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“Antonio!” Cal’s voice halted my progression and I turned back with a smile.
“Hey man, what’s up?”
Cal sighed and shook his head. “It’s already been a long day. Tell me you don’t have plans tonight. I need a drink or five, and a night with the guys.”
“Hell yes,” I growled, unaware of just how badly that’s what I needed too.
Cal’s expression brightened. “Perfect. Nine o’clock work for you?”
“That’ll give me enough time to spend a few hours with Rosie and put her to bed. See you then.” A night out with the guys was just what I needed to get over my infatuation with sweet Augusta.
Yeah, it was just what I needed.
At least that’s what I thought until I showed up at The Outpost to meet Cal and Casey. “What are you two gossiping about?” I swear there was something about being in a relationship that turned even the most stoic of men into chatty, gossiping old ladies.
Casey flashed a wide smile and patted the chair between him and Cal. “You, actually. Have a seat, there’s a pitcher on the way.”
I took the seat and stared at my friends. We’d all gone to school together from elementary school until graduation. We had all left to pursue our dreams as well, yet somehow, each of us ended up back in Jackson’s Ridge. Sitting around The Outpost as if we had never left.
“What’s so interesting about me?”
Cal laughed. “All the time you’ve been spending with Gus, for starters. Tongues are wagging, my friend.”
I shook my head and laughed. “Yeah, your tongue is wagging. Are you lobbying for the biggest gossip in town award?”
“That’s a low blow,” Casey offered with a laugh.
“I never say no to an award,” Cal joked. “But I’m curious. You’ve been spending a lot of time with Gus lately. Are you seeing each other officially?”
I shrugged off the question with a vague answer. “I wouldn’t say that, you know how I feel about labels.”
Casey let out a loud bark of laughter. “You didn’t just say that, did you?”
“Damn right I did.”
Cal sighed. “My poor, ridiculous, fool of a best friend. You can’t keep a woman like Gus by stringing her along. She’s independent, knows her worth and won’t put up with your crap.”
“I’m not asking her to.” Augusta didn’t appear to have a problem with our current, label-less arrangement, and I had no plans to change it. “We’ll keep hanging out for as long as it suits both of us.”
“So you do like her?” Casey asked with a knowing smirk. “Megan said there were serious sparks between you two, but she’s a romantic so you can never be sure what she actually saw.”
There were definitely sparks. More than sparks. When me and Augusta were together, it was always the pre-cursor to an inferno, hot and bright and seemingly never-ending. “I’ll just say that I like spending time with her. She’s beautiful and smart. She’s cool.”
“Cool? What are we, sixteen?” Casey shook his head and helped the waitress with the glasses when she finally got around to bringing our beer to the table.
“Easy to be so smug when you met your wife in the third grade.” For as long as I could remember it was always Casey and Megan, Megan and Casey, joined at the hip. “What do you know about dating?”
“I know that we’re too old for your games. You like Augusta, if you didn’t, you wouldn’t have brought flowers to the hospital today.”
“You did?” Cal’s eyes went wide with shock and I groaned.
“I did.” And thanks to Melanie, the whole damn town knew about it.
“So you definitely like her,” Cal insisted. “Maybe more than like her if I had to guess.”
“Don’t guess, Cal. In fact, don’t do anything. Me and Augusta are having fun. Trust me, she knows the score.”
I hoped she did, because I wasn’t even sure if I knew the score anymore.
Gus
“Me and Augusta are having fun. Trust me, she knows the score.”
I shouldn’t have been eavesdropping, I knew that but I couldn’t resist the opportunity to hear what Antonio really thought of me. In my silly little mind, I was sure he would tell his friends that I was an unexpected treat, a nice girl, a sexy woman, or even an adventurous lover. Any of those, no matter how vulgar, would have been preferable to she knows the score.
What was the score, and who was keeping this score?
More importantly, what was the game that we were playing? Because I had no damn idea.
A game.
Just as I suspected, it was all a game to him. I was, as I always suspected, a way to pass the time. To alleviate the boredom of small town life for a man used to the fast pace of big city living.
I knew it. I absolutely knew it, and I let myself get caught up in his words of pleasure and passion. I was angry. Hell yeah, I was angry. At Antonio, sure, but I was really angry at myself. I knew exactly who Antonio was from the outset, a sexy bad boy who just so happened to be a loving single father. I let myself believe that he was someone else because he was good to his daughter and his sister.
