“This isn’t about who smiles for Ally, son. This is about your insecurities, and that’s something only you can work on. And just so you know, that’s what pissed Ally off this morning. Your jealousy was you putting your insecurities into her hands, and telling her to take care of them. That ain’t her job.”
My heart thuds with the truth bomb my dad just tossed into my lap, and as he walks away – to mack on my mom – I consider what he just told me.
I’m not sure I’ve ever been insecure in my life. About anything, about anyone. So now I’m working on feelings I’ve never felt before, while being slammed with insecurities I’ve never before had.
Fuck.
“He’s right, ya know?” My client pours half of his water over his head, so it rains through his shirt and drops onto the floor. “It isn’t her job to soothe your ego.”
“Fuck you!” I toss a clean towel at his face, and turn to walk away. “Clean up that mess, then pay your account. I’m taking a girl out to dinner tonight, and I’m using the bills you hand over to cover it.”
“Asshole,” he calls out on a laugh as I walk toward the hall. “You owe me twenty minutes. Your girly chat fucked with my workout.”
“Suck my dick.”
Thankfully, my mom is busy with my dad, and my aunts are busy doing their own thing, because such a statement inside this gym would normally end with a smack on the back of my head. Instead, I make it to the hall without being hit, then into the locker room without having to talk to anyone.
Five minutes and a couple of text messages later, I walk out again and head toward the octagon. I have an hour to kill before my next client arrives, and after that, I’m heading to the lake to put time in on that damn pier that I was practically raised on.
I’ve spent twenty-one summers at that lake. A thousand dive bombs in an effort to splash as many people as I possibly could. Hundreds of weekends spent with Rob and whichever girls we’d chosen for that day. Hundreds more weekends spent with our family, our cousins…
Emma.
I owe her a massive fucking apology too, for throwing random girls at my brother when, if only I’d stopped being so unbelievably self-absorbed, I might have noticed she long ago made claim.
Shaking my head, I lift my shirt off and toss it to the floor outside the cage, and waiting by the door for the timer to end on Ben and Will’s fight – yeah, Will the cop – I push my mouthguard into place and bounce on the balls of my feet.
I have a tournament to prepare for, a family name to make proud, and a reputation to maintain.
Then later, I have a whole lot of pride to swallow, a genuine apology to make, and then a dinner to enjoy.
I feel giddy and nervous, because tonight, I go on my first date.
Ally
Fake or Break
Luke: I’m about to walk into the octagon and have my ass handed to me just for the sake of having a little fun. It hurts so good… like when I smack you in bed. Think of me, and I’ll think of you. Then at dinner, we can talk about this weekend – it might involve your bikini and a whole lot of nothing else.
Setting my phone back in my bag, and dropping my bag between Sonia’s desk and the filing cabinet beside it, I turn back to my great-grandmother with an iced coffee chilling one hand, and a smile stretching my face as I drop down in the chair opposite hers. “We did it.”
Sonia sits in one of her wingback chairs and reads a report, while a cup of tea balances precariously on the arm of the chair. She looks as beautiful as always, pressed and perfect and giving me hope that I can one day look so polished. “You did what?”
“Well…” My face burns warmer. “Lots of things. But we got Chester back home.”
Slowly, Sonia lowers the report she’s reading and looks to me with an arched brow. “Are you sure?”
“Am I… what? Am I sure what?”
“Chester.” Smiling, though I can’t say it’s entirely genuine, Sonia studies me. “The news this morning indicates our favorite mascot is still on the loose.”
“What?” I thrust up again and dive for my handbag.
I catch a fast glimpse of another text from Luke: Enjoy your day. I kinda already miss you. But I leave it unopened and instead hurriedly swipe to my internet browser, and typing in this town’s name, followed by ‘Chester’, ‘ice cream’, and ‘news’, I pull up a news station and groan as I hit play and am forced to wait out the buffering phase.
‘We’re on day two of Statue Watch, Elizabeth, and with the sizable reward the owner herself is offering for the return of her property, this piece is making news far and wide. Where is the llama? And why would anyone be so cruel as to take it when the world already knows about the first missing statue?’
“I’m not sure the world knows about the first statue,” Sonia murmurs and goes back to reading. “But everyone in this town knows. Miss Dixie is making a lot of noise, Allyson. Noise I had hoped would be avoided once you returned the statue last night.”
“We did return him!” My heart hammers against the inside of my chest. “Oh my god. Gigi, we returned him, I swear. We walked that stupid thing along Main Street and left him where he—” My heart stops. My eyes widen.
Sonia grins. “What?”
“We may have played a game of poker beforehand, with Luke’s brother and friend.”
She watches me, but says nothing.
“The kind of poker where you take a shot if you lose. Or, well, you take a shot because you’re thirsty.”
“And how thirsty did you get last night, Allyson?”
“Oh god.” I drop down onto the chair opposite hers and press my face to my hands. “We took him, like, eighty-five percent of the way home. We got really close to putting him back.”
“And then you, what? Abandoned him in the middle of the street?”
“Well, on the sidewalk, but still. Everyone knows where he belongs, so whoever found him would have known to keep walking him the rest of the way.”
“So you’re saying it’s someone else’s job to undo your crimes?” She tilts her head. “Really, Allyson?”
“No! I’m just saying…” My breath comes faster, like I’m running a marathon, and not merely sitting. “I just meant any good citizen who found him would have known where he belonged.”
“Yes, well…” She sits her file on the table between us, and sighs. “I guess someone else wanted in on the statue shenanigans, because now Chester is really missing, and we have no clue where he is.”
“I don’t… I’m not…” I swallow down my nerves, my worries, and the niggling thoughts in the back of my mind. I was halfway to drunk last night, and then I ended my evening in Luke’s bed. I can’t promise I was making good choices all night long. “I’m sorry, Gigi. I swear we intended to return him, but then we got distracted, and we—”
“Distracted?” That grabs her attention the way a scurrying mouse might grab a tomcat’s. “By what?”
“Um…”
“A minute ago, when I asked you what you did last night, your face burned red, and you said, ‘lots of things’.”