Sweetest Revenge

Kamella Day Sweetest Revenge Copyright © 2023 by Kamella Day All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission. First edition This book was professionally typeset on Reedsy Find out more at reedsy.com Contents 1. Aaron’s Back 2. The Aftermath 3. Why Is He in My Home? 4. We Almost Kiss 5. The Morning After 6. What’s Going On with Dakota? 7. Aaron and Dakota Have a Date 8. Something Just Happened Between Aaron and Me 9. Aaron Comes Over Again 10. I Do Something Stupid 11. Our Dirty Deal 12. I Will Ruin Aaron Mathers 13. Forget Him 14. Aaron Saves Me 15. An Awkward Breakfast 16. We Can’t Control Ourselves 17. I Catch Dakota Red-handed 18. I Need To Leave 19. Aaron Is Waiting For Me 20. I Finally Tell The Truth 21. The Aftermath of Disaster 22. He’s Finally Mine 23. Are We Okay? 24. Dakota and I Talk About What Really Happened 25. A Special Visit From My Stepfather 26. I Break Him 27. Aaron Meets The Family 28. He Was In Love With Me This Whole Time? 29. The Beginning Of The End 30. I Fuck Up 31. Mother’s Advice 32. “Aaron is looking for you.” A New Beginning One Aaron’s Back “Okay, it’s getting a little sad,” I told Sal, giving up my ruse. It was a Friday at Sal’s Bar and Restaurant, and for the past fifteen minutes, I’d been trying to pretend that I wasn’t watching the soap opera unfolding at table five. It was a pretty slow shift, so the spectacle held my complete attention, especially since I hadn’t quite seen anything like it in a long time. “Do you think he’s going to speak to her this time?” I asked Sal, who was studiously ignoring me. “Fifty bucks says he doesn’t. As a matter of fact, how much you got?” Sal, my boss, gave me a sardonic glance before returning to his weekly plumbing magazine. I didn’t know what was so exciting about pipes. He should be like me, watching the live entertainment from the love triangle at table five. At least, I thought it was a love triangle. It was two men and a waitress. Man-number-one was striking up a conversation with the waitress, played by my best friend, Dakota. She was the best casting for the role; beautiful in a delicate sort of way. Kind. Approachable. A complete catch. Man-number-one certainly thought so. And then there was Man-number-two, who looked like he was seriously contemplating the benefits of internal combustion. He was not making eye contact with the female lead, nor was he engaging in any sort of conversation. He seemed quite preoccupied with his meal, yet somehow, oddly, you just knew he was utterly attuned to his surroundings, like if a bomb dropped at a moment’s notice, he’d be the first to act. But Petty Officer Aaron Mathers had always been like that. It was what made him such a fearsome Navy instructor and SEAL candidate. As I watched, Aaron took a hearty bite of his burger, chewing with absolute precision. He probably even calculated it in his head. Five bites to masticate. Two swallows to ingest. Twenty minutes to digest. I knew very little about Aaron Mathers, but the one thing I did know was that he was as regimented as they came. Always in control. The perfect soldier. So, one would think it would be amusing to see him so awkward around my best friend. But they would be wrong. Aaron Mathers was completely the wrong guy for Dakota. On paper, they looked good together. One dark, the other light. One extra-large, one petite. They could have been prom king and queen or a politician and his well-beloved wife. He would be the nice boy she brought home to her southern family, who would shake her father’s hand and kiss her mother’s cheek. Except Aaron Mathers wasn’t nice. Or maybe he was nice to people like Dakota, who didn’t so much as swear or shit talk. He was probably semi-decent to everyone who fit into his little box and played their roles to his liking. But to anyone who dared disappoint him? Like the slightly overweight recruit who tried his hardest but conked out on the tenth push-up? Or the asthmatic dude who couldn’t quite make the time? Or to me? The designated Navy slut who defied him at every turn? No. He was not nice to us at all. He had marked us as failures, and he’d made sure we all knew it. It might seem like I was handling this well; the fact that my mortal enemy was in my workplace and might harbor romantic feelings for my best friend. But the truth was, I’d had an uncomfortably itchy feeling in my stomach since I figured out what was going on. I didn’t blame Dakota; she had no idea how I felt about Aaron. I didn’t know how to explain my animosity for him to her, and I couldn’t exactly get him kicked out of the restaurant for no reason either. The only way to cope with the situation was humor. “On the other hand, he might do it,” I continued my commentary to no one in particular, since Sal had apparently tuned me out. “You want to know how I know? Because Mercury’s in retrograde today, so there could be a shift in the force.” Sal snorted. “You buy that stars bullshit?” he said in his thick Italian accent. “Hey, it’s not bullshit. Some very prominent scientists believed in astrology.” I wasn’t one of them, but I didn’t completely discount it either. People believed in worse things. “Fine,” was all Sal said before losing interest in