I was glad I had to work the following evening, because it gave me something to do other than dodging texts from Emma or obsessing over the kiss. I threw myself into work and let it carry me through the next four hours. The good thing about working in a bar is that no amount of work ever really feels like enough. There’s always something that needs doing.

By the time I surfaced again around ten, it was only because Ward texted me while I was working on our tax returns and asked me to come meet him in the main room.

Predictably, Ward was behind the bar with Lucas sitting in front of him. Less predictably, Cole was right there as well. I swallowed hard, put a smile on my face, and told myself to act normal.

“What’s up?” I asked in a too-high voice. Cole looked especially good tonight. His hair was pushed back from his forehead and it looked so soft and shiny. I wondered for the one millionth time where his family was from. His smooth, tan skin was too olive to be Irish like Ward and me, and his handsome features were ambiguous enough that he could be almost anything from Hawaiian to Turkish. His people, wherever they came from, were hot.

Ward grinned at me as I approached. “Can you hook Cole up with your girlfriend Tiffany?”

I blanched. My friend Tiffany was beautiful, single, smart, and bound to jump at the chance to meet a hot, successful guy like Cole. I’d rather gargle glass than see her have him. “What?”

“Cole needs to find a place to live,” Ward added. “Isn’t Tiff a realtor?”

My brain caught onto what Ward was actually saying. “To buy a place to live?” I asked dimly.

“Or maybe rent,” Cole interjected. “I haven’t decided exactly what to do yet, but I’m determined to figure it out. I’m here to stay and need to find the right fit.” He was looking at me intently, and I wondered if his words were a double entendre. My heart skipped.

Lucas, who was watching this whole exchange, was smirking into his citrusy beer like he knew something. Ward was as oblivious as ever. I frowned at all of them.

“Tiff only works with people looking to buy in east Austin, that’s her specialty,” I managed to spit out. “Do you want to live there?”

Cole shrugged. “I don’t know. I was thinking that I should probably look all over.”

“Ok, well I can text you her number. She can hook you up with somebody good.” I shifted uncomfortably as he smiled appreciatively.

“Thanks,” he replied politely. He was a better actor than me, or else he didn’t have any trouble pretending like we hadn’t passionately kissed the last time we saw each other. I could feel a blush spreading over my cheeks already.

I didn’t think I could hold together for much longer. Standing here having a regular, boring conversation was making me feel lightheaded. Just twenty-four hours ago, Cole had kissed me. Even now, all I could think about was the feeling of his lips on mine. The weight of his hands on my body. His intoxicating smell. The way he felt like he belonged to me…

“Is Tiff the hot Latina girl with the red hair and all the tattoos?” Lucas asked, ripping me out of my daydream.

I nodded at him and frowned. “Yeah. Do you want her number, too?” That would be an interesting pairing to say the least. Lucas did have quite the documented preference for redheads. I couldn’t actually recall him dating women with any other hair color.

He looked like he was giving it serious consideration, even though my voice had been entirely sarcastic. “Nah, I’ll let Cole have the first shot at her. Once he strikes out, I’ll swoop in all gentleman-like and ride off into the sunset with her.” He was doing an impression of Cole’s lilting Arkansas accent, and all three of them laughed. Ward and Lucas also fist-bumped at this declaration of strategy.

I rolled my eyes at them. Lucas had no game whatsoever, and I knew for a fact that he was still sobbing into his pillow about his ex-girlfriend. Little did Lucas know, Tiff could eat him for breakfast. She was nobody’s rebound fling, either. She was the woman men needed to rebound from. She went through men’s hearts like I went through sunglasses: the ones I didn’t misplace, I crushed to smithereens.

“Ok, well I gotta’ get back to the office,” I told the trio, backing out of their conversation. “I’m doing our quarterly taxes.”

“How’d we do?” Willie interjected from down the bar. He’d owned this bar for a good thirty years before Ward bought it, and still acted like it belonged to him when it suited him.

“Ward did well,” I said sweetly. “You and I had less impressive revenues.”

Willie shook his head and grinned. “You don’t know what I pulled in last year. I don’t report my cash tips. Besides, I’ve got investments.”

“Yeah,” Ward teased, “Willie’s been putting a lot of capital into the bank of Nancy lately. He’s excited to start collecting dividends any night now…”

Willie’s cheeks turned a darker color where they emerged from his whiskery beard, but he didn’t deny it. The fact that he was seeing his ex-wife again was something of a running joke in the bar these days. Unlike Ward, I actually liked Nancy quite a bit. She was an old, crazy hippie, just like Willie. The last time I’d seen her, she had orange and green streaks in her hair.

“I think it’s sweet that you and Nancy are reconnecting,” I told Willie. “How’s she doing?”

“She’s got it in her head to move back to Lubbock,” Willie admitted, looking saddened and confused. “We barely got out of that godforsaken town with our sanity intact. I don’t know why she’d want to go back.”

Whether Willie and Nancy actually escaped west Texas with their sanity intact was up for debate, but the answer was still fairly clear. “Doesn’t your son’s family still live there?”

Willie nodded. “Yeah.” His voice was stubborn. “God knows why.”

“That whole town smells like cow shit,” Cole remarked. Ward nodded in disgusted agreement.

“That’s only when the wind is from the southeast,” Willie explained, “since that’s where the feedlot is for the dairy. Forty thousand head of cattle don’t smell nice, but that’s not even the worst of it. When the wind blows from the other direction you get the hell-on-Earth Sulphur smell off the oil fields. You do get used to it after a while.”

Lubbock sounded like a delightful place to live.

“Perhaps someone just used a bit too much polish on the 2008 Big 12 South Division Co-Championship trophy,” Lucas offered, earning him a look of treasonous disgust from the other three.

“I think you mean the smell of Aggie defeat,” Cole corrected. The rivalry between Texas A&M and the University of Texas football programs was strong.

“Well,” Ward added, “you know what they say: Lubbock or leave it.”

I used the moment of ensuring laughter to make my way back to the office. Not fifteen minutes later, however, a knock on the open door made me look up. Cole was looking at me expectantly from the hallway.

“Can I come in?”

I nodded. “Um, sure.” My voice sounded shaky in my own ears.

“I have a proposition for you,” he said, settling into the chair in front of the desk.

There was probably a really snappy answer I could have given right then, something clever and witty, but I couldn’t think of it. All I could do was stare. Eventually, Cole blinked at me and continued.

“I think we should go out on a date,” he said confidently. “A real date. We need a total reset on the past. What do you think?”

My stubborn heart screamed gleefully but I looked down at the tax documentation in front of me and tried to play it cool. A very real part of me still hadn’t forgiven him for what happened in college.

“I think you give yourself a lot of credit,” I said. “What makes you think I even still like you? You had your shot back in college.”

“I was an idiot back in college,” he replied. His voice was earnest. “Forgive me?”

I didn’t know what to say.