Ten Thousand Lies (28 page)

I never want to see that fucker again.

I couldn’t stop thinking about him. Last night, I’d dreamed he made love to me up against that nasty-ass wall, telling me all the things I needed to hear, and I’d woken up crying.

Bastard.

Heading into the piercing room, I was greeted with a huge bouquet of brilliant lavender lilies and blood-red sunflowers sitting on my desk. In my hazy memories of the night before last, I remembered telling him what my favorite flowers were.

My blood boiled.
Really? Does he think a beautiful bouquet of my favorite flowers is going to make a dent in the loathing I have for him?

The front door chimed the electric gong, and I turned and left the room to check to see who it was.

There stood the fuckface and Ronen, and both of them stared at me.

Ricki’s eyes were wide and bright, his chest heaving.

Stomping back into my room, I grabbed the flowers and tramped back out to the lobby. Grabbing the waste bin beneath the front counter, I demonstrated quite clearly how I was feeling. Pointedly looking at the motherfucker in his weird eyes, I held up the can for their viewing pleasure and shoved the flowers in it with all my strength, aiming to punch them through the bottom. Then, I tossed the can onto the floor and marched my ass into the restroom before locking it. Shaking with fury, I sat on the toilet and fought the urge to weep. And I lost.

A good fifteen minutes later, I stood, washed my face, straightened my clothes, and headed back out.

Ricki was nowhere in sight, and I breathed a sigh of relief.

Ronen was behind the counter, looking over the schedule. “Hey,” he said.

“Hey,” I replied.

“Um…we’ve got to reschedule all these clients…”

“On it,” I replied tersely as I got to work.

The whole day, I did my job with a fake-ass smile on my face. The first shipment of jewelry arrived around noon, and I went about getting it all sterilized and packaged for use, followed by doing the same with all my new tools. I’d be piercing starting tomorrow.

As the last client left, I hid in my room, sealing packages of jewelry for the second round of sterilization in the autoclave, when the most wonderful and equally hated voice drifted into my ears from the doorway.

“Jaime?”

Filled with so much sadness and pain, my name had never sounded so fucking morose.

“What?” I snapped.

“Can we talk?”

“I’m busy.”

“Please—”

Spinning around on my stool, I was angry enough to look at him now. What I saw broke my heart all over again, which made me even angrier because I was heartbroken enough as it was. Dark circles lay like bruises beneath his strange eyes, eyes I still wanted to lose myself in. They were red-rimmed and glassy, and the despair in them was evident. Faced with it, I felt the walls I’d been constructing around my heart begin to falter.

I couldn’t have that now.

“
This
is all I’m willing to say to you, Ricki. I’m here to work. If you need to talk about work, then I’m all ears. If not, you can go fuck yourself. There is
nothing
you can say to me that’s going to fix whatever the fuck happened two nights ago. Don’t fucking give me flowers, don’t fucking waste my time, and don’t bother with some half-assed excuses you think will make whatever the fuck that was go away.”

His eyes dropped to the floor, and his hands bunched into fists. “I need to tell you I’m sorry.”

“I’m sure you are. Now, leave me alone.”

Praying he didn’t witness how bad I’d started to shake, I turned back to my task. The swish of the bead curtain rattled, letting me know he’d left. The tears I’d been able to hold in check while telling him to fuck off spilled over.

I gasped and sniffled. Face scrunching up, my mouth and cheeks quivered with the effort not to cry. I hated that part of me was dying to run after him and tell him I didn’t mean it. His face had shown as much misery as I was feeling. I could make it all go away and tell him I wanted a do-over.

Instead, I sat there, attempting to use my pride as a way to heal. Pride was cold, and I knew I needed the warmth of love to mend this tear in my soul.

“Fuck,” I whispered, crossing my arms on my desk and dropping my head down on top.

Ricki

Crouched beside the doorway to Jaime’s piercing room, my back against the wall, my head between my knees, I listened to Jaime cry. The harsh muted sounds lashed at my already raw emotions, and I deserved every torturous second of it. It took everything inside me to sit there quietly and listen. More than anything, I wanted to charge in there, take her in my arms, and kiss every tear she shed.

Silently, Ronen came out from the back. We stared at each other for a minute before he tilted his chin at me, urging me to my feet and out the front door.

“We can’t leave her alone in there,” I whispered as he locked the door.

“She needs time to fucking cool down, man. We’ll watch the shop from the café and make sure she gets out safe.”

“All right,” I conceded.

We headed to the café across the street and sat in the window with some tea.

“She came back, right? So, all you need to do at this point is let her know every fucking minute that she’s adored and wanted.”

In defeat, I slumped over my tea. “She told me, unless it’s about work, she doesn’t want to talk to me.”

“Yeah, well…can’t say I blame her at the moment.”

“Yeah.”

Half an hour later, the lights in the shop switched off, and Jaime walked out, locking up behind her, her phone tucked between her shoulder and her ear. After dropping the keys into her bag, she headed off in the opposite direction of where she lived.

“Let’s go home,” said Ronen.

Jaime

As I ducked into Helmersen’s, Xanthe waved me over to where she was sitting. With her was a huge-breasted woman with a blonde bob and severely straight bangs.

“Hey,” I said as I made it to the table.

“Jaime, this is Lilla. I met her here last night. Lilla, this is my best friend, Jaime.”

Lilla stood, delightfully proving that she was as tall as I was. She was a big woman—not fat, but muscular and big-boned. Her smile was bright and genuine as she came in and gave me a friendly hug.

“I’m so happy to meet you,” she said, her thick New York accent throwing me for a loop. “Xanthe said you guys moved here about a month and a half ago.”

“Yeah, man. I love it here,” I replied, lying through my teeth. I’d love it if I hadn’t already blown my happiness to shit with a jerk I was now forced to work with.

Lilla sat and picked up a joint, handing it to me. I sparked it up and took a giant hit.

“How was your day?” asked Xanthe.

“Busy,” I replied, not able to meet her eyes.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to tell her, but I didn’t know Lilla, and to dump depression on someone I’d just met wasn’t cool. I wouldn’t want it dumped on me, if the situation were reversed.

Instead, the three of us got baked and shot the shit.

Lilla was awesome.

After she’d graduated high school, she’d left New York to travel. For a year, she’d backpacked her way through Europe before meeting her business partner here. She’d been staying in a hostel and noticed it could use some work.

In exchange for free room and board, Lilla had done the repairs, being a bit of a self-taught handy person. After that, Marta—the owner of the hostel—had asked her to be partners since the woman had more work than she could do on her own. At twenty-one, she’d been in Amsterdam for almost two years, and she was having the time of her life.

By the time we were ready to call it an evening, I was feeling better, having laughed my ass off a few times. The three of us left Helmersen’s and hugged each other out front before heading in opposite directions.

“I like her,” I told Xanthe. “I say we hang out with her more often.”

“I think we should. There’s too much testosterone in our group. So, for real…how was work?” she asked.

“It sucked. Ricki got me this gorgeous bouquet of flowers, and I trashed them right in his face.”

“Damn.”

“What? Like that should’ve made everything all right?”

“No, but—”

“But?”

“I was ready to go to war for you, but when I saw him yesterday…Jaime, he’s fucking
wrecked
over this, like completely gutted. I think…is there really no way in your heart you can forgive him? Because, if you won’t, I know he never will.”

“What? So,
I’m
the fucking bad guy here?” I fumed.

“Not at all. I just know, if you’d let him fix it, he would in a heartbeat. You’re the only person he’s ever wanted to be with, Jaime, and my heart is breaking for the both of you. I think he’s the only one you’ve ever wanted to be with, too.”

“Sometimes, we shouldn’t get what we want,” I stated stubbornly. “Look at what happened when I did; it fucking went to hell. It just might be better to forget this shit ever happened—right after I get tested for fucking sexually transmitted grossness.”

“Ricki’s clean,” she mentioned. “You don’t have to worry about that.”

“How do you know?”

“He gets tested every month because of both his jobs. He’s exposed to bodily fluids a lot. And…he’s not sexually active. I’d be more concerned that you gave him something than the other way around.”

“My last tests came back clean, and he’s the only one I’ve been with in months.”

“Really? How come?”

I shrugged. “I was getting sick of it. I guess I want something better than a fuck buddy.”

“Yeah, but why? What made you change your mind?”

“I don’t know. I’ve started to wonder why I never really gave any of them a chance. It’s not like all guys are like my dad, you know? Some of the ones I’ve been with were totally worth it, and if I had given them a shot, it might’ve actually gone somewhere.”

Xanthe reached out and took my hand, lacing our fingers, as we walked in silence down the street.

“Don’t give up on him just yet,” she said. “I wanted to murder him myself when I found out what had happened, and I don’t blame you for needing this time to be angry. If I were you, I wouldn’t forgive and forget so quickly. But, one day, please just hear him out. I think there’s a lot more to this than we know.”

“Ronen said something along those lines.”

My wrath was ebbing into a dense sort of smoldering. Hearing how devastated Ricki was,
seeing
it for myself, and knowing there was a reason I felt the way I did about him—it was all slowly cooling my anger.

“Well, while you decide what you need to do, we should take this time to get out there and have fun. Meet some new people. I say we take Lilla out this weekend and party like rock stars.”

In that moment, I knew Xanthe was hurting, too. Once again, she had let Deo go, and I knew it wasn’t easy for her. She’d never admit to it, but I knew each time she and Deo got together, it was that much harder for the both of them.

Squeezing her hand, I gave her a smile. “Yeah, let’s do that.”

Wednesday, I walked into the shop, still depressed but not ready to draw blood. Once more, I was the first one in, and I went about getting everything set up for the day.

Excitement zipped through me at the thought of piercing again, and after I set the coffee to percolate, I headed into my room to check everything over.