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Anna sighed and leaned against the bar beside Sally, her false smile in place, her heart aching as though it was wrapped in jagged cement.
“Was that Blaze I saw?” she asked, dropping her clutch purse on top of the bar and signaling Greg for a drink. He knew what she liked—vodka and cranberry, with a twist of lime.
Sally nodded, sipping her gin and soda through a tiny straw. “Yep, it was. And you should have seen his face when you kissed Trevor—my God that man looked about ready to tear Trevor’s arms off and beat him to death with them.”
Anna snorted and rolled her eyes before taking the drink Greg placed in front of her with a wink.
“Blaze doesn’t care who I kiss, it’s not like he hasn’t already kissed at least five women in the last five days—probably more if he’s engaged in a ménage,” Anna remarked flippantly, though the ache in her chest throbbed.
Chuckling, Sally placed her now empty tumbler on the bar top and fully turned to Anna, her eyes dancing. “Listen to you, ‘ménage’, ‘engaged’…you’re like the perfect mix of librarian and filthy slut.”
Bursting into laughter, Anna smacked Sally’s arm, thankful to her friend for helping to lighten the mood.
Sally laughed too, grinning, her moss green eyes bright. Either it was booze or wickedness that made Sally’s eyes glisten, Anna was convinced they were just two sides of the same Sallina coin.
“So, Trevor got the first kiss. Does that mean he’s gonna get the first thrust, too?” Sally asked, making Anna spit her first sip of vodka cranberry all over the bodice of her new dress.
Dabbing at it with tiny bar napkins, Anna glared at her friend. “No, he is not going to get the first thrust, you perv. And that kiss was about as exciting as watching paint dry. Or grass grow. Or folding laundry.”
For the gazillionth time in the last ten minutes, she wondered that the hell she’d done. She’d just given her first kiss away to a dude who wore shoes without socks and talked about his job as an actuary like it was Indiana Jones and the Last Tax Audit.
Sally had the grace to look guilty. “When I met him, I thought the steady, settled, regular guy would be a change from the flighty, careless, manwhore-ish guy you usually hang out with. Besides, it’s only your first date—ever. It’s not like we’re going to get this right right out of the gate.”
Anna shook her head, pinning Sally with hard eyes. “No more ‘we’ Sallina Alaina Mendez. If I am going to learn to be a normal, romantically active twenty-five-year-old, I have to learn to find my own dates.” She flicked her finger at Sally. “And your taste in men is terminally ill.”
Sally sniffed, faking affront, her eyes still dancing. “Whatever do you mean?”
“Dale from Advance Auto? You picked him up when you went in for windshield wiper fluid and then ditched him when he got grease spots in your bed.”
Sally shrugged. “They were new sheets.”
“What about the fact that you said he kissed like he was lapping a bowl of milk…from your face?”
Laughter rolled from her friend and Anna followed suit. Hell, it felt good to laugh, especially since she’d been tense from the moment she’d felt Blaze enter Happy Jack’s.
It didn’t take long for their laughter to die…along with Anna’s small moment of elation. Sensing her friend’s mood—as always—Sally wrapped an arm around Anna’s shoulders and planted a kiss on her temple.
“I know this is all hard, Anna-bae, but you should have done it a long time ago.”
“It” being disentangling herself from Blaze and starting to live her own life. In the beginning, back when she was drunk and contemplating what “cutting” Blaze off would entail, she’d been excited to finally live for herself, to finally know what it felt like to be shaken free of the weight of having a “friend” like Blaze…of unrequited love and all the pain that came with it. But now…now that she’d experienced the agony of not seeing him, of not hearing his voice, of not even sharing their normal back and forth over text, she was slowly and painfully realizing that Blaze was an even greater part of her than she’d ever imagined.
Cutting him off completely would be impossible. Yes, the man was a reprehensible asshole who’d taken advantage of her over the years, but he’d also been her one-time hero, her only friend for years, and now he was the only one who could make her feel…whole.
God, I am so damn pathetic, still pining away for a man who doesn’t even consider me an actual woman.
“I can see your brain spinning, Anna-bae,” Sally interjected, wrenching Anna from her downward spiraling thoughts. “You need to stop thinking so much and start feeling—start taking some risks.”
Anna rolled her eyes playfully. “You mean like you and Advance Auto guy?”
Sally snorted, dismissing Anna’s words with a wave of a thinly fingered, manicured hand. “I know you’re still texting with Blaze, and I know it’s killing you to cut yourself off cold turkey from seeing him or talking to him. I know that little Anna Cass from Jackson Key is having a heart attack because the high school jock she fell in love with turned out to be a turd. But…baby, you got to live for you, not him. Not anyone.”
“I know,” Anna replied, her shoulders drooping.
“I know you know, babes.” Sally squeezed Anna’s shoulders and then finished off her drink.
Anna sighed. “I am just so confused and hurt and sad and…and…definitely not up to dating quite yet,” she admitted. “That means no setting me up with that Xerox guy from your office. He was nice but….”
Sally nodded. “I get it. No more Trevors. We’ll circle back to the guy I was telling you about yesterday once you’re feeling up to dipping your toe back into the dating pond.”
