by Kira Graham
“Perfect match,” Rose says harshly, ignoring my squirming.
“He’s an asshole! And besides, he wants to be friends.”
“He told you that?” she asks, glaring when I scrunch up my face and try to make myself smaller.
Being a target for three of the five Sweet girls is like getting my ass hauled into a terrorist’s clutches and being interrogated using torture methods. I answer, or they hurt me—and from the wild light in Rose’s eyes today, she’s looking forward to getting her hands dirty.
“Dammit, Rose. Yes. He said that we’re friends, and that I’m easy to talk to because he doesn’t get distracted by the glitz that most women employ to lure him in,” I huff, smarting a little because I can be vain, too.
I’m not immune to compliments, ya know, and nothing says “insult” like being told that there isn’t a single thing about you that’s going to distract a man. I have good boobs! And for the first time in my life, I find myself wanting to show them off to a guy. One problem. I can’t do that. As attracted as I am to Hart, I won’t go there again. My story isn’t meant to be some romantic epic. It’s going to be a boring, unexceptional tale about a girl who lived as she chose…
“Dammit, Cleo, shut up! That crap isn’t going to fly with us, and it most definitely isn’t going to make me feel sorry for you. Whatever you think that Hart was saying, and whatever you took from what he actually said, I can almost guarantee that it’s not true. Did he actually say those things, or is this another case of Cleo hearing what she wanted to hear?” Sin demands, calling me out so hard that I frown and bite into my lip, my mind whirring with memories from the last two weeks.
Well, I mean, he did sneer and tell me that I looked like a bag lady, but if I’m honest about it, that was probably because I wore a dress that I bought at Goodwill, and it was so ugly that I burned it after I wore it to one of our hang-out sessions.
Technically, Hart didn’t actually tell me that I’m ugly or anything. He’s made comments about the fact that my eyebrows are no longer orange, and he told me one time that I have pretty eyes behind the Coke bottles that I call glasses. So, really, he’s not mean or uncomplimentary…
Shit!
“Cleo—”
“I don’t want a relationship based on physical attraction. I just don’t. It’s temporary, and it doesn’t last, and you can’t trust it.”
“Can’t you? I may not like Chilli right now, Cleo, but that doesn’t make me blind. He’s smoking, and I’m hot, too, and yet whatever I wanted isn’t happening. Because he’s not into relationships right now—”
“He told you that? And here you are making me hate him.”
“Shut up. I’m allowed to say what I want about that rat bastard, and if I want my people to hate him, then that’s what’s going to happen. My point is, it’s not just about looks with these Hart men. They don’t just see the outside, or, trust me, Adonis, Chilli, and at least Zeus would be married by now,” she mutters. “Adonis isn’t just into looks—Chilli’s told me that more than once.”
“Well, Adonis—God, that name is just so…dammit, I like it! Adonis told me that he’s all about looks. He practically took out an ad to convince me of the fact.”
That part is completely true. I just don’t add that I don’t fully believe it. Hart is superficial, there’s no denying that, but it’s the normal kind of superficial that everyone falls prey to. I myself am slightly superficial, but only because I hate it when blondes let their roots grow out, and it makes their hair look dirty. Oh, and I have a slight bias towards women who look like they haven’t eaten in decades. Partly because it’s just so wrong, and it sets a bad example for kids. Also, I’m slightly envious because food is a drug that I just can’t shake. I feel like Heath Ledger seeing Jake Gyllenhaal for the first time. I just can’t quit it.
“And didn’t you tell him that you don’t like him?” Sin points out, grinning when I huff and make a face.
“I did exactly what I always do on first dates.”
“No, you usually dress down, go in with a bad attitude, and then spend the rest of the night laughing about it with us. This time, you drank a lot of wine, made friends with Hart, and now spend half your day talking to him or hanging out with him at night. That’s not you, Cleo, and you know why?” Rose asks quietly, her expression serious for once.
Don’t say it! I don’t think I can function if I hear it.
“You like him!”
“No, I don’t.”
I can’t. The last guy I liked, really liked, like love-liked, ended up breaking my heart and stomping all over what was left of my self-esteem. It’s the one and only time that Mom forgot or ignored the fact that murder is a sin and actually tried to kill Dennis. Dad was no different, except that with him, I got a raging lunatic who’d break into short and sudden bursts of crying because he hated that some idiot had broken my heart.
Never let it be said that the Sweet men aren’t in touch with their emotions. Dad planned to cry while hacking Dennis’s body to bits—for disposal purposes—because, according to him, Mom’s the brawn, and he’s the clean-up. Don’t ask. I don’t get my folks after twenty-six years, and no one else is going to understand them if I can’t.
My point is, I’ve had the head-over-heels, “love is blind, deaf, and dumb” experience, and no, it’s not a story that I will ever tell. And I don’t want that again, which is why I decided a long time ago that I either won’t get married, or, if I do, it’ll be to a guy who’s unexceptional and feels like he lucked out by landing me.
See? I’m superficial and mean. I want to be the pretty one with nothing to lose in a relationship. Hart? He’s gorgeous, and, as such, he just doesn’t qualify. He’s too big and bold, and if I were stupid enough to fall for him, I would always wonder. I would always be afraid that he’d see someone shinier, newer, better.
Just like Dennis.
“You do. And you wanna know what I think, Cleo?”
“No.”
“I’ll tell you what I think,” Rose continues, ignoring me completely. “I think that you’re too much of a coward to take a risk on Hart.”
I hate being called a coward. It’s worse than being called stupid, and trust me, I’ve had people intimate that very thing for most of my life. I’m not stupid, I’m just…average, and there’s no shame in that. Rose is super smart, and she graduated from college a whole year early because she got to speed up her courses and then take that bar exam thing. Which she didn’t just pass—she slammed it. Sin is a master chef, and I see her owning her own place one day and wowing people with her culinary genius. Alex is in advertising, and Tee is a therapist—the freaking irony!
Me? I’m the chick who barely scraped through college, earned an art degree that will get me nowhere, and spent some of that time learning how to be a pastry chef. I’m okay at art, and great at the baking and creating part, but I suck when it comes to business, and we all know it.
See? Average. And I am okay with average, because I refuse to revisit a time in my life when I reached for the stars and ended up crashing to Earth with a thunk.
“Whatever, Rose. We’re friends. With a capital F. And I like it that way.”
I have a vibrator for the fantasies that just won’t go away, so I’ll survive whatever stupid attraction I have to Adonis Hart. I really will.
“You need to let go of what happened with Dennis. And move on. With someone who is smart and cute and doesn’t have back hair or B.O. Playing out of your league is only good when the other person is worth the chase, Cleo. Come on. Tell me you know this.”
“Rose, this is supposed to be about you and Chilli! Not you trying to convince me to date his brother—oh my God!” I yell, a light bulb going off as Rose flinches, her cheeks turning a shade of red that spells out her guilt in big, ugly, traitorous letters. “Are you trying to get me to date Hart so that you can be closer to his brother?”
“Um…no?”
“Rosetta! That’s just plain genius,” Sin crows, her smile growi
ng wider when Alex agrees and high-fives my sister.
This whole time, I’ve been sitting here thinking that she’s trying to push me to want more. For me!
“You’re an asshole!”
“A romantic asshole who believes in true love. Come on, Cleo. How cool would it be? You marry Adonis, I marry Chilli, and the others—”
I start laughing so hard that I snort when Sin and Alex both vault off the bed and start running, their commitment-phobe lifestyles shying away from whatever crazy dream Rose has got coming into her head.
“Oh, come on! It’d be awesome! The Sweets could marry the Harts, and we could call ourselves the Sweetharts! Oh, come on!” she yells, the sound of the front door slamming shut drowned out by my own laughter and the very real suspicion that my sister is, in fact, crazy.
Sweethearts, indeed.
Chapter Nine
Adonis
She’s absolutely beautiful, and I let her know it by running my hand over her side and appreciating her perfect lines and curves with a stroke that is more than sexual. It comes from my soul.
“That’s not a car,” Cleo grunts, shoving her glasses back up her nose with a huff when I turn and gape at her, my disgust a silent glare of blinking disbelief.
“It’s a work of art!”
“It’s ugly. The doors don’t open the right way, and it may as well not have any tires because it’s so low to the ground that you’ll be setting off sparks when you drive the thing.”
Why am I attracted to her again? I ask myself, taking in her mustard-colored jeans, hot pink shirt, and the truly hideous sandals she’s wearing, all in an effort to keep throwing me off her scent. I’d laugh, as I often do when thinking about just how blind I was on that first date, but this shit’s getting old for me.
Half the time, I’m walking around with a hard-on, and it takes a monumental effort, every time we see each other, not to yell at her and tell her to cut the crap. The more time we spend together, getting to know one another, the more outlandish her outfits become. Don’t even get me started on the fact that she taped her boobs yesterday, and yes, I know this for a fact because I looked down her shirt while she was bending over and saw, with absolute horror, what she’d done to those beauties.
And now this. Insulting the one thing in this world that I love as much as sex.
“This is a Ferrari, Cleo. It’s perfection. No, even that word is too plain to do it justice. There are no words to accurately describe just how awesome this car is. This is the car you buy when you’ve achieved everything you have ever wanted to in life and don’t have anything left to excite you,” I explain, frowning when she sniffs and looks less than impressed.
“I thought you already had a Ferrari.”
“I do. This is the newest model. Only one person in the world owns this car right now, before its release, and that person is me,” I brag, preening slightly because, yeah, I am that cool.
“Big deal! I have every original My Little Pony.”
“My Little…are you comparing this car to plastic horses?” I sputter, thrown by the fact that she isn’t even a little impressed right now.
Usually when I bring out my cars, women fawn all over them and ask me to go for a spin. Some even try to wheedle some time in the driver’s seat. Which I never acquiesce to, because these aren’t just cars; they’re machines made into art!
“Ponies! Not horses. Ponies. And I have them all. One day, they’re going to be worth so much that I’ll be able to retire on the proceeds I make when I auction them off,” she boasts, smiling when I blink and throw my hands in the air.
So far, nothing impresses this woman. I’ve taken her to the most exclusive restaurants, only to be given the stink eye and have the food declared disgusting and a waste of good money. I took her shopping on a disaster of a day that saw me limping around after her in some secondhand store. After she punched me in the nuts. We went to the opera—snooze-fest!—and the ballet, another snooze-fest that I will never repeat again. And that also, by the way, got me ridiculed by my brothers, because not only was I copying Richard Gere—who the fuck is that, anyway?—but Cleo also fell asleep halfway through it and snored so loudly that we got kicked out.
Not that she’ll cop to it, because, according to Ms. Sweet, girls don’t snore.
In any case, I’ve practically bent over backwards in an attempt to get this woman to like me, and all I’ve gotten so far is an assertion that I’m “okay to hang with,” and some backhanded compliment about my appreciation of candy.
Gazing down again, I surreptitiously check out my stomach and remind myself that the four extra hours I spent at the gym this week definitely took care of whatever “gut” Cleo offhandedly pointed out last week.
Christ.
“My Little Pony cannot be compared to a car that cost over one point five mil—”
“It can if you’re a girl who likes that kinda stuff. Which I do. And I hate cars. See mine?” she asks, pointing to the rust heap parked in my parents’ driveway, her tone filled with misplaced pride.
“Yeah?” I ask, covering my nuts when I can’t control a grimace.
Like I should have to! Anyone with eyes can see that her car is a rattletrap. I think that at one time, it may have been an actual car, but right now, all I see is rust, faded red paint, and a door that hangs slightly askew, even when closed. I can’t even tell you what the make or model is because it doesn’t have any badges left.
“That’s Red. I bought her three years ago for two grand, and she’s as reliable as heck. She gets good mileage per gallon, and I haven’t had to replace anything on her in all this time. Now that’s a car,” she breathes, sending the thing a glowing smile.
Meanwhile, I have a mini heart attack thinking about her rattling around in something that unsafe. Which hasn’t seen mechanical intervention in at least three years. Or the last fucking century.
“You can’t drive that thing,” I wheeze, as visions of Cleo and a fiery death fill my head.
She scoffs and manages to drag her eyes away from the monstrosity, meeting my wild glare with one as calm as a crystal blue lake in the summertime. It’s so peaceful, I almost believe that Cleo Sweet is a peaceful sort of girl. Almost.
“Don’t be silly. She’s perfectly safe. And reliable. I don’t know why you have so many cars, Hart, and I really don’t get this obsession you have with something that could kill you. Now, if you’re done having an orgy with your ugly cars, I’d like to go meet your folks.”
“You want the food,” I scoff, smiling now because she flushes and tries to look innocent.
“Are you suggesting that I don’t want to meet your sweet mother? Are you saying that I’m here for the food and not to meet the poor soul who had to raise you and Chilli?” she taunts, her eyes sparkling because she knows I’ve put my foot in my mouth.
Even if that foot is laced with the truth.
“It is not. Truth foot,” she snorts, giggling when I curse and scrub a hand through my hair.
I’m already as hard as steel, and all she’s done is smile and stand around wearing her pest-infested rags. Christ, I can only imagine how desperate I’ll be when I finally lull her into my bed and get her out of these clothes.
“Shut up, Sweet. You’re getting really annoying for some weird chick whose only claim to friendship is a guy she keeps insulting.”
“Aw, you like my insults, Hart. I’m the first woman you’ve met who doesn’t immediately want to get in your pants,” she trills, her cheeks flushing a pretty shade of pink. Because she’s lying, and we both know it.
Cleo Sweet wants my dick; she just doesn’t want to want it. I just need to figure out why, and then use that information against her so that I can give my dick to her. Seems simple to me. Or it did two weeks ago, when I came up with this plan, only to get a week into this “friendship”and realize that I’m going to have blue balls before I even smell her pus—
“Addy!”
Groaning, I turn to face the front door,
where Ma and Pop are crowding into the doorway, both smiling so broadly that I feel myself flush. Ma knows the score with Cleo, though I haven’t told her that I’m still unsure as to what I want with the woman. All she knows is that we’re friends and that I like her, and she’s also aware of the fact that I’ll use anything to get her. Including food. That’s where Ma comes in. Today, she’s made no fewer than three different dishes, requests that I made because I know they’re Cleo’s favorites. Or that’s what I think. It’s hard to tell when she attacks any kind of food like a starving animal.
“Hey, Ma,” I greet her, smiling as I go up the steps and bend to kiss her, my cheeks heating up because Ma’s a believer in mouth-kissing everyone, and Cleo seems to find this amusing.
Until Ma pulls her forward by the cheeks and lays one on her. With gusto.
“Ah. Cleo! I been waiting to meet with you for so long!” Ma coos, her accent getting thicker, though God knows she’s lived in the States for more than half her life, and the accent very quickly turns Southern when she’s about to throw down. “Is nice to meet you. So pretty, this one. Real body!” Ma crows, making Cleo titter nervously and send me a pleading look.
I ignore it and laugh as I stand beside Pop and watch Ma tow her inside, no doubt towards the kitchen, where Ma thinks that every woman under ninety should congregate and make life happen.
“That looks like a good one you got there, son. What’s with all the ugly she’s hiding under?” he asks, grinning when I curse, shake my head, and follow him into the family room, where Zeus is already watching some History channel drivel and ignoring the world.
“She thinks that if she tones it down, I won’t see what’s underneath,” I reply with a shrug, accepting a soda because, one way or the other, I’m driving Cleo home.
And finding a way to scrap that car before she can argue. I see a nice, safe Mercedes in her future. Or a station wagon. Or maybe a Humvee. Yeah. Something big, maybe in pink so that she won’t complain too much.
“Huh. Any man who can’t see how gorgeous she is under all that nonsense is as blind as a bat,” he grunts, his eyes sparkling when I nod and look towards the kitchen, where Ma’s probably in seventh heaven with Cleo.
