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Good one, me. I should leave now because he’s sure to think I’m a moron, but instead he laughs.
“You’re funny,” he says.
“Thanks. I ... like your hat.” I point upward, toward his light-gray baseball cap with a white Yankees logo on the front.
“Are you a fan?”
“Of baseball?”
He nods, his eyes full of interest, like he really wants to know my answer.
“No,” I say honestly.
This makes him laugh louder, which is kind of unexpected because it wasn’t all that funny. But I like that Brett is quick to laugh. It’s a good quality in a person.
“Can I ... buy you a drink?” Brett asks, reaching up and rubbing the back of his neck like he’s nervous to ask me this.
“Oh,” I say, my eyebrows moving up my forehead.
Wow, okay, so I’m a little late to the meeting here, but Brett, it would seem, is flirting with me. What do I do? I feel like I want to ask Morgan what I should do right now. But I’m also an adult woman who can make up her own mind.
“Sure,” I say.
“Okay,” he says. “Follow me.”
I let him guide me through the tables and crowd, passing a man and woman doing a mostly terrible duet of “Shallow” from that movie with Lady Gaga.
I lock eyes with Morgan as I walk by our table and have a quick silent conversation only best friends can have. Her eyes are saying, Look at you with a hot man! And mine are saying, Help, I have no idea what I’m doing. She shoos me away with her hand. Guess I’m on my own.
Graham looks up from his phone just in time to see Brett and me walk by, and I make brief eye contact with him and then quickly turn away, keeping my focus on the task at hand: me heading to the bar so a handsome man can buy me a drink. It dawns on me right now how insanely different my life is than it was less than a month ago. Before, most Tuesday nights of mine were spent either working or hanging out by myself. This really is the year of Lucy.
We sidle up to the bar and Brett waves a hand at Charlotte, who’s helping someone else just down from us. The beginning of “Bohemian Rhapsody” plays through the speakers, and a group of people start singing along.
“So, do you do karaoke often?” Brett asks as we wait for the pretty redheaded bartender. We’re standing close so we can hear each other over the loud music. Whatever cologne he’s wearing smells good. It’s a spicy sort of scent.
“Um ... no,” I tell him. “That was my first time in a very long time.”
His eyebrows move up his forehead. “Wow, it sure didn’t seem like it.”
“Nope. And this is my first time visiting this bar.”
“I figured. I would have remembered you.” He gives me a playful expression, a charming smile with a teasing glint in his eyes.
Okay. He’s ramping up the flirting. I’m not sure how to respond to that. I settle for giving him a closed-mouth smile.
“Where are you visiting from?” he asks.
It’s my turn to raise my eyebrows. “I ... live here.”
“You’re from Aspen Lake?”
“Yes, born and raised.”
He gives me a confused look. “How have I never met you before?”
I shake my head slowly. “No idea.”
“I figured you were an out-of-towner.”
