Chapter 3
"Where did you go?" I place the mug of hot coffee I've been nursing for the past ten minutes down on the table. "You bailed on me."
"I saw you with Fingers." Rebecca pours herself some before she turns to me. "You never mentioned that he knew Drew."
She's diverting the conversation. "You just got up and left. You didn't think to come tell me?" I'm pissed and I have every right to be. It was her idea to go get a beer in the first place and because of that my entire life fell apart in the space of five minutes.
"Jess, you were sitting with Nathan." She spits out his name as if it's vile. "You were busy so I called it a night."
"You knew, didn't you?" I ask even though I'm sure of the answer. "You knew Drew was married to Cassandra."
"What?" The coffee that was just in her mouth is now spread out unceremoniously all over the table and the front of my robe.
I cock a brow at the reaction. She may be good at manipulating people and getting her way but I doubt that even she could mock surprise so convincingly. "You didn't know?"
"You're wrong." She reaches for a paper towel to soak up the mess. "There's no way he was married to her."
"They were married." I still can't absorb the fact even though I heard it firsthand last night. I spent hours after Nathan's friend, Garrett, dropped me off trying to decipher exactly what happened.
"I never met the ex." She takes a generous mouthful of coffee. "She's still hung up on him."
"On Drew?" I almost burst out laughing. After learning that he was shirking his child support duties, I can’t imagine what Cassandra sees in him.
"How can it be Drew?" She leans both elbows on the table as she shakes her head. "She talks about her ex like he's the best thing that ever happened to her. His name is Andrew. Ah, that makes sense I guess."
I shrug my shoulders. "Nathan knew all along. He knew when he made the bet." The word slips out with my thoughts. I didn't want to confess any of this to my best friend.
"What bet?"
"I can't talk about it." Technically I won't. I don't want to humiliate myself even more.
"Jess." She inches her chair on the floor so she's sitting next to me now. "Spit it out. What bet?"
It would feel amazing to just let this all out. I'm just not in the mood for all the reminders that she warned me that Nathan was just using me for sex. "You're going to tell me that you knew he was a mistake all along."
"Fingers?" A thin smile covers her lips. "That goes without saying. Spill the beans. What the hell is going on?"
"Do you remember that night when we went to the club with Bryce? Right after he moved in?" I don't want to make Nathan the centerpiece of this recounting. "That was the night when I met Drew."
"I remember." She rolls her eyes. "I was drinking Bloody Marys and trying to get a pharmacist to prescribe his dick to me."
I laugh out loud. "That was the night."
"What about it?" She reaches for a peach from a bowl in the middle of the table. "Who bet what on what?"
I just need to say that Nathan and Drew bet money on who would nail me first. I wish I could just say it without feeling like my heart is falling out of my chest at warp speed.
"Apparently, when we were in line, Drew and Nathan wagered a bet on me." There that's it. It's out in the universe now and Rebecca can have at it and me for being so reckless.
"Those bastards." She bolts to her feet so fast the entire table jerks upwards causing the peach to roll off the edge. "He's an a*shole."
Sadly, I feel the need to clarify which of the two a*sholes she's referring to. Such is the life of Jessica Roth in the big city. "Which a*shole?"
"Fingers." She once again reaches to mop up the stray coffee that spilled over the rim of her mug when she upset the table.
I take the towel from her hand as I wipe the area directly in front of me. "What about Drew?"
"Yeah, him too." She storms off leaving me with even more questions than I had before she sat down.