Slide (Black Addiction #1) Read Online Free Page A

than I deserved. She’d always known Rob would break my heart and not a single “I told you so” had escaped her lips. Instead she fed me, let me cry and then locked me in the bathroom until I showered. Friends don’t let friends smell.
    “My life is over and you brought me raw fish?” I opened the door wearing the same stained T-shirt and sweatpants I had been living in for the last two days. There was no need to get fancy; misery didn’t have a dress code.
    “Your life is not over, this is just a hiccup. And sushi is good for you.” She pushed past me and took the five short steps from my door that landed her in my kitchen.
    “I’m sorry. I guess I’m a shitty friend as well as shitty girlfriend. Oh, and I’m a shitty paralegal too it seems. Just all-around shitty.” I let the door slam as I joined her in the kitchen. As far as wallowing was going, I was still neck deep. It was good to be successful at something, self-pity being my only option currently.
    “You aren’t a shitty friend.” She pulled the bamboo chopsticks from the plastic bag. “Or any of that other stuff.” She tactfully added. “But you can’t sit in your apartment and hide from the world for the rest of your life.”
    Reality. Something I didn’t want right now, not that my reluctance to deal stopped it from arriving on my doorstep in the form of my best friend and questionable dinner. She was right. Hiding was not the solution. Lord knows I’d been giving it a try, and all it got me was greasy hair and a smelly apartment. My severance pay would soon dry up while my bills would not. And while one of the four weeks was spent wallowing, I literally couldn’t afford anymore time off. So while I wasn’t ready to deal with society, I would at the very least have to start dealing with the classifieds. Who knows, maybe sticking a toe in first by rejoining the human race would prepare me for an interview . It’s not like I had much more to lose. “You’re right.” My shoulders slumped as I leaned against the wall for support. “I need to get out.”
    ***
    It would have been easy to get dressed up, get drunk and have sex with some random guy. At least that’s what Renee wanted me to do. But every single time we’d walked into a bar, I almost had a full-blown panic attack over the thought of some guy seeing me naked. My confidence—which had always been lacking—was now nonexistent, and even alcohol didn’t seem to help.
    With Renee as my cheerleader, I persevered for an entire week. Night after night, bar after bar, with only one of us ending up getting lucky—not me. My attempts at flirting bordered on embarrassment next to my cool femme fatale best friend.
    Even with my battered bravado and lackluster enthusiasm, I put on my prettiest dress and highest heels in what would be my fourth attempt at trying to get laid. This time without Renee—the pressure of having an audience just making it more difficult. Apparently a one-night stand would cure me, or at least send me into post orgasmic bliss so that I wouldn’t care for a while. I wasn’t convinced, but I was willing to give it a try.
    It was while I was at the bar, sipping a Diet Coke through one of those ridiculous cocktail straws, that my world went even further into a tailspin.
    “Hey, Ali-cat.”
    The nickname sending chills down my spine despite the bar feeling like a sauna.
    “Rob.” I twirled around to the direction of the voice, his smiling face greeting me as I made eye contact. Damn it, he still looked good.
    “Wow, I thought it was you.” His eyes moved over the curves of my body, pausing over my mostly exposed cleavage. “You’re looking well .”
    Every night I fantasized about this very moment. The one where Rob would run into me, see me looking fabulous and then declare what an idiot he’d been and beg me to take him back. It was the sweet dream I’d lull myself off to sleep with, concluding with me telling him there’d be a cold day in hell before