Page 132 of Dirty Like Me
“Excuse me?”
“Our relationship. You were right. It wasn’t real. But… then I think maybe it was. Kind of.” I hesitated. “Now… I don’t know. I don’t know what it is.”
Elle crossed her tanned arms. “I see.”
I had no idea what I was reading in those steel-gray eyes. “I just thought you should know the truth. And that’s the truth of it.”
Elle stared at me. “I know Jesse, hon,” she said. “I’ve seen him with a lot of women. Saw him waking up next to me. Saw him with you, too. If what you had was real, I’d know it. If it wasn’t real, I’d know it. Either way, you don’t need to come to my house to tell me.”
“I just thought you should hear it from someone, face-to-face, instead of the way you did,” I told her. “I’ve seen the things they’ve been saying in the media, and you should know that it’s not true. You weren’t replaced overnight. There was no overlap, and you deserve to know that. I never meant for you to be publicly embarrassed over the whole thing.”
Elle stared at me some more, then did the last thing I expected. She laughed. A short, humorless sort of laugh. “Honey,” she said, “if I can’t handle a little public embarrassment, I’m in the wrong game.”
“Oh.” Well that had to be true. And maybe that should’ve occurred to me before now. But it still didn’t mean she deserved what she’d got. The media had been merciless, like vultures picking over the scraps of the breakup, sniffing for dirt. Rubbing all those shots of Jesse and me making out in her face. It hadn’t seemed that way to me at the time, because I liked seeing pictures of myself with Jesse. I just hadn’t thought about how it would feel forherto see them.
She studied me, then uncrossed her arms and drew the door open a little farther. “You want some chili?”
“Um. What?”
“Just made some.” She stepped back, swinging the door wide, inviting me in.
Even though I’d already had dinner, I was tempted. I stepped over the threshold, and after Elle shut the door, I followed her deeper into the house. Once my eyes adjusted, the art on the walls snagged my attention. There was tribal art everywhere, pieces she’d obviously collected all over the globe.
We passed a room lined with guitars and big plush pillows on the floor. She had a massive black-and-white painting of Jimi Hendrix on one wall in the living room, which had a vinyl collection to rival my own. I recognized many of the spines and it was safe to say she had incredible taste in music; Bob Marley was playing over a surround sound system.
She also had two incredibly hot men in her kitchen.
Could this chick be any cooler?
Dylan was sitting on a bar stool at the island and Ash, wearing a frilly apron, was pulling a pan of something that smelled amazing out of the oven when we walked in.
“Katie!” Dylan stood and pulled me into a rib-crushing hug, which I was grateful for. It was a relief to see a friendly face. Not that Elle had been unfriendly, exactly, but at least now I knew she wasn’t planning to hack me up and put me in her freezer. Not with witnesses.
“Where’s that bony fucker of a boyfriend of yours?” Ash greeted me, giving me a hug as well. Which was funny because bony wasn’t a word I’d use to describe Jesse Mayes. Though Dylan did overshadow him by several inches and probably fifty pounds.
“He’s playing in Portland tonight.” I glanced at Elle. She was cutting into the pan Ash had pulled from the oven.
“You want some jalapeno corn bread?” she asked me.
“It’s Elle’s grandma’s patented recipe,” Ash said. “And we’ve got margaritas.”
“I’ll pass on the margaritas, thanks.” I took a stool next to Dylan. “I’m still sweating off the last batch you served me. And I just had dinner, actually. But I’d love to taste the corn bread.”
I hung out with the three of them while they ate chili and talked about some side project Dylan was working on. Apparently he was going to be an underwear model. Which made a lot of sense. I’d seen the man in a kilt.
When they were done with the chili, the guys refilled their margaritas and made themselves scarce. Maybe Elle told them to go; I didn’t know. But when we were alone in the kitchen, she said, “He ended it.” She looked at me with a cool, level gaze. “Knowing Jesse, he probably let you believe our breakup was mutual, out of respect for me. It wasn’t mutual. He knew we weren’t right, he ended it. I didn’t see it, not then. I get it now. Took a while for me to get to that place. I’m there now. That’s all you need to know.”
I digested that.
I appreciated her honesty. And that she thought enough of me to tell me. Not to mention the courage it took to admit that, aloud, to me.
But when I looked into her steely eyes, I remembered our confrontation in the washroom, only days ago, and I had to wonder if shewasbeing honest. Fully honest. If she’d really gotten to that place... or was still getting there.
“Okay,” I said. There didn’t seem to be anything more to say, though it felt like there was something left undone. I just didn’t know quite what it was.
I could tell, as I’d sat here in Elle’s home enjoying her hospitality, that she wasn’t keen to have me here. And I couldn’t blame her for that. Even so, she was a perfect hostess, which just reminded me that she was a seasoned pro at all of this, and I was still so fresh. So unsure. For all I knew she felt like the enemy had landed, unannounced, in her kitchen, but she played it like it was second nature to her to treat Jesse’s new girlfriend with nothing but respect.
Surely she’d been through it all with him. The fame, the media, the women. And Katie Bloom wasn’t about to make her sweat.
