Page 79 of Dirty Like Seth
It was mid-summer, pretty warm out, and I was no expert in women’s fashion—but that was not a dress you wore to a business meeting. Or for a chat with a platonicfriend.
“How are you?” she askedcarefully.
I tore my gaze away from her tits and looked hard at her face. “Beenbetter.”
“Why?” she asked, folding her arms at her waist. “What’swrong?”
How to answer that, exactly? “I guess I don’t appreciate beingsummoned.”
“Summoned?”
“You sent a car to collect me. What would you callit?”
Her mouth dropped open, but she didn’tspeak.
“Look, I get that in your world, this is normal for you,” I told her. “That you’re used to snapping your fingers and having everyone around you do your bidding. But it’s not normal,Elle.”
She looked taken aback. Offended, even. “So then why did youcome?”
“I guess you could call it… morbidcuriosity.”
She frowned. “About what?” She cocked her head a little, her loose blonde hair spilling over her shoulder. I let my gaze go with it, dropping briefly to her low-cut neckline, then the high-cut hemline of herdress.
“I think you know.” When I looked her in the eyes again, they were wide. “Are we gonna play games, too? ’Cause that’s not normal for me, either, and it’s not a turn-on.”
“What the hell are you talkingabout?”
“Why don’t you tell me what we’re talking about. You’re the one who brought mehere.”
“Yeah, so we couldtalk.”
“Right. Like you took me to Hawaii to talk.” I kept staring at her; I couldn’t fucking help it. I was drawn, getting sucked in by that dress, her bare thighs, the pouty, bitchy look on her face. “So we talked. What else is there to talkabout?”
She balked, getting kind of flustered as she said, “Well… lots ofthings.”
I just stared at her some more. She did not go on. She didn’t offer up what all these “things” were as she stared up at me. I was half a foot taller, and standing close enough that she had to tip her head slightly back to meet my eyes. It put her in the perfect position to bekissed.
“Elle,” I said, trying to shake that idea out of my mind, even as I studied her pink lips. “You know the rest of the band won’t take me back. It was great playing with you again, but it’s done. It’s over. The faster we just move on forward, the better it will be foreveryone.”
“That’s what I’m trying to do,” she said, still flustered. Her cheeks were actually turning pink. “Moveforward.”
“Feels to me like you’re still lookingbackward.”
“How?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know if you’re looking back at the past and having regrets. If you’re feeling bad about firing me. I don’t know if you’re regretting Hawaii. What happened. What didn’t happen. But what’s done isdone.”
She’d started shaking her head slowly as I spoke. “Maybe it’s not done, Seth.” She blinked up at me, her gray eyes searching my face. “It doesn’t feel like it’s done tome.”
My heart beat harder, my throat squeezing a little as shespoke.
“Does it feel that way to you?” sheasked.
I had no idea if we were talking about the band anymore, at all, or about the two of us and whatever happened—or almost happened—in Hawaii. But I told her, “That’s the way it’s gotta be,Elle.”
“Why?”
“Because there’s no other way it canbe.”
