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“Your excuses are highly convenient.”
“London.”
She wrapped her arm around my shoulders. “He likes you,” she said into my ear. “He can barely take his eyes off you, and you keep looking back at him. Just… don’t be so quick to shut everything down, okay?”
“He’s not looking at me. I’m not looking at him.”
“If you’re not looking at him, how do you know he’s not looking at you?”
I opened my mouth to reply, but we were interrupted by the bartender, and…
Well, she was right, wasn’t she?
I wouldn’t know where he was looking if I wasn’t looking at him.
I mean, I was. Looking at him. And I knew he was looking at me. But where else would we look, right? He didn’t really know anyone, and I was the only other single person at the table.
Damn it.
I tacked my order onto London’s, and we paid separately. We both headed back to the table where Tori was arriving with another tray of shots she’d obviously gotten at the other end of the bar.
“Shots!” she shouted happily to us.
I shook my head.
“Yes!” she said emphatically, putting the tray down on the end of the table.
I was still shaking my head when I looked up and Maverick was gone. “Where’s Maverick?”
Saylor side-eyed me as I sat down and nodded behind me. I set our drinks down and turned my head to look over my shoulder.
He was talking to another woman.
Tall, slim, beautiful.
Why were other women always taller, slimmer, and more beautiful than you?
Ugh.
They shared a laugh, and stomach plummeted right through the floor to somewhere beneath the Earth’s crust.
My stomach had no business dropping like that.
It had no business dropping at all.
We were friends.
That was it.
Nothing more.
He was at liberty to talk to whoever he liked.
“Oh,” I said simply, turning back around to join the table.
Kinsley put the shot in front of me with a smile that said she’d seen too much. “Change your mind?” she asked softly.
“I’m fine.” I picked up my glass of gin and sipped from that instead, looking anywhere but at her.
Unfortunately, the gaze I caught belonged to my brother.
Sure. Ten other people at the table and it was his eyes I met.
The look in them was indescribable, but when they flickered away to something behind me, a hard glint formed there.
Kinsley kicked him under the table, catching my foot on the way. “Stop it,” she said firmly.
“I’m fine,” I said, albeit a little too loudly.
Everyone at the table looked at me.
Oh, fuck it.
I grabbed the shot and tossed it back.
Tori whooped.
I was going to regret the shit out of that tomorrow morning.
I didn’t know if anyone else knew he was talking to someone else, but I wasn’t sure it mattered. I was unhappier about it than I should have been. I was the one determined to pigeonhole him into being my friend, so he was free to talk to whoever he wanted.
If it weren’t for business, I’d have never seen him again anyway.
Right?
Right.
I looked down into my glass. I was going to finish this drink and go home before Tori took my one shot as an invitation for anything more and I had to see Maverick get even closer with Miss World over there.
Then tomorrow I would wake up, unbothered, back to normal.
We’d already agreed that he wouldn’t be at the bakery on a weekend because it was too expensive. All I wanted to do was immerse myself in my baking and hopefully try and nail down his first recipe so I could get him out of my hair.
With any luck, I’d be able to make a start on the second one, too.
“Hey.” Holley nudged me.
“He’s coming back,” Saylor mouthed.
Even Dylan and Oli were eying me speculatively at this point.
I smiled. “Who’s doing karaoke first, then?”
***
My friends were the worst influences in the world.
As I’d suspected, Tori had managed to get another two shots in me—I had no idea how that happened—and Maverick’s one trip to the bathroom had lasted four times longer than any human being needed to be in a public bathroom.
Oh, wait.
That was how the shots happened.
Sometimes, it was a good thing to have friends who knew you better than you knew yourself, even if the end result was you staying at a bar way longer than you intended to with way too much alcohol inside you.
Felicity was going to kill me.
On the bright side, the huge burger I’d eaten before we’d started drinking had done its job and lined my stomach. I was nowhere near as drunk as I should have been, and for that, I was very grateful.
It meant the headache would shift quickly.
Unfortunately, that wasn’t going to happen unless I left now and went to bed.
“I’m going,” I said, wrapping my hand around Holley’s arm. “It’s past eleven and I have to be up way too soon to stay any longer.”
