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I’m going to need another beer and maybe a shot of Jack.
CHAPTER7
VINCENT
The moment we sit down,the small table is swarmed with people. Men, women, okay, mostly women, are introducing themselves at a dizzying pace. Sarah, Monica, Tina, Brittany, and Manda all chirp their greetings.
“Biscuit, who is this delicious morsel you’ve brought us?” a blonde asks. She bends down close enough that her tit is brushing my ear. I move to the side, crowding Emma, who glares at me. She moves away as if I’ve got some communicable disease.
“Vincent, this is Tina. Tina, Vincent.”
“How about me?” coos another woman. She pushes Tina to the side and sticks her hand out, deciding not to wait on Frank. “I’m Brittany. Like Spears.” She bats her eyelashes. “I can sing like her too.”
“You cannot,” argues Tina. “She sings like a scarecrow. Screechy enough to scare the birds away.”
“That’s bullshit, and you know it. I was Cinderella and Belle in the school musicals,” argues Brittany. Her eyelashes are still moving at a rapid pace. I’m kind of worried for her. She might have a tic.
“You should get that checked out,” I say.
“Get what checked out?”
“Your eyesight,” inserts Emma. “You must have something in your eye. You keep blinking.”
“Are you serious, Emma Charles? I’m not blinking. I’m…” The woman trails off.
“I thought you might have something wrong with your eye, too,” I speak up. “Emma’s an EMT, so you should—"
“I know she’s an EMT,” the woman says crossly. “Come on Tina, let’s go talk to Blake. This guy isn’t worth the hassle. Emma has her hooks in him.”
“I do not,” Emma nearly shouts, but the gaggle of women move on anyway. “I don’t,” she repeats, her cheeks red and her eyes fiery. She scowls at me as if I was the one who suggested she was interested and not her friends. I’ve never seen anything prettier in my life. I want to capture her lips in mine and make those eyes spark with lust for me.
A sharp pain in my shin jerks me out of my fantasy. I send a frustrated look toward Frank, who just kicked me. “You call your girl lately? She’s going to be missing you,” he growls.
“Since I don’t have a girl, her loneliness is a figment of your imagination,” I reply sharply. I get that he wants me to stay away from his sister, but this seems to be going too far.
“I never thought you’d be the type of guy to ignore your woman’s existence just because there are other honey bees buzzing around.”
Time to fight fire with fire. “I never thought you’d invite a faithless son of a bitch to sleep under your mother’s roof.”
Frank clamps his mouth shut.
Melody and Emma exchange confused glances. “Does that all mean you don’t have a girl or that Biscuit has poor judgment?” Emma finally asks.
“It means your brother has got rocks for brains.” I lift Emma off her chair. “Let’s go dance. Melody can try to chisel some sense into him.”
“I don't want to touch Biscuit’s brain,” protests the girl.
I pretend not to hear her or Frank’s protests. “You all gotta start calling him Frank. The Biscuit thing is too confusing,” I tell Emma as I’m dragging her away.
“Maybe you should change, not us.”
“I can't. The man saved my life. I can’t call him anything but his call sign. Wouldn’t be respectful.” I stop at the edge of the dance floor and place Emma's hands on my shoulders.
“You've mentioned that he saved you more than once. What's the story there?” she keeps her arms rigid, maintaining more distance between us than would be required at a Catholic school dance, if Catholic schools had dances. I wouldn’t know. I went to a private, non-religious boarding school in Maine. Our all-male school had regular exchanges with the private girls’ school in the next town over. I didn't dance at one of them. Instead, I stayed in my room, studied my math, practiced my flight simulations, and dreamed of getting up in the air. That was where the real excitement was, not in a stuffy gym with sixty sweaty teens.
“We had an engine failure in the middle of Alaska. I was able to land the plane just fine but ended up with a rod in my thigh. Your brother dragged me through ten miles of snow. If he hadn’t, I would’ve probably bled out or died of frostbite.”
Her eyes widen at the story. “I didn't know Biscu—I mean, Frank did that. He never said.”
