Total pages in book: 84
Estimated words: 79968 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 400(@200wpm)___ 320(@250wpm)___ 267(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 79968 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 400(@200wpm)___ 320(@250wpm)___ 267(@300wpm)
Rush popped on the show and came and sat next to me, propping a bunch of fluffy pillows up behind us on the bed. “I’m thinking breakfast for dinner,” he said, picking up the room service booklet on the nightstand. “Their strawberry Belgian waffles looked killer.”
“Sure,” I said, the image of that random guy’s dick still at the forefront of my mind.
He looked at me again, in a way I hadn’t been expecting. “What’s up, Shawn?”
“Hmm?” I responded, shifting on the bed and shaking my head, still unable to get the tightness out of my chest. “Just waiting to watch this show.”
Having Rush’s eyes on me felt intimate somehow even when we weren’t doing anything related to sex. Most guys would have brushed me off immediately, but Rush turned toward me on the bed, and I could feel him trying to figure something out.
“Hey,” he said softly, reaching out to massage a hand against my shoulder. “Look at me.”
I was biting my lower lip as I looked at him.
A wave of emotion came over me looking at his face this closely. It hit me in a different way every time I really looked at him. He was almost painfully handsome, especially now, when I found myself wishing like hell that he could be all mine.
“I saw something on your phone,” I finally blurted out. “I know it’s none of my business, and I wasn’t even trying to look at it at all, and I know just because you want to date me does not mean we’re exclusive, so it doesn’t matter—”
“Christ,” Rush said, reaching above me to snatch up his phone and look at the screen. He snorted, letting out a long sigh. “Oh, I see. Here. I’m going to show you my whole message chain with this guy.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I’m definitely going to, though.”
Rush got right up next to me, cuddling up and putting the phone right in front of us in his hands. He scrolled up to the top of the message chain with “Tower Bar Hottie” and then showed me the first thing that they’d said to each other.
>>Rush: Thank you for stopping by the bar today! The pizza was great.
“It all started out very simple, as you can see,” Rush told me. “This guy worked at a place called Tower Bar on the same street as one of my San Francisco breweries. One night there was a pub crawl and they had a bunch of leftover pizza and brought us some. Pretty simple, right?”
I let out a breath. “Sure.”
“Then look what he sent me back, two hours later that night.”
He showed a very, very graphic photo of the guy spreading his cheeks for the camera. I couldn’t help but laugh. “He sent you that out of nowhere?”
“Yes indeed, he did,” Rush said. “I didn’t respond, because even back then I needed a little more conversation before unsolicited asshole photos. And when I didn’t say anything back, he kept going.”
Rush scrolled and scrolled through various photos that the guy sent him, some of them even more obscene than I was into.
“Okay, wow,” I said.
“Clearly I had thought he was a little bit attractive when I first met him and he dropped off the pizza,” Rush said. “I should have known it was a red flag when he asked for my number out of nowhere that night, but I wasn’t going to complain. Until I got all of these messages.”
>>Tower Bar Hottie (Pink Hair): You’re not gonna fucking text me back?
>>Tower Bar Hottie (Pink Hair): Someone told me you were cool. Guess not.
>>Tower Bar Hottie (Pink Hair): Fifty bucks to let me cum in your armpits?
“Good God,” I said. “He was really that persistent, even when you ignored him?”
“Yes,” Rush said. “Here was the final and only thing I wrote to him, five months ago now.”
>>Rush: Do not message this number again please.
“Wow.”
“As you can see, he didn’t listen. He’s been texting every now and then ever since he found out I left San Francisco. One of my old bartenders told me he came in one night looking for me and they told him I’d moved.”
“Kind of fucked up, actually,” I said.
“I didn’t block him because I used to laugh about this with coworkers, but I am happily going to block him now,” Rush said, navigating to the option in his phone and blocking the guy for good.
I ran my fingers through my hair and Rush put his phone back over on the nightstand.
“So Tower Bar Hottie was actually Tower Bar Creep.”
“Big time,” he said. He reached over, running a hand along my arm, still looking at me. “I’m sorry if seeing that text weirded you out. It would have weirded me out, too, if I were you.”
I waved a hand through the air. “Even if it was a guy you actually liked, it’s no big deal. I know you’ve lived your life a certain way for a long time, and… well, I guess I don’t want to be possessive with you.”