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“What are we eating?” he asks, his eyes perusing the plate of cheese fries in front of us.
“Help yourself,” I say, sliding an extra plate over to him.
He slaps his palms and rubs them together a few times while deciding where to dive in. He grabs a sizable handful of fries and takes his first bite, a string of cheese hanging across his lower lip until his tongue wrangles it inside his mouth.
“You here on vacation?” he mumbles around his food.
I nod, dipping the edge of my small burger in the pile of ketchup on my plate. “Yep.”
“For how long?” Wyatt washes the loaded fries down with a drink of beer.
The balls clank to my left as Benji breaks, some of each color falling into the pockets on the sides and at the ends.
“Solids,” Benji calls out to Zane.
“A couple of weeks,” I answer, watching Benji’s next shot out of the corner of my eye. Zane is somewhere behind me.
“We can get into a lot of trouble in two weeks, Willow,” Wyatt promises.
“We?” I ask playfully.
Benji misses, and Zane steps up to the table, leaning down to take his first shot. He banks it into the side pocket, looking over at us when he’s done.
“We,” Wyatt confirms, glancing around the space. “Or are you traveling with someone else?”
“Is that your way of subtly asking if she has a boyfriend?” Chelsea jokes, sipping on her second mixed drink of the night.
“No boyfriend,” I confirm, shoving the last bite of burger into my mouth. I chew for a few seconds and swallow before speaking again. “And I’m flying solo this trip. My parents were supposed to be here, but my dad had emergency surgery two days ago.”
Wyatt’s brow furrows. “Is he okay?”
“He’s fine,” I say, waving him off while I lift the longneck bottle to my mouth. “Just not good enough to travel right now.”
He nods slowly, watching me. His brown eyes have a golden glow to them. “Their loss is our gain.”
The alcohol starts to color my senses and emboldens me. “Is that right?” It feels good to flirt with someone my own age right now. I can’t remember the last time I did it. My time has been filled with work and surgeons and exhaustion for years now. And Wyatt is hot, too, in that boy-next-door kind of way.
“Uh-oh,” Chelsea says teasingly, raising her voice to capture Benji’s and Zane’s attention. “Your boy is laying it on thick over here.”
Zane is still running the table on Benji. He shifts forward to take the next shot right in front of me, glancing over his shoulder. When his eyes capture mine, the world stops. I forget about Wyatt flirting with me. I forget that Chelsea and Benji are watching us. I forget that Jessica might be his girlfriend and every female in here seems aware of him. I’m blind to everything else in the bar besides those rich blue eyes on me as if they cast some weird spell.
“Do you mind?” he asks coldly.
I glance down at the stick that’s poised behind him.
“Oh.” I scowl, realizing I’m in his way.
And just like that, the spell is broken. My momentary infatuation shifts to embarrassment and then irritation. I feel especially foolish, knowing I’m so affected by him while he obviously couldn’t care less about me.
“Excuse the hell out of me.”
Wyatt chuckles at my side as I scoot my stool closer to him and out of Zane’s way. Wyatt drapes a conciliatory arm across my shoulders. “Don’t mind him. He’s a grumpy bastard tonight.”
“Every night,” Benji chimes in.
Zane hits the cue ball harder than necessary and drills an orange-striped ball into the corner pocket. “You’re excused,” he says arrogantly as he walks around the table to line up the winning shot, aiming his sharp words like an arrow at my chest and ignoring his friends.
I scoff and rise from my seat, wondering what his problem is and what I did to deserve his ire. But as annoyed as I am at his salty attitude, I’m equally intrigued by his sullen nature, making me wonder why I’m so damaged that I’m drawn to people I should avoid. And when exactly that happened.
