“The guy in the black shirt. That’s my neighbor I was telling you about.”
“Ohhh! Does this mean I finally get to meet Hot Elliott?”
I slap my palm across her lips. “Quiet!” Yeah, it’s busy in here and there is almost a zero percent chance Elliott can hear her over the music and chatter, but it would be just my luck for him to find out that I have, in fact, referred to him as “Hot Elliott” on multiple occasions.
For that reason alone, I remain at the high-top table while Meg goes to order us drinks.
No men approach me while I wait, which is a relief.
I don’t have it in me to play nice tonight.
Tonight is for drinking and drowning and bitching about the terrible monsters that are the opposite sex.
“Men are the worst,” I moan into my glass of gin and tonic as the lime inside sways like a sad little boat all alone on the sea. That’s me. I’m a sad boat. All alone. Drifting nowhere.
Meg rests her chin on her elbow with a heavy sigh. “Agreed.”
“Why do we waste our time with them?”
“Don’t know.”
Neither do I. I tip my glass into my mouth and nearly drop the thing when the ice cubes avalanche into my face. “Do you know what else is the worst? Freaking ice.”
“Awe, no. I love ice. I’d never drink water if it weren’t for ice.”
That’s true. Maybe all ice isn’t bad. Maybe it’s just the ice in my glass.
A shadow passes over us and a man appears as if he heard us talking about how awful they all are and has made it his personal mission to prove us wrong. Unable to read the room, he props his elbow on the corner of our table. “Hey there.”
Meg shoves her hand toward the intruder’s smirking face. “No.”
“What—?”
“I said no.”
The man slinks off, but not before calling us bitches.
“Do you ever wish you could bite people?” Meg muses, spinning the ice cubes around her glass with the straw.
“Just ratbag.” I catch a glimpse of Elliott smiling across the bar at a woman with purple hair as he makes her a drink. “And maybe Hot Elliott.” For two totally different reasons.
Meg snorts.
“Not in a mean way,” I add for clarification. “More like a your-biceps-look-edible-let-me-nibble-on-them sort of way.”
“He does have edible biceps.”
“He does.” Should I tell him that? If someone thought my biceps were edible, I’d want to know. Might help my self-esteem. Not that Elliott seems to have any issues with his self-esteem. Look at all those women drooling over him.
Still, sometimes our outsides don’t match our insides and we’re more self-conscious than people think.
I slide off my stool and saunter across the sticky floor to the shiny bar, nudging my way between two women in super cute dresses. Meg clambers behind me, squeezing herself into the gap as well so we’re both squished together.
Elliott is too busy pouring a bunch of shots from one of those silver shaker things to notice us. I should get his attention. Say something suave and cool that’ll be the perfect segue into a conversation about his edible arm muscles.
“I know you!”
Totally freaking nailed it.
