“This is stupid.” That encouraging comment came from Benta, who was using her iPhone’s camera as a mirror to apply mascara.
“It’s not stupid. It’s smart. If Carter’s there, he’ll see Chloe looking smoking hot.” Cammie winked and handed me a lipstick. “If he’s not, no harm no foul. Just another night out.” Cammie reached over to rub Dante’s arm. He nodded noncommittally.
“Dante?” I pressed from my spot behind him. “Is this stupid or smart?”
His eyes met mine in the rearview mirror. “His friend owns the place?”
“Yeah. I saw him headed that direction, dressed like he was going out.” I repeated the same facts we’d already dissected ten times.
He shrugged. “Fifty-fifty chance he’s there.”
I sighed. “I know the odds. I want to know if I’m going to look pathetic showing up there.”
He laughed. “Right now? Yes, you look pathetic. But he’s not going to know all this underhanded plotting you guys got going on. He’s only going to see you there, partying. He won’t figure it out.”
“Puh-lease.” Benta had moved on to lip-gloss. “He’ll figure it out.”
“No,” Dante said, stronger. “He won’t. We don’t think like you do. He will see you, want to fuck you, and that will be the end of that.”
“Well that’s just stupid,” Benta grumbled, tossing her phone and her gloss into her bag.
“Men are stupid.” Dante laughed, running his hand up Cammie’s thigh as he made a right turn. “We focus on sex, food, and how to have more sex. That’s all we are about.”
“And love,” Cammie said pointedly.
I drowned out whatever sappy response he gave, rolling down the window and tossing out my gum. Love was what got me into trouble in the first place. Love should be less stubborn. It should listen to red flags and reason. It should learn from past mistakes and guard itself from future ones.
I loved Vic. I thought I would always love Vic. But I couldn’t be with him. Pure and simple, no matter what my libido said—I couldn’t do it. It was stupid of me to fall into his traps, to let him buy his way into BLL, into my daily life, in hopes that he could win me back. Despite what happened last week, I was not winnable. I would not come back. I was single and happy, and tonight, I was moving on. Hopefully with ridiculously hot superintendent sex. Now those were four words I never expected to say.
The prior night, I’d stood at Carter’s door like a total stalker and put my ear against it, listening for a hint as to what was going on inside. Silence. That was what was inside. I almost knocked. I was horny and trying to ignore thoughts of Vic and wanted something, anything. Even if it was just someone to talk to. But I didn’t knock. I stood there for a full ten minutes debating, then I returned to my apartment. Pulled open my top drawer and reached for my vibrator. Wasted forty-five minutes on something Carter could have knocked out in five.
I didn’t want another vibrator night.
Hopefully Dante was right, and boys were naïve, and if we did see Carter, it would seem random and fated—not like the devious plan of three girls and a lot of tequila shots.
Benta pushed at my hand and I glanced over, seeing the flask she offered. I took it with a smile, twisting off the top, quietly stealing a strong sip. Her arms wrapped around my neck and she hugged me. “It’s a stupid plan,” she whispered in my ear.
“I know,” I whispered back.
“But we can be stupid together.” She giggled, giving me a last squeeze and then let go, crawling over the center console to twist the radio dial, blasting hip hop through the car.
The music was loud, their energy infectious, and neither distracted me when my phone rang. I fished it out of my pocket and looked at the display. Vic. I silenced the phone and considered, in a moment of tequila-fueled insanity, rolling down the window and chucking it out. It would have been deliciously dramatic. A clear sign to my subconscious that I was done with Vic. It also would have been as stupid as me chopping off my right arm. I tightened my grip on my cell and stuffed it back in my pocket. Pasted a smile on my face and looked away from the window.
Benta stared at me, her eyes narrowed.
“What?” I gave her an innocent face.
“Do I need to take your phone?”
My hand tightened on my cell for one weak moment. Then I pulled it out and handed it over. “Yes. Please.”
I wouldn’t have listened to his voicemail. Wouldn’t have let, whatever he said, influence me or affect the night. I wouldn’t have, a few drinks later, huddled in a corner of the bar and called him. Told him through tears and alcohol, that I still loved him. That I still missed him. That I wanted him and our old life back.
I was sure I wouldn’t have done any of that. But, just in case, I let Benta hold on to the phone. Sometimes we all needed protection from ourselves.
I’d been to Whiskey Bravo before, knew the relative location of the ladies room and deck, but we got pulled in by the crowd and ended up upstairs, in a dark corner that I’d never seen. There was an open table there, and we pounced on it. My clutch stuck in between my knees, the stool cool against the back of my thighs, an air vent blew right down, flattening my hair in a manner that couldn’t be attractive. But it was a table. And in a hot bar, on a Friday night in New York, you took a seat, wherever it was.
“HAVE YOU SEEN HIM?” Cammie yelled across the tiny table at me, her voice barely audible over the music and the wheezing air vent.
I shook my head, saving my voice.
“WE’RE NEVER GOING TO FIND HIM HERE,” she continued, Benta covering her right ear as she shot Cammie an irritated look. The poor woman. Stuck in the middle of us, she’d be deaf by dawn.
“Who are you looking for?” The voice didn’t have to shout; it spoke at my ear, the tickle of breath delicious against my skin, and I craned around, looking up into Carter’s face. I smiled.
“Hey.” My greeting got lost in the noise and he lowered his head, putting his ear to my mouth. “Hey,” I repeated and wanted to bite into his neck and suck him into my soul. Someday, when we were babysitting grandchildren, this would be the story I’d tell. The day eloquent Grandma said “Hey,” while stuffed into the corner of a crowded club.
“Been here long?”
I shook my head and my cheek hit his mouth. His hand reached out and settled on my bare knee, the touch electric. I tried to draw in a breath without shaking. God … his touch. It brought to mind his push of me back on his dining room table. The moment during the night when he trailed his fingers across my arm. His mouth, buried between my legs…
“Who are you looking for?” He repeated the question from earlier and I pulled back a little, tilting my head up and looking into his eyes.
I opened my mouth, and honesty fell out. “You.”
His eyes smiled, and his mouth twitched. I gripped the edge of the table and kept myself from reaching for him. “Want to get out of here?”
“Yes.” He couldn’t have heard me but he read my lips and squeezed my knee, running his hand up to my hip, and he helped me off the stool. Leaning across the table he shook Benta’s hand, then Cammie’s, introducing himself while never letting go of me, his hand at my back, keeping me in place at his side.
“I’m stealing Chloe,” I heard him shout to them. “Is that okay?”
“FOR TONIGHT?” Cammie hollered back.
He looked at me and grinned, a moment of silent connection, a moment where the din of the bar faded and we had—in that brief second—something. He looked back at Cammie and the connection was broken. Then he leaned into her, whispering something in her ear, and her eyes widened slightly at me, her hand passing over my phone.
I snuck a look at it as Carter shouldered through the crowd, a text from Cammie coming just as I dismissed the missed call alert from Vic.
He said “for as long as she’ll let me.” He’ll steal you for as long as you’ll let him. I think he’s a keeper.
I almost missed her second text, it coming through right as I went to lock my phone, and I smiled when I saw it.
P.S. Use protection. Hopefully Magnums.