“God, I’m a sucker for those green eyes,” he said smoothly.
I didn’t think that was true, but I had been pulling the puppy-dog eyes andpleaseon him since I wore a training bra.
“You pick the place,” I told him, ignoring his comment. He wasn’t serious. At least not in the way an average woman would hope that he was. “And you can drive too. I’ll be ready to go around seven. Just in case you want to make reservations.”
“You’re so bossy, English. Why do I put up with any of this?”
“Because you love me, obviously.”
“Obviously,” he muttered before he abruptly left my office, tapping the doorframe on his way out. I stared after the place he’d occupied just seconds earlier, wondering what all that was about. Jonah had been cool and confident for as long as I could remember. He never worried about anything.
Least of all, his friendship with Will.
But I had been where he was more times than I wanted to count. Okay, maybe not with my ride-or-die BFF because that top spot was reserved for my brothers and Jonah. But I had girlfriends once upon a time. A lot of them, especially in my early twenties. Yet, one by one, they’d all disappeared into the mysterious abyss of love and matrimony. Girlfriends from my pre-Craft days, old high school friends, even my close friend Daria, who I’d randomly met at a speeding ticket forgiveness class when I was twenty-one. We’d been so perfectly matched as friends and had enjoyed two solid years of inseparable hilarity. Then she’d met the one, fallen hard and fast, and slowly but surely disappeared from my life.
I thought it was the Curse of the Bridesmaid. The urban legend turned reality in my own life where once you stood up with someone at their wedding, the friendship was doomed to die. I’d lived out that scenario too many times. Apparently, I made an excellent bridesmaid but not a great long-term friend.
It had given me a sort of standoffish approach to women in general. But thankfully, I had Will, Charlie, and Jonah to fall back on.
Although now I worried Jonah and I would experience that with Will too. It hurt to even think about. If Will fell into the marriage black hole, it wouldn’t be quite so easy to bounce back from.
I let out a slow, stabilizing breath and was determined to get back to work. I had a lot of routine work to do today, but I had also made a New Year’s resolution about building a stronger social media presence for the bar. It wasn’t something I felt particularly qualified to manage, but it technically fell under my umbrella of responsibility.
We were pulling in great numbers, and we seemed to have a good mix of new clientele every weekend. But this part of me couldn’t help but fear the day we opened, and nobody came in. Every other bar in Durham seemed to have this successful and creative online presence. I knew that was exaggerated insecurity. But currently, our Instagram account only had three pictures, and they were all from opening day. It was a little embarrassing.
I opened my phone to scroll through my different social media accounts, hoping for inspiration, when Ada knocked on my door. I looked up, thankful for a distraction. I was three seconds into my social media research and already defeated.
“Jonah wasn’t here very long,” she said by way of greeting.
A shrug pushed my shoulders up, but I halted halfway through my indifference. Ada was never casual about anything, but least of all Jonah.
“Yeah, I don’t know. He was in a weird mood,” I said, keeping my voice purposely flat. She leaned against the doorframe, folding her arms over her cropped sweater. This was a move she pulled on everyone—where she just waited it out, still and stoic, until the other person cracked. It worked one hundred percent of the time. “He was all bummed about Will being in a serious relationship.” I stared at my computer screen, pretending to click through only God knew what.
I hated that it was that easy to get me to crack. But truthfully, Ada was some kind of Jedi mind manipulation master. She was all serious and comfortable with silence. Where the rest of the normal population, or at least me, preferred to fill any kind of pause in a conversation with rambling nonsense.
She reacted differently than I expected, though. Blowing a puff of air from her lips, she kicked her toe against the recently mopped tile floor and said, “Yeah, it’s new for all of us.”
My fingers hovered over my keyboard. “Don’t tell me you’re going to be weird about it too. You like Lola.”
She waved a hand in front of her face. “Obviously, I like Lola. Everybody likes Lola. She’s unfairly endearing.”
I bugged my eyes at her. “So what is it then?”
She shrugged, her shoulders bunching up around her chin and staying there. “I don’t know. It kind of feels like everything is changing all at once, doesn’t it? Like we had this great thing going... and now...” She huffed another breath out. “I overheard them talking about opening a second location before Christmas.”
My eyes narrowed. “You heard who talking?”
She swallowed, and I could tell it took some effort. “Lola and Will. He was picking her brain about opening another bar and what it would entail. He mentioned a spot near one of Ezra Baptiste’s new restaurants that just went up for sale. He seemed anxious to talk to a real estate agent. I need to know, Eliza. Are y’all talking about breaking up the bar?”
three
My stomach hollowedout at the very thought of us splitting up the bar. “Will hasn’t said anything to me about it.”
Her chin dipped knowingly. She had known she was going to get that confirmation from me but needed it anyway. “Or Charlie.”
Well, Ada was the only one who was surprised by that. But how could Will not have said anything to me? Before Lola, I had been the person he talked to about everything. And if not me, then Jonah. And Jonah would have said something to me.
Anger and betrayal simmered in my chest. I tried to hold them at bay until I had the full story, but they spit and hissed like hot grease in a pan.
