The Right Side of My Pillow, стр. 26

A high pitched female voice called out to her. “Jade? I thought that was you.”

She recognized it immediately. Slowly, she turned around. “Elise?”

Her pasted on smile couldn’t have been more forced. “I was in the neighborhood and thought I’d stop by to see you. It seems we keep missing each other at Cole’s. I’ve been dying for us to have some girl time.”

Jade thought to herself, I bet. Tommy smartly walked away to assist a customer. Elise made herself comfortable on a bar stool next to hers. She crossed her model length legs as she pointed towards Tommy. “Wow. He’s yummy if you like the working man kind of thing.”

Jade frowned. What was that supposed to mean? What other kind was there? When did being a working person become distasteful? Maybe Jade was reading too much into it.

“You two were looking awfully close when I walked up. Is he a boyfriend?”

She was fishing. Jade didn’t want to be rude, but she also didn’t want to entertain Elise either. Out of respect for Cole, she tried her best to sound friendly. “I’ve been busy with work, so I’m sure it’s been difficult to nail me down.”

“Of course. I understand. Cole makes it even worse because he is so protective of you.” She laughed. It didn’t seem genuine, and her smiles never seemed to reach her eyes. “Do you know he wouldn’t even give me your phone number? Thank goodness us girls know how to get around silliness like that. I just took it from his cell phone.”

Jade was pissed! Did Elise really just admit to going through Cole’s phone and stealing her number from it? She must have diamonds and gold between her legs because she couldn’t understand for the life of her what Cole was doing with this type of woman.

“All the more reason I knew a trip over to Mario’s to see you was a good idea. Yes, I could have called, but I thought a face to face chat would be better. I said to myself why not just show up where you couldn’t run and hide.”

Elise’s passive-aggressive comments had quickly turned the conversation in a bad direction. “What? Honestly, I think it’s pretty shady to take anything without asking permission especially my phone number. Also, why would I run away and hide from you?” Maybe Cole couldn’t see it, but Jade could tell from a mile away that Elise was a bad seed, and she didn’t want to be any part of it. She’d be a liar though if she didn’t also acknowledge that it had never been easy to see Cole fawn over any of his girlfriends.

Elise placed her hands over her heart as if she were surprised. “I’m sorry. I only thought it would be a good idea for you and me to get to know each other considering I am his girlfriend.”

Was she for real? Who was she trying to convince, herself?

Calling on patience that she didn’t feel, Jade remained calm. “I know that you’re Cole’s girlfriend, Elise. But, more importantly, Cole knows it too.”

“True. He does. So I’m sure you are well aware that he and I are very close, and it would only make sense that I would want to get to know you better.” Elise laid it on thick. She couldn’t sound any more insincere if she tried. “My goodness, if you’re important to him then you’re important to me.” All that was missing was a southern drawl. “I also wanted to make a couple of things very clear.”

Jade highly doubted Elise wanted to get to know her better; but could certainly understand her being concerned with some woman who seemed to have dropped into Cole’s life out of nowhere, and was now living with him. Before Jade could say anything to try and smooth over the obvious ill feelings on the both their parts, Elise kept talking.

“Men can be so shallow sometimes when it comes to women.” Elise gave Jade a head to foot once over as her facial expression reflected a look of distaste. “Temporarily, they can forget about proper breeding, their standing in the community, and everything else except for a piece of ass when it’s flaunted in their face. In some cases, you can even understand when the woman is, at least, attractive but in other cases...” Her voice trailed off as she continued to scrutinize Jade. “Well, in some instances, you never know what the lure could have been. I’m sure you understand what I’m talking about Jade.”

Jade was finished trying to be civil. Elise came to see her solely to put her on notice about Cole. The façade of being friendly was just a poorly constructed smoke screen. “Elise, do you have a point to all of this?”

The silkiness of her voice changed. It hardened. “Well, okay, I guess that I do, and it’s this—if you try to take advantage of Cole in any way with this helpless victim routine, I promise you that I will gut you like a fish.” She then had the nerve to bat her eyelashes as if she’d just invited Jade to church.

She was about to say something else, but Jade stopped her from talking before she could make an even bigger fool of herself. “Okay, Elise. I should have stopped you earlier. I know who you are and what you are to Cole. I’m not interested in anything else save for getting myself together so I can move out. You obviously don’t trust him, or what I, myself, have heard him tell you about the nature of our relationship. So, you can drop the let’s be friends routine. After this conversation, I can’t even say that I’m not even remotely interested in forming any kind of anything with you.”

Elise shrugged. “That’s too bad. Well, I can appreciate your honesty. So, let me just say what I came here to say.”

“Wow. You mean to