Filter Ree! Filter!
“I work from home,” he says defensively.
Translation: He doesn’t have a job.
I know, I know. I work from home, I shouldn’t be so judgmental. But I actually do work from home. Men are liars. And shouldn’t be trusted. They use their devil penis magic to hook you and before you know it they are mooching off of you and stealing your credit card. (No, that didn’t happen to me, but it totally could if I allowed myself to be ensnared by the penis magic.)
“Oh, that’s awesome!” I say enthusiastically. Thankfully this guy doesn’t know my fake voice tones.
“So I’ll see you later?” he asks, creeper smile returning.
“Absolutely.” Never going to happen.
I place my hand on the door handle again and begin to turn it.
“You wanna give me your number and I’ll text you if I have to leave?”
Where are you going to go? Your mommies for breakfast?
“Oh, I don’t have a cell phone,” I lie. Bad, Ree. Who doesn’t have a cell phone?
“What?” he asks incredulously. “Who doesn’t have a cell phone?”
“Me. It’s the death of America,” I state matter of factly. When in doubt, always pull out the crazy card.
“Wh… what?” he sputters.
“You know, NSA and all that shit,” I wave my hand in the air. “They’re always watching,” I ramble on, “I saw this documentary where it showed the NSA had the postal service install camera’s in everybody’s mailboxes just to keep an eye on their mail.” I don’t know if it’s true, but I’m desperate here!
“Wait…” he says, his brows furrow as he studies me, “you were on a phone last night.”
Way to be observant now asshole.
“Yep, okay, gotta go!” I bolt out the door and scurry through the apartment.
“Wait!” I hear him yell and climb out of the bed.
I make it to the door and finish my escape.
Sometimes you’ve just got to run.
I go as fast as my size seven feet will take me until I make it out to the street and get into a cab.
“Ankeny,” I tell the driver breathlessly and give him my address. I send a quick text to my friends telling them I will be late. I turn my head to look at Dave’s building as we pull away from the curb just in time to see him run out.
Please don’t follow me. Please don’t follow me.
I watch to make sure that he doesn’t and sigh in relief when I see him go back into his building with a frustrated look on his face.
“Bad night?” the cabbie asks me.
“Great night. Bad morning,” I respond, making him laugh.
***
I leave my house at exactly one o’clock after taking a quick shower then throwing on a pair of shorts, a short sleeved blouse and a pair of wedges. I hop into my Ford Edge, make my way downtown, pull into the parking ramp on 9th and Locust, then make my way down the street to Centro. I walk in, see my friends and make my way over to the table.
“Hey, guys,” I say as I flop down into the chair, moving my sunglasses to the top of my head.
“Long night?” Malia asks with a smirk.
“Long morning,” I reply dryly.
“It’s a good thing you’re coming home,” Kota says, “These romps with men are making you look haggard.”
The reason I’m meeting two of my oldest friends on a Friday when they should be at work is because they are helping to pack up my things to move back to Belton, after we’ve finished eating. The movers come tomorrow and I just have too much stuff to go through on my own.
Yes, I could have been working on it all this time, but it’s so much more fun to have friends over.
Life has gotten a little rough for me in the city, and while I love it, I am needed at home. My mother had a ‘mini’ stroke a couple months ago and my dad doesn’t want her doing so much around the house.
I volunteered to come home and help out, mostly due to the fact that I am the only child without a significant other and kids. Abbey has tried to help out, but Dad and Wyatt don’t want her to overdo it. But also because it scared the shit out of me when I got that phone call. Dad had called saying that Mom was taken to the emergency room because she was having weakness and her face was ‘lopsided’. Well, I knew enough to know that those were signs of a stroke. I got in my car and drove like hell to get to the county hospital.
It had turned out that she only had what the doctor called a ‘TIA’, but that makes her more susceptible to a full blown stroke. She didn’t have any lasting effects or paralysis from it, thank God, but Dad has insisted she take it easy. The doctor has been working with her to get her on track for a healthier food, exercise and lifestyle plan.
My mom is only fifty four years old, and she’s not overweight so none of this made sense to me, but the doctors say it is all about a healthy lifestyle.
So I am going home to help out around the house. I’ll have my own place in town, but I’ll be five minutes away rather than the forty plus minutes away that I am now.
I flip Kota off right before the waitress, Karen, according to her nametag, sets a menu down for me.
“Hello, I’m Karen,” she greets me, “What can I get you to drink?”
Kota and Malia already have their drinks and menus, so I look over the menu quickly to see if I want something different, decide against that plan and go with my usual.
“I’ll have a Bellini-tini, with a glass of water,” I answer with a smile.
There is just something about the mixture of peach vodka, peach schnapps and sparkling wine that really gets my juices flowing.
“Be right back with that,” she replies smiling.
“Thanks, Karen,” I say.
This is what I love about this city, it feels so small town yet it has so much life, vitality and everything is constantly updating. Everyone you meet is so nice and will treat you with amazing service; whether it’s at a gas station or an upscale restaurant or just the random stranger on the street. I’m really going to miss all the people I’ve met in the city.
I turn back to my friends and notice them giving me a ‘look’. I know The Look. It means that I shouldn’t be drinking so early when I spent all night drinking and having a ‘romp’ as Kota so eloquently put it.
“Bite me,” I say as I upturn my nose at them making them laugh.
These are the best friends a girl could have. They don’t judge me, ever. They just take me as I am and love me anyway.
Kota, full name: Dakota Presley, is tall at five eight and slender. She is the same age as me, as is Malia, and has green eyes with amazing long red hair, so I sometimes like to call her Ginger
Snap. She is a cosmetologist at a salon in Belton so she occasionally throws some crazy colors into her hair.
Malia Serling has a curvy figure, but not as curvy as mine and she’s shorter than me, which is pretty remarkable, measuring in at a cute little package of five foot two. She’s got blonde hair that hangs just past her shoulders and hazel eyes. Malia is an ER nurse at the county hospital back in Belton.
Karen comes back with my drink and, after I take a drink of the explosive goodness, she takes our order. I lean back in my seat and let out a huff.
“So what happened last night?” Malia asks, with genuine curiosity.
Malia is always the sweeter of the two. Kota is more brash, like me. We keep Malia around so that we can have someone to show us that good people do exist in the world.
“What always happens to her?” Kota laughs and takes a drink of her water.
“Really, Ree? Again?” Malia scolds me.
“What can I say?” I shrug leaning my elbows onto the table, “He was hot,” I take another drink, “And the sex was good.”
“So what went wrong?” she asks throwing her hands up.
“He was too clingy this morning,” I answer, scrunching up my nose.
“You have to settle down at some point, maybe you should have given him a
chance.”
Silly Malia.
“A chance to what, Malia?” I shake my head at her. “Break my heart? Bring me down? Fuck that.”
“They’re not all bad…” she trails off.
“Really? What about the guy you dated for a month and then found out his ‘job’ was a cat herder? Seriously? A fucking cat herder? What is that?” She looks down and bites her lip, knowing I have a dozen more examples. Of both of them. I nod my head towards Kota, “You’re awfully quiet over there.”
“Not much to say, I guess,” she shrugs. “We’ve said it all before. Besides, Malia,” she looks to her, “Ree is moving home. She isn’t going to start a serious relationship with a guy when she won’t even be around.”
“That’s true, I guess,” Malia concedes. “Oooo! Speaking of home!” she exclaims, “A lot has changed around town!”
“Like what?” I ask, genuinely interested.
I’ve gone home over the years, but never actually to spend time in Belton. My parents live just outside of town, and I only ever go to their place, so I don’t know much of the happenings of the town anymore. When I moved away, I left everything but my friends and family behind. It’s not that I hate Belton, or the small town life, I’m just more of a city girl. All my friends have come to the city to see me over the years, so I’ve never had a reason to spend any time there.
Wow, that sounds pretty rude when I think about it. I can’t believe it’s been so long since I spent time there with them… Sure, I’ve been to their houses to pick them up or drop them off for something or another, but I haven’t really spent time at their homes for over three years. And even then, it wasn’t for very long.
“Well,” Malia begins, her voice somber, “Betty Pruitt passed away.”
“Oh, my gosh! No!” I loved her. “Why didn’t someone tell me. I would have come to the funeral.”
“Her family didn’t have one,” Kota puts in.
“Why didn’t they have one?”
“None of them lived around here or knew her very well anymore, and her will said that she didn’t want one,” Malia informs me.
“Still,” I huff, “someone should have told me.”
“Sorry,” Malia apologizes. “That was during the time when the twins moved away and Kota and I were working through that,” she explains.
“Oh…” I reply, completely understanding how it slipped their minds.
Malia and Kota were both dating these twins for nearly a year, Malia was this close to getting him to propose when they both had to move away for some job in Wyoming. I think that was a bullshit reason, because if they were really in love with my girls they would have asked them to move with them, and they didn’t.
Well, Kota and Malia took it pretty hard and didn’t get out of bed except to go to work. Hence why I didn’t know about Betty, because I barely heard from them at all during that time.
The waitress comes just then with our food and the smell of my Chicken and Prosciutto sets my stomach on a rampage.
“Jesus, Ree, how long has it been since you ate?” Kota asks me, after hearing the rumbling.
“Last night before I went out,” I respond and shove a bite of chicken in my mouth.
“Can I get you ladies anything else?” Karen asks.
I hold up my finger to get her attention, since my mouth is full, and point to my drink.
“Another?” she asks smiling and I nod in response. “Anything for you two?” she looks at the girls.
“No we’re good,” Malia replies laughing at me as I shovel another bite in.
“So what do we do for a coffee house now?” I ask. Betty owned a great coffee house that was right next to Gert’s cakes.
More on Gert later.
“Oh, the Dunson’s opened it back up and named it ‘The Grind’,” Malia says excitedly.
“Awesome name!” I say earning an agreeing head nod from them both. “So what else is new?” I ask when our waitress sets down my second drink and leaves, shoveling in more of this amazing food. “God, this place is so good.”
“Well…” Kota says as she takes a slice of the margherita pizza her and Malia are sharing, “Oh, there is a new flower shop in town.”
“Really?” I ask a bit surprised. “What happened to Hilda’s?”
“Well,” Kota leans forward and drops her voice, so I know the gossip is going to be good, “she went a bit crazy after her husband left her for the recently graduated cheerleading captain about a year ago.” My eyes go huge and I almost choke on my food. Hilda’s husband, Richard, was in his sixties and Hilda was even a bit young for him at thirty eight, but to each their own, I suppose.
“Yeah,” Kota purses her lips to the side and nods her head, agreeing with my shocked as shit expression, “So she set the
flower shop on fire and ran out of town about a month after Richard left.”
“Holy shit!” I say rather loudly, making everyone turn to look at me. “Sorry! Good gossip,” I apologize to the other patrons receiving a few chuckles and some eye rolls.
“Yep,” Malia responds to my shock.
“Kids these days…” I shake my head, lowering my voice back down to a normal decibel. “Viagra and gold diggers… tsk, tsk. What has Belton come to?”
“Right? Well Richard can thank god for that shit,” Kota says.
“The pharmaceutical gods,” Malia corrects with a raised brow, Kota and I both nod in agreement.
“So who opened up the new one?” I ask, after taking another bite.
“This really sweet girl named Brielle Reiner,” Malia answers, sprinkling parmesan on her pizza. “She’s just a couple years younger than us, I think, and she kind of keeps to herself, but she always seems cool whenever I talk to her at the coffee house.”
“Cool,” I answer, “I’ll have to get to know her.”
“Oh! The Yates’ got a masseuse to come to the hotel once a month, so they renamed it ‘Belton Inn and Spa’,” Malia tells me.
As opposed to just ‘Belton Inn’.
“Wow… once a month?” My voice is dripping with sarcasm. “Watch out, Des Moines, Belton may take over as the new capital.”
“Oh shut up city girl,” Kota rolls her eyes at me. “He’s really good and his name is Claude.”
I bite my lips trying to hold in my laughter, but my shoulders still shake.
“Anything else?” I ask, once I finally compose myself.
“Nope,” they both answer me at the same time. The look on their faces makes me awfully suspicious.
“Sure…?” I ask
“We’re sure,” Kota nods and takes a bite of pizza.
I eye them speculatively, shake it off and decide to just finish my meal and figure it out when I get back to Belton.
Chapter Two
Code Red
Are you fucking kidding me!
Seriously? Two nights in a row, Ree?
I scold myself as I stare at the undeniably beautiful face with his eyes closed. Just looking at him I begin to get a thrill racing through my body. He has short dark brown hair that is sticking up in a few places, all messy and sexy as sin. It looks like that hair style where they mean for it to look like that, you know?
Clearly Mr. Sexy While He Sleeps hasn’t styled it to look like this. His face is shoved in the pillow and his leg and arm are thrown over my body, holding me tight into his side. The sheet is pulled low on his back, showing me how fit his body is and making me, honest to God, wet just looking at him.
This guy, I would seriously consider dating for a month. Though, with his looks, he has to be trouble and would most definitely break my heart. Maybe I could wake him up and have a little morning sex before I leave…
Wait.
Did I even have sex with him?
Shit! I can’t remember!
All I remember from last night is meeting him.
Fuck, fuck fuckity fuck!
Well, this is a first for me. I never black out.
Shit! Maybe he drugged me
!
But why would he need to drug me? He’s shit-hot.
Okay. Calm down. It’s okay. I just need to run through the night’s events and see what happened…
***
Around nine o’clock, after we got the last box of my things taped shut, Malia, Kota and I decided to go out and celebrate with a drink. They left me at a great bar called El Bait Shop after they
had their one drink, since they had to get home and I continued to visit with some friends I know who were there as well.
At around midnight, when I was getting ready to head home, my friend, Amanda, turns to me and says, “Ree, that guy at the bar has been watching you for the last hour like he wants to devour you.”
See, this is what annoys me. I don’t care if a guy is checking me out. Not tonight anyway. I’m just here to say goodbye to people I’ve come to love over the years. This night isn’t about getting laid and after this morning I feel that I need to tone it back. The ‘clingers’ are just getting too frequent.
I think all of this in the second it takes me to turn my head (like I’m just looking around the bar) and then my eyes lock on a delicious slice of heaven sent straight from the Gods. And he is looking right at me. I try to keep my composure, but my body’s reaction to him is instantaneous. Everything tightens. Especially my super-secret places.
Even sitting I can tell that he’s tall, very tall, has short dark hair that stands up in different directions, like he runs his hands through it a lot. His jaw is perfectly square and clean shaven; his nose straight, with what appears to be a slight bump on the bridge that adds character to his face. His body is lean and clearly defined in a maroon shirt that is tight around his arms, chest and shoulders. His skin is a golden tan color, and somehow I can tell that he must work outside a lot. He doesn’t seem the type to lay in a tanning bed. His legs look long and powerful in a pair of faded jeans that had to have been designed just for him. He may be fully clothed, but I can tell that he is an exquisite package of pure muscle.
His eyes lazily work their way up my body, causing me to shiver, until they stop to look into mine. I can feel myself panting, like a dog in heat, and I would be embarrassed if it wasn’t for the fact that he obviously notices, and a slow, sexy, half grin spreads across his face.
My Coyote Ugly Life Page 2
