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“Guys,” I growl.
“You have to be married in three months,” Emerson blurts out.
Chapter 2
Sierra
I wonder what he’s thinking about now.
That guy from before—that man. The one whose muscled tattooed arms rested on the back of the seat in a casual lounge that seemed at odds with the fire kindling in his hazel eyes. My mind goes back to that moment: how the square of his face was angled towards me, his lips pursed.
Why, hello there.
Not that it mattered. It was just a moment, a glance. I’ll probably never see him again.
“Helloooo, earth to Sierra?” Josie waves a hot pink and neon green fingernailed hand in front of my face. “Have you heard one word of what I said?”
“Huh? Yeah, I totally…” I trail off, racking my brain. “OK, I might have missed a bit.”
Wynona snorts, then takes a slurp of her chocolate milkshake, her lips leaving a black lipstick smear on the straw when she’s done.
“Can you really blame me?” I protest. “You guys have been grumbling about the guys here for at least an hour. If this was supposed to be a Scope Mission, then why didn’t we hit up O’Malley’s or any of our usual spots?”
“Because,” Josie says, fluttering her strawberry-blonde lashes as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world, “we go to the usual spots, we’ll see the usual boys. And you heard Wynona: we don’t want boys. We want men.”
Now it’s my turn to snort. I pick up a spoon and brush aside the chunk of side-bang that’s been annoying me to hell and making me seriously consider just saying fuck it and chopping it off. “Boys are men are boys. Just because a man is an asshat, you call him a boy, and vice versa.”
“Um, excuse me,” Josie says, using her ice cream spoon as a baton and pointing it at me with her pink gloss lips drawn into a disapproving frown. “We are supposed to be here for moral support for Wynona, not for you to—”
“I knew it,” Wynona cuts in, pale pointed chin sinking to the table so that her choppy bowl cut bangs settle over her face like dyed black protective wings. “I knew it would all go to shit.”
“There, there,” Josie says, shoving her half-finished bowl of strawberry sprinkle ice cream in front of her sister. “Jeremy was just a jerkwad, and you’ll meet a better one. Promise.”
Her warning glare at me forces a half-hearted “promise” out of me too.
Although Josie knows how I feel about the subject. The three of us have been friends since forever and have been brutally honest with each other since forever too. I don’t know when that stopped extending to Wynona’s piss-poor taste in men, but somewhere along the way it did. And now we tiptoe around the subject, as if it’s a shock that the latest unemployed asshole with a criminal record turns out to be an asshole once again.
I sniff the air with a light smile. Last time I was here was years ago, but I definitely don’t remember the smell: is that spiced apple? I guess the little red heart-shaped candles on our table aren’t just for show.
Weird, in a comedy club, but I’m not complaining. At least, now I’m not. We originally went here expecting the comedy club part of this place to be open, to help cheer Wynona up, but had to settle for just food instead.
“There’s no one here,” Wynona moans out of her hair temple.
“Stop that,” Josie says sternly. It’s almost funny sometimes, how unlike they are for twins. With all of Wynona’s piercings, makeup, dark dyed hair, and tattoos, they don’t even really look alike anymore. “There’s a whole table of perfectly eligible men at the back. I saw them myself.”
“All with their wives slash girlfriends,” Wynona says stoutly. “I saw.”
I pat her back gingerly, while Josie mouths to me, too much wine.
“Unless they are all married to the same two women, that’s doubtful,” Josie trills peppily. “And one totally looked like your type. Long hair, tattoos.”
“Probably a wife-beater,” Wynona grumbles glumly.
I’m inclined to agree with her, but hold myself back.
With just about everything else in life, Wynona’s killing it. She’s the top tattoo artist in New York, has saved up enough to have a chic flat that Josie and I drool over, has abs that make me seriously consider going to the gym, and her Dalmatian’s obedience makes me practically die in shame every time Horatio and I come over for a visit.
Right now, though, she’s a mess. So, it’s really not the time to break it to her.
No, I just need to wait for one of the very often times she has her shit together and is sober, and drop the bomb: Over the past year, after Gary dumped you, your taste in men has gone from bad to worse. Very worse.
