by Linda Kage
Any minute now, they’d come out with our food…with her ring. I kept trying to remember the words Zoey had said, the words that I’d thought would make the perfect proposal, but my head was fuzzy and I couldn’t concentrate long enough to remember anything.
I picked up the glass of water and took, like, the hundredth sip for the evening. I was worried about my mouth drying out when the time came, but then I was equally worried about drinking too much and having to go the bathroom at exactly the time they brought out the ring.
The staff had been tickled to participate in my plans when I’d brought the ring in earlier. I guess they were all romantics at heart too. I kept seeing waitresses and waiters stealing secretive grins my way every time they passed, which made my stomach knot with even more nerves.
I don’t think I’d ever done anything so big and public before in my life. But for Cora, I would. Except...what if she said no? What if I’d totally been reading her wrong last Sunday morning?
Heck, what if she said yes? Was I really ready to get married?
Across from me, Cora’s phone dinged with an incoming text. About the twentieth text she’d received since we’d gotten here. I glanced at her as she picked up her phone and read the screen. Whoever she was talking to had quite a bit to say, because she studied the screen for a while before grinning and typing back an answer.
When my own phone chimed, I glowed, thinking she’d just written to me.
But when I checked my screen, it was from Zoey. Relax already. You look like you’re going to toss your cookies any second.
I lifted my face and glanced around until I spotted her sitting all the way across the restaurant on a stool at the bar.
When she realized I’d found her, she smiled and waved, giving me a big thumbs-up as she swung her legs cheerfully.
I don’t know why, but knowing she was here immediately eased my nerves. I let out a breath and all my muscles stopped clenching.
Then I shook my head and texted her back, since Cora was still on her phone. What’re you doing here, crazy girl?
I couldn’t stay away. I’m dying to see Cora’s expression when she says yes. That’s okay, right?
I rolled my eyes. Sure. Just make sure she doesn’t see you before then. Or she might get suspicious.
You got it, boss.
When I read that and glanced at her, she sent me a salute. Then she wiggled in her barstool as if she was doing some kind of sit-dance. I had to cover my mouth with my hand to keep from laughing aloud.
Across from me, Cora actually did laugh.
My gaze shot to her.
Still smirking at whatever she was reading, she began to answer her text. Curious what was pulling her attention away from our date, I asked, “What’s so funny?”
Her head zipped up, her eyes wide. “What?”
I tipped my attention to her phone. “Who’re you texting?”
“Oh. Uh...Zoey.”
I glanced toward Zoey. She was most definitely not texting Cora. I looked back at my girlfriend. And it hit me.
Oh...hell.
“You’re lying.” The words seemed to echo from my mouth and reverberate inside my head. Why would she lie about who she was texting?
Cora looked up again, and I saw the flash of panic in her gaze. “Excuse me?”
“Who...are you texting?” I said with a little bit more force.
Cora scowled. “I just told you. Zoey.”
“No.” I shook my head slowly. “You’re not texting Zoey.”
I glanced toward Zoey again just as a new text chimed from Cora’s phone. Zoey’s phone was still sitting on the bar behind her. She frowned at me, looking concerned, and motioned with her hands as if to ask what was wrong.
I turned back to Cora. Busy trying to open the new message, she didn’t notice me stand up and lean across the table until I’d snagged the phone from her hand.
“Hey,” she yelped, glaring at me and trying to retrieve it. But I’d already read enough.
She wasn’t just texting some other guy, she was texting lewd, sexual things to some other guy, telling him she’d try to sneak out to him tonight because her mouth was watering for his dick.
My pussy is so wet for you right now. As soon as I’m done with this stupid dinner, your cock better be hard, because I’m climbing on it as soon as you open your door and I’m riding you until dawn.
I kept reading, and everything in my chest just kept sinking lower and lower. Cora ran around the table and once again tried to take her phone back. I held out my hand, keeping her away. She hit my shoulder and started to curse me. But I didn’t feel her fists or hear her words. I was still reading, unable to look away.
“Damn it, Quinn.” She started to cry. “It’s not what you think. Just give me my phone back…now.”
“Not what I think?” I murmured, looking up at her. “So…you’re not having sex with this guy who…” I glanced down and starting reading her text aloud, “made me come so hard the last time you were in me I almost orgasm just thinking about it?”
“I…” She had no words to talk herself out of the truth.
An uncontrollable, hard laugh left my lungs. “Oh my God. Oh my God, Cora.” My ears began to ring. “I cannot believe you.”
This was impossible to process. My girlfriend had cheated on me.
“Quinn,” Cora started, but I held up my hand.
“No. Don’t even...just, no.”
“No. Please...just listen to me...”
I shook my head and threw her revolting phone on the table. “I think I’ve had enough of reading what you have to say, I don’t want to listen to any of it.”
“Damn it.” She stomped her foot in a pout. “How the hell did you know it wasn’t Zoey?”
My mouth fell open in shock. She was upset because she’d gotten caught, not because she was breaking my heart all over Jenny’s Crab Shack? I couldn’t freaking believe her.
“Because she’s sitting right there!” I helpfully pointed Zoey’s way.
Cora spun around and gaped at Zoey. Zoey jumped off her barstool, clearly startled. She hurried toward us, but I couldn’t handle her right now either. She knew; she had to know. How could she live with Cora and not know? How could she go with me to pick out a ring and not tell me?
Oh God, why had she let me do that and let me make a complete fool of myself?
I felt doubly betrayed.
Just then, the server, wearing a huge smile, approached our table. “I hope you guys have a big appetite tonight.”
The blood drained from my face. Life could not possibly get any more humiliating than it was in this second. Actually it could, because I was half a second away from puking my misery all over the floor.
But Zoey plowed into the server, sending the bucket full of crabs flying everywhere. I watched in a daze as she apologized to the waiter as if she totally hadn’t meant to tackle him.
“I should’ve watched where I was going,” she said as she crawled through butter sauce and crabs and shrimp until she curled her fingers around something she picked up and cradled to her chest. When she looked up, her eyes met mine.
I saw pity, and I couldn’t handle it. I whirled away and stalked from the restaurant.
“Quinn, wait.” Cora raced after me. She grabbed my arm and whirled me around.
“What was that? Was that a ring she picked up? Are you going to propose to me?”
Her eyes lit with a smile, but I snorted. “No.” Hell, no! “Because I never want to see you again. It’s over, Cora.”
This time, she didn’t go after me when I stormed away, and I wouldn’t have let her stop me if she’d tried.
Cora was a sobbing mess. It was hard to understand anything she was saying. I still wasn’t sure what had just happened between her and Quinn, but he’d been so upset, more upset than I’d ever seen him before.
Through all Cora’s tears, I finally understood that he’d seen something on her phone he was never supposed to see. So I grabbed he
r phone, and then I saw something I never wanted to see.
“Oh my God, Cora. You…you’re cheating on Quinn? Quinn?” I stared at her, wondering when she’d lost her freaking mind. “How…how…how could you?”
“I love him, Zoey. I swear I do. Quinn is the best boyfriend I’ve ever had. I don’t want to lose him. What do I do?”
“How about not having sex with other men?” That’d be a good start.
She huffed out a sound of irritation. “Those were just flings. Quinn’s the real deal. No one’s ever been as good to me as he is. I really do want to marry him. But I like sex. What’s so wrong with that?”
“Oh my God, Cora. You can’t have your cake and eat it too. Marriage means monogamy. And you...you just lost the best thing that’s ever happened to you.”
I turned away and left her in Jenny’s Crab Shack too, with Quinn’s engagement ring a little buttery but tucked safely in my pocket.
I cried a little bit, wandered around town a lot, refused to return to my apartment where Cora was. About an hour after everything fell apart, Caroline called, frantic.
“Oren just showed up here with a black eye and really upset, mumbling something to Noel about how Quinn will never forgive him for what he did. What the heck happened?”
“I don’t…I don’t know. I’m not sure. Cora cheated on Quinn, and they broke up.”
“What? Cora cheated—Wait. Oren wouldn’t possibly be stupid enough to...not with Cora? Would he?”
“I don’t think so.” I shook my head. “No, the texts I read weren’t from him. She definitely cheated with someone else.” Or maybe a couple someone elses from the sounds of it.
“That lying fucking whore. I mean...I’m sorry. I know she’s your—”
“She is not my friend,” I snapped. “Not right now. She lied to me too. I had no idea.” I’d helped Quinn buy her a ring. I’d...Quinn probably thought I knew about this. He probably thought I’d purposely led him on a merry goose chase. “I’m sorry, I have to go.”
I hung up on Caroline and raced toward Quinn’s apartment.
When I stormed through the front door of my apartment, Ten was slouched on the sofa, eating from a bag of potato chips and drinking a beer as he watched television.
I slammed the door behind me and began to pace the front room.
“I’m sensing turmoil,” he said mildly.
I picked up one of his textbooks off the coffee table and heaved it as hard as I could against the wall.
“And I’m sensing it has something to do with...classwork?”
I sent him a glare. “Cora cheated on me.”
Ten dropped his beer. “Shit, man.” He popped to his feet. “So, it’s true then?”
I stopped pacing. “What? Wait, you knew about this?”
“What? No! Fuck, no. I’ve just heard—I mean, come on, man. She was a total slut before you hooked up with her, but—”
“She was what?” I marched toward him. He backed up a step.
“Dude, we called her Cora the Whora. How did you never know that? Before you two hooked up, she’d had just about every guy on the team.”
He must’ve realized that was the very worst thing he could’ve possibly said because his eyes widened a split second before I grabbed his shirt and hauled him close until we were nearly nose-to-nose. “Really? Did she have you?”
Ten didn’t answer, but his face paled.
I let go of him and stepped back. “Oh God. She did.”
“Ham. Man.” He inched toward me, reaching out, but I slapped his hand away. “It was only one time, before you ever met her, before you even knew she existed.” When I just stared at him, he closed his eyes and winced. “Okay. And then one time after.”
“After...” I repeated slowly. “After what? After I met her, you mean?” I’d slept with her the very first night I’d met her.
Ten held up his hands in surrender, his eyes pleading. “I didn’t know you were going to start dating her. I swear to God. You’d just lost your virginity to the girl. I thought you’d call it good and move on to other pastures. She’s a one-time kind of slut, not someone you date. And she came on to me a couple nights after you guys first hooked up, so I thought, why the hell not? We were both unattached—or so I thought—and I was horny. When I heard the next day that you’d asked her out again, I cornered her and demanded to know why the fuck she’d done that to me. But she said she didn’t know you were going to call her again.”
I growled. “I didn’t call her again. I asked her out on an official date the morning after the very first night we met. And she said yes.”
Ten winced. “Then she lied to me. I promise you, Quinn, I would never betray you like that. I had no idea you were still interested in her after your first time.”
I couldn’t listen to any more. So I punched him.
In the face.
He wasn’t expecting it and shouted out his surprise before catching his jaw in his hands and cursing up a storm.
As he danced around the room to alleviate the pain, I pointed toward the door. “Get out of my apartment.”
Breathing hard, Ten straightened. He opened his mouth, but I shook my head, finished listening to him. “Just go.”
He drew in a deep breath, nodded, and left me alone. After he was gone, I took the beer he’d left on the coffee table and I got drunk. I was still drunk when a knock came on the front door.
I didn’t feel like talking to anyone or being civil, but I stood up and checked to see who it was anyway.
It was Zoey.
I knew he was drunk as soon as he opened the door. I covered my mouth as I stared up at him. “Oh, Quinn.”
While my eyes wanted to fill with tears, his eyes remained dry. And hard and accusing. “Did you know?”
“What?” Pain sluiced through me. I shook my head fiercely. “No! How can you even ask that? You know...you know I had no idea. You know I...I never would’ve helped you with the ring, or...or...oh God. She betrayed me too. I’m supposed to be her friend, her closest confidante, and she kept something like this from me. I’m...I had no idea.”
With a relenting nod, he stepped back and let the door fall open. “Well, this seems to be the party for the betrayed. Come on in.”
I stepped over the threshold, smelling the alcohol immediately. When I spotted the half-empty bottle sitting open on the coffee table, I started for it. “We need to cut you off.”
But Quinn caught my arm and whirled me to face him. I gasped when my chest bumped into his. “How ’bout we don’t,” he said softly.
I gulped and lifted my gaze. He stepped in toward me, and I backed up a pace. As if my retreat irritated him, he turned me and pressed my back to the wall.
“Quinn?” I said, my voice small. My skin buzzed with apprehension. His expression looked so severe. I had no idea what he was thinking, and that scared me. I wasn’t afraid of him exactly, but I was definitely afraid of the moment. Anything could happen, but what I feared most was what I’d let happen.
A relieved breath rushed from me when he released my arm. But the small moment of freedom didn’t last. He slid the back of his finger up my bicep toward my shoulder, making me suck in a shaky inhale.
“It’s funny what you remember when you’re drunk, you know.” His gaze seemed fixated on the place he touched me. “Like I was just sitting here, remembering the last time I drank. Do you remember that night, Zoey? Do you remember what we almost did?”
He cupped my cheek with one palm while he pressed his other hand against the wall beside my face, so close that his wrist brushed my hair. I gulped and tried to soak deeper into the sheetrock. But he was still right there, invading all my senses.
“Do you?” he pressed.
I closed my eyes. “Yes,” I whispered, because in that moment I didn’t know how to lie to him.
He let out a harsh breath. “Why didn’t I remember that until now? I almost had my mouth on you but I stopped because I wanted to be faithful to my girlfriend. What a
joke. Faithful? She doesn’t even know the meaning of the word.”
“Quinn,” I started, but he took his other hand off my cheek to set it on the wall too, neatly trapping me into place.
“Do you think I’m a joke, Zoey?”
“What?” Flabbergasted by the question, I shook my head. “No. Never.”
His gaze met mine. “Does she? Does Cora? She’s probably laughing at me, right now. Isn’t she?”
Again, I swished my head back and forth. “N-no. The last time I saw her, she was crying.”
Mouth curling into a hard smile, he let go of me and stepped back. “Good.” But as soon as the word left his lips, he shuddered and his eyes filled with pain and remorse. “What is wrong with me?” Cupping his head, he backed away some more until the backs of his legs hit the couch, and then he slumped down, sitting on the cushions and still cradling his head in his hands. “I’m glad she’s crying? How wrong is that? Hours ago—just hours ago—I thought she was the love of my life, and bam.” He snapped his fingers. “Just like that, I hate her? That doesn’t even seem possible. But it is. I mean, seriously, I want nothing to do with her. I don’t want to see her, I don’t want to talk to her, I don’t even want to think about her. She’s dead to me. How can I be that coldhearted after I was this close to asking her to...?”
He shuddered again and bowed his face, looking more tormented than I could handle. Unable to stay away, I peeled myself from the wall where I’d still been hovering and went to him.
“You’re not coldhearted.” I set my hand on his shoulder. “You’re just...brokenhearted.”
When he leaned into me, I shifted my fingers from his shoulder to his hair, and he wrapped his arms around my waist. So I wrapped mine around his head. His large frame quivered again.
“Oh, Quinn.” I wanted to help him, anything to end his pain. So when he tugged me down onto his lap, I went willingly; I even kissed his hair.
His arms banded even tighter around me as he said, “Thank you,” in such a broken voice that I had to bite my lip to keep any more tears from spilling. “Thank you for coming.”
He pressed his lips to the side of my head, just above my ear, and I rested my cheek on his shoulder. We sat there for I don’t know how long, but it was long enough for me to grow warm and realize how hard yet completely comfortable he felt under me.
