AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“And a side of sex,” Sam adds.
“That’s for dessert.” Drew smiles sarcastically and slumps back in his chair. I look at Ava, finding her watching me, daydreaming.
“You’ve had a drink.” The accusation falls out of my mouth, and she freezes, looking incredibly guilty.
“It was an accident.”
It’s just a glass of wine.Oneglass. “I don’t mind you having a drink if I’m with you, Ava,” I say, hoping to eliminate the guilt, returning my attention to Sam and Drew.Oneglass.
“Well, it should be a sport,” Drew says, as Kate returns with a waiter who’s carrying a tray of drinks.
“What should?” I ask.
“Fucking.” Sam smiles up at Kate when she passes him a beer. “Don Juan here thinks he’s a pro.”
“I am,” Drew grunts.
“Wasn’t Don Juan famous for seducing women?” Kate asks. “You don’t want to seduce, Drew, you just want to fuck. Right?”
Drew points his bottle of beer at Kate, and I look out the corner of my eye, wondering what Ava’s making of this. Nothing, apparently. She’s still just watching me. I squeeze her thigh, snapping her out of her daze, and she smiles.
“Right,” Drew confirms. “And it should be considered an extreme sport.”
“So”—Kate’s tongue is in her cheek as she lowers to a chair—“How’s Victoria?”
I purse my lips and turn my attention Drew’s way, along with everyone else around the table.
“Don’t ask. She’s sweet, but God, she’s got to lighten up.”
I feel Ava shift under my hold of her leg. “Why did you ask her to go?” she asks, surprising me. How does she know Drew invited Victoria to The Manor? I look at Kate, whose lips form a straight line. Kate told her. Sam told Kate. Drew told Sam.
“It’s who I am,” Drew says, no apology. “It’s what I like.”
“Amen.” Sam toasts thin air, and Kate joins, hitting her glass against his bottle, both of them smiling knowingly.Fucking hell.I discreetly look out the corner of my eye to Ava and find what I knew I would. Wide eyes.
“Anyway”—Drew leans back in his chair, pushing his chest out, stretching—“I’ve got to make the most of it. Get to thirty-five and it’s a slippery slope down to a saggy arse and man boobs.” I frown and peek down my front. Is it? My arse cheeks, which I don’t mind saying, are like rocks, naturally tense. “I’ll think about a woman who loves me for me and not for my body when I need to,” he adds, relaxing again, looking around the table at the endless exasperation.
Suddenly, every muscle in my body starts to tense and relax, over and over, my thirty-seven-year-old mind telling me I need to work out more. For fuck’s sake. I’m outrageously fit. In incredible shape. But good shape doesn’t always mean good health.
Thirty-eight on Monday.
The thought makes me hold Ava’s leg tighter. She hasn’t asked me when my birthday is. She hasn’t told me hers either, not that she needs to. Her driver’s license is imprinted on my mind after I had a bad-mannered rummage through her handbag on our first meeting. February 27th. Which sucks incredibly, because she only just turned twenty-six a few months ago. Which means I’m only eleven years older than her for three months. For the other nine months of the year, I’m a whole twelve years older than her.
I grimace and sink into my chair. A birth date is kind of standard information in a relationship.
Boundless. The natural progression.
“Well, I’ve only got nine years left, so I’d better get my fill.” Kate’s dry quip wakes me from my silent musings. Nine years until she’s thirty-five. God, how I wish I could be young again. How differently I would have done things. But as I look at Ava, who appears to be in a consistent state of shock this lunchtime, I hate the notion that by doing anything different in my life, I might not have met her. And once again I’m mulling over the painful fact that I’ve had to lose everything I’ve ever loved to find her. I swallow and drop my eyes to the table.Anything it takes to keep her. Because I can’t fucking lose again.
“It hits us women worse than you lot.”
I look up and see Kate waving a wine glass around in the air, her attention onus lot. The men. Though what she’s talking about, I can’t recall.
“Is that what happened to you, Jesse?” Ava asks, forcing me to push away my depressing thoughts and think really hard about what the fuck we were talking about. My arse cheeks clench again, as if reminding me.
“No.” I look at her, relishing her poorly concealed grin. “Doyouthink I’m lacking in the body department?”
“You know I don’t.”
