43
Shanna came back around dinner time.
“So you two patched it all back up, huh?” she asked.
“Yeah. Thanks for letting me have the room both nights.”
“No problem.” She yawned and swapped out her club clothes for a shower robe. “Aren’t you going to thank me for the other thing?”
“What other thing?”
“The ‘not busting your ass about Derek in front of your boyfriend’ thing?”
Oh. THAT other thing.
“…thank you,” I said grudgingly. “Though there wasn’t anything to bust me on.”
“Ha! I don’t think your boyfriend would see it that way.”
No, he definitely would not have.
And this once, out of all the hundreds of times he had been a suspicious jerk, he would have been right.
Shanna got her stuff together for the shower down the hall. “You do know your boyfriend is a dweeb, right?”
“He’s not a dweeb,” I protested.
“He’s kind of a dweeb,” Shanna said, as though breaking bad news that I obviously didn’t want to accept. “And you do know that Derek is a grade-A hunk of man-meat, right? I mean, like, a dream lay, right?”
“Who sleeps with anything with a pulse,” I snapped.
“Um, not so much,” she said, annoyed, and gestured to herself like Vanna White might to a vowel. “Exhibit A.”
Oh yeah.
“Sorry,” I mumbled.
“You should be, since it’s your fault,” she said, though she sounded like she was ribbing me more than she was upset with me. “Anyway, you do know he’s a grade-A hunk of – ”
“Man-meat, yes, got it.”
“Okay. Just checkin’ that your brain still works.” She paused and cocked her head to one side. “That might be your problem, though.”
“What?”
“Your brain. That’s all you ever think with. You should try thinking once in awhile with another part of your body. And by ‘another part of your body’ I mean – ”
“Yeah, I know what you mean,” I said snarkily. “That’s your specialty, not mine.”
She shook her head as she walked out the door. “You should try it sometime. Why pass up a chance at something amazing for something you don’t really want?”
I frowned and turned around. “What do you mean, something I don’t really – ”
But she was already gone.
When she got back from the showers, I didn’t ask again.
I didn’t want to hear the answer… because, deep down, I was afraid she was right.