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Her blue eyes widened and her plump, pink lips parted in surprise. His gaze locked on their soft curves and he felt his head bending...
He snapped his head back, reminding himself of all the reasons this was a bad idea. "It's late. We should both get some sleep."
Chapter 7
Colleen's phone buzzed in her back pocket, signaling an incoming text. She pulled it up and couldn't stop herself from laughing at the screen.
"What?" Molly was helping Colleen get set up for happy hour at Adele's.
"It's stupid," she held out her phone to show Molly the picture JT had sent her of a chubby cartoon character dressed as a police officer.
"I don't get it," Molly said.
"I know," Colleen said and tried to explain. It had all started a few days ago when they had discovered a shared love for the TV show Southpark.
She had been pouring a drink for a guest while JT sat at the bar talking to Amber's parents. The bottle of vodka had slipped from her hand and landed on her big toe. In addition to the sharp pain of impact, most of a handle of Grey Goose now lay in a puddle on the floor.
"Goddammit," she said without thinking.
It was only later when JT confronted her that she realized she'd said it in her best Eric Cartman voice.
"You do not strike me as a Southpark fan," he said later as he lingered once more to help her clean up.
"Why not? It's hilarious. Trey Parker and Matt Stone are geniuses. Have you seen the Book of Mormon?"
He shook his head.
"I saw it in Denver a couple of years ago. You have to go when it comes back." She told him the broad strokes of the plot, grateful that the conversation flowed for the first time since the night she swore he had been about to kiss her.
He didn't speak of it the next time they saw each other, and she certainly wasn't going to bring it up. Instead it had hung awkwardly between them until that moment.
In the days that followed, they had started texting each other memes and quotes from the show, each one more outrageous than the next.
"So you're sending flirty texts back and forth, but nothing's going on between the two of you?" Molly arched one blond brow.
"They're not flirty," Colleen insisted. So what if her heart did a little skip in her chest every time she saw JT's name show up on her screen? They were friends sending jokes to each other, that was all.
"Let me see," Molly grabbed her phone and scrolled through the exchange between Colleen and JT. "Are you kidding me? You've exchanged dozens of messages in the last three days," she held up the phone and pointed at the screen as evidence. "You're scouring the internet trying to find ways to make each other laugh. Who does that with someone they're not interested in?"
"I don't know. Friends?" Colleen said and busied herself slicing limes.
Molly gave her a look that said she wasn't buying it for a second.
"Okay, fine, I like him," Colleen finally admitted. "I mean, like, like him. He's funny, he's smart, he's nice to children and animals—"
"Not to mention smoking hot," Molly interjected.
"But I just don't think he likes me back." She thought about that for a minute. About the way she sometimes caught him looking at her. About the way he'd stared at her lips that night, his head angling down just a fraction of an inch. "Or maybe it's that he doesn't want to like me back."
"He's probably intimidated," Molly said.
"Why in the world would he be intimidated?"
"Oh, I don't know. Maybe because you're beautiful, smart, funny..."
"Yeah, and JT is totally hot and can get any woman he wants."
"But he wasn't always like that. Think of it from his perspective. You were the most popular girl in high school and he was... well, he was JT."
