Murder To Excellence

17.

She gave herself a once over through the reflection of the glass doors. Her white button-down was fitted and she had undone a few buttons, showing enough cleavage to drive him crazy without it looking cheap. Her hair down, just the way he liked it. In jeans and heels, just the way he liked it.

“You can do this,” she whispered to herself before walking in. She was planning on being as stone cold as she was when she wanted to deny her feelings at first, being afraid he wouldn’t feel the same.

The host led her to the fancy lounge area Raphael had brought her to this once before. When she saw him, her heart started racing and she felt extremely nervous.

He had been sitting there half an hour prior the time he had told her to come, he was that nervous. As every second passed, he was convinced she wouldn’t show up, but he was stressing himself for nothing since he still was early. In the relatively short amount of time he had – almost two weeks – he had gone back to the old Raphael. He had trimmed his beard, cut his hair to its original length, and doing things like sit-ups in between meetings since he noticed his muscles were kind of fading.

He looked up when he heard clacking of heels against the floor and instead of his eyes meeting hers, his eyes met her décolleté. He finally looked up at her and she looked more beautiful than he remembered. She just stared at him blankly, shielding what she was actually feeling.

He stood up when she came closer, but she didn’t give him any greeting. She just sat down opposite of him, a fire pit table standing in between them.

“How are you?” he questioned.

“You wanted to talk?” she replied rudely and he could tell this was nothing like her, he just didn’t say anything about it.

“Take me back,” he declared, his eyes still shifting from her eyes to her breasts.

“Nope,” she answered, pursing her lips afterwards and looking at her surroundings.

“I didn’t know she was your friend!” he exclaimed, earning a few glances from others here and there.

“And I don’t care!” she retorted as loudly as he did. “She could’ve been anybody else and I still wouldn’t want to be with you.”

“Why not? I told you I was fucking sorry, Rose, what more do you want me to say? I know I fucked up.”

“That’s good for you and you’ve told me this a million times. If this is how this conversation is going to be, I’m going home.”

“Cut the fucking attitude,” he required, his dominant side showing up again.

She put down her glass of water, a bit spilling over the rim as she put it down in fury. “Cut the fucking attitude?” she hissed. “You should be happy I even showed up! You cheated on me, you dick, and you’re asking me to cut my attitude? What the hell do you want me to do? Laugh with you? Kiss you? Jump your bones? I’m mad, livid.”

He kept quiet, wanting her to spill it all out.

“You’re irrational when you’re mad, really irrational, and I don’t want to be with someone like that. After our first, real argument what do you do? You go sleep with someone else within a timespan of… I came to your office first thing in the morning… in a timespan of twelve hours? Who does that?”

“We did not have sex,” he stated and her eyes softened.

“You mean to say that you and Alicia did not do anything?”

“I did not say that,” he murmured and she scowled.

“I might just vomit, this is disgusting. Why would you even do that? You need to comprehend why I don’t want to be with you anymore. You’re illogic when you’re mad! You attack innocent people, bluntly ask me if I had sex with every guy I’m with. Why? It’s so disrespectful, I can barely look at you.”