“So, what, you’re hanging out with Gray all week?” She made an annoyed noise in her throat. “The guy was annoying as fuck the last few weeks, girl. All he could talk about was getting to see you and all the crap he planned on doing with you. Even Kale was starting to get annoyed with him, and you know it’s hard to annoy that stoic bastard.”
“Gray and I have hung out all week,” I told her as I decided on my black halter top. I didn’t even bother with a bra as I pulled the top into place. “Tonight, I’m going out with a friend from the gym.”
“Is this friend a guy or a chick?”
“A guy,” I mumbled, checking myself out once again in the mirror.
“Holy shit! Really?”
Her surprise at my answer made me blush, and I gritted my teeth a few times before answering. “Yes, really.”
“Whoa… Wait, is this a date?”
The pink in my cheeks only deepened. “Uh, kind of, I guess.”
“Does Gray know?”
I didn’t answer, and she took my silence as confirmation.
“Well, hell. Now, I wish I were already there. I want to see his face when his ‘little caterpillar’ spreads her wings and turns into the beautiful butterfly we all know she is.”
I rolled my eyes at my reflection, and after picking the phone up, I walked into my bathroom to do my makeup. “It’s not like that. Brandon has been asking me out for weeks now, and last Sunday, I finally gave in and told him yes.”
“You gave in and told him yes, then arranged a date on a day when you knew Grayson Knight would be home and see you going out with this guy.” Kin’s observation was spot-on, dang it. “So… Can you maybe take pictures of Gray’s face when the dude shows up to pick you up?”
I snorted. “Sorry, but Gray is at the gym right now, and I’ll be gone before he gets back.”
“Okay, let me get this straight. You’re going on a date with a guy you don’t really know, and I’m the only one who knows? That’s not smart, babe. Not smart at all.”
“Alicia knows, and she thought it was a great idea to go out with Brandon.”
She had told me that she had started to worry about my disinterest in dating when I had told her about Brandon, and she had even encouraged me to say yes over the last few weeks. It was because of her that I had finally given in, not Gray.
Or so I had tried to lie to myself.
Maybe I was doing it because of him. Maybe I wanted him to see that I wasn’t going to sit around and let the world pass me by. Just because I was in love with him didn’t mean I had to close myself off and wait for something that was never going to happen. I had to be realistic about the fact that Gray and I were never going to happen, and it was time to move forward with my life.
Because, fuck, he sure as hell had been moving forward, and from what I had heard, it was at the speed of a bullet train.
“Well then, that makes me feel better,” Kin muttered, blowing out a relieved sigh. “Glad that’s out of the way. Now, let’s talk about the important stuff. Is he hot?”
I paused in the process of putting on mascara and pictured Brandon. Short chestnut hair, leanly muscled with a runner’s physique, and around average height for a guy. He was cute, and plenty of the younger women at the gym had been watching him more closely since he had joined two months ago. But cute was all I could say about him. He, like every other guy I had looked at, didn’t compare when I lined him up in my mind beside of Gray.
And that, too, was why I had finally said yes to this date. I hadn’t given him a chance because I had been too busy comparing him to Gray and finding him lacking. But that had to stop, and not just with Brandon. I needed to start dating. If Gray could go out and dip his dick into any chick who would spread her legs for him, then there was nothing wrong with my dating.
“Kas? Kassa?” Kin called out, pulling me out of my inner musings. “What the hell are you doing? I’ve been talking for a solid minute and you haven’t said a word.”
“I’m getting ready for this date. I heard you talking. I’m just trying not to stick my mascara wand in my damn eye.” It was a lie. I hadn’t heard a word she had said, but she didn’t need to know that.
“You could have said something, bitch,” she grumbled.
“Like you could have said something when I was talking to you last week while you and my brother were apparently doing things I don’t even want to think about? And by the way—gross! I heard him.”
“Touché,” she mumbled.
“I still love you.”
“Okay, okay. I’ll let you go. But I want details later.”