Now it was natural for him to be up there. He didn’t look at me anymore unless I stopped in an obvious spot. He was all charm and confidence, no longer the man rocked with nerves at the sight of strangers. He scanned the crowd in front of him, and whether he liked to admit it or not, he shined those fuck-me eyes at every girl, and they lost themselves in his allure. The screams were sometimes deafening. My jaw dropped when a pair of girls took out their cell phones and began recording him. What did they intend on doing with the footage? I wanted to ask, but Melanie had banned me from speaking to the “groupies” as she called them. Something about me causing bodily harm, which was absurd. I wouldn’t hurt anyone… too much.

Carter was slowly becoming somewhat of a legend around here, and the second he started on the girls, that legend status was going to explode.

Melanie showed up and sidled up next to me, watching the band.

“He called me a friend,” I told her quietly.

“You need to make him jealous, babe,” Melanie replied, indignantly.

“That’s not who I am. That’s toxic.”

“Toxic or not, you have to force his hand. Do you want to be friend-zoned your whole life?”

“After everything we’ve been through, is that what we really are?”

“If he’s telling people you’re his friend, then yeah, Leah, it is.”

Fuck.

We returned to work after that. I was collecting empty plates from deserted tables when I heard a couple talking just behind me. Their laughter drew me in, and to distract myself, I listened to their conversation.

“When we get married, you’re going to tell my mother to fuck off forever, I swear, babe,” the man said to his girl. “If she doesn’t accept you, then she’s not welcome in our lives. You’re my whole world now.”

I smiled a little and turned my head to look at them. They were a few years older than me, holding hands, chatting with smiles on their faces. Completely open and honest about what they were to the world. Judging by her happiness, she didn’t have to skirt around her man’s commitment issues. He was gazing at her like a love-struck puppy, ready and willing to give her the world.

I felt something tear inside my chest. I was caught surprised by how jealous I was of them. I couldn’t believe how powerful the feeling was, spiking even my heartrate as I stared on.

Jealousy. It was a poisonous feeling, and it was capable of consuming every last drop of you. I’d tried living in denial, thinking that green-eyed-monster could be avoided, but like a shadow it followed me around, until I had no power left to push it away.

I felt emotional. More than usual. Reality seemed to finally have broken through my armour. And the more I thought about it, the more I realized being with Carter the way we were wasn’t healthy. That it was consuming too much of my time and thoughts. My emotions had become dependent upon him, and somewhere along the way I’d lost a part of who I was.

I didn’t even know where to start in claiming that part back.

This strange epiphany rocked me to the core, causing my eyes to drift to the stage where Carter was. He was looking back at me with uncertain eyes, and I swear he knew.

He knew exactly what I was thinking.

Fifteen

Rome drove us back. I sat in the backseat, quiet, peering out the window at the deserted streets. My chest felt heavy with indecision. The closer we were getting home, the closer I was to confronting the dreaded truth.

Rome kept trying to catch my eye in the rear view mirror, silently asking me what the matter was. Always attentive, he never missed a beat. Carter, on the other hand, kept his gaze out the window too, equally quiet. He sensed it. When he drew near to me under the awning of the bar, he could see the conflicted look in me as I pulled away from him. He’d almost looked powerless.

“Chin up,” Rome whispered to me as we parted ways at the house. He went to the front door and we went to the back where our suite was located. I followed Carter in the dark, feeling the sweat from the summer air trickle between my shoulder blades. It would be good to get this damn uniform off. Mel was a size smaller than me and the uniform had felt constricting all night.

Carter pulled out the keys and shoved it in the door. He pushed it open and we walked in. I stared at his back as he turned on the light and threw his keychain down on the kitchen counter. We didn’t say a word. He went to the bathroom and I heard the shower pipes go on. I tidied up around the apartment before he got out. It was a feat of its own not ogling him in a towel on my way into the bathroom to have my turn.

I spent a lot of time under the hot spray, running what happened through my head. I thought of the way he said friend, how he looked when he said it, and the anger for being put in that position. My body shook with the urge to go out and ask him where I stood in his life, but speaking when I was this emotional didn’t seem like a good idea. I bottled it up instead.

When I finished, I wrapped the towel around me and headed for my bedroom – because sleeping together was still against his rules. Walking in, I was startled to find Carter leaning against my dresser with his arms crossed. He was usually sprawled in bed at this point, not standing there in nothing but his usual briefs, looking like we were going to discuss something heavy.

I stared at him once before opening the drawer of the scratched-to-shit tallboy. The drawer creaked annoyingly, reminding me why second-hand furniture that sold at a bizarrely cheap price wasn’t always an investment. I pulled out the nightgown and then tried closing it. The drawer shuddered and the tallboy shook as I pushed and then stopped because it wasn’t going to fucking close.

“I’ll fix it,” I heard Carter say.

I sighed and turned around. “Okay.”

Then we just stood there for several moments. The air was charged, and I was very uneasy. He stared at me for a long time, his eyes hard, his mouth pressed in a line. He seemed cloudier than usual. He’d had a few beers, so perhaps he was a little tipsy.

“You’re not your usual self,” he finally muttered.

I didn’t want to talk about this now. I looked away instead.

“Leah,” he pressed softly. “I can read you like a book. I know you were upset at the table.”

Without helping it, I opened my mouth and retorted, “You mean when you referred to me as your friend?”

He exhaled loudly. “It was an asshole move, I get it.”

“It’s not an asshole move if that’s how you really feel. I’m actually glad to know that’s what I am to you. Just a friend –”