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We head inside the bar. “This place hasn’t changed at all,” I exclaim, looking around the dim, sticky space, with a pool table at one end of the room, and a scuffed-up bar at the other, and two dozen drinking undergrads in between. “I would come here all the time to study.”
“You would work here?” Reeve takes in the raucous buzz of conversation and loud music.
“It was like white noise to me,” I explain, as we order at the bar, and then find a free booth in the back. “I can focus through anything. One time, in undergrad, I managed to study for a midterm while my roommate was rehearsing for her beauty pageant talent routine. Playing the ‘Star Spangled Banner’on the bagpipes,” I add darkly, and he laughs.
“Just another one of your superpowers, then.”
I take a sip of my beer and slowly relax, feeling more like myself now that we’re a safe distance from the Jake Fortune lovefest. “I’m sorry I got carried away back there,” I apologize again. “I’m over it, I really am, I’ve done my therapy, and soul-searching, and taken responsibility for my own mistakes in that marriage, it’s just that sometimes I see his smug, arrogant face, and …”
“Want to punch it?” Reeve suggests.
I give a wry laugh. “Yes. Is that so terrible?”
“Not at all. Jake has a very punchable face,” he says, and I sigh.
“It just gets tiring, that’s all. Being the bigger person.”
“Well, I’ve got some good news for you,” he says, leaning closer. “You don’t have to be the bigger person with me. In fact, be as petty as you like. Go on, tell me all about Jake’s tiny micropenis, and how terrible he was in bed. I’m all ears.”
I laugh again, full-throated this time. “Nope, I promise, that’s the last you’ll hear about him tonight! Even bitching is still giving him more time than he deserves.”
“I don’t know, I love a good grudge,” Reeve says, sitting back as our food arrives. Baskets of fries, and burgers soaking up their wrappers with grease. My stomach growls and I happily dig in. “Pure spite can get you just as far as ambition, sometimes.”
“Really? You don’t seem like bitter, jealous man.”
Reeve grins. “Not these days, but … when I was starting out, I had a buddy, a writing partner. We met in college, and decided to make a go of it, as a team. Except, he decided he’d rather be a team … with my girlfriend.”
“Ah.”
“Yeah, it wasn’t great. To be honest, I was more cut up about the work,” Reeve adds, as he devours his burger. “We’d just written a great script together that could have gone places, but after that mess, I couldn’t deal. I just stuck it in a drawer and moved on. But you can bet that lit a new fire under me, to make it big,” he says, grinning. “So that both of them would have to read about my fancy deal announcements in the trades, and know that I won.”
“You’re right, that is deliciously petty,” I agree. “Where is he now, anyway?”
Reeve grins. “Back in Oklahoma. He never got anywhere with his writing after me, so he packed up and moved back home. Last I heard, he was working at a used Chevy dealership. He follows me on social media,” Reeve adds smugly. “Watches all my livestreams from set.”
I raise my beer in a toast. “To petty spite and ambition.”
“Amen.” He clinks his glass to mine. “It’ll take you far.”
“And only corrode your soul a little.”
Reeve smiles. “Who needsalltheir soul intact?”
I finish wolfing down my burger and sit back with a satisfied sigh. “You were right about the food. Everything’s better with carbs.”
Reeve finishes up the last of my fries. “What next?” he asks. “Is there some wild historian afterparty you want to check out?”
I shake my head. Reeve smiles at me across the booth, looking rumpled and delicious with his shirt-sleeves pushed up and an easy glow in his eyes.
All mine. For tonight, at least.
My pulse kicks, that flame of bold recklessness sparking to life in my blood.
“Uh oh, there’s that dangerous look again,” Reeve smiles, “Let me guess, there’s a copy of the Declaration of Independence around here, and you want to steal it? Don’t get me wrong, I’m in, but we’re going to need a good plan.”
“The plan …?” I pull out some cash to cover our tab, and toss it down as I meet his eyes. “The plan is, we go back to the hotel, lock the door, and break that ridiculous four-poster bed.”
Reeve’s jaw drops for the second time today.
