"Sloan got a promotion."
"And why the hell would I care about that?"
Elizabeth hits me on the shoulder.
"Because she's my best friend idiot, and because the two of us are going out Friday night to celebrate."
"Friday," I say stoically.
Fridays belong to us.
Elizabeth calls them our "date nights." I call them our go out and do something, before I fuck her senseless nights. This is something we organically established about two months ago. Something I watched the old man do with Juliette, and I figured that out of all the things he's done wrong, at least my father got his relationship with Juliette right. So I don't mind following that blueprint, even if I never will admit to the shit.
"Her idea no doubt," I grumble.
That bitch Glamazon is always plotting against me.
"I know what you're thinking, but Sloan's whole team is taking her out to celebrate, and she invited me to go too. I couldn't very well pick the day. Most office employees go out at the end of the week. It's just one Friday. We'll have plenty more."
Elizabeth talks to her whacked out Barbie doll girlfriend every damn day on the phone. Do they have to hang out on our night too? I'm going to have to remind the Glamazon of who the fuck I am in a little bit. I've let her get away with entirely too much meddling, and I'm sick of her shit.
"Am I invited?" I ask.
As if I was really going to fucking go, but when Elizabeth turns her lips up as if I'm being ridiculous for even asking, the shit rubs me the wrong way. At least give me the chance to say no.
"Well am I?"
She huffs. "Why would you want to go? You barely like Sloan, and you definitely don't like any of the people she works with. You wouldn't have a good time."
The brush off.
"Am I your dirty little secret, Elizabeth?" I jest. Sort of.
"Oh please. You're hardly anybody's secret. Her whole office knows who you are. You've made sure of that on more than one occasion."
I chuckle to myself. That's true. I know all about that horny Thomas asshole Sloan works with who's been after Elizabeth since forever. I warned him once to stay the fuck away from her, but he's not a good listener. So I've had to make an appearance a few more times to remind him and anyone else who's considering making a play that Elizabeth belongs to me.
"So I'm not invited? I just want to be clear."
"Oh my God, Roman–"
"All right, all right." I cut her off, before she really gets mad and doesn't give me any pussy tonight. "You're right. I don't want to go out with those uptight pricks anyway. They act like they're curing cancer or something, when all they are, are drug pushers."
She rolls her eyes.
"Is there anything else?" I ask. "Neither of those things seem worthy of this five star meal, that I'm about to risk my life for."
"Very funny. Can't I just do something nice for my boyfriend?" she asks while twisting several strands of her hair.
A dead giveaway.
"You absolutely could, but I know better, Duchess. What's up?" I pull the hair she's twisting out of her hands and between my fingers. "If I have to keep asking, you're going to have to pay for it later, and I promise that you won't like it. You won't come at all, and I'll enjoy every minute of watching you squirm."
"All right already," she exhales a puff of air then continues, "I want you to meet with Joseph again."
I knew it was some dumb shit like this.
"Uh, hell no."
"Why?"
"Haven't you and Juliette learned your lesson yet? It didn't work last time, and it won't work again. The two of us will talk if and when we're ready to talk. We're grown fucking men. Leave well enough alone."
"If we leave it up to you, you two will never talk. You both are just alike. You both think that you don't need anything but money and sex, but that's not all you need, you two need each other too."
I almost laugh. She's watched too many family dramas where things end up neat and tidy and in a perfect bow. That's never going to happen with us. We've never been that. We never will be. And I'm very much okay with that.
"I said no."
"I'm asking you to meet with him again, because a letter came for you."
"A letter?"
"Yes, it was delivered to the house. A few days after J and J returned from their Alaskan cruise, I stopped by and Juliette told me about it."
J and J is Elizabeth's new nickname for the old man and Juliette.
"What's with all the clandestine maneuvers? Why didn't Juliette just call me to come by and pick it up?"
Elizabeth hesitates for a moment.
"Because of Joseph."
"What about him."
"He wasn't necessarily going to tell you about it."
"Is that fucking right?"
I feel a lethal mixture of tension and trepidation swirling around in my gut. There could only be one person that Joseph would give that much of a damn about me having any contact with.
"Is it from ... her?"
"Yes," Elizabeth answers in a careful tone.
"Did you read it?" I ask hoping that she didn't. I have no idea what the letter says, but I definitely don't want Elizabeth reading any of my mother's crazy until I do.
"No."
"Is there a return address on it?"
"No, but the postmark is from Vegas. If you want to read it, you should go over there and get it, Roman. It's your letter, and you're a grown man. Uncle Joseph can't just keep it from you. Just go over there and ask him for it."
So my mother's in Vegas, huh? How fucking cliché.
"So what's for dinner?" I ask abruptly changing the subject.
There's no point in talking about this further. First of all I'm not asking Joseph for shit. Secondly, I'm not opening that letter. All I ever really wanted to know was if my mother was alive and she clearly is. I did sort of want to know where she was living, and now I do. She's in Vegas. It would also be great to know why she was such a shitty mother too, why she didn't want me, but I'll never get that answer. Not an honest one anyway. So I'm thinking that I just need to let all my fucked up mother issues go at this point. She's always going to disappoint me, so what's the point of caring anymore?
Elizabeth stares at me for a moment. Waiting for some sort of reaction from me. Probably trying to figure out what kind of a mood I'm in now that I know about the letter, but I'm not going to let that shit bother me or bother us. I've got a good thing going. A great fucking thing, and I'm not going to let shadows from the past ruin that or ruin us. Never.
"Dinner?" I ask again.
"A crab bake." She smiles as if she's very pleased with herself. "I made crab legs, sausage, corn on the cob, onions and red potatoes smothered in garlic butter. Just the way you like it."
That puts a genuine grin across my face for a lot of reasons. First of all, I am actually really hungry. I haven't eaten a thing today. All I usually have before a run is a protein shake. The second reason I'm smiling is because this dinner is symbolic.
Over the summer Elizabeth and I visited the Jersey Shore several times. Like so many East Coast families, Elizabeth had been to the shore countless times with her family and friends over the years, but I wanted to show her my Jersey Shore, which is a little different than what she was used to.
While I grew up on cheese steaks and salt water taffy at the beach just like she did, after moving in with Joseph as a young teenager, I was introduced to a whole other side of the shore. The side where the Philadelphia elite own summer homes and private boats. The side where families vacation in beautifully restored and modernly renovated Victorian homes with rich attention to detail, on freshly paved streets, alongside clean quiet beaches and lush landscaping. It's part of the shore I had no idea existed as a kid, because you drive past all of those areas when you're on your way to the family beaches in typical tourist towns like Wildwood or Ocean City.
So I made reservations at my favorite five-star hotel in Avalon, N
ew Jersey with a pristine private beach where we spent plenty of days playing in the water and plenty of nights with me playing in between her legs.
One of the things we did for four nights straight was order a delicious crab bake and eat it on the deck by sunset. It's one of my new favorite memories, and I think it's so fucking cute how she's trying to recreate it. I just wish it wasn't because of that damn letter.
"I'm going to punish you tonight for this," I tease.
"For fixing you one of your favorite meals?" she asks incredulously.
"No, for thinking that you needed to do all of this in order to tell me about a stupid letter."
"I didn't think that."
"You were nervous. You thought I was going to lose my shit."
"I think I had a right to worry a little. You're already in a bad mood. You beat some poor kid's head in today for no reason. Or should I say not a good enough reason. I just didn't know how you would feel about it."
"I don't feel anything," I say as I sit down at her dining table.
"Then you're lying to yourself, because I know you, Roman Masterson. And just mentioning your mother's name makes you feel all sorts of things. Maybe one day you'll share some of those feelings with me."
I rub the back of my neck to relieve some of the tension that has built by just talking about my mother for the last five fucking minutes. Evidently Elizabeth is right. My mother is a topic I like to avoid at all costs, because the subject makes me more than just a little bit angry. It makes me feel something way more fucking scary.
Sad.
"So do you want to stop by their house to grab the letter after we eat?" she asks while placing a large, steaming bowl of seafood in front of me.
"You really don't want to come tonight do you?"
"I take it that means no. See, just the mention of your mother's name and you've already turned into the orgasm bully again. I thought we had a new agreement? Why are you killing the messenger?" Elizabeth chuckles.
"Oh, I'm not going to kill the messenger." I grin sinisterly. "I'm just going to kill what's in between the messenger's legs. I promise you that shit."
"Promises. Promises," she says in a flirty way that shoots straight from the base to the tip of my dick.
"That mouth of yours," I warn.
"Well somebody has to–"
And before she finishes saying whatever snarky comment she was about to make, I slam my crab cracker down and shoot straight out of my seat. I've had enough, and I'm about to end all this shit right now. She knows it too, because she shrieks, and makes a beeline for the loft.
"Stay away from me, you Neanderthal!"
I laugh a little out loud, because my girl's reflexes are so slow. So slow that I could have easily caught her ass right by the forearm at the table, but where's the fun in that? I allow her to reach midway up the ladder to the loft, but then literally grab her ass off of there and throw her over one of my shoulders.
"Put me down before you throw your back out!" she protests.
I give her ass a quick whack.
"What am I an old man now? It'll be a long time before lifting your tiny ass will ever throw my back out."
"I'm serious, Roman."
"I'm serious as fuck too."
With one hand holding her in place, I use the other to quickly and dramatically swipe our entire crab bake to the floor, and then I toss her ass right on top of the table that we were just eating on.
And then I eat her.
Until she finally whispers with an exhausted smile and two orgasms later ...
"You always deliver on your promises, Masterson."
Fucking right I do.
CHAPTER FIVE
ELIZABETH
There is sleep crusted in the corners of my heavily lidded eyes. My mouth tastes like I've swallowed a bottle of liquid chalk, and my head is pounding like a bratty little five year old has been kicking me in the temples for days.
I've come to the conclusion that being best friends with a professional partier and drunk (I mean social drinker) can be utterly exhausting for an ordinary girl like me.
Last night Sloan and I spent the majority of our evening bar hopping with a few of her co-workers to celebrate her latest promotion at work. I'm not really sure how things work exactly in the world of pharmaceuticals, but I'm pretty sure that she is now the head of her own team of sales reps, instead of being on someone else's team (or something like that).
Sloan's not really one for giving lots of details about her job, and I'm not really sure why. I guess she's just weirdly private about some things, and then on the other hand gives way too much information about things like her sex life. But whatever the specifics about her new job, she's happy about it, and therefore I'm happy for her. It means more money, which Sloan is very much used to having since she is the daughter of a professional basketball player. So it's a very good thing that she can now further keep herself living in the lifestyle that she is accustomed to.
To celebrate, last night we probably stopped by four different bars, and unfortunately I had a drink at every single one. Two drinks is truly my happy place. That's the point where I need to stop. Big girls already know their limits, but idiots like myself? Well we keep going and going. And that's how I know that at three drinks I'm twisted sideways, and at four I'm just plain old stinking drunk. Interestingly enough, I know for a fact that Sloan drank way more than I did, yet I seem to be the only one that's in a whole world of pain the morning after. So unfair. She gets legs that go on for days and the ability to drink most grown men under a table, and I get ... this.
Lying on one side of her feather soft bed (she has one of those memory foam mattress toppers), in a fetal position, wondering why I allowed myself to drink that damn much, and promising God that I'll never do it again if he'd just stop the pain. While she's over there happily humming an old David Bowie song and brushing her teeth like she hasn't a care in the world.
A sound very much like a sickly animal escapes from my mouth. I want her to stop humming. I want her to stop brushing her teeth so noisily, and I desperately want to attach several strips of tape across her mouth, so that she’ll shut the frack up.
"Are you finally awake?" Sloan asks me with toothpaste suds oozing out from the corners of her mouth.
"Eww." I gag. "Would you please finish taking care of that before you start talking to me," I beg while my stomach rolls.
"It's just toothpaste you nutball."
"Just spit it out!"
Ugh, just saying those four words made my head even worse.
"We drink every time we go out, and you're in your twenties. I cannot for the life of me understand why you're acting like a fourteen year old newbie. It's alcohol, not heroin, for God's sake."
"First of all, I wasn't getting drunk when I was fourteen. At that age, I was still in braces and spent my free time scrapbooking with my mom."
"Cornball!" she jokingly sneezes through her fist.
"That's right, I was," I say proudly. "Which made me a newbie at drinking alcohol at the age of twenty-one, which wasn't that long ago thank you very much. You know the age when drinking is legal for law abiding citizens of this great country of ours?"
"Hardy, har, har. You told me that you used to drink your mom's wine when you were a kid, cornball."
"Not even close, person who only hears what she wants to hear. What I told you was that I would steal sips of my mom's wine on occasion. That's a little different than all of your high school tales of getting drunk at the local baseball field with a boy four years older than you, slut puppy."
"Okay, okay. So I'm a little more seasoned than you," she admits while cracking up. "But I gave you a ritual to follow. Food, then alcohol, then water. Then alcohol again, then water, then home, then Motrin, then sleep. It's foolproof. Learned it from my parents and their wino friends when they used to have house parties after the home games."
Ah, that explains a lot. Sloan's parents had a busy social life when she was a kid, and her
dad was a popular basketball player for the Sixers. The complete opposite of my quiet childhood in the 'burbs.
"I never get sick at night, and I never have a hangover in the morning. You must have skipped something. Do I need to write it down for you, Babygirl?" she asks with a crooked smile.
I suck my teeth as my response, but unfortunately I think she may be right. I'm not the best listener sometimes, and it's very possible that I may have skipped a couple of steps. I definitely didn't drink all the water I was supposed to, and the Motrin bottle is still in my bag. I don't even think I ever took it out, or I probably would have left it on top of Sloan's nightstand last night.
I suck at this.
"You know what?" she asks after spitting toothpaste suds in the sink. My stomach rolls again.
"Oh my God, Sloan, what?"
Why is she still talking?
"We should do this every week!" she announces excitedly.
"And why the hell would I want to do this every week?"
"Well I wasn't sure how to bring it up, but I think we're a little off right now. Our friendship is a little off I mean, and I want to fix it."
What is she talking about?
"I mean I know I'm on the fast track at work, but lately I seem to be spending way too much time with the girls at work. All they do is blow smoke up my ass, because I'm the top female rep in my department. They just want my spot. They're not real. You're my only real friend, Bitsy."
"There's nothing wrong with our friendship, Sloan." I groan not really wanting to talk about this right now. Especially if the end result is me agreeing to a night of this type of ridiculousness every weekend.
"Come on. You have to admit that we've grown a bit apart over the last few months, especially because of the bubble you seem to be living in."
"Me?"
I knew it was just a matter of time before Sloan brought up the "Roman bubble" that she believes I've been floating around in. She's mentioned that term a few times to me lately, but after fighting my feelings for so long, I'm not ashamed to admit that I definitely have fully embraced my relationship with Roman. When I'm not working on my business, I want to spend every waking moment with him.
Cousins In Love: An Alpha Bad Boy Romance (Book 3) Page 4