The Unidentified Redhead (Redhead #1)(40)
Author: Alice Clayton

I, of course, chose to focus on the not-so-innocent.

Jack had left this Marcia in a bar somewhere after she blew him in the bathroom. Jack had left this Marcia in her bed after f**king her senseless and then telling her he was going to take a piss, but never returning. Jack had left this Marcia at a party, surrounded by all the other naked women he had schtupped that night, neglecting to say goodbye to her personally.

But in the end, I had to let it all go. He owed me nothing. We’d known each other for only weeks, and I was leaving.

Of course, what I already knew about him told me that nothing like that had happened. I didn’t really honestly think that he had been with anyone else, not in that way.

Still, I would like to meet this Marcia. If for no other reason than to stop referring to her in my head as “this Marcia.” I looked at him, slumbering quietly next to me, his body warming my bed.

His arms were wrapped around my waist. His hands were on, as was quickly becoming tradition, my br**sts. And I knew that he didn’t want to be anywhere else.

Which was troubling because soon al this fantastic was going to have to end.

And as all true Scarletts do, I decided to think about that tomorrow. I snuggled back into his arms and tried to put all of this out of my head.

Like I said, I slept, but it was a thin sleep.

I was up before Jack and decided to go for a run. I left him a note: George, I went for a run, be back in an hour. Coffee is downstairs.

If you wait to shower, I’ll join you. Then, we can be all kinds of naked.

Gracie

I almost wrote “Love,” but I changed my mind at the last minute.

Chicken shit.

Ain’t nobody here but us chickens .

As I ran, I thought about how to tell Jack I was leaving. I knew he’d be happy for me and would realize what a tremendous boost this would be for my career. Hell, this would make my career. And we could work something out, right? I mean, he was crazy about me … at least, that’s what it felt like. He’d still want to see me when I was back in town. And he’d probably be doing press in New York. We could get together then, right?

Who are you trying to convince?

Then I thought about working with Michael. Shit, this was going to be a nightmare. I knew that I could handle it. I could be a professional. A professional that wanted to remove his balls and wear them as earrings.

Gross.

Obviously, there would need to be some kind of air clearing ceremony, or at least some kind of ass kicking. But as the writer, he had some say in who was cast, and he must have been OK with working with me. Of course he was—he wasn’t the one who was left with the smashed up mess of a heart.

I ran faster.

When I got home, I noticed that Holly’s car was in the driveway. That was weird. She never came home during a workday. I let myself in the back door off the kitchen and heard her talking to someone. Jack must have been up.

I rounded the corner, ready to start kissing on the Brit, when I saw who she was talking to.

“Hey, Grace. Good to see you again.”

“Michael! Hi! Holly, look, it’s Michael!” I said, surprised into the defensive.

“Yeah, I thought it would be a good idea for the two of you to talk. Ya know, hash things out,” Holly said, offering me some coffee, obviously as a gesture of peace.

The air clearing ceremony would be starting earlier than I’d planned.

I took a moment to really look at Michael. Yesterday all I could see was red.

He was the same guy I had gone to school with. If anything, age had made him better looking. Curly brown hair, sweet face, deep brown eyes. I remembered those eyes. He was looking at me expectantly.

“Grace, until I talked to Holly, I didn’t realize there was anything to hash out.”

“Well, I’m not surprised,” I started, walking toward him with my finger pointed straight at him. “You left my apartment, never saying a word about what happened, and then all summer you—”

“Uhm, guys? Let’s be constructive here. Grace, why don’t you take him out on the terrace and you guys can talk there. You don’t want to wake our house guest,” she hinted heavily, reminding me that Jack was still asleep upstairs.

“Humph. Whatever. Come on, O’Connell,” I huffed, taking my coffee and the chip on my shoulder outside. He followed with a twinkle in his eye and a wink at Holly. I saw them both.

Once outside, I turned on him.

“So, let’s get this out now and then not speak of it again, shall we?”

“Fair enough. Why don’t you start by telling me why you’re so pissed about something that happened so many years ago?” he asked, sitting in a lawn chair.

I took the seat next to him.

“I don’t know. To be honest, I didn’t know I was still so pissed. But when I saw you yesterday, it brought all that rejection back and it just slammed into me,” I answered, feeling good to finally be able to unload this on him.

“Rejection? What are you talking about? Is that was this is about? I watched you date countless guys, most of them jerks, all through school. And then you jump me at a party, I foolishly tell you how I’d felt about you all those years, and then when I don’t instantly propose the next morning, you go back to treating me like your little buddy.”

“My little buddy? You were out the door before I even had the sleep wiped out of my eyes! And then you were such a dick to me the rest of that summer!” I yelled, angrily brushing a piece of hair away from my eyes.

“Grace, did it ever occur to you that when I woke up that morning, after wanting to be there like that with you for three years, that I panicked? I mean, come on, you’re Grace Sheridan! The fact that you were even interested in me was beyond the realm of possibility! And then when you invited me back to your apartment … oh man, Grace. That night was, well, amazing.” He sighed, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees in a way that was so familiar to me.

It was like ten years faded away instantly and we were sitting on the campus quad, arguing about Brecht and Stanislavski like the pretentious theater brats we were. Or arguing about whether to use the fifteen dollars we had between us to buy the new Toad the Wet Sprocket album or keep us in pitchers and chicken wings for two nights.

“If you felt like that, why did you leave? And why did things get so weird for us?” I asked, feeling a wave of nostalgia pass over me that was so strong I could almost smell the Drakkar.

“Because I was twenty-one. Because you were twenty-one. Who knows, who remembers? Because we were idiots.” He laughed, and I felt myself begin to relax.