Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 75916 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 380(@200wpm)___ 304(@250wpm)___ 253(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75916 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 380(@200wpm)___ 304(@250wpm)___ 253(@300wpm)
By the end of the shift, I was beat. It didn’t help that I hung out at Jesse’s last night, then got up early to help watch Hailey while Bree ran errands. She and Mark were in a better place now, and he’d promised to get on some sort of bimonthly schedule. He wasn’t due home for another few days, but she’d decided to take me up on my offer of watching Hailey so she could hang out with her friends this week, and I was glad for it. She needed a night out.
And I had a mound of laundry to get to in the morning, so sleep sounded good right about now.
After Andy and I closed up for the night, I walked upstairs to retrieve my bag from my locker in the dressing room, bummed that I’d missed Jesse slipping out. Maybe I could still catch him at the bus shelter and offer him a ride home, though he’d probably refuse, especially since it had stopped raining.
I was surprised to hear Jesse’s and Skylar’s voices around the corner near the costume and makeup station. I shoved my hand inside a zippered compartment in my backpack and drew out the bag with the item I was debating giving Jesse. Maybe now would be the time. But it might also muddy the waters.
Fuck, why hadn’t I just let it go? But at the time, I couldn’t resist, and it had been done out of kindness. And okay, maybe also something more that I didn’t think my tired brain could work through right now.
When I heard my name, I froze.
“So…what’s up with you and Dane?” Skylar asked.
“What? Oh, that’s nothing,” Jesse replied, and my stomach sloshed, even though I’d had similar thoughts about him. Whether they were true or not was a different story.
“But you went to the mall together, and I heard you guys even saw Tommy’s show. Does Jesse have a boyfriend?” Skylar laughed, followed by Jesse chuckling too.
“Oh God. He was a ride to the mall. You know me. I’m not serious about Dane. It’s just…well, he and Hailey totes love me. Why wouldn’t they?”
The room tilted sideways. Had Jesse just been using me for a ride to the mall? Just like Ste— No, that wasn’t what this was. Jesse always sounded super confident about everything, so he was probably just being his usual diva self in front of his friend.
Still, I couldn’t shake how I was feeling in that moment. I was afraid of being played again and wasn’t sure if I could trust my intuition, even though Jesse hadn’t given me any reason to doubt him. Not really. But now Hailey was involved, and I needed to be more careful where she was concerned, and fuck! I should’ve never eavesdropped on his conversation.
I turned to flee the dressing room, but my shoulder solidly hit the wall. “Ooomf.” The bag I’d been holding sprang out of my hand and dropped to the floor. Fuck, I was such an idiot.
“What the—” Jesse came around the corner just as the cotton-candy lip gloss rolled out of the bag. The same lip gloss he’d put back at Sephora because he couldn’t afford it. And I was the schmuck who decided to go back and purchase it for him. “Are you okay— What the heck is that?”
I stared at the floor as my entire body flushed, and instead of explaining myself or picking it up, I decided I needed to leave as soon as humanly possible. “Just, whatever.”
I walked the hell out of there, got to my car in record time, and drove my ass home.
23
Jesse
I was really starting to get pissed off.
Dane had been ignoring me for three days. Three. Fucking. Days. And for what? That was the part I couldn’t quite figure out. Was it because of what he heard with Sky? I mean, it was true. We weren’t serious, and I highly doubted he wanted to be. Hell, he was the one who wouldn’t even fuck me again, so what was I supposed to say? Maybe I could have found a better way, but he also could have talked to me instead of running out like that.
I rolled the lip gloss between my fingers. But this…this had been nice. It was the last thing I expected, for Dane to have gone back and purchase it for me. Sure, part of me was embarrassed because he obviously must have known I wanted it and couldn’t afford it, but he didn’t have to go back and buy it for me…yet he had…and that made my stupid crush-like feelings multiply.
Maybe it was better he was being a jackass right now, and that would help me get over him. I had no business crushing on Dane.
Grumbling, I got out of bed, showered and dressed, but didn’t put on any makeup. I made my way to class, realizing I was tired, yeah, but I’d felt less worn-out lately. In a lot of ways, I was doing more than I typically did, by adding hanging out with Dane and Hailey on top of everything else, but I wasn’t as exhausted and hadn’t had a headache in a while.