Page 30 of Desperate Haste
Little Fox:
Just so you know, I’d rather let the dragon eat me
Why don’t you let me do that instead princess? I know how much you like it when I do.
“No phones at the tableDenis,” Conrad hisses out the ‘S’ as he calls me out from the other side of the table. When I look at him, he pulls his eyes from the top of the table and shoots them at me like daggers from his seat. “We have a rule.”
“Yeah, that these two fuckwads have broken more times than I can count.” I jut my thumbs out towards Hank and Kolbi who are on either side of me.
“Yeah but only when I was texting my girlfriend. And now she’s my wife,” Hank says, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms across his chest.
“Same with me. I only ever pull my phone out when it’s Flower.”
My three friends all stare expectantly at me from their seats.
“What?” I shrug and bring my hands in front of me, palm sides up.
“Who’s the girl, Malcolm?” Kolbi says knowingly. Fuck him for being like our den mother and knowing us all way too fucking well.
“Who says it’s a girl?” I try to act like he isn’t right.
“No one, but the way you were looking at your phone like you wanted to make out with it did,” Hank says and my two friends laugh at his callout. Fuck these guys.
“I don’t do girls like you guys do. It’s nothing.” I tuck my lips around my teeth and intentionally bite down hard. I deserve a worse punishment for calling her ‘nothing.’
“It?” Conrad asks, raising a skeptical brow at me.
“She,” I correct. “She…she’s just a friend.” I swallow hard and clear my throat before trying to look my friends in the eye as if I’m not lying to them. Truth be told, I’m not sure what Ophelia and I are. We haven’t really discussed anything official and I’m pretty sure if I try she’ll tell me to drink bleach.
“You have a girl who’s just a friend?” Conrad’s voice ticks up at the end. “I didn’t think your dick let you do that.”
Kolbi and Hank bark out a laugh that’s so loud it gets the attention of the girls who come in to see what all the commotion is about.
Super.
“What’s so funny?” Magnolia asks as she makes her way to stand behind Kolbi’s chair. He doesn’t waste a second and pulls her hand into his.
“Malcolm here has shared with us that he has a girl friend,” Kolbi explains with raised brows.
“A girlfriend?” Bailey’s eyes go wide and snaps her head to me. “Since when do you have a girlfriend?”
“No, no, hermosa?*. A girlfriend. Like a friend who is agirl,” Hank explains, looking up at her.
“Ohhhh,” she oos at me for a second. Then, almost as if a missing key finally finds its lock, her eyes hone in on me and she studies me hard. There’s no room between her eyebrows and her eyes are nearly slits as she stares at me. “A friend…who is a girl.Interesting.”
Hank, seated in the chair in front of her, looks at his wife over his shoulder, then slowly at me, then back to her. I can tell he’s trying to work out whatever is happening between us. While Ophelia and I haven’t talked about it, I assume she told Bailey about us. Or least, part of me hopes I’m important enough to her for her to want to tell Bailey about us. I do nothing, show no emotion, and I don’t even dare to flinch for fear that even the slightest indication that something is going on will set her off.
“Well, I’m happy for you. I think a little bit of good, clean, femalefriendshipmight be good for you.” She pumps her brows at me once and gives me a smirk.She totally knows I fucked her best friend.
“Butwhois the girl?” Conrad pushes. He’s always the one who needs all the facts and figures.
“Leave him alone, boys. If he doesn’t wanna share, he doesn’t need to. If I remember correctly, there was once a time when a few people at this table had some things they wanted to keep to themselves.” Like a mother looking at her children who just misbehaved, Bailey looks at both Kolbi and Hank. She isn’t wrong, at one point in time they did both have their own secrets to hide when it came to their relationships.
“I’ve never had a secret relationship before, I feel like I should get to know,” Conrad grumbles like a child from his seat.
“You wanna go finish our movie?” Bailey looks to Magnolia who nods and follows her back to the living room couch.
With the interrogation over, my friends and I resume our game. A little after 11:30 p.m., the girls come back in, both tired and ready to call it a night. Since our game nights now revolve around when they want to be done, Kolbi wraps up the battle we are in and we all say goodbye. Once safely inside my truck and alone, I pull out my phone and notice an unread text message that I missed from hours earlier.
