Page 66 of Dirty Like Brody
Him. I was definitely bullshitting Brody if I’d somehow convinced him I didn’twanthim.
Because I sure as hell knew I did. No way I could lie to myselfthatwell. Even if my brain wanted to believe it, my body knew differently. My heart knew it, too. Which was why every time I was around him I lost the ability to thinkstraight.
Just like when wewerekids.
Worse, because now I was a grown-up. I was supposed to have my shit together andallthat.
I picked up my phone and held it a while, working up the nerve to send him a text. But whattosay?
I knew I still needed to have a talk with him; there was no way I was going to skip doing that before I left town. I needed him to know why I ran all those years ago; that it wasn’t because I didn’t want him. Even if it meant he’d never be able to forgive me. Even if he couldn’t stand me after what I had to tell him. Even if it meant he was finally going to realize that I was never the girl he thought I was… that girl he thought heloved.
I had todoit.
Even if I was never, ever going to be his princessagain.
And I really should’ve done it by now. Except that I hadn’t. I hadn’t answered his call two days ago, and I hadn’t replied to histexts.
I was leaving town in three days for my shoot in L.A., but somehow the really chickenshit part of me had convinced the rest of me to leave it until the last minute. Just talk to him right before I left town, so I could disappearafterward.
Yeah.Mature.
All I was accomplishing by putting it off was torturing myself anyway. Iwantedto talk to him. I wanted to see him, too, but seeing him was a slippery slope. There were only so many times I could see him without kissing him again, drunk or not. There were only so many times he could get in my face without me throwing myself at him and rubbing my pussy on him again, and there were only so many times I could do that without suffering a major blow to my self-esteem when he refused tofuckme.
But maybe, eventually, he wouldfuckme?
All roads lead tofucking.
And that was a bad thing,right?
Why,again?
Oh, right. Because I’d been lying to him for years. Well… lying byomission.
Samething.
So no seeing him, then, until I was prepared to suck it up and comeclean.
In the meantime, the phone was a safe option, right? No possibility of accidentalfucking.
So I texted him; I said the only thing I could think of to say to him right now if I wasn’t bullshitting. The same thing he’d said to me many, many timesovertext.
Thinkingaboutyou.
I sent the message and tossed the phone down on the bed. He wasn’t going to respond. I knew hewasn’t.
Even if it wasn’t for all the times I’d recently pissed him off, or failed to respond tohistexts, or the fact that he thought I was trouble for the band, those six-and-a-half years of radio silence, which he’d shoved in my face ad nauseam, made it pretty clear where hestood.
He’d said it himself, right tomyface.
Brody Mason thought I was “unstable” and “unreliable.” Translation: fucking crazy and a big fat load of pain-in-the-ass.
Oh, and judging from our make out session on that bathroom counter, during which he’d pretty much accused me of intentionally giving him blue balls, it seemed he also thought I was a cock tease—never mind that he was the one who’d put a stop to things and leftmehanging.
What the hell would he want with a cock tease when he had the lovelyAmanda?
I ditched my jeans and panties for some well-worn sweats and took off my bra, but I left his shirt on. I thought briefly about masturbating, but that seemed too depressing. So I got comfy with my laptop and watched some junk on YouTubeinstead.
Then I put onRomeo + Julietso I could watch Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes kill themselves over each other, because at least I still had a sense of humor. Justbarely.
