Page 75 of Grasp The Moment

Eat up, darlin’. The more you eat, the more energy you’ll have tonight :)

Rolling my eyes with a stupid grin on my face, I adjust the phone to my ear. “He packed me lunch today.”

My mother gushes as I chuckle.

What am I going to do with these two?

Mom and Derek met over FaceTime when Ifirst moved in with him and Delilah. She was more upset than anything when she found out I’d gotten married while she was in a different country, and we may have told her we dated for a year before deciding to elope, just to take a bit of the sting away.

She didn’t believe a single word, but when she met Delilah over FaceTime, she loosened up to the idea of Derek and me. She and Dels now have weekly calls where they drink their tea and chat about God knows what while I sketch.

“He’s a keeper, Georgia—oh! I’m getting a call from my chief of marketing, Peach. Love you, gotta go!” she exclaims, ending the call as the word “love” leaves my tongue.

Nodding my head, I grin down at the lunch and pack it back up.

Maybe heisa keeper.

It doesn’t take long for me to get to campus; with it still being the middle of the morning, almost everyone is off the road and already at work or school.

I’m walking on campus, headphones in, when someone bumps into me, knocking my smoothie out of my hands as they do so.

Frowning, I look down at the green substance that took me almost a full container of spinach to create and sigh as I turn to the person, but they’re already looking at me. Their arms are crossed over their chest, a challenging smirk on their lips as they look me up and down.

“Watch where you’re going,” Rosemary says with a roll of her neck, looking me up and down with disdain as I scoff, ignoring her.

I pick up the messy cup and huff as a bit of the smoothie lands on my shoe. “Fucking great.”

I’m just happy I still have my lunch… Turning away from her, I’m about to walk away when she speaks up again.

“He’s not gonna stay for long, y’know,” she slews, herwords hitting their target as I whirl on her, the cup in my hands forgotten.

The two of us stare at one another, neither of us backing down.

“What did you just say?”

She takes a step closer. “He’ll leave you.”

Strike one.

My chuckle lacks humor as my tongue pokes in my cheek. “Like you left them? Newsflash, he’s not going anywhere, Delilah’s not going anywhere, and neither am I. Watch yourself, Rosemary. I’d hate for you to cross a line that you can’t cross back over.”

There’s a fire in her eyes, one that I know I can extinguish with the mere flick of my tongue and the sound of my words. She wants to have power over me, wants me to be wounded by her words—I’m not. If anything, I’m more annoyed that I’m running late to class than the fact that she’s in front of me.

She takes a step even closer to me, looking up at me slightly. “You’re just a sorry excuse forme. His mom told me everything. As soon as DJ gets his inheritance, he’ll leave you and come crawling back to me. I bet all he uses you for is sex—has he told you about his dad? Do you know what makes Derek Perez tick? What makes himcome?”

Strike two.

“Are you done?” I ask with a tilt of my head, annoyed.

Her words hurt, but they lack merit. If my self-worth revolved around the way a man felt about me, then maybe, justmaybe, I’d be a crying mess. It’s a good thing that I know my worth and have never needed a man to define it. I laugh in her face.

“He’s mine!” she screams in my face as Sienna runs up to us, pushing Rosemary back.

I can’t help the cackle that comes out of my mouth as she slips on the smoothie she made me spill.

“And yet, legally—he’s mine.” I grin, holding up my left hand and my middle finger on my right.

Rosemary tries to fight Sienna off as Sienna pushes her away from me; the two of them scream back and forth at one another before Sienna gets the last word.