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When Hicks sets Bailey back on her feet, he looks like somebody’s hit him over the head with a frying pan. Bailey reaches up to wipe away a hint of lipstick off his mouth, and why the hell that move goes straight to my dick, I have no idea. Surely it’s because I remember what kissing Bailey was like and I’m jealous.
Surely that’s it. It couldn’t be anything else.
4
Bailey
“Uh,” says Drew, uncharacteristically speechless. I spot a smudge of lipstick on his bottom lip and flush, reaching up to wipe it away.
“Well, that was entertaining,” drawls Cooper.
Somebody’s got to get this shitshow offstage. Honestly. I thought Drew was supposed to be the sane one in this relationship.
Not that it’s a relationship. Obviously. It’s a fake relationship with my real best friend.
Best remember that.
Drew and I kissed exactly one time before today, and that had been an accident. Too many tequila shots plus a kiss on the cheek gone wrong. He’d been mortified and I couldn’t stop laughing.
I’m not laughing now.
“Cooper,” I say, grabbing Drew’s hand and avoiding his gaze. “Come get a drink with us?”
When Cooper smiles, it’s full of innuendo.
“You sure about that, Ross?” he asks me. Coop had called me by my last name every day of the school year, right up until the minute he’d finally asked me out. “I thought three’s a crowd.”
“Not tonight,” I say. Cooper’s eyes shoot wide and Drew’s hand tightens around mine. “I mean… shit. You know what I mean.”
“Maybe Lawson would rather go check on his new friend Mila,” says Drew. He keeps the venom in his voice dialed back, but Cooper hears it anyway. I can almost see the chip on his shoulder get heavier every time Drew speaks. What the hell is it with these two?
I know they ran in majorly different social circles back in college, though they’d both been science majors of one flavor or another. Kind of odd they hadn’t met until recently, now that I think about it. But the school was huge even back then.
Still not thinking about that kiss. See? We’re going to be just fine.
“What’s that?” Drew asks as we approach the bar.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“You were muttering,” says Cooper, drawing up a stool on my right. “Something about science.”
My face is going to catch fire if I blush any harder. I focus on charming the bartender out of the largest glass of wine he can pour.
There’s a limit to just how crazy I let myself get. Like, there’s a little wild, then there’s maybe needing professional help. And, okay, maybe I’ve gotten a little too comfortable toeing the big, fat line between them lately.
Kissing Drew like that? That was certifiable. We have officially surpassed post-breakup-crazy and have entered padded cell territory.
Not that it wasn’t good. On the contrary, that memory is going straight into the spank bank, though I’d never in a million years have guessed one PG-rated kiss in a ballroom surrounded by Drew’s coworkers would ever have been hot enough to qualify.
Turns out I was wrong.
“I have to ask,” says Cooper, pitching the question just loud enough that Drew can hear him, too. “How did you two lovebirds meet?”
My first inclination is to tell Coop the truth, that I’m just posing as Drew’s girlfriend to get rid of that obnoxious woman Mila, and that Drew and I are really just friends.
Only friends. Tongue-kissing notwithstanding.
But Drew gets there first. “We’ve been friends a long time, right, Bailey?”
