“Yeah. Lex. Finally on good terms with her.”
Good terms? What the hell did that even mean?
Chill, girl.
There had to be a logical explanation. I couldn’t hop on the crazy train because of one phone call I might have heard. I shook my head. Definitely ridiculous. Everything was fine between us.
Ryan pushed back from the table and stood. He strode over to me and planted a kiss on my forehead. “My break’s done. I’ll see you out there?”
I nodded. “Yep, just need to put my purse away.”
As soon as I got back out to the service floor, Ryan passed me a note. I tucked it into my pocket without reading it. Something felt off. My stomach flip-flopped, not like the butterflies I’d gotten this morning when snuggling with him. These were lead balls playing Tetris in my intestines. I still couldn’t shake hearing him talking to Lex, how he was sorry for how he’d treated her.
I made it two hours, still leaving the note in my pocket untouched. The store had been busy, not giving me much time to read it, anyway. That’s what I kept telling myself, even though I’d usually sneak a peek in between customers.
Courtney arrived just in time for me to go on my first break. As I signed out of my register and walked to the back, I passed Ryan, who was coming out of the freight area.
He was just outside the door when he said, “You left your jacket in Blake’s truck. It’s in my locker. Go ahead and grab it.”
I nodded and booked it past him. Gah. Why did I feel so squicky now? Get a fricken grip. This was all in my head. Thank God I had an appointment with Dr. Ahrendt tomorrow.
I strode to the back and beelined it for Ryan’s locker. Pulling out my sweatshirt, something pink slipped out of the space and fell to the floor. A magazine. From the looks of it, a very girly mag. I bent down and picked up a Cosmo. Weird. Ryan didn’t strike me as the fashion tip type. But this was his locker, I mean he had my sweatshirt in it, so this obviously had to be his. Just as I was about to shove it back in, something on the cover caught my eye. In big white letters read Six Foolproof Steps to The Ultimate Summer Fling.
I inwardly rolled my eyes. Ryan wasn’t using Cosmo’s summer fling tips. I bet that was Courtney’s mag—maybe she’d shoved it into the wrong locker on her last shift.
Or maybe Ryan’s been using them on you.
No. This had to be just a coincidence.
Just to prove this was all just a stupid locker mishap, I flipped to the page with the article and stared, dumbfounded. Familiar jagged squiggles ran across the top of the page and five of the six steps were already checked off.
Lots of people doodled, right? No need to freak. I started scanning the article.
Find common ground. I read the cute little caption, the way to really snag someone by finding shared interests. The first one left me a little unsure, I mean, anyone with half a brain cell would try to find some commonality with someone they were interested in. But as I kept scanning, the similarities were too much to deny. By the time I got to turn up the heat, I felt like I was being sucker-punched in the gut and head at the same time. This was exactly what Ryan had done, step by step, right down to getting messy on a date. But the kicker was number six. The one that hadn’t been checked off yet: Have an exit strategy.
I stared at those damn doodles. No one else in the store did those except Ryan.
It all made sense now. The call to his ex-girlfriend, the perfect execution of fricken wooing me. I even bet that was Lex who called this morning. Was I just someone to pass the time while he waited to go back to his ex in Texas? I balled my hand into a fist and chewed the inside of my cheek hard enough to draw blood. My hands shook as I tried to find some other way to explain all of this.
Shutting my eyes, I wished this was all just a sick joke. When I opened them, I was still in the break room, holding this ridiculously stupid magazine. I stared at the article, trying to find a different explanation, but this was just too much.
What. The. Hell. This was all just a game to him. Mother fucking DeShane. I had it all wrong. He was no better than Andrew—he was worse. Way worse. At least Andrew was upfront with his douche-baggery. This was sneaky. When was he planning to bail? And to think I had trusted him.
I threw my hands up in the air. I let him in my life. I slept with him. He was in my bed, sharing my personal space. He was supposed to be my white knight.
I squeezed the magazine in my hands, pretending it was his head, and marched out onto the service floor. He was still in the furniture section, straightening the chairs. I made sure to bump each and every single one as I made my way to him.
His brows furrowed as he stared at the disarray of chairs. “Whoa, what are you doing?”