“This is so damn hard.”
“But won’t last forever. You just have to get through the tough days.”
“It’s feeling like wine Wednesday.” I’d planned on using the night off at the pharmacy to clean my jewelry and makeup drawers, get my apartment organized. But I felt like doing that now about as much as I felt like going back into the gym to finish my workout.
“There’s a couple checking in today. We’re slammed at the inn. But text Jules a time and a place, she was talking about going out tonight too.”
“Will do,” I said, wondering for the millionth time what I would do without my friends.
“Oh, and also…”
I waited for my friend’s words of wisdom.
“Makis is a giant asshole. So there’s that.”
I laughed. “True statement. See you later.”
Hanging up, I got a look at my pale, tear-stained face. Winter sucked. Makis sucked. Men in general? Suck. Suck. Suck. I was not getting myself into this situationeveragain. The whole “it’s better to have loved and lost than never loved before” was bullshit.
I was done with love.
Forever.
2
PARKER
“There he is, the man of the hour.”
As usual, Beck stood behind the bar at O’Malley’s Pub, raising a hand to me as I walked through the surprisingly heavy Wednesday night crowd. Not surprising? That he was currently working a group of female tourists with his drink-making skills. His surfer good looks, slightly out of place in upstate New York, would charm every one of them. Question was, which did Beck have his eye on?
“Took you long enough,” Mason said. I sat in the empty seat beside him. “The brunette,” he whispered.
“Convenient of them,” I said of the women, “to differentiate themselves.”
One brunette. One blonde. One redhead.
“Speaking of brunettes,” I said as Beck poured my beer, “where’s Pia?”
Mason’s fiancée was usually not far behind him, and this “celebration” was her idea.
Not that I thought a celebration was needed. I constructed a footbridge pro bono for the town because it connected a residential area with a kids’ park, not for some award from the Cedar Falls Recreational Committee.
“Drinking wine with Delaney.”
“Couldn’t they drink wine here?” I asked as Beck pushed a beer toward me.
“Apparently not. She’s going through a bad breakup.”
“Who?” Beck asked. He hated not being part of a conversation.
“Nosy bastard. Go back to impressing your tourists.”
“Shhh,” he admonished me. “Don’t want her to hear and think I’m a player.”
Mason and I exchanged a glance, and we both burst into laughter. Neither of us needed to state the extremely obvious. Beck was the biggest player that either of us had ever met.
“Assholes,” he muttered as a guy at the end of the bar flagged him down for a drink.
