AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Most likely, I’m just feeling Jace Allen’s hot gaze from across the room and allowing my ill-will toward him to muddy my good time. It’s been awhile since I dragged the firefighter to the cemetery for a mediocre midnight romp, and I wish he’d stop staring like he wants a repeat.
“It still feels so weird to me that one of us has a legitimate grown-up job,” Carter says, sucking on a lime wedge after downing a tequila shot. She spits out the rind, pinching her blue eyes closed and popping them back open. My official best friend since grade school, she’s the only one to ever be able to keep up with my drunken episodes, often joining me in my stupors.
Selma, the responsible daughter of Egyptian immigrants, sips on a club soda, vigilant about her surroundings. She never relinquishes complete control, afraid her parents might find out and cut her off financially. It’s a wonder she agreed to come out tonight at all.
She runs her fingers over her hijab, somehow avoiding getting her many rings caught in the fabric. “Are any of us surprised that I was the first, though?”
Carter snorts, reaching for another shot off the table we’re seated at. “Were we surprised Ms. Stick-up-her-ass graduated with a boring degree? Definitely not.”
Avery and I share a look, shifting in our side of the wraparound booth. I adjust the front of my strapless minidress, a sparkly sequined number I dug out of Carter’s closet, and down the remainder of my amaretto sour. We’ve been here an hour, and those two have been fighting nonstop.
“It’s not my fault you guys aren’t striving for success.” Selma shrugs. “If not moving up in the world is fine with you, then you’ve already achieved everything you set out to do, right?”
“You’re gonna be anaccountant,” Carter snaps, rolling her eyes. “You didn’t discover the cure for cancer or anything, bitch. Besides, college isn’t for everyone.”
College was never even on the horizon for Carter; the Mackenzies are as esteemed as the Harrisons once were, with her father being a renowned pediatric surgeon in Portland and her older brother Caden attending law school in New York. Her mother died when she was an infant, and when the others focused on careers and education as a way to combat the grief, she dove into art.
She sells her abstract paintings at galleries throughout the state of Maine, making a decent living, but her father—and Selma, for that matter—refuses to acknowledge it as a profession.
Avery, on the other hand, developed a pain pill addiction her sophomore year at Bates, left for a stint in rehab, and is playing catch-up at Stonemore Community. “Jules was pretty close, we have to admit.” She bumps my shoulder with hers, hazel eyes smiling under the poor bar lighting. Her skin sticks to mine as she makes contact, the humidity of the packed floor starting to take its toll on our presence, and it makes me squirm. “Why’d you drop out, again?”
“I didn’tdropout,” I say into my empty glass, glaring at the maraschino cherry I’ve left behind.I flunked.“I went on hiatus. Big difference.”
“When are you going back?” Selma lifts a brow.
“Whenever I feel like it.” I stab the cherry with my straw, watching its insides turn out, and glare at my friends. “Did we come here to celebrate or talk about my mediocrity?”
“For some reason, it always seems to come up.” Avery shrugs, pushing dark brown hair from her bronzed shoulder.
“Because you’re always bringing it up,” I mutter, scanning the crowd pulsing around us, looking for a distraction. I find it in the burly blond across the room, a Stonemore Fire Marshall shirt clinging to his defined torso, throwing darts with a couple buddies. Reaching into my dress, I fix my cleavage and smack my lips together.
“Are you about to ditch us to go have club sex?” Carter frowns, twisting in her seat to glare at Jace across the room. “You do this every time, Jules.”
“You’re starting to sound a lot like my sister.”
“I don’t know if I should be insulted or not.”
Grinning as they collectively roll their eyes, I push out of the sticky booth; giving my phone a quick once-over, ensuring I’ve not gotten any worried messages from Caroline or Elia, I stuff the device into the built-in bra of my slutty dress and give my friends the finger, ditching them to shove my way through the crowd.
I love them, but holy shit, I’m starting to remember why we don’t all hang out together anymore. As adults, we’ve begun succumbing to societal demands of how we should be spending our time, either rejecting the standards or embracing it, and it’s making the whole of us aggressive.
As if we’re each other’s competition, and not there for moral support.
In any case, I don’t feel like rehashing the details of why I went on a leave of absence for school—especially considering my sister thinks I’ve started back up again, two classes at a time.
She doesn’t know that I withdrew midway through my last semester, overwhelmed by the atrocity my life had become and the failing grades I’d accumulated, and have yet to return.
Not that I don’twantto go back, I just haven’t decided where I want to go, or if I really want to commit to marine biology. It intrigued me as a kid, still does, but the desire to pursue it is lacking lately.
And therein lies my problem. The desire to do anything, really, is nowhere to be found.
Making my way over to Jace, I sidle up to him as he cocks his arm, sliding my fingers just above the waistband of his light-wash jeans. “Juliet.” A wide grin splits his puffy lips, and he turns his chin down, throwing the dart without even looking at the board.
His blue-green eyes sparkle as he stares at me, and a low simmer starts somewhere in my abdomen, burning and churning like an unwatched pot. “Jace,” I purr, stroking his bicep and fluttering my eyelashes. “Fancy meeting you here. No fires to put out tonight?”
“I’m off duty.” The flames dancing in his gaze tell me that while he might not be putting any out, he’s not opposed to starting some. Somehow, even though I can seehimwatching me, see it happening, the demon strapped to me says someone else is waiting. Hunting. “This is the only place near my house that serves on Sundays and isn’t ensconced in criminal activity.”
Like Crimson, Elia’s bar. Jace is too nice to point it out to me, but the unspoken implication hangs in the air between us.
