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“I thought we agreed that your ex is a douchecanoe.”
“We did. And I’m past it.” Mostly. Past him, definitely. Past how he’d made her feel about herself, not so much.
Aubry snorted and opened the door. “Right. You’re so past it that you’ve dragged us out to be maybe killed, maybe sacrificed to hang out with people who are still clinging desperately to their high school glory days.” She looked around, her brows drawn together. “Because, seriously, who goes to bonfires when there’s a perfectly adequate bar in town? Two, in fact.”
“The cool kids?” That was always who’d been out at bonfires when she was in school. She’d avoided the whole scene, though, despite Grant’s protests. They came out here as an excuse to drink without the town sheriff bothering them, and that had never been Jules’s thing. She barely drank the hard stuff now, let alone when she was sixteen. And trying to navigate the roads back to town while buzzed? No, thanks.
That may or may not have also contributed to the whole Jules-is-boring thing.
Aubry scrunched her nose. “Ten to one, someone’s wearing a decade-old letterman’s jacket and talking about that one football game where he threw the winning pass.”
Ten to one it’s Grant himself.
Jules looped her arm through her best friend’s. “An hour. After that, we can go back to town, grab a bottle of wine, and play that horribly violent game that you love so much.”
“Deal.” Aubry grinned. “And don’t act so put-upon. You love it as much as I do—you just suck at it.”
“Truth.” She pulled them to a stop at the edge of the clearing. There were trucks parked in here around the fire, too, their tailgates down and people situated around them, chatting and drinking and a few women even dancing. It looked like something straight out of a country music video. She picked out a dozen people she’d gone to high school with, the ones who’d stayed behind and never wanted to leave, and another dozen who had left with stars in their eyes but had filtered back into town in the years since graduation.
“Jules? Jules Rodriguez?”
She froze. There was no mistaking Grant’s deep voice. Too soon. I’m not ready. But since the only other option was dropping Aubry’s arm and fleeing into the night, she turned around with a smile pasted on her face. And there he was, standing a few feet away, his dark hair shorter than she remembered. No freshman fifteen there. Damn it. He looked like he’d been spending quite a bit of time in the gym, in fact.
Bet he spends the whole time he’s working out checking himself out in the mirror.
The snarky thought didn’t make her feel any better. There was nothing worse than being caught flat-footed by the ex who left her in the dust, only to find out that he hadn’t developed some unfortunate skin problem in the intervening years.
“Grant.”
He moved closer. “Damn, you’re a sight for sore eyes. You look good, Jules.”
“Oh, you know, Pilates,” she answered breezily, already searching the crowd around them for an escape. She cleared her throat. “So, uh, how are things?”
“Great. Better than great. I just graduated from Duke. Top of my class.” He gave a smile that was all teeth, like a politician. “I have a position waiting for me in my father’s firm here in town.”
“Imagine that.” She couldn’t even bring herself to pretend to be surprised. Grant always had been fond of riding his daddy’s coattails. For all that he was determined to live the big life off in Anywhere but Devil’s Falls, he liked being a big fish in a little pond more.
“And you? I think I heard that you opened up some sort of cat café?” He laughed. “Can’t say that’s surprising.”
Beside her, Aubry went ramrod straight. It was only a matter of time before her friend went postal on his ass. Jules smiled, and though she wanted to holler at him something fierce, she managed to keep her tone even. She was not ashamed of Cups and Kittens. “It’s been a real hit with the locals.”
“I bet.” He looked her over, head to toe and back again. His appraising gaze made her skin crawl. “I hear you’re still single. You want to go get a drink sometime?”
Suddenly, Jules was a whole lot less worried about keeping Aubry back than she was about pressing her lips together to keep from laying into him. She looked around at the people circling the bonfire. A full half of them were watching this little drama play out.
Did he seriously just ask me out?
No. No, absolutely not. Nope. Never.
She had to do something, and fast. Jules wasn’t a particularly violent person, but she also wasn’t above hunting down Grant’s truck and slitting the tires.
And maybe scrawling something witty in the paint with her keys.
