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“That’s not what I asked.”
“I’m an old maid—er, man? The hell would you call it?”
“Well, you’re definitely too sinister to be a spinster.” Paisley sees herself in a mirror and uses the reflection to pull a million little bobby pins out of her updo.
“Sinister… I like that.” I nod with a wink and lift the rum to my lips.
“So why did you leave the wedding you were attending early?”
“Paisley, ah…” I point a pin in her direction, stumbling for her last name.
“Cooper.”
“Paisley Cooper doesn’t need my sob story.”
“Okay then, why were you convinced your friends sent me here as a joke?”
She bends forward, shaking out her hair. When she flips back up, it falls over her shoulders in copper waves streaked with gold.
I decide to give her a reason to stay right there where she is, looking like a knockout compared to the primped princess that walked into my bar.
“They’ve all gotten hitched and believe I cannot commit.”
Paisley leans her elbow on the table. She picks up her shot glass, letting it fall and spin, fall and spin on its base.
“I commit to the things that are important.”
“But not women?” She fills my glass, then hers.
The freaky thing is, my parents raised me in this building surrounded by women. I caught on to which ones were selling themselves to maintain the status quo versus the ladies struggling to turn stripping into something better: the students who attend Pinewood State. I’m fully fucking devoted to doing anything for a woman who deserves it.
Take Holly, for instance. She was a single mom with the odds stacked against her. If it weren’t for her son, I’d have passed her name on to my childhood best friend, Carver Galloway. He’d have found a room for Holly at the mill. She could have gone back to being a flight attendant instead of slinging hooch and having her ass grabbed at Caroline’s. I probably would have settled into something longer-term with Holly until I’d fucked her senseless. But as great as the kid is, he was a liability for both Carver and me.
The last decade or so of my life haven’t been what you’d call “child-proof”. So I did what I could and stepped away when I would have rather kept Holly as my own. I transformed her into my own personalized version of a mill girl—the women who, at one point or another, live across the street in Carver’s revitalized factory building.
A stretch of silence fills the empty theater. Paisley refills my rum, trying another tactic to get me to open up.
“Have you ever been in love? The real, true kind where no one else exists?”
My lips flatten to a line. It is Paisley’s wedding day. The rum is three-quarters gone. I gift her an answer.
“She stole my heart from day one and, when she was gone, she took my dreams along with her.”
“Which is what makes you a cynic.”
“I prefer realist. Isn’t that what you are, too?”
Paisley based her decision on the inability to see how her marriage could work.
“No. I’m a coward who didn’t stand up for myself until there was no turning back. I dragged everyone down to a place none of us belonged. And I hurt someone who I honestly care deeply for. The stunt I pulled tonight was unfair. It cost a lot. More than money can buy to get back, you know?”
I cast a noncommittal shrug. As much as I’m enjoying Paisley’s company, our trust is paper thin. Aside from the lone truth about being in love that I gift-wrapped for Paisley, I won’t pour my heart out to her the way, at present, I regret doing with Holly.
Paisley isn’t my bartender. The simple fact is she’s another girl to get drunk on. Another beautiful woman I’d spend the night fucking if she used that “just go with it” line when the club was packed.
Women rarely share their problems with me. Maybe because our sum games when we start talking includes getting our tongues down the other’s throat. The hot banter leads to a passionate encounter, not comes from it. Which makes what happened with Paisley different since there was no pretense in flirting before she kissed me. She was ballsy. It was a fucking amazing kiss. Paisley went right for what she wanted and she got the reaction she needed. I’m glad Gavin got the message so easily.
My heart thuds a little in my chest, and I mistake it for pride. There’s no mistaking why my dick twitches under the table, though.
