Page 80 of Dirty Like Me
Now she looked pissed again. “So? Half the women in the room wanted to fuckyou. And the other half wanted to blow you when their boyfriends weren’t looking. And it’s like that in every room we’re in.”
I stood back, all thought grinding to a halt. Complete fucking traffic jam in my head.
I rubbed my hand through my hair, feeling really fucking tired. “That bother you?”
She wrapped her robed arms around herself. “Um, yeah, Jesse. It kinda makes me look like a chump.”
“How?”
“Because you eat it up. You flirt, you hug, you sign breasts. And I just stand there.”
I stared at her. She stared back, her mouth curved in an angry pout.
“Well… maybe I need to pay more attention.” I blinked at those plump pink lips, feeling like a complete dick with a side of drunken asshole.
“Maybe you do.”
She stared at me.
I stared back.
Then she turned and stalked back into the bathroom.
I kicked her sketchbook across the room, then slumped down on the bed. I stripped off my underwear, burrowed under the sheet, and waited for her to come back as I fought the spinning sensation, the waves of sleep and the echoes ofCan’t Feel My Facethrobbing through my skull in an endless loop.
The next thing I registered was Katie, standing next to the bed in her bathrobe looking down at me, silhouetted in the light from the bathroom, which was way too fucking bright.
“Katie,” I heard myself say.
My eyes were shut when she got into bed. I felt her warmth and smelled her cherry-vanilla smell. She laid her head on the pillow next to me and sighed.
And even in the dark, in the ringing silence, I felt the distance.
CHAPTER 22
KATIE
My fake boyfriend was hungover.
It was actually kind of cute. It also took the edge off my frustration over what happened last night.
I watched him drag his sexy ass out of bed, naked, and weave his way to the bathroom, stretching out his sculpted body as he went. I’d never seen him like this before, all groggy and stumbly. He tripped a little, mumbled and slammed the door and I just grinned. It was the first time since the start of the tour that I was out of bed before him.
He emerged a few minutes later. “Room service.” He looked at me with one eye open, the other one squeezed shut like the light was killing him. “Omelet,” he croaked. “Juice.”
I gave him a kiss on the cheek. “I’m on it. Take a shower and don’t break anything.” Then I added sunnily, “You’ve got a show tonight.”
Confused, he struggled to open the other eye and focus on me.
“Just kidding!”
He groaned and tried to grope me but I dodged the clumsy attempt. He grumbled and disappeared into the bathroom.
After his shower he looked a hell of a lot better. At least he had both eyes open and he managed to get dressed. He didn’t say much. He ate half his omelet, then Jude showed up and to my surprise, they went to the gym.
Which left me some time to evaluate as I finished my breakfast. In the morning light, things looked a little clearer than they had last night.
Despite my recent Sahara-sized romantic dry spell, I wasn’t totally clueless. I knew Jesse had to be on edge over our, um… fucked-up situation. It couldn’t be easy on a guy making out with a girl every night, then sleeping alone, or worse yet, right next to that same girl, and not being able to fuck her. Especially for a guy who wasn’t used to having to wait—as he put it, for any fucking girl. It probably felt like he was being punished, when he hadn’t even done anything wrong.
