She waves me away. “Your gym is huge. You’re a real life small business owner and didn’t go to business school. You also have a full time teaching job. Everyone very annoyingly loves you. Family, friends, coworkers, clients. Women. Blondes. It’s annoying. Everything about it is annoying.”
Despite the number of “annoying”s she’s dropped, I find myself grinning, thrilled to be taken seriously for once. “Thanks, Meems.”
“Whatever.”
We both sip on our drinks. After a minute, her leg starts bouncing. It seems she’s set her eyes on a target. I follow her eyes across the room.
I frown. “Him?” I ask. “Really?” I feel prickly, have felt this way since getting here.
She sighs dreamily. “Fuck. Yes,” she all but moans.
I take another gulp of my beer. The guy looks like a douchebag. Like another finance bro. But whatever.
“So go get him,” I tell her.
She swallows, frozen to her seat. I don’t push.
“How do you do it?” she asks eventually.
“Do what?”
“I don’t know, be allyou. When you’re out. Besides being hot and irresistible.”
This makes me feel marginally better. “I just am pretty hot and irresistible,” I grin down at her, inexplicably staring at her exposed collarbone.
She rolls her eyes. “What are you attracted to when you go out? Besides blondes,” she adds on. “How do I do it? What do I do?”
I scrub my face, feeling weird answering but knowing, after earlier, that she won’t relent. I may as well give in. “I don’t know, Mia… I like it when… or what I try to do…” I sigh again.This is so fucking weird. “Confidence,” I manage. “And even if you don’t feel it, fake it. Chin up. Shoulders back. Tits out. Look at him like you want to eat him alive, but also play it cool.”
“Those sound like opposite things,” she retorts.
“There’s a balance you have to strike. But that’s where you should start.”
She nods, mulling it over. “Okay,” she says firmly. “I’m going.” She takes a huge sip of her drink, then sets it on the bar. Her chin goes up. Her shoulders go back. Her tits… go out.
I cough.
She strides over. My dick twitches.Chill, dude.I notice her ass again, and I’m impressed at her dedication and the confidence she’s clearly faking. That is, until she detours, maybe two feet before reaching the guy, and makes a beeline for the bathroom instead.
I bark out a laugh. A memory pops into my head, a time in high school, when she did almost the same thing. Our parents made us all do Band (Leo and I stuck to percussion) and Mia had a flute solo for one of our performances. She marched right up to the front of the stage, turned on her heel, and walked off stage left. I followed her and gave her the pep talk of all pep talks, forcing her to get back out there. She did it. It was terrible, but she did it. I chuckle to myself, feeling a little lighter.
“Hey,” a new voice says, somewhere to my left.
I look over to see a beautiful woman filling in the spot Mia just vacated. Long, silky, black hair, dark eyes. Nice.
I turn my whole body around, bracketing hers with my legs. She’s wearing a tiny, stretchy dress that barely contains her gorgeous body. This is one of those times when trashy is, in fact, not bad. In fact, it’s?—
Some drunk asshole trips into the two of us. Her drink gets knocked off the bar.
I catch it.
She smiles, eyebrows high. “Fast hands.”
“Thanks,” I grin at her. “They go slow, too.”
She likes that. A lot. She takes a step closer.
The bar area is weird in that it’s a big oval in the center of the room. As this girl opens her mouth to say something, across the way, on the other side of the bar, I see Mia. She’s watching us, watching me, with a strange look on her face.
