Definite possibility of extending your work past June.
Patrick will be an amazing mentor.
I accepted a pathetically watered-down vodka gimlet from a bustier-ed waitress, and savored the loose feeling of inebriation slowly seeping into my body. I earned some drunkenness after the interview from hell. Spending the afternoon telling myself I nailed the interview and they’d be fools to choose someone else didn’t prevent Patrick’s chilly disinterest from rattling my confidence right to the edge.
“Enough thinking,” Marley yelled over the thundering house music. “More dancing.”
We danced as a trio and ignored attempts from men in awkwardly tight t-shirts to splinter our group, instead allowing them to admire us from the perimeter. I drained a few more gimlets while we tried to yell-sing along with the music, and found myself pressing into the large hands and firm chest that appeared behind me.
Holding my drink aloft, I tossed my head to the beat, closing my eyes when my partner’s hands curled around my jean-clad hips. I didn’t glance over my shoulder to check him out since I had no interest in leading the Tight T-Shirt Brigade’s foot soldier to believe he had a chance.
His hands moved with me while I danced, and I imagined different hands on my hips, a different broad chest pressed against my shoulders. My backside swayed against my partner’s crotch and I recognized the ridge of his arousal bumping against me. He squeezed my hips and urged me closer. Letting myself believe those hands belonged to someone else, I rolled my hips over his erection and covered his hands with mine.
“Let’s get outta here,” he grunted.
His accented voice dragged me back to reality and I shifted out of his hold. Taking in his v-neck t-shirt and hair that looked styled to the point of crunchiness, I shook my head. There wasn’t enough alcohol in the bar to make it happen with Tight T-Shirt. Not even close.
“No thanks.”
I offered my best attempt at a gracious smile. I did grind on the boy for at least four songs, and was leaving him in an unpleasant condition.
“Fuckin’ cock tease,” he murmured, his eyes coasting up and down my body.
I shrugged and walked away. I’d heard worse, and he wasn’t entirely wrong in that moment. That didn’t mean I was required to experience any remorse.
“I’ll be right back,” I yelled to Jess and Marley, both moving with the beat and ignoring me.
I hit the bar for another drink and guzzled a gimlet from the relative quiet of the white leather seating area. If wine was my rabbi, vodka was my therapist, and I needed some sorting out.
It didn’t escape my notice that Patrick was attractive.
Okay, I can be honest: Patrick was strikingly hot.
He possessed the build and authentic masculinity of a rugby player. It was an observation I noted and discarded when we met this morning, and months ago when I read a feature about his work inArchitectural Digest, complete with several photographs of him. I refused to allow a chiseled jaw or broad shoulders to kill my focus then; I wasn’t excited about allowing it now.
Accepting another tumbler of vodka with lime, I nodded to the waitress in thanks.
Considering those observations were manifesting themselves in the form of dance floor daydreams, it was possible I hadn’t discarded them at all. More than likely, I’d tucked them high on a shelf in the back of my mind and waited for a properly uninhibited moment to take them down and play. If my reaction on the dance floor was any indication, I really wanted to play.
And lest we forget, I hadn’tplayedin a few months.
I spent years admiring Patrick’s work from afar without once admiring him as a man. Becoming his apprentice meant immediately returning those observations to that shelf. It was an uncomfortable thought to swallow.
I frowned at the bar’s faux Miami seashell-and-white-leather décor. As much as I loved my high school friend Jess, growing up and going to college in rural Maine meant she fell on the wide-eyed and naïve side of the lobster trap. In addition to finding a place to live, a hardcore yoga studio, and the farmers’ market, better nightlife options were in order.
“Hey, hey, hey!” Marley shouted as she shimmied toward me. She collapsed on the sofa, panting and drenched with sweat. “Where’d you go?”
“I’m right here,” I replied, muffling another sarcastic comment with my cocktail.
I wanted to like Marley, but I was content with simply tolerating her. Thirty minutes wasted explaining the difference between architecture and construction to Marley didn’t help that tolerance.
“I thought you left with that Hottie McHotpants, but then I saw you over here.”
“Hm.” There was nothing to say to that.
She aggressively fanned her face, and I gnawed a chunk of ice to keep from explaining she was not going to cool off by waving her arms. If anything, she’d expend the same energy as bouncing around the dance floor, though getting that point across in a bass-thumping bar was not a challenge I wanted to accept.
It wasn’t that I was a bitch. Sometimes, talking to people wasn’t easy for me, especially idiots, and Marley was an idiot. And I didn’t mean deep discussions of literature or politics, either. I know it sounded terrible, but the girl struggled to rub two thoughts together without setting her hair on fire. But she was a warm, sweet idiot, and she was an incredible friend to Jess.
