Page 16 of Cuts like a Knife
“How? How do you do this? I don’t understand.”
“Well, I don’t have them yet, Lexi baby,” Callum’s voice is as oily as his chest hair.
“Check your email, Sweetie,” I retort.
“Seriously, Lex. Tell me how you do it,” Dani whispers.
She is still looking at me over the wall and I don’t even bother lowering my voice to answer her.
“It’s easy,” I say. I’ve actually been fantasizing about using this line for awhile. “We work with assholes, right? So when someone tells me to eat shit … I don’t nibble.”
It’s a line I read in a novel and it sounded so badass, it immediately lodged itself in my brain, so right after saying it, for maybe a millisecond, I feel a sort of glow of pride. I’m the badass now.
Then Callum bursts out laughing.
“Did you just say you’re willing to eat my shit?” He shakes his head as he chuckles. “Whatever floats your boat, hun. Kinky.”
My millisecond of pride drains out of me into a puddle on the floor.
“I don’t … even understand what that means,” says Dani, wrinkling her nose before disappearing back down into her cube.
As I stare at my computer screen, I feel my cheeks flaming again. This time for all the wrong reasons44.
I grab my phone to respond to Drew.
Drew, who is too young for me and who I need to cut loose, but who doesn’t know what an embarrassing failure I am, who still thinks I’m cool.
Who still wants me.
Because he doesn’t know.
Lex: I’ll just see you there.
I’m not actually going to hook up with him. I’ve decided. That’s over. But maybe I won’t shut the door all the way. Not just yet anyway. My ego needs whatever little boosts it can get.
The thing about Drew Fox is that he’s not serious relationship material. He’s bad for me. We butt heads. And like I already said, he’s too young for me.
There are so so so many good reasons why it’ll never work with him in any real way. Over the last six months, when I have felt myself weakening, I have repeated those reasons in my head like a mantra.
Too young.
Too obnoxious.
Baby brother’s best friend.
Too young.
Too obnoxious.
Baby brother’s best friend.
And more intellectually, we’re just way too different. Drew shares, like, none of my ideals. None! He’s not an authentic person. Not anymore.
When we were kids, sometimes, I saw a glimmer of a really good person inside of Drew — someone who could maybe even have been a good match for me, all other things aside, but the older we got, the more he leaned into his douchebag (my word) persona.
He’s become so corporate, so slick. His job is gross — fundamentally unethical. There were even times when I even wondered how Graham could stand to keep him as a friend.
I actually asked Gray about it once, when they were in college, but he blew me off. I remember exactly what I said, too.
