Page 6 of Choosing Goddess

“You are horrible,” he teasingly scolded.

“But it’s the truth. How did you even know him?”

“Albert writes a lot of self-help type books. He’s got quite the following.”

“But that is not your genre of writing, so how can he offer advice to you? I really don’t see how that works.”

He looked down at me, and I could feel the subtle shift. I had just told him more than I meant to and he knew it too.

“What do you know about my writing?”

I swished the liquid around in my glance, trying to figure out the best way to get out of this without sharing anything else, but I wasn’t sure there was one.

“Maybe I looked you up a time or two. Seeing what you made of yourself. And maybe I grabbed a book only to find out it was one I had heard before.”

His lips slowly lifted up on one side, and I had to force myself to look away.

“Maybe I did take a story from our youth and add far more details to it.” He grabbed a glass from a passing waiter and lifted a brow. “You kept tabs?”

“Far from it, AJ. I just looked a few times. It’s really no big deal.”

“Then why won’t you look at me and tell me that, Spy?”

I lifted my eyes and looked at him, regretting it the moment that I did, because this was exactly the problem. Even after all this time, this was the one man who saw far too much.

He was my best friend for a reason, and even as the time has gone by, some things don’t age.

“Join me on my boat?” he whispered, brushing his knuckles over my cheek. “I can write and you can star gaze.”

It was the perfect time, and I didn’t have it in me to say no.

Chapter 4

Ajax

Iwaited.

On my couch.

With my phone in my hand.

When I still didn’t get a text or an email, I gave up. Not because I thought she was ignoring me or something. It was the Fourth of July, of course she was busy. She probably had some plans I didn’t know or something, and that was fine. But tomorrow, the fifth, was our birthday. And I wanted to book her up for the whole day.

So, since she refused to text me first, I did the only thing I could think of.

I requested her.

Did I look desperate?

Oh, I have no doubt.

But you know what? I don’t care.

I wanted to talk to her without all the stuff and noise in the background. To be able to really reconnect. Because if there was anything that I noticed over the course of the event last night, besides how beautiful she had gotten, it was the fact that I missed my friend.

That I wanted to bond again.

I wanted to talk.