13
Slate
The week passed in slow motion.
I did my daily routine, going to work, hitting the gym, and then sitting on the couch all night. I enjoyed my scotch and skipped dinner most of the time. Sometimes I was hungry, but I was not motivated to cook, so I snacked on whatever I could find. Even if it was filled with carbs, I didn’t care.
I didn’t care about anything anymore.
I’d never felt like this, like a piece of me was missing. I used to be the strong and unbreakable man who didn’t need anyone, but now, I was lost and broken. That woman was just a transaction, but without her smell on my sheets and her smile on her lips, my life didn’t have meaning.
I was a billionaire—but I’d never felt so poor.
Coen stayed with me, nursing his own depression over Simone. He didn’t mention Monroe again. Didn’t try to convince me to go after her. He seemed to have given up on me.
I was relieved but also disappointed.
I sat on one couch while he sat on the other. He scrolled through his phone while the game played on the TV. Our empty beer bottles were stacked on the coffee table, and the empty pizza box only had crumbs left over.
It’d been at least two years since I’d had pizza.
Coen lowered his phone and looked at me, ignoring the touchdown that had just happened on the screen. “You doing okay, man?”
“I’m fine.” That was my automatic response to everything. I clearly wasn’t fine, but I would stick to the bogus line to the end of my days. Even my assistant had asked me that question when I was at work yesterday, and that overstepped her boundaries.
“So, you still aren’t going to work this out?”
“I thought we were done talking about that?”
He shrugged. “I just wanted to make sure you were sticking to your guns.”
“Yes, I’m sticking to my guns.”
He finished his beer before he set it on the table. “So, you’re a hundred percent sure about that?”
It was an odd question, so I looked at him with my eyebrow raised. “What are you getting at, Coen?”
“Well…this is a little awkward. Not sure where to start.” He rubbed his palms together as he ignored the TV and stared at the ground.
My mind jumped to conclusions, and my anger followed quickly behind. Coen took Simone behind my back, and now he wanted Monroe. They’d spent time together ever since he moved in here, and now I wondered what happened on the second story before Monroe relocated. After everything Coen and I had been through, would he stab me in the back again?
“I kinda have a thing for Monroe.” He lifted his chin and met my gaze, anticipating my rage.
I stared at him blankly, unable to process the bullshit I was listening to. My nostrils flared like a pissed-off bull, and I wondered if I could throw him through the floor-to-ceiling windows and to the street hundreds of feet below.
“Nothing has happened, Slate.” He held up his hand. “I would never go behind your back like that…not again.”
I was too angry to speak. Insults ran rampant through my mind, but I couldn’t voice a single one of them. Both of my hands formed fists, my knuckles turning white.
“I would never do anything unless you were okay with it. But if you guys are never going to work it out and you don’t want her…I thought I would ask.”
Still, my mouth wouldn’t respond.
“She’s always been so nice to me, even after what happened with Simone. She’s easy to talk to, she’s had her heart broken, she’s pretty…I think she’s really cool. You told me you wouldn’t have cared about Simone if I’d told you I wanted to be with her. So that’s why I’m telling you now.”
My mouth finally unclenched so I could speak. “This isn’t fucking Simone, Coen. Monroe isn’t some gold-digging tramp. Monroe is a woman with class. She’s a queen without a tiara. She’s world-fucking-class. You don’t deserve a woman like that.”
“Maybe I don’t. But you don’t either. You say all these nice things about her, but you still don’t want to be with her? It’s just empty words, Slate. If she’s really that amazing, you wouldn’t have let her go.”
“Fuck you, asshole.”
He didn’t flinch at my venom. “Is that a yes or a no?”
“What do you think?” I snapped. “We just broke up a week ago.”
“Because you dumped her.” He met my fire with his own. “You didn’t want her anymore. It’s not like she broke up with you. If you don’t want her, then why can’t I ask her out? You can’t say you have feelings for her if you don’t want to be with her. That’s just not right.”
“Why are you so obsessed with my leftovers?”
The corner of his mouth rose in a smile. “Simone manipulated me. But Monroe is the perfect woman. I’ve been with a lying tramp, so I know Monroe is nothing like that. I appreciate her goodness, her kindness. I’m looking for a good woman to settle down with, and that’s exactly what she is.”