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She held up a palm with a smile, thankfully cutting short my babble. “Sure. That sounds like fun.”
Chapter 14: Jude
“What’s wrong with you tonight?”
Jake, bartender extraordinaire at Sugar Babes, began setting the drink order he’d just filled for me on my tray. I looked up from the tattoo I was drumming into the polished wood surface of the bar with my fingertips and wrinkled my nose.
“I’m fine, thanks.” I started to pick up the tray and he placed a hand on my wrist, pausing me.
“No, babe. You’re not fine. You’re anything but fine. I’ve seen finer on a two day bender—”
“Damn, Jake, what are you, the fine police?” I pulled my wrist free, picked up the tray, and started to walk away.
“Jude. Come back here after you drop those. You can help me and we’ll chat.”
Grumbling under my breath, I walked away, winding through the crowded eatery as gracefully as possible. Damn Jake was like a hound once he caught scent of something that intrigued him. He wouldn’t be letting it go. I should’ve been smiling and happy if I didn’t want questions, but I’d been having trouble pulling my head out of my own ass.
It was Gale. For some reason, I couldn’t stop thinking about that conversation we’d had in the gym a while ago.
He’d acted like he was genuinely curious about me and had seemed almost… sympathetic… when I brought up my sister and parents, but after we’d returned to the dorm it was as if nothing had happened. He was still rude and boorish, with nothing more to say in passing than a grunt here and there.
In all fairness, he’d warned me that he wasn’t going to change. He was still going to be an asshole. But I would catch him watching me, those dark blue eyes following me with shuttered meaning in their depths.
He liked me, the fucker.He just didn’t want to.
I dropped the drink order at table five, a group of already half-lit frat boys. They were here for the wings, they’d said. I nodded. I’d heard it all a thousand times.
Placing the tray under my arm, I made a quick survey of my other tables before handing them over to the waitress that rotated our tables when we took breaks, and then made my way back to the bar. I would help Jake out for a little while, feed his thirst for gossip and other people’s drama, and then take my break.
Behind the bar, Jake put me to work slicing additional limes and lemons. He worked around me where I stood dead center, filling drinks at the tap and walking them down to the other end of the bar before returning to make a mixer and a row of shots. “All right,” he said. “Spill.”
“It’s really not a big deal,” I said. “You know about my roommate situation?”
He pushed a tip in the jar with a smile of thanks. “Yes. Disaster waiting to happen, in my opinion.”
“I’m in avoid-at-all-costs mode at the moment. I make sure I’m gone before they get up. If I happen to come out of my room and somebody is there, I retreat. Basically, I’m doing my best to be invisible.” Especially after that kiss with Ezra...
“Why are you avoiding them?”
I flung my hands up in a hell-if-I-know gesture, making Jake eye the knife in my hand with wary respect. “Why wouldn’t I? Galen doesn’t want me there, and he’s being an asshole to try to get me to leave. Ezra kissed me silly, but does what Galen wants him to. The only one that’s not an asshole is Baron. Baron just… watches… me all the time. It’s unnerving.”
“Hmm. So you want to screw each other. Back to that in a sec.” Jake nodded in response to a guy flagging him and then ignored him. “Explain the asshole behavior to me.”
“Go get his drink.” I tipped my head toward the customer, who was looking pissy. “I’ll have a list for you when you get back.”
Jake went to fix the drink, and I surveyed the bar, trying to get my thoughts in order. It rattled me to even think about everything the guys were doing. Well, Galen, anyway. I wasn’t sure how much Baron and Ezra were participating.
I didn’t want to think about my attraction to them, either, reluctant though it was. Why couldn’t my body see what my brain understood clearly? They were jerks. Galen, especially, seemed to have it out for me. It was as if I had done something to him on a personal level. It was as if—
He was here.
I froze in the act of wiping a ring of moisture from the bar top, trying to be inconspicuous as I turned my back on him. He was sitting about six people down from where I stood, at home in a dark tee shirt covered with an unbuttoned flannel. In the mirror behind the bar, his eyes caught and held mine and he waggled his empty glass toward me in a sarcasm-filled toast.
“All right, let’s hear it.” Jake was back.
“He’s here,” I mumbled.
“Who’s here?” Jake cut his eyes to the group of people sitting around the bar, most of them regulars.
