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I nod my thanks to the blonde and sneak out back the way I came before I get stopped by anybody else.
So Bailey’s leaving with Cooper. It doesn’t matter. It shouldn’t matter.
It can’t matter. She’s my friend, and while I might tease her about her questionable taste in men, she makes her own decisions.
Hell, who are we kidding? As far as I can tell, with the obvious exception of my brother, Bailey and I have practically the same taste in men. And isn’t that just a bitch?
I’m sure I’ll laugh about it someday. In the meantime I have a job to do.
9
Cooper
Bailey points me to a dive bar a few blocks away from the arena. It doesn’t look like much from the outside, the open sign on the door flickering every now and then as though it could give out any moment. The crowd inside is low-key, and I don’t immediately recognize anybody from Sizzle. Taking it as a good sign, I follow Bailey when she chooses a booth in the back.
“Feels a little weird,” says Bailey. She waits until I sit down to finish the thought. “A cooking show competition where nobody eats anything.”
“Speak for yourself,” I say, snagging a menu from the back of the table. “I had to taste half those damn smoothies before they got discarded.”
“Guess that’s what you get for being so popular,” teases Bailey. She gives me a grin that makes my heart hurt in my chest, looking so much like my 19-year-old lab partner that for a moment I’m transported back to the one night I had her alone.
I shake my head, coming back to the present.
“It won’t last,” I say. “It’s good for the competition, but my contract with Sizzle was only for the live competition, plus the final rounds next week.”
“Much to the dismay of your new fans,” says Bailey, eyeing the menu. “Pretty sure you found some new ones today, too.”
“Can’t hurt,” I say. “That’s the nature of the business. I need all the eyeballs I can get.” Weirdo. “I mean—”
“I know what you mean,” says Bailey, laughing. “How’d you get into the whole blogosphere thing, anyway? Though I hear you’re mostly doing videos now.”
“Same way as anybody else, I guess,” I say looking around for a server. “I started posting pictures of every meal I had that I liked, and after a while people started responding. It was easy to go from photos with captions to making videos. After a few months, I had companies emailing me about sponsorship.”
“Why do I suspect that’s not the ‘same as anybody else’ at all?” says Bailey, arching a brow.
I grin. “You may be right. You want a beer?”
“I’ll have whatever you’re having,” she says. I head up to order our drinks, leaving her to scour the menu.
The bar top is almost empty when I get up there, resting on my elbows on the edge as I wait for the bartender to come back from the kitchen. An attractive dark-haired man to my left clears his throat. Twice.
“Can I get you something?” he asks. I turn my head, bracing for confrontation, but the grin on the guy’s face is warm, bordering on flirtatious. I feel my own lips quirk but shake my head, turning down whatever he’s offering.
“Just waiting on a beer,” I say. If I’d come here alone, I might have taken a seat just to see what else he had in mind. The guy’s built, no two ways about it. I don’t usually go in for that much muscle but he’s good-looking too, almost pretty.
The image of another muscular man who is absolutely, positively not my type whatsoever comes to mind, but I ignore it because Bailey’s waiting for me, and if this turns into a second chance with her, I’m not blowing it. Not for pretty boy here at the bar and sure as hell not for some know-it-all Captain America knockoff.
“My bad, man,” says Pretty Boy, shifting in his chair and averting his eyes.
“Not a problem,” I say. “Any other day, maybe, but I’m here with a friend.”
“Yeah?” He grins at me again.
I grin back. “Yeah.”
The bartender comes back and takes our order, and I make my way back to Bailey with drinks in hand. Can’t say I expected to get hit on by another dude in a place like this, but I guess you never know.
“What was that all about?” Bailey asks.
