Chapter Three
PAXTON
*
God, this night was turning out to be the absolute worst.
I fought my way back through the crowd towards the rickety little table that we'd managed to finally claim for ourselves, gritting my teeth with each thump of the too-loud music. You couldn't even hear the words or catch any of the melody – it was basically just repetitive bass thumping, a tribal rhythm pumped out so that horny young adults could grind their asses against each other before going home to have meaningless sex!
And if I hadn't been convinced before that the guys in this club were total assholes, I now had the perfect anecdote to prove my point.
Finally, I managed to get back to the table – but instead of seeing any familiar faces standing around it, I found myself instead looking at strangers. It seemed that, while I'd excused myself to go use the facilities, we'd lost our table.
Perfect. Just perfect.
"Paxton!"
I turned at the sound of my name, and breathed out a small sigh of relief as I spotted Anna-Claire standing at the bar, waving her hand at me. Thank goodness. I hadn't been abandoned completely.
"I wanted to get a fresh drink," Anna-Claire said as I made my way over to her. There were a lot of people squeezed in around the bar, and I had to wiggle my shoulder a bit into the guy standing next to Anna-Claire before he moved over. He turned and gave me a dirty look at being dislodged, but I just glared right back. Probably another asshole, just like that guy by the bathrooms.
"Yeah, well, I want to get home," I sighed, once I'd squeezed myself into the tight space beside Anna-Claire. "Seriously, why did I agree to come out here again? This place is the absolute worst."
"Because your best friend is having a work party here, and you agreed to come along with her for moral support?" Anna-Claire's dimples flashed in her cheeks as she smiled sweetly at me. She knew that I'd cave, of course. "And you're a good friend?"
"Yeah, yeah, I'm already here." I reached out and picked up her glass, frowning down into it. "What's this?"
"Whiskey," she answered, as I took a sip – and nearly gagged on the acrid, burning taste.
"Well, it's awful, just like everything else here." I put it back down firmly on the bar's counter. "How can you drink that sort of stuff? It's like swilling rubbing alcohol!"
"It's not so bad, once you get used to it," Anna-Claire said, her voice sounding far too reasonable, as if I was somehow the crazy one. "And a lot of the guys at the office drink it, so it's nice to be able to talk about it with them."
I turned my frown back to her. "Don't you remember the lessons from elementary school about peer pressure? Just say no?"
My eyes dipped for a moment, taking in Anna-Claire's tight pantsuit. She looked more like she belonged in a board meeting somewhere, not out at a club. The fabric looked expensive to my untrained eye, and the suit fit her well – but she still seemed out of place. She'd at least taken off the jacket and left it in her car, revealing well-toned shoulders in the short-sleeved cotton blouse beneath, but it still looked too professional. Especially when I compared it to the skimpy little tank tops and too-tight, too-tiny miniskirts or spandex shorts on the other girls in the club around us.
My eyes rose past Anna-Claire's blouse, up to her face. She'd cut her hair into a rather stern pageboy style, but it still managed to glint a tawny gold color in the flashing strobe lights of the club, hinting at highlights and lowlights that I knew had cost her a pretty penny at the salon.
"Stop it," Anna-Claire said softly to me, interrupting my thoughts.
"Stop what?"
She rolled her eyes. "You're comparing yourself to me again. You need to stop doing that."
"I'm not comparing myself to you," I lied, even as my treacherous mind tallied up the score between us.
Most of the points were in Anna-Claire's favor. She stood four inches taller than me, and weighed about thirty pounds fewer. She complained about the long hours she put in at her high-powered job, but she also got invited out to company happy hours, like at this club, and she had the money to lease a new Mercedes every three years. She had the nicer apartment, the better fashion sense, and she knew how to conduct herself in uncomfortable social situations, like this one.
"Yes, you are," she said firmly. "Now, do you want to tell me what's bugging you?"
"Where do I start?" I gestured around at the interior of the club. "This whole place is awful! The drinks are too expensive, the music's too loud, and I just want to be at home right now. And some asshole creeper accosted me on the way back from the bathroom! Where are your coworkers, anyway?"
Anna-Claire frowned and rose up on her tiptoes in her respectable one-inch pumps, casting her eyes out over the crowd. I couldn't do that, I thought resentfully to myself. Too short. My view was a sea of thinner female chests and brawny male ones.
"Over there on the dance floor," she finally said, sinking back down. "Although from the way that they've been tossing back drinks, they probably won't even notice if I take off now."
"Do it," I urged her. "Come on, Anna-Claire, you know that you hate this place as much as I do! Don't you want to go home, maybe take a nice hot bath, read a romance novel and have a couple glasses of wine, instead of staying here?"
"They serve wine here, you know," she tried, but I wasn't having any of it.
"That's not the point, and you know it. Why are we sticking around?"
I thought for a second that I might have convinced her – but then Anna-Claire's jaw tightened, and I winced. That was the same expression she wore when she decided that she was adopting a new resolution in her life, or when she was insistent upon where we'd go out for dinner. It was the kind of expression that told me that she wasn't going to be swayed – and worse, she'd now try and convince me to see her side.
"Paxton, how long has it been since you've had a date?" she asked.
Ooh, right in the gut. "A couple of months," I lied. "And I'm focusing on myself right now, anyway."
"A couple?" she echoed. "How many is a couple?"
"Oh, you know. Two, or three..." She kept staring at me, and my mouth kept rolling. "...or four, or six, or eleven."
"Eleven?"
"So it's been a while. So what?" I pointed my finger up at her, trying to turn this around. "How long has it been for you?"
"Two months, but I've been asked out since then," she answered immediately. "I gave up dating for six months so that I could focus more on my career."
"Well, that's what I'm doing, too."
She rolled her eyes at me. "What career, Paxton? You work for your uncle at his used bookstore. There's not much of a ladder there to climb, since the only other employees are the part-time stock boys."
"The store needs a lot of attention," I said weakly. Yes, it had been a long time since my last date, much less anything physical happening – but I knew that I wasn't going to find any potential romantic partners here, in this club full of skinny bitches and muscle-bound tools. All the people here were the same, not what I wanted.
Anna-Claire poked me in the middle of my sweater-covered chest with a finger. "No, you need some attention! If you don't get some kind of action, Paxton, your lady bits are going to dry up and fall off."
Eergh. Not the prettiest mental picture. "I'm not going to meet a guy here," I restated, trying to circle back around to my core premise. "Because all the guys here are assholes and creeps! Just a minute ago, when I was coming out of the bathroom, this guy pointed at me and told me that he wanted to see my tits! That is not the kind of guy that I want to think about going home with."
"Well, maybe not him," Anna-Claire winced. "But come on, Paxton, don't you want to just cut loose and have some fun? You're always so tightly wound, so busy thinking about stuff. This is your chance to relax, turn your brain off for a bit, and have fun! And drinks are on my company, so you should enjoy a few!"
For a second, I wavered. Anna-Claire Lewyn was nothing if not convincing, and she knew it. The same persuasive skills that carried her debate team to the national stage in high school now worked against me, urging me to stay. I could always enjoy a free drink, at least – the used book business didn't leave me swimming in free cash.
"Give in," she purred, sensing that I was about to fold. "Just a few more minutes. At least talk to one more guy before you leave. I'll order you a drink, and you can let that pent-up, repressed imagination of yours loose and imagine doing some of the things from your romance novels with a real-life, actually breathing guy."
Oh, what the hell. I hated everything about this place – but my best friend did have the very annoying habit of knowing what was right for me, sometimes when I didn't even realize it for myself.
"Fine," I finally let out. "One drink, and one guy. But that's it. Then, I'm going home – alone, mind you – to go take a hot bath and read some of the stack of books that's waiting for me."
Anna-Claire let out a little cheer, clapping her hands together. "Oh good – maybe you won't die a spinster, after all! Now, what can I get you to drink?" she continued smoothly as I choked at her comment.
I coughed, trying to clear my airway, and she placed an order for me. A minute later, she passed a tall glass of something brightly colored and fruity smelling over to me.
I took a cautious sip. Surprisingly, not awful.
"Now, to find you a guy," Anna-Claire said. "Ooh, how about-"
I held up a hand to forestall her. "Actually, I think that I'll make my own choice of man," I cut her off. "Why don't you go check in with your coworkers out on the dance floor? That's why you're out here in the first place, after all. Not to get me talking to some random stranger."
Anna-Claire bit her lip for a second, perhaps considering objecting, but she couldn't refute my logic. "Fine," she gave in, finishing off her glass of disgusting whiskey. "But I want you to really try, Paxton! Don't just dip out like you usually do."
It was like she could read my mind, sometimes. "Yeah, yeah." I waved her off, watching her taller, slender figure disappear into the crowd and hating that I felt a note of jealousy throbbing in my chest. Why did she have the high-paying job, the good looks, the thin figure, and the confidence to just go up and hit on guys at a club like this? It felt like she'd been dealt all the good traits when we were born, and I ended up with the rejects.
I didn't belong out here at the club. I was too... too ordinary.
But still, I'd promised that I'd talk to one guy before leaving. And I would stick to the letter of my promise – I'd talk to one man, for just long enough to down this drink. And then, as soon as my straw drew air, I'd be out of this disgusting club and headed back home, where I could finally lower my shields and relax.
I looked around, trying to find a man who might be suitable to hold a few minutes' conversation. I wanted someone unthreatening, someone who wouldn't push my buttons too much.
I looked to my left, then to my right, and then straight ahead – and spotted one man, bearing down on me.
Oh god, no. Anyone but him.
"Hi," the creeper said to me.