Wasted Words by Staci Hart

I huffed. “How is it that tweens are more adept at taking selfies than me?”

“Because they spend all that time practicing.” Tyler said and took my phone from me. “Here. Take one with me.” He pulled me in close and held the phone up, and I grabbed his lapel, leaning into him. “Say ‘Hawkeyes suck!’”

I laughed, and he snapped the picture, showing it to me afterward with a smug look on his face.

“There you go.”

I shook my head, looking at it. It was amazing, the two of us laughing and happy, my smile as I looked up at him, and his looking into the camera and … it was just amazing. I pretended to pout. “How did you nail that on the first shot?”

He shrugged and held out his arm, drink at the end of it, in display. “I’m like a human selfie stick.”

I laughed. “So my T-rex arms are bad for selfies. Got it.”

But he kissed my temple. “Guess you’ll just have to take selfies with me indefinitely.”

I leaned into him again, blushing as a soft bell rang over the speakers and a soothing voice informed us we’d need to choose a seat for dinner. My stomach rumbled — I realized then that I hadn’t had anything to eat since breakfast. Too busy shaving my legs and watching video tutorials to eat, I supposed. We took a seat with Jack and a few other agents and their dates, and I sat between Anne and Tyler.

I picked up the letterpress menu that sat on top of my plate and scanned it, grateful when I saw there was a steak option. We ordered and chatted, or listened to Jack tell stories, more like. He thrived with an audience, and he had so many stories to tell, from when he played to the hundreds of players he’d worked with.

By the time dinner was served, I could have eaten my napkin, and on my empty stomach, with the scotch and now whiskey in my belly, I was buzzing enough that one drink would have been the difference between me talking to someone about the merits of Battlestar Galactica, and this was not the crowd to delve into that with.

The server set my plate down in front of me, and everything else shut down.

See, when I’m really hungry and I finally start to eat, it’s like some weird animal instinct takes over. My brain sees the food and is like, Put all of that in your body, right now, as fast as you can. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised if I unknowingly growled at people if they tried to talk to me, or, heaven forbid, if they tried to touch my food.

Which is why I was halfway into my steak before I realized that Tyler’s ex girlfriend had approached our table.

It was her laugh that brought me out of the haze, my jaw slowing as it worked on a piece of steak that I realized distantly was far too big to be considered appropriate. I turned to find her standing just behind him — he was turned in his chair to face her.

She was one of the most gorgeous girls I’d ever seen in my entire life.

Her hair was the color of honey, her skin flawless, an olive complexion that made me think she was Spanish or Italian. Her big, brown eyes drank Tyler in, her smile sweet, her teeth so white I needed sunglasses to look directly at them. Standing next to her, I felt like a cheap imitation, like the Fendi knock-offs they sold near Midtown that said Frendi.

As if that weren’t bad enough, she was wearing the runway edition of the nude dress I’d tried on the day before — the one that made me look like a meat tube — and she looked incredible in it.

Tyler glanced at me as I hovered over my plate mid-chew, gesturing to her. “Cam, this is Jessica.”

I knew exactly who she was — I wouldn’t have been a good friend if I hadn’t stalked Tyler’s ex on Facebook — but I sat there like a dummy for a second, wondering how her name wasn’t Flavia or Alessandra or something before snapping into action.

My steak was too big to swallow in its current state, and I couldn’t exactly spit it out, so I smiled with closed lips and extended a hand, pointing to my mouth with my other hand and rolling my eyes in jest.

She looked like she was pretending to be amused but actually thought I was horribly rude and strange.

“Uh,” she said as she took my hand, smiling, “It’s nice to meet you.”

I nodded and smiled, chewing as quickly as I could, taking the moment to watch the two of them.

“I didn’t expect to see you here, Jess,” he said. There was a strange quality to his voice that I couldn’t place.

She smiled that million-dollar smile of hers. “Yeah, I came with Cade Matthews, the quarterback for the Patriots.”

Tyler smiled back, but it was tight. “Yeah, I know who he is.”

She laughed, and it sounded like a chorus of angels or something. Seriously, you could record it, make a ringer called Hot Girl Laughing, and make a million bucks. “Of course you do. I don’t know why I said it like that. I don’t mean to bother you, I just thought this might be the only chance I had to come say hi.”

I kept chewing, reaching for my water. Almost there.

“You look good, Tyler.” Now her voice had a strange quality, but this one I knew for a fact I didn’t like.

I swallowed and took a drink, Cam-the-nervous-girlfriend gone as the bulldogging friend took her place. “We haven’t met before, but I’ve heard all about you.”

Her smile faltered a little. “Oh. And who are you?”

“His girlfriend. You know, Tyler and I were just talking the other day about you. He really took it to heart, what you said. You remember — when you called him boring? But I still said that going to India was way too big for our first trip together, didn’t I, babe?”