TOMMY

Friend-zoned? By the first girl I really want to fuck in years. It fucking figures. I have no sort of luck lately, and I just can't catch a break.

Ava and Lola are taking a shower together, and normally, that'd be enough to get me at least semi-hard, but tonight I just throw them out.

"Where's Tara?" Lola asks from the doorway, peering around the room like it's not obvious Tara isn’t here, and she's just hiding behind the bed or something.

I almost slam the door in her face, because she looks so hopeful and excited about Tara being here. But I don't, because she looks so hopeful and excited.

"Never mind that, I have some work to do," I say instead and close the door firmly. It's a total lie. I have absolutely nothing to do, and I'm not even remotely in the mood for sex with anyone other than Tara. Which is worrying, but I won't dwell on it now.

My friend Brett called while we were at the lake. I wasn't planning on calling him back, since it's probably over some MC business, and I'm sitting that shit out tonight, but I suddenly have nothing better to do.

"Hey, I'm at Sara's," he says when he picks up. "Wanna come down for a drink. She needs some more bodies in here."

"She needs to sell that place, is what she needs to do," I snap.

"You want me to relay that message?" Brett asks wryly.

"No way," I say. "I'll tell her myself when I get there."

Since why the fuck not? A cozy drink with my old friends might be alright for tonight. Pretty soon I'll never see either of them again.

* * *

Sara's new bar on the edge of town is more or less deserted. There's only her and Brett at the bar, and a group of teenagers drinking juice at one of the tables by the open windows. I tried to tell her this whole ocean-side resort look she's going for with the decor won't go over well in the hills, but after she spent all her inheritance on it after her mom died last year, I stopped pressing. And the place does have a kind of Caribbean vibe to it, with the dark wood tables and the large, open sitting area. The breeze coming through the open floor-to-ceiling windows, making the white linen curtains billow in and out, doesn't exactly smell like the ocean, but that's what your imagination is for.

Kind of like the way I imagined Tara wanted me to kiss her earlier. I was completely off on that one. Friends? Jesus. Why couldn't she just say, "Get lost"? That'd be easier to process.

"You don't look in the best of moods, Tommy," Sara says as I sit down next to Brett at the bar. "What will it be?"

It's too bad about having almost no customers, but at least she has the bartending gig down pat. Fake sympathy followed immediately by the offer of a drink. Though I've known her since kindergarten, so the sympathy's probably not fake in this case.

"I'll have a scotch, double. And a beer." And keep 'em coming. But I don't add that.

"That bad, huh?" Sara says wryly as she pours.

"I heard some rumors that Shade is…" Brett starts saying, but shuts up as I give him a sharp look, glancing at Sara's back and shaking my head.

Brett shouldn't even be hearing any rumors about the execs meeting a couple of days ago. But it figures he has. Shade admitted a lot of new guys to the MC, guys completely loyal to him, in the last couple of months. They’re probably the source of those rumors. And Shade's behind them. Despite agreeing to put the matter up to a vote, he's already making sure everyone's informed about the shifts he's planning for the MC.

"Yeah, Brett, no discussing club business in front of the old ladies. Don't you know the rules?" Sara says, placing my drinks in front of me. "But I'm not that anymore. And I won't ever be again."

Ian, her long time boyfriend and my best friend went to jail in February and she broke up with him because of it. But they must have broken up and gotten back together a thousand times in the last ten years since they started dating.

"Ian'll be out by New Year's, he says," I inform her. And then you'll just start again right where you left off. I know that's what Ian wants, he keeps telling me when I visit him, and I also know Sara's not very good at saying no to him.

"That's great, but I'm through," she says. "For good this time."

"Yeah, if I had a dime…"

Sara fixes me with one of her piercing gazes that make her look cross-eyed. "What's with all this interest in my love life, Tommy? Are you having girl trouble and don't know how to ask for advice directly?"

Brett barks a laugh. "Yeah, that'll be the day. He never sticks around long enough to have a conversation after sex, let alone a troubled one."

He punches me in the arm like it's all a funny inside joke. I like Brett, he's been my friend for ages, but the way he looks up to me when it comes to women irks me.

"Maybe I am," I say and take a long swallow of my drink. Mostly to get from under Brett's shocked expression.

I can't believe I even said anything. The conversation can't go anywhere good from here.

"Did you get one of them pregnant?" Brett asks. Sara has a very strangled look on her face as she waits for my answer.

"No, it's not that."

"I can never figure out how you don't have a whole kindergarten of kids running around by now," Brett muses.

I can't either; maybe I just can't have children. It'd be for the best, if it's true. "I'm careful that way."

"So what is it?" Sara asks. "Did you finally fall in love?"

She's says it like a sarcastic joke. She never made it much of a secret that my never ending series of one night stands and casual-sex-only policy offends her.

"She blew me off, said we should just be friends," I say. "I'm just not used to not getting laid when I want to."

I'm plenty used to it. In college, I had to work pretty hard with some of the girls. But it's fun riling Sara up. Her ears start twitching when she gets mad.

Love? Give me a break. I've only known Tara for a couple of days.

"So be her friend," Sara says. "What's so awful about that?"

"We can be friends after I fuck her," I say and earn an appreciative chuckle from Brett. Which offends me for some reason, though maybe what I said did that all on its own. Tara seems so troubled by something, so sad and lost and alone, and she deserves a friend if she asks for one. She certainly doesn’t deserve me talking this kind of shit about her.

Sara's ears are twitching uncontrollably now. "I know you're just saying this to mess with me, Tommy. This girl touched you, else you wouldn't even bring it up. And it's high time one of them did. You can't just go through life without love. That's not how it works. And now excuse me, I have to go take care of my customers."

The teenagers want to pay, and she leaves to bring them the bill. I'm glad for it, because I really don't need her harsh assessments of my life choices on top of all the other shit that went wrong today. Brett seems to still be processing all that just transpired. A lot of people think Brett is dumb, but he's very smart, he's just not sharp. He needs time to figure things out before he speaks.

"I'm just afraid I don't have the time to be her friend," I admit once Sara returns.

"Are you going somewhere?" Brett asks pointedly. "Only you've been alluding to not having much time left a lot lately."

Have I? I really need to start watching what I say from now on, if Brett's picking up on my plans to leave.

"I think she might just be passing through," I say to avoid answering his question. It's the truth too.

"Things work out, if they're meant to," Sara says reassuringly. I think she's sorry for speaking to me so harshly before. She knows exactly why I refuse to date. "I know what you can do. You can bring this girl to the concert on Wednesday night. I have Midnight Kiss booked."

"Who?" Brett and me say at the same time.

"You remember Marshall Jones from high school? It’s his band. They're pretty famous these days, and I finally managed to convince them to come play here." Sara's positively beaming.

I remember Marshall only vaguely from school, but I do remember he had a band back then already. I also remember him and Sara had a thing once, while her and Ian were broken up. Ian got very violent about it, and I think I helped.

"It'll draw quite a crowd, I'm sure," Sara adds.

"Not on a Wednesday night, it won't," I say, not even sure why I'm trying to spoil her enthusiasm.

"Even on a Wednesday," she won't be deterred. "Like I said, they're quite famous now."

It's a good idea, I guess. Maybe after Tara's had a few drinks, she'll reconsider. Because those looks she's been giving me, those aren't, "Let's just be friends" looks.