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Her eyes lit up. “You’re the best fake boyfriend ever.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN – LAUREN
“One lap dance and I’ll never bother you again.”
At this point, it was actually a good deal.
I looked at Mason’s Great Uncle Charlie and shook my head. “I tried to give a lap dance once. I fell face-first into a toilet.”
Life lesson learned: don’t ever lap dance in a bathroom when the floor is wet. Or when you’ve been drinking. Or at all.
“All right, how about—”
“How about you leave the poor girl alone, Charles?” Pru swept in with a dry tone and a gin and tonic in her hand. “She doesn’t want your sexual favors. She’s not going to dance like a puppet for you. Let her drink her wine and judge people with me.”
Before he could say a word, Pru grabbed my arm, barely leaving me enough time to pull my clutch against my body and scoop up my wine glass.
Thank God.
I thought I was never getting out of there.
“I wish I could say he was senile,” Pru said. “But my brother has always been a dreadful pervert.”
Of course. With a personality like that, there was no way it could be anything else.
Pru lead me over to a table that was slightly out of the way and insisted I sit down. I did. I didn’t want to upset her—not only was she my only true ally here, but I had no desire to be at the end of her sharp tongue, thank you very much.
“All right, if you’re gonna survive this shitshow, here’s what you need to know.” She put her gin and tonic that, on reflection was probably just gin, down on the table between us. “Avoid Charlie, but you know that already. Alfie, he’s the guy in the red fedora, avoid him, too. He likes to pull unsuspecting women into Cha Cha Slide battles.”
“Do I want to know what that is?”
“No.” Pru sipped her drink. “Now, Elsie is proficient at the Macarena, and while she’s fun to drink with, do not let her get you drawn into vodka shots.”
I nodded.
“And Shirley—she’s the bleach blonde tart with the leopard print shoes talking to Nadia—is a slut for some Fireball. Don’t be there when she gets control of the bar. It won’t end well for her.”
“Right,” I said slowly. “So I should hide in the corner and hope nobody notices me.”
“That’s about right.” Kirsty slid into the chair between us. “What up, Aunt Pru? Pissed anyone off yet?”
“Only your father, but that’s par the course.” Pru was completely unbothered by it. “What are you doing here? Don’t you have a date?”
“I did, but he sent me dick pics, and they weren’t that impressive, so I bailed.”
“Ah.” Pru nodded as if she understood.
Hell, maybe she did.
“How’s Mason?” Kirsty nudged my shoulder.
I side-eyed her. “He looks fine to me.”
And he did. Fi-i-ine. He was at the bar with his buddy, Trevor, who I’d met at the reunion. Apparently, their families were close friends, and that was why he was here tonight.
“Mhmm. Just fine?”
“We’ve already spoken about this,” I reminded her. “I’m here because you made me be. You’re responsible for this.”
I wasn’t in the mood for this tonight. I was here, being nice, being the socially acceptable good girlfriend, despite the bad mood that bubbled underneath it all.
I wasn’t over my mom’s scolding. She’d gotten under my skin with her hypocritical criticism of me, but that was nothing new. It was the thing I’d grown up with, and Imogen had, too, to an extent.
This time, she’d really pissed me off, and I couldn’t shake the frustration no matter how hard I tried. After all, I’d been the one who’d been there the day after Imogen had given birth. I’d cooked her meals and bought her beaver-dam-sized sanitary towels. I spoke to her every day, and for my mother to drag me down the way she had really made me mad.
And I hated that Mason hugging me had taken the edge off.
Seriously.
What was he? A human vodka shot?
Now I was here, at his grandpa Eddie’s birthday party, with his family, pretending like I was okay, while he stood at the bar with Trevor and watched me with a stupid little smile on his face?
All I could think of was his lips on mine for the few fleeting seconds they’d been there. It was a frustrating balm to my annoyance. The thought of kissing him was way more soothing than it had any right to be.
The idea of Mason running his fingers through my hair while his lips moved across mine, and I ran my hands over his shoulders and arms as our bodies pressed closer together…
Jesus, I was getting a complex with this man.
Complex feelings.
Kirsty grinned. “You’re doing a great job at convincing everyone else you’re the real thing.”
I sipped my wine. “It’s not hard. Nobody is paying attention to either of us.”
