“None of?—”
“None, Jules,” I said sternly. “Promise me, okay? I don’t wanna have to worry about it.”
“Okay, yeah. No Connecticut numbers. Got it,” she said hastily writing herself a sticky note. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I pushed out too quickly.
Slowly, sound and shapes and regularity came back to me. I stopped feeling my heart beating in my throat and felt cool air hit it instead.
“Who was that?” Lana asked from behind me. Only the girls were ever brave enough to pry.
“No one important.”Not anymore.
Blinking, I took in the shop window. Large and clean, the Ink and Mar logo shone inky black on one side. On the other, there was a cheeky little neon sign that read, “Kinky” only the “K” was purposefully hanging off, so that it said “Inky.”
I inwardly smiled. That one was a gift from little miss sunshineherself. And since she brought it in, the sign alone had attracted tons of interested parties to the shop. Some just wanted to take a silly photo, but others actually ventured inside and eventually got work done.
She was smart, and she knew her stuff… and Ireallyneeded to apologize. What I said hadn’t come out right, and if she would just come back I could tell her so.
Motion outside the window caught my attention, making me blink. I had the urge to wipe my eyes again, convinced they were playing tricks on me. Conjuring images that I wanted to see, rather than reality.
“You look ashen, Gus. There’s no way that was nobody important,” Jules insisted. “Who was it?”
I waved her off, hardly registering her concern. In a few short moments, what I saw through the window went from being an image I wanted to see to one I was quickly learning I didn’t.
Jutting my chin in that direction, I said. “Never mind me, J. Who the fuck isthat?”
Everyone followed my gaze out to the sidewalk where the girl who’d been haunting my thoughts since the last time she walked out that door stood.
Touching some guy.
I don’t know if she looked more angelic than she usually did or if I was simply suffering withdrawals, but for some reason she seemed more dressed up in her calf length pencil skirt the color of sand and blue button down that I could see from here wasn’t buttoned nearly far enough. Her hair fell loose around her shoulders and she was also propped up on heels.
She looked good.Really good. I mean, she usually came in here sporting one form of business casual or another. Sometimes she even dressed fully casual with jeans and one of her frilly little tops or even sundresses when the weather was warm. But today she looked dressed to impress.
The clothes were just an addition, though. She looked great in anything. What I really wanted to know was why she was suddenly so dressed up for some dark-haired business suit wearing guy she had her arm looped through as she pulled him along the street.
“I don’t know, maybe her boyfriend?” Quis said from behind me.
“No way,” I scoffed, but secretly I wondered if I was just telling myself that. “She wouldn’t go for a guy like that.”
He didn’t look disinterested exactly, just there. He certainly was not as interested as she was as she smiled brightly at him while he remained one note.
I didn’t like that. If I ever got that kind of smile out of her… well there’s no telling what I could do with a gift like that.
My eyes narrowed on the attitude guy as I grumbled. I noted the way he walked with her. They were strolling, talking comfortably as they made their way along the street. I could see her pointing around at something every few steps, his eyes following the trajectory of her attention.
“Her boss?”
I grunted. Could be, but there was something about the two of them together that looked annoyingly right. Symmetrical in a way that was hard to understand, even from this angle.
Aside from them obviously touching as they walked arm in arm, they didn’t seem to be close likethat. Yet, as a biker zoomed by on one side, he put a hand on her shoulder and pulled her out of the way. So he obviously cared about her.
And I don’t know why, but that irritated me.
What made me angrier was watching the way he treated her. As she spoke with him animated and clearly having the time of her life–something that was already aggravating enough as it was–he had the audacity to stop and pull out his phone.
Pulling away from her, he paused their steps to answer whatever was on his screen. Alta just stood there patiently waiting, lookingaround herself as her foot tapped. Soon her patience ran out, and when she said something to him, he shut her down with what looked like the insistence to finish his correspondence.
