All To Myself by Annemarie Hartnett Page B

more person said a damn word about Noah Hyland to her, Rory was going to explode.
    “I have no idea,” she said, and dissuaded further questions by sending the blender into a grinding frenzy.
    Yes, he was supposed to be there. He had been talking about it all week. That morning when he dropped her off at Garden View with her bike, he had said he would see her that night.
    But it was nearly closing time and he just hadn’t shown. She hadn’t seen him all day. At first she’d been worried, but when eight o’clock rolled around a vicious little thought came to her.
    He got what he wanted, so now he’s off fucking some other girl.
    Try as she might to push it back out, once the thought entered her brain it burrowed deep. Her mood soured as she imagined him at a bar in town or on the mainland, flashing that gorgeous smile around until he had a small harem surrounding him. He’d take one, or maybe a couple of them back to whatever hotel room he had booked.
    Worse, he brought them back to his waterfront paradise and was fucking him in the same tent he had fucked her.
    She thought about it as she dumped margaritas into salt-rimmed glasses. They’d both been so tired that their coupling had been hurried, but it was still intense. She’d spent the entire day thinking of his soft tongue gliding between her slick crease, getting her off before he mounted her in the middle of that big bed. She’d been looking forward to a repeat, and maybe the toys he had hinted at but still hadn’t produced.
    Now, she just felt horrible.
    “Hey, does anyone feel like going to Mermaid tonight?” she asked Fiona once the drink order was ready.
    “Fuck, yes, after tonight,” Fiona growled, and glanced over her shoulder to a table filled with blonde, middle-aged women. “Bloody trophy wives. Tom had to switch tables with me, they were giving him such a hard time. You’d swear they’re at a bachelorette party.”
    “Money can’t buy you class,” Rory muttered, but it wasn’t the trophy wives she was thinking of. “I don’t want to get falling-down drunk, but I’ll split a pitcher with you if you can talk your brother into driving us home.”
    It was a lie. She wanted to get falling-down drunk. The more she simmered as she thought about Noah, the more she wanted to wake up fully clothed and drooling on her pillow.
    The Blue Mermaid was one of the only restaurants in the area that stayed open past eleven o’clock. It made shitty food and the staff wasn’t that friendly, but they offered a discount on pitchers to the folks they knew. Fiona’s brother doubled as cook and bouncer, though he only had to exercise his duties as the latter once or twice a month if things got rowdy.
    “Seriously, you need a car,” Fiona told her once they’d loaded Rory’s bike into the back of Fiona’s truck. “This must be killing you.”
    “It’s a pain in the ass, but at least my ass is taut and toned from all the peddling.”
    A car loaded with the rest of the wait and kitchen staff honked as they passed the truck, and Rory squeezed over to give Hannah room to get in.
    “So, you don’t want to talk about it?” Hannah asked as Fiona drove them through the park.
    “Not really.”
    Neither girl said anything more. In a few days, Rory would unload to them, but she needed the sting to subside a little first.
    The bar was located at the mouth of the park, and so they arrived in minutes. Claiming the two tables by the window, Rory and her co-workers ordered up pitchers of the cheap beer that The White Tip wouldn’t even carry and everyone leapt into the tradition of gossiping about what went on at the hotel. In previous summers, when they were all too young to legally drink and they would take their beer to Rory’s cabin, Noah was a frequent topic of conversation, mainly who he was fucking.
    No one mentioned his name that night, and Rory found herself immensely grateful to her friends.
    “Look, I’m magic! I wished for it and it came!” Gord,