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He stares me down for a minute. “Okay, buddy. What’s going on?”
“Huh?”
“You’ve been here for over an hour, only had one beer, and you’ve been turning down drinks from smokeshow ladies all night. You got a girlfriend and you’re too chickenshit to say it?”
“I don’t.”
“You trying to con some chick into dating you? Playing hard to get?” His eyes are so huge it’s almost comical.
“No,” I say.
Jeff snaps his fingers. “Ah-ha! You took too long to answer. Who is she?”
“No one. Look, I’m just trying to get my train back on its tracks after years of misdeeds.” I flash him a wink. “They were entertaining years, but they’re over now.”
“Keep telling yourself that, Mack.” He turns to fetch someone another drink.
Not even five minutes later, he’s back.
“Okay, bud. Last chance. This third girl looks like a fallen angel, and she has you pegged for a beer drinker.” He holds up a dark Trappist Belgian beer. My favorite. “It’s not what you’re drinking tonight, but she pinned you down, so I had to humor her.”
Damn. I never realized women could be just as relentless as men.
Even though I say nothing, he scans the bar so he can point her out. “Hmm. She was right over there, but I don’t see her now.”
Before I can blink, an all-too familiar set of curves and medusa eyes slides onto the barstool beside me.
“Oh, Nicholas. It’s so nice to see you again.”
“You know her, I see. I’ll leave you two kids alone.” Jeff walks away whistling, leaving the Belgian beer in his wake.
I face Carmen with my harshest dagger eyes.
“What the fuck do you want? Why are you even here? Shouldn’t you be in Hollywood?”
“You forget, I still own a condo here. This is home, Nick. I grew up here with you.” She surveys the room. “Nice hangout. I had no idea you were still being stupid, hanging around bars, drinking too much, doing stupid shit.”
“I’m on my second drink. Root beer—and not the hard kind. Plus, some horrible woman wasted a Trappist beer on me,” I say, taking a defiant pull of my root beer.
She purses her lips. “Hmm. Is she horribly pretty?”
“If you’re into the Hollywood type,” I snap, making my preferences clear.
It doesn’t stop her from asking, “Are you?”
I glare at her. My tastes have changed. Apparently, my appetite craves short Midwestern girls with mahogany-brown hair and soft blue eyes begging to be claimed.
Just remembering the last time I bedded Carmen—what little I can remember through the drunken haze then—triggers my gag reflex.
“Not interested. Let’s cut to the chase. What do you want? It’s been over for a long time, and I think you know it. I also hope you know I’m not playing games—especially if you dripped anything to Roland Birdshit and his merry band of liars.”
“I didn’t mean to say anything,” she says with a sigh. “After our last meeting I...I was upset. You know how slimy Mr. Osprey can be, how good he is at his good cop-bad cop thing. He’s not hard on the eyes, either. I just started talking.”
Of fucking course you did.
She winces sheepishly. My eyes drill through her.
“I slipped up, Nick. I just—I hoped it would bring you to your senses. Or at least make you talk things out with me, which seems to have worked. You’re talking to me for the first time in ages—”
“You slung champagne at me and slapped me across the face. You almost sent the fucking tabloid hounds after an innocent woman,” I snarl, slamming my glass down hard enough to get a few looks from bystanders.
“Because you were with another woman! Duh. Who was the slut, anyway?” Carmen hisses.
I form a fist so tight my knuckles go white.
“Watch your forked tongue. She’s not what you think—she’s no one to you—and we broke up a long damn time ago. There was no reason she shouldn’t have been there, and even less for you to flip your shit and cause me a public spectacle that lasted for months.”
I stand up.
Christ. I need to get the hell out of here before I give Carmen another chance to make us both Internet famous.
She grabs my arm, this desperate smear of confusion on her face.
“Wait!”
I stare right through her.
“We never had these problems before. Remember how easy it was? We knew each other, Nick. We grew up together.” A wicked smile slides across her face like the serpent inviting me to remember Eden. “All those times on your grandparents’ yacht? No way do I believe you’d forget. We could still be like that.” Her voice goes sultry. “So close. So real. Just the two of us together, against the world, against all the people who don’t understand us...we’d be unstoppable.”
There.
Now we’ve gotten to the gist of it. She’s never given up her twisted power couple fantasies, and she wants to use a long torched bridge to a bygone childhood to reel me in.
