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Chapter 15
Invitation
Willa
“Copper Kettle okay for lunch?” he raised an eyebrow in question.
It was Tuesday and he’d just poked his head in the door of my office at the shelter. I smiled, dismissed the butterflies in my stomach. I silently congratulated myself for acting natural and not at all like I wanted to wrap my legs around his lean hips.
“I love that place. They have live music nights a couple of Fridays a month in the summer. I always go.”
“You like live music?” He wandered in, allowing the door to close behind him.
I sat back in my seat and smiled. “I love it. The louder the better.”
He stood with his big hands loose at his hips, his head cocked to the side. “What kind of music do you like to see live?”
“All kinds, not a lot of rap or hip hop appeals to me. I like country, I like dance, I love rock.”
“You like to dance?”
“I do. I love dancing.”
“There’s live music at Stonewall’s this weekend. I’ll be there with a few friends. You want to see if your friends Junie and Minty want to go and meet us there?”
I grinned. “I’d like that.”
I liked the idea of being included with his friends. Including Junie and Minty made me feel that this was indeed going to be a lasting friendship. I hadn’t met anybody new in a few years.
My last boyfriend moved away well over a year ago and I’d been with him for over two years. He had asked me to go with him, but I declined. He wasn’t surprised and nobody walked away with a broken heart. I don’t think.
So, Barrett asking me to go out in a group, meet his friends, and hang out all together? That appealed to me.
After having lunch together and talking shop, I didn’t see him for the rest of the week. Not even Thursday when Olivia was there. I texted him Thursday to let him know that Junie and I would meet him and his friends at Stonewall’s on Saturday night.
Junie was pumped, though she maintained she was continuing her man free hiatus. It wouldn’t last. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised if Barrett took one look at her and changed her mind.
Junie possessed the face of an angel. Clear blue eyes, a creamy complexion unmarked by even a single freckle. Small, perfect lips perpetually curved into a smile and a slightly upturned nose were set like jewels in a heart-shaped face. Straight, fine, white-blond hair that she wore in intricate braids one day, and in a straight sheet down her back the next, crowned her beautiful face. She was soft and curvy and her bust looked bigger than it was due to her five-foot frame.
However much she looked like an angel, she certainly did not talk or act like one. Junie had been a bit of a party girl for as long as I’d known her, which was going on thirteen years. She loved to go out and wasn't shy about tying one on occasionally. She was brash and fearless, lively and effervescent, and could sometimes be a hothead. She was champagne served in a beer stein. French cuisine eaten off a paper plate. Caviar on a Ritz cracker.
She was my best friend and I loved her, and I knew I could trust her not to date Barrett, but it wouldn’t be the first time a man threw me over once they got a look at her. Unfortunately, they fell hard and fast for her looks but were taken aback by her confidence and her cheeky mouth.
This meant, for Junie, that man after man either treated her like porcelain or tried to mold her into the image they held of her in their heads. Neither worked for her and she wasted no more time on any of them once she realized at which end of the spectrum they swung.
Despite all of that, she was always up for meeting new people and readily agreed when I told her about the invite at work on Wednesday. I was happy that I was the one dragging her out for once rather than the other way around.
“You’ll have to point out which one is Barrett, so I keep my greedy mitts off,” she informed me.
“You're on a man hiatus, remember? Also, there’s no missing him. I can’t imagine he hangs out with a bunch of giants. He’s six foot four and looks like a Viking,” I said drily.
“Man, I wish I’d gotten to meet him instead of Minty,” she grumbled, “Who are his friends? Is it a veterinarian symposium? All those talented, surgically precise fingers from which to choose from?” she winked.
We sat with our chairs swiveled towards each other. She stretched out one foot to spin her chair back and forth while we talked.
“I thought you were off men?”
She slumped. “I am. I can’t take any more stupidity.”
