AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Strange.” Her nose twitched and her eyes slid away from the phone.
Sorry I missed you earlier. Anything important?
I waited for Nora’s reply while Payton flagged down the server for another round before I could stop her.
NORA
I just wanted to chat, but I guess I’ll catch you tomorrow?
Absolutely. Get some sleep.
I frowned at the phone, eyes darting to the door, wondering if I could trust a clearly inebriated Payton for a few minutes while I took the call outside. I decided against it.
“We’ll take the check, too,” I told the server when he returned with another round.
“When did you stop being fun?” Payton asked as she fished the cherry out of her empty old-fashioned and placed the glass in the server’s hand.
“I have an early morning. What time do you have to be up?” I teased.
“I’ve got lunch.”
“Exactly.” I took a sip from my glass, closing my eyes and letting the liquid warm my throat while I mentally calculated precisely how much sleep I’d get. After dropping Payton off at her apartment across town, I’d be lucky to be in bed by midnight.
Suddenly in a hurry, Payton swigged down the drink with a 1000-megawatt smile. “We should take a picture! I haven’t updated my Insta all day!”
“Sure. Why not?” I said. A picture would certainly hurry Payton out the door anyway.
I had a bevy of social media accounts I barely kept up, passing most of that responsibility onto my assistant. Payton, on the other hand, loved perfecting her public image. She had hundreds of thousands of followers—some bought, most cultivated—who followed her into boardrooms and onto private islands. I’d been in more than a few of her photos. She joked the pictures were “free exposure,” but she enjoyed being seen with up-and-comers as much as they enjoyed being seen with her.
She grabbed my hand and pulled me over to a light installation made for picture-perfect social media posts, complete with a list of suggested hashtags displayed in the corner. Payton threw an arm around my shoulders, pushing her chest flush against mine and angling the camera up.
“One second, let me fix my hair,” she said, pushing back a lock of hair before unbuttoning the top button of her shirt and parting the fabric. “Perfect,” she cooed and pressed her lips into a kissy face. She shot a flurry of photos before pulling the phone back to her face and finding the right one to upload. “One more.”
She held the phone out again, pressing her lips to my cheek as the camera took picture after picture. Her hand slipped around my waist, sliding up my chest until I covered her fingers with mine, stilling them and pulling away slightly. On the screen, her smile faltered as she resisted and, after I continued to push back, stopped.
“Finish your drink while I look at these. You’re taking me home, right?” Her voice wavered. Drunk or unsure, I couldn’t tell.
“Yeah, of course,” I said, shaking off the weird tension building in my chest.
I threw back the last of the bourbon, sliding my phone out of my pocket and checking for another text from Nora. At this time of night, she was probably fast asleep and certainly not waiting by the phone for me.
“You ready?” I asked Payton.
She tapped out a message on the screen, calling her driver to pick us up. “Yep. Let’s go.”
We wrestled our way back outside the packed bar, sliding into the nondescript black SUV aimed directly at Payton’s apartment. She gave me an expectant smile as we pulled up to the building.
“You’re going to walk me up, right?”
I hesitated. Something had shifted back at the bar and rubbed me the wrong way, but I couldn’t pinpoint what it was.
“Sure. I’m not staying for a nightcap, and if you’ve got friends over, I’m not staying to network, either.”
Her gray eyes widened innocently. “First, that house party was a primenetworking opportunity. Second, Imayhave an open bottle of Pappy Van Winkle, but I’d never share it with you. Third, when are you finally leaving New Hampshire to join the rest of the world?”
Despite my good intentions, I wavered at the temptation of Pappy Van Winkle. “For now, I have zero intentions of moving out of New Hampshire, and maybe one drink.”
She shot me a smile that was equal parts smug and playful. “For the time being. I can work with that.”
