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“Nah, man.” He claps me on the shoulder, and I tense. “Celebrate the fact that you finally decided to go for what you really want. The woman and the book stuff.” He rubs his hands together and says, “Now, let’s go get a drink. It’s Friday night, you’re home when you should be out. Hell, when we all should be out.”
“Is anyone even here?”
He shrugs. “No idea. Enzo is probably working but I’ll text him to meet us when he’s off. This is going to be a good year, man. I can feel it.”
I smirk as he leaves the room and pull out my phone when a text comes through.
Wish me luck!
The text has an image of Jane attached to it, her hair is in a curled updo and her lips are painted red as she blows a kiss to the camera.
Maybe Derek is right, maybe I do need to celebrate the wins in life. Because that woman blowing a kiss at me in this photo is someone who I never saw coming, but she was mine. And I was going to enjoy that fact, public knowledge or not.
“Dude, I’m so drunk right now,” Derek slurs and gets too close to my face. Thankfully, I’m too drunk to care.
“We’re all drunk, dude,” Archer replies, circling his hand for another round to the bartender. The bartender is a beautiful woman who has been eyeing our friend group for hours now, more specifically, Archer. She was new to this bar we constantly frequented, which was why she wasn’t rolling her eyes like the other bartenders and waitresses were.
“Dude,” Derek says, patting the bar. “Thank you, man. I need another.”
“No, you don’t,” Garrett replies, the only semisober one in this bar.
The beauty of this city is if you want a date, you can run out to any bar on Market Street and find some willing, drunk single to party with.
This was what we did as a group often, but even though the woman I was pining for wanted to keep everything quiet, I was fully considering myself off the market.
So there were no eyes being made at anyone, no flirting or touching of any kind. I was a one woman at a time kind of dude and planned to keep it that way.
Preferably, a woman with hair like coffee and eyes that looked like melted dark chocolate.
Fuck. I wanted some chocolate.
“Look”—Derek taps my arm hard—“it’s your love.”
I turn without commenting on Derek’s phrasing and just as sure as I conjured her up, Jane Leads and a group of preppies walk into the bar.
I had explained to Derek in my very inebr-inebrat—inebriated state—there we go—that I had been sending Jane love poems for the last few weeks, and though we’d been out on a date and decided to investigate that more, she had asked me to be hush-hush.
“It’s Miss Hush,” Derek whispers in my ear, though his whisper is more of a low talk.
“Don’t call her that.” I shove him away and watch Jane as she walks to a table in the back, her group surrounding her from every angle. The group is the definition of overdressed for this establishment and my drunk mind slowly clears up. Her shimmering gold dress catches the lights and nearly blinds me, but when she looks over her shoulder and catches my eye, she freezes with a shocked look on her face.
I smirk at her, and to my utter fucking delight, she smiles right back.
Chapter Eighteen
“I’d live and die for the moments that we stole on begged and burrowed time.”
-Taylor Swift
Jane
The second I see Warren in the bar, my palms grow sweaty. I have no idea if it’s from seeing him and the potential “what-ifs” or if it’s from the fact that I’m in a bar with these people whom I’ve called friends for years, and the man who has made me realize that they’ve never truly been real friends at all.
Hanging out with Warren has made me feel like that about a lot of aspects of my life.
I stop myself from picking my pink-painted nails and try to focus on the conversation around me, I can feel the weight of the man’s gaze on the side of my face but if I look too long or too hard, people will start to notice.
Who cares?a voice that sounds a lot like mine whispers into my brain.
