Page 98 of 10 Rings I Hate About You
“Three-fifty, going once?—”
My hand moved. My brain had filed a formal objection, but my hand had already made its decision and raised the paddle before the memo arrived.
Marc’s head snapped toward me.
Fuck my life.
The stage was close. Our table was close. The distance between his eyes and mine was way too close, and the silence that happened after my bid lasted approximately one thousand years before Glamma’s voice started up again.
I gave my program my full and undivided attention.
“Excellent! Three-fifty. Do we have four hundred?”
Janine raised her paddle.
I turned to Cheryl. Cheryl’s eyes were laser-focused on Janine. “She’s not getting him,” she said, which technically was not a sentence I expected her to say, and yet here we were.
“Adele—” Cheryl nudged her.
I only had five hundred dollars in my bank account right now.
“I have a hundred I could give you,” Adele said immediately.
“Four-fifty!” Glamma announced.
I raised my paddle.
Janine’s went up again.
I raised mine again, and so did Janine.
“I have at least a hundred I can give you too,” Penny offered quietly, pushing a folded bill toward me across the table like we were executing a covert operation.
I was doing the math in my head and getting slightly nauseous. We were up to six-fifty.
At seven hundred, I hesitated. Janine watched me do it. That same predatory look of satisfaction from earlier crossed her face—she had identified exactly where my limit was.
Fuck.
I was out of money. The girls had given me everything they had to spare.
Seven hundred dollars. I was going to lose a charity date to a woman who had called Glamma’s name weird and a shelter cat ugly without remorse.
The universe, apparently, was watching.
“Seven hundred and twenty-five dollars,” Cheryl grabbed my paddle and shoved it into the air.
Janine opened her mouth.
“Going once,” Glamma said, and her voice had a speed to it that suggested she, too, had formed opinions about Janine. “Going twice—sold!”
The room applauded.
“Well that was rigged,” Janine huffed.
Something about her tone snapped the last frayed wire of my patience I'd been carefully maintaining all night. The words lined up on my tongue, every single thing I’d been storing up since she’d opened her mouth about the cat, about Glamma, about the men in this room like they were on a menu …
“Stop being a fucking cunt, Janine. You lost fair and square. You didn’t even really want him forhim,” I spat out.
