Her back straightens as she licks the cheese sauce off her fingers, drawing my attention away from her swollen eyes to her plump lips. “You don’t know me.”
I nod, tapping my fingers against the worn wood of the table. “You’re right, I don’t know you. But I know women. Have a whole family filled with them. Someone talks to them the way that asshole talked to you, he doesn’t talk again for a few months.”
She blinks, gawking at me. “He doesn’t talk for a few months?” she questions, blinking quicker.
I hold up my fist. “This is my asshole muter.”
She tilts her head, staring at my closed fist, still blinking. “You have an asshole muter?”
I smile, pointing at my hand. “Been muting assholes since Tony Mandello called my cousin a slut after getting in her pants. He was almost twice my size and a handful of years older, but he was eating through a straw for months, regretting those words.”
“You broke his jaw?” she gasps, eyebrows up.
“He was a dick and deserved sucking down a cheeseburger like a milk shake for what he said and how he treated her. These douchebags aren’t worth the tears.”
She smacks her hands together, righting herself. “I’m not crying because of Jamison.”
I scrunch my nose.
“What?” she asks, immediately crossing her arms.
“Jamison.” I snort, rolling my eyes. “Total pussy name.”
“It’s the perfect name for a cheating bastard.”
“It’s the perfect name for a man who barely has a dick, doesn’t know how to use it, and doesn’t care to satisfy anyone other than himself.”
She blinks again, staring at me in shock, and my gaze dips down to that perfect pouty mouth of hers again. “Four inches.”
“Four inches what?” I ask, moving my eyes back to hers.
“His dick is four inches.”
I rock backward, figuring he had SDS, Small Dick Syndrome, but not realizing he was that fucking small. I snort again, but this time louder.
“And thin.” She holds up her pinkie finger and waves it. “Like super thin.”
“Tragic,” I mutter, shaking my head. “And you dealt with that shit?”
“Obviously, I was the one lacking since he needed to plant his face between the maid’s legs,” she says sarcastically. “Between his small dick, temper, and cheating, I’d say I got the better end of this breakup.”
“You sure as fuck did. So, stop the tears, yeah?”
She stares at me for a minute, blinking a few times, no doubt making judgments about me. Every single one of them is probably wrong too. “What’s your name?”
“Nick.”
“You live around here?”
“Nope,” I lie because Jo seems like trouble and tragedy, two things I didn’t come here for.
“Damn,” she whispers.
I hold up my hand, knowing I’ll regret this moment for the rest of my life. “You need a man, baby?” I ask her, my gaze dropping to the rise of her tits, glistening in the dim moonlight, covered in her tears.
“I think I’ve had enough men for a while, but I need a place to crash, and you seem like a really nice guy.”
I bark out a laugh. “One. I’m not nice. I’m not Jamison, but sweet is not me. Two. I have one bed, and no one sleeps in it except me. Three. I don’t fuck random chicks who’ve been crying over the loss of four-inch dick within the last five minutes.”
Her head jerks back like I slapped her with my honesty. She recovers quickly and leans forward, placing her palms flat on the table. “Well, aren’t you a wordy prick. Now, let me explain a few things to you, because we don’t know each other, but you’ve clearly already formed an opinion. One. I don’t need a bed. The couch will be fine.”
I laugh and her eyes narrow. “Babe, you’re too classy for a couch. I’m sure you lie on seven-hundred-thread-count sheets, pillows of real feathers, and that high-tech body-sculpting mattress bullshit too.”
She wrinkles her nose. “Asshole,” she mumbles.
“Not making me want to change my mind.”
She steals my move and holds up her hand, wanting me to shut the fuck up, so I do. “Two. You don’t look sweet, nor do you talk sweet. I may seem like whatever, but I can assure you, your opinion of me is wrong too.”
“Nor,” I tease, still laughing. “Who the fuck says nor?”
She gives me the middle finger. “Three. I don’t fuck guys who use their fists as a mute button. I also don’t fuck random dudes I meet at taco stands after midnight in the middle of bumfucking nowhere. I’m not thirsty for cock—’specially not starving for your dick, baby,” she says that last word so sweetly that if I weren’t listening to the entire lecture, I’d think she liked me.
“Then there’s nothing more to say,” I tell her. “We’re both agreed.”
She throws up her hands and stands. “You know what?”
“What, babe?” I ask, genuinely curious where this crazy-ass chick is going to take the conversation next.
“Never mind, jagoff.” She waves her hand at me and storms off, leaving her half-eaten nachos on the table. “You can go fuck yourself too!” she yells across the parking lot without looking back.
“After the tacos,” I reply to no one as she stalks toward a car parked in the shadows where the lights don’t hit.
“Order’s ready,” Tina Marie calls out, craning her neck toward the parking lot as the engine to the crazy chick’s sweet ride roars to life.
I stand and move toward the counter, grabbing my tacos.
Jo backs out, almost nailing my bike with her overpriced black luxury car and fishtails out of the parking lot before I make it back to the table.
“Tacos are so much easier than pussy,” I mutter to myself, unwrapping the first taco.
For ten minutes, I sit in pure silence, relishing the crispy goodness without listening to a crying chick or a dumb-ass drunk. Not giving two fucks about the grease running down my chin because no one’s watching or bothering me anymore.
As soon as I’m done, I throw my trash and Jo’s in the nearby can, leaving the place how I found it, minus the crying girl with tons of attitude and a mouth that could suck a man dry in minutes.
Back on my bike, heading toward home, I don’t make it five miles when I hit the first traffic light.
Fuck.
If you hit one, you hit them all unless you haul ass, breaking the cycle. I turn my head to the right, continuing to curse under my breath when I see it.
The sleek black car Jo sped off in is under a light in a virtually empty superstore parking lot.
Not my chick. Not my business.
The light turns green, and I’m off before I let that voice in the back of my skull tell me to get my head out of my ass and make sure she’s okay.
I already know she has no hotel room to go back to. And based on where she is, which is my hometown, there isn’t a decent hotel for at least fifty miles. Add in the fact that it is after midnight in the middle of nowhere, and I know she is stuck.
Fuck me.
“Always look out for a woman, Nicky.” My father’s words echo in my head. “It’s our job to protect them.”