She’s just about to ask Nick if he likes working there when she spies Will and Charlie out on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant, Ranger pulling happily at his leash. Charlie spots them at the same time, his handsome face breaking open into agrin at the sight of her sister. “Hey, June,” he calls, trotting over, seemingly oblivious to the stares from other tables, the way people reach for their phones. Will trails behind him, an expression on his face like he’s being made to walk a plank with a sword at his back.
“William,” she says, taking a sip of her cocktail.
“Elisabetta.” She’s surprised to hear him use her full name. It sends a weird little shiver through her, though she couldn’t say exactly why. She thinks of his thumbs ghosting over her hip bones. She thinks of his lips grazing over her throat. She smiles—she can’t help it—but to her small surprise Will doesn’t smile back; in fact, he’s barely looking at her at all, staring instead across the table at Nick, whose own expression is suddenly a little bit seasick. Lilly has no idea why they’d know each other—Will also does not strike her as a regular at a dive bar in DTLA—but they certainly seem to. Lilly files the question away in her pocket to consider at a later date.
In the meantime she takes Will’s arm, tugging him over to the far side of the patio. “Look,” she says quietly, “about the other night at Charlie’s.”
But Will only looks at her blankly. “We got it out of our systems, didn’t we?” he asks. “Just like you said?”
Lilly blinks. “I mean, sure,” she says, trying not to feel stung. It’s not like she was about to suggest they shack up for the weekend in Malibu; still, she’d be lying if she said she’d been expecting to be brushed off quite so hard. “I guess we did.”
“Okay,” he says, nodding distractedly. It still feels like she’s only got a sliver of his attention, that he’s looking at something or someone over her shoulder. “So, I guess that’s all there is to talk about, then.”
“Um, yup,” Lilly agrees crisply. Her whole body feels like it’s on fire. “I guess so.”
She follows him back to the table, ignoring June’s quizzical expression; Will and Charlie take off not long after, Charlie waving gamely at the paparazzi who’ve materialized outside. Lilly asks their waiter for the check, praying that Colin will pick it up and feeling both miserable and furious without quite knowing why or in which direction. She wants to punch someone in the face and go to bed. She can’t believe she’d actually started to like him, Will Darcy with his boring hair and neutral wardrobe. She can’t believe she let herself be charmed.
“So what’s the verdict?” Nick asks as they’re leaving, and for a moment Lilly honestly hasn’t the faintest idea what he’s talking about. It must be obvious, too, because he grins. “About drinks later. You guys going to come hang out with me tonight?”
“Oh!” She looks in the direction Will and Charlie took off in. She looks back at Nick’s open, curious face. “Tonight,” she says with a grin. “We’ll see.”
***
Nick’s bar is in fact an actual dive, all warped linoleum floors and fraying leather booths and a neon Budweiser sign glowing like a beacon in the tiny front window. The smell of mildew hangs faintly, though certainly not imperceptibly, in the air. Lilly spent the better part of an hour after dinner trying to decide on an outfit before finally settling on ripped jeans and a tank top Kit designed, sheer and mostly backless; at the very last minute she added a pair of sky-high heels—you can take the girl out of Calabasas, et cetera—the soles of which are now sticking ever so slightly to the tile.
Still, the whole scene is significantly less grim than she expected it to be when she bullied her sisters into coming with her: Kit and Olivia are playing the naked photo hunt game in the corner. Mari is posted up at the pool table, where by all appearances she’s taking Colin for everything he’s worth. And Junie is perched on a stool at the corner of the bar, sipping a bottle of Amstel Light and, judging by the small, secret smile on her face, texting with Charlie. Nobody in here seems to give a shit about them one way or the other, and if Lilly has never quite been able to decide whether she wants that kind of anonymity or she doesn’t, for tonight at the very least it’s nice to just be herself.
She sits back on her barstool, nursing a vodka and water as Nick dumps a five-gallon bucket of ice into the cooler. She’d be lying if she said she was completely uninterested—his shaggy hair and the dimple in his chin and his plaid shirt rolled to his elbows, his scarred-up, capable-looking hands. He did an actual double take when they all strolled through the door earlier tonight, then threw his head back and laughed a shocked, booming laugh, visibly delighted at the sight of them. “I underestimated you, clearly,” he told her when she bellied up to the bar, shaking his head in bashful amusement. “I won’t make that mistake again.”
Lilly raised an eyebrow, sliding onto a stool and nodding at the dusty bottle of Ketel behind him. “See that you don’t,” she said primly, then grinned.
Now it’s an hour later and she’s pleasantly buzzed, her whole body warm and loose and humming. She watches as Nick opens a couple of Heinekens for a pair of grizzled guys in Dodgers caps down at the end of the bar, then pours two shots of Jameson and sets one down in front of her. “What’s this?” Lilly asks, lips quirking in a smile.
“Just, you know.” Nick winks at her. “Token of my esteem.”
Lilly nods seriously, running her thumb around the edge of the glass. “That your love language?”
“Cheap alcohol?” Nick shoots back. “Absolutely.”
“How long have you been a bartender?”
“Since before I was old enough to drink,” he confesses. “My uncle owned a couple of Irish pubs in New Haven back when I was growing up. I used to stock the coolers and sneak shots of Fireball next to the dumpsters in the alley with my cousins.”
“Charming.”
“Well.” He grins. “We can’t all be as terminally fancy as your buddy Will Darcy.”
Lilly feels herself perk up like a prairie dog at the Los Angeles Zoo, holding up one finger to stop him. “A,” she says immediately, “he’s not my buddy. And B, can I ask you something? What the fuck was going on with you guys at brunch today?”
Nick makes a face at that, lets out a sheepish sigh. “You noticed that, huh?”
Lilly laughs. “The two of you grilling each other like a pair of prize golden doodles about to go at it over a Milk-Bone?” she asks. “You were not what I would call subtle, no.”
Nick clutches his heart in mock outrage. “Is that the vibe I give off to you?” he asks, leaning over so his elbows rest on the bar and his head is tipped close to hers. He smells like beer and drugstore aftershave, piney and sharp. “Golden doodle?”
Lilly smiles sweetly. “Prizegolden doodle,” she corrects him.
Nick smirks, straightening up again. “We knew each other back in New York, a little. We were... also not buddies.”
