onto the stairs. “I’m losing her, Seth. I’m fucking losing her and I can’t do a goddamn thing to stop it.”
“Don’t give me that bullshit,” I barked. “You know exactly how to stop it, so why the hell aren’t you?”
I expected him to bite my head off in response. Instead he looked…terrified. “I can’t do that. I need her to— Back in New York, she always went back to him. I know she didn’t want to—in her heart I knew it was me—but she was always leaving me. And now…I need her to choose me. To just believe me and fuck everything else.”
“Have you told her that you actually screwed this other girl?” I asked, sitting beside him.
Blake made a choking sound in his throat. “No, of course not.”
“Well, I hate to break it to you, but something has happened. I saw her at lunch today and she was, you know, miserable, but fine. Then tonight…she was at breaking point. Look, you probably don’t want my advice, but you should tell her, Blake. If she finds out and you didn’t tell her, she’ll fucking leave you.”
He stood. “It wouldn’t be more than I deserve.” Blake turned and headed upstairs and a moment later his bedroom door slammed shut.
Man. And I thought I had problems.
I checked on Marley before going to bed. Set another bottle of water in front of her and covered her with a blanket. Retrieved another puke bucket. She’d be good till morning, when her epic hangover hit.
I took a long shower, hoping it would relax me enough to sleep.
It didn’t.
* * * *
Any sleep I actually managed was worth precisely jack shit. I’m not the kind of guy who lets stuff weigh on my mind. I have no problem shutting off any thoughts, problems, whatever. But that night I tossed and turned so much it was the most action this bed had seen i
n its lifetime.
Around seven I gave up on sleep. Throwing on some sweats, I slumped downstairs. Marley was still passed out cold on the couch when I checked on her, so I went to start the coffee everyone would need that day.
She stirred when I sat beside her on the couch, rolling over and covering her eyes with her arm. “Please tell me that’s coffee.”
“So strong you’ll grow some balls.”
“Awesome.”
“Are you working today?” I asked, sipping my coffee and wincing. Fuck me, that was strong.
“Not until tonight,” Marley said. She pushed herself up and accepted the mug I handed her. “I think I’m dying.”
“What was that last night?”
As soon as Marley looked at me, her normally soft brown eyes bloodshot and exhausted, I regretted asking. Really, this was none of my goddamn business. Blake and Marley had created themselves a shitstorm and I did not need to shove myself into the middle of it.
But Christ…I couldn’t just ignore it.
“Last night was me hitting a wall.” Marley blew out a breath and glanced at me. “I can’t tell you what happened, Seth.”
I frowned. “Why the hell not?”
“Because if I tell you, you’ll either have to lie to me or tell me the truth—and I’m honestly not sure what I’d prefer right now.” Marley scrubbed at her eyes. “I’m so tired. All of this…I’m done. It’s all going to come out soon and I have no idea what will happen.”
“Yes, you do,” I said quietly. “But you’re afraid to find out for sure.”
“Is that such a bad thing?” she whispered.
“No. It means you want it to work out. That you’re still hoping for a good outcome.” Man. When did I become all positive thinking and stuff?
Marley shrugged. “At this point, I just want this situation to be over, no matter the outcome.”
“Your coffee is getting cold,” I said, nudging her with my knee.
“Your deflection techniques could use some work,” she mumbled dryly. “Fine. Conversation over, but for the record, you brought it up. What’s going on with your girl?”
Secrets, Lies & Imperfections Page 7