Page 66 of Dirty Like Dylan
But, man… when Johnny O’Reilly did a number on a girl? He went all in.
He’d smashed my heart to pieces.
The worst part was that he didn’t even set out to do it intentionally. That would just make it easier to hate him for being an evil bastard. No, my ex just had other things he wanted out of life, things that were one-hundred-percent at odds with having a wife, and when he went after those things with the same certainty with which he’d gone after me… my heart was just the collateral damage.
If you asked him—if Dylan or Ashley asked him, God forbid—he’d probably just say something infuriating about what a great girl I was, and ask how I was doing. Yeah, he’d definitely do that.
Hell, he’d probably even try to get in my pants again, if he ever had the chance.
Yeah. I really knew how to pick them.
I couldn’t decide whether it was a relief or totally depressing that Google couldn’t even find a single thing about our marriage. It didn’t even warrant a mention on Johnny’s Wikipedia page. He wasn’t as famous back then, so maybe that was it.
Or maybe when you’re only married for sixteen days, no one really knows or cares.
Maybe Johnny preferred it that way. Maybe he’d rather just forget.
Personally, I preferred to remember. Because that seven-month relationship and sixteen-day marriage were the reasons I didn’t do impulsive anymore when it came to relationships.
Sex was one thing.
Relationships were a whole other beast. One that tended to bite me in the ass—over and over again. Unfortunately, my ex-husband wasn’t the only man who’d ever devastated me. Really, I’d been dumped, duped and dated more assholes than any girl should ever have to.
Couldn’t fault me for trying though, right?
I closed the browser and went to find something to drink. I had no interest in more booze; I’d drank enough the last few days. So I poured myself a pineapple juice. I was feeling a little restless, so I threw together a salad for tomorrow. I didn’t think I’d actually seen Ashley eat a vegetable himself, yet he’d filled his fridge with them since I’d arrived. For me.
I could probably thank him, though I didn’t want to set off some kind of allergic reaction; me being nice to him would probably just give him hives.
I smirked at the thought.
When I was done making the salad, I brought my juice over to the dining room table and sat in front of my laptop, looking through the images from today. Wondering idly what the guys were doing next door.
I pulled up the photos I’d taken on Dylan’s back deck, and started flipping through—until I got to the ones with Dylan in them. I paused on one particularly beautiful one. Dylan had just gotten out of the pool and stood looking down, wearing nothing but a towel. Well, he was kinda wearing the towel. He was in the middle of putting it on, maybe, and the fabric just barely covered the bulge of his—
“Nice photo.” I jumped as Ashley appeared out of the goddamn ether behind me. Jesus, the man had a way of sneaking up on a girl.
“Fuck. What are you, a fucking ninja or something?”
He smirked, then glanced at the photo of Dylan and said, “Wow. You are freaky.”
“I’m not—”
“I knew you were kinky. I knew it the moment I saw you.” I watched him saunter over to the fridge and pull out the carton of pineapple juice.
“Um… Excuse me? You barely even noticed me when you first saw me.”
“I knew he’d notice you.”
Oh. What?
He poured himself a juice, then leaned back on the counter and looked from me to the photo of Dylan and back. “Do you want him?” he asked me bluntly.
“I wasn’t stalking him or anything,” I said, avoiding the question. “He knew I was there.”
Ashley said nothing.
I got up, planning to clear out of his dining room, when he said, “Trust me, he wouldn’t mind if you stalked him.”