She and I grimaced at the same time. Mac and her shitty boy-bait beers.
“You got it, dude.” I leaned on the bar and watched Izzie work, sifting through bunches of herbs, peeling lemon rinds. I thought about ordering Kyle, my itinerant hookup, a drink, but odds were high he wouldn’t show until the tail end of the night, just like I liked it. After the Ben debacle, I was itching to jump into bed and work off some pent-up frustrations.
“Lee Stone, standing alone at a bar. Just like the night we met.”
That smug, husky voice. It could belong to none other than Ben Laderman.
I turned, and there he stood, all those many inches of him. He’d exchanged the cool blue suit for a simple white button-down and jeans, no glasses, his black hair no longer carefully brushed behind his ears but askew over his forehead. It looked for a second like bedhead, and in a sudden flash, I remembered I’d seen him a hundred mornings over, shirtless and sleepy and tangled in his sheets. I pictured his wolfish smile when he woke, how he’d pull me toward him across the mattress, burying his face in my neck, hands sliding down my chest, skimming my stomach, lower—
The unexpected intimacy shot through me like a white-hot bolt.
I swallowed to mask it. Ben was my ex—andmy competition. “What are you doing at my spot? Crashing my workplace wasn’t enough?”
He looked around. “There’s this constitutional principle called the right to free association. Besides, I’m pretty sure this bar belongs to every hipster in Austin.”
Izzie put my drinks down on the counter and raised an eyebrow. “He’s cleaner than you normally like them, but truly, not bad.”
I snatched the martini. “Ben’s not a paramour. He’s a pest. He’s the Ghost of Relationships Past, back to haunt me.”
“I see. And what would the ghost like to drink?”
Ben looked over his shoulder to the corner, where two guys in matching button-downs were playing darts. “Two Shiners and a basil gimlet, please.”
I nearly spit out my drink. “Which one of your friends is the 1920s flapper?”
“California introduced me to herbs, Stoner. I didn’t get much green stuff growing up, and now I’m making up for it. The drink is delicious. And it’s too cool for you.”
Ben had always skirted the topic of growing up while we dated. Clear sensitive zone. The most I’d been able to gather was that his dad split when he was ten, and his mom struggled to raise him and his younger brother, Will. Ben used to glow with pride whenever he talked about Will, who’d been starting undergrad at Duke when Ben was in law school.
“How’s your brother doing?” I decided to play nice—a change in tactics. Lure him in with honey and then pounce on his vulnerabilities. It had nothing to do with the fact that I was tossing my martini down a little too fast. At this rate, I’d have to order another before I went back to the table.
Ben’s face transformed, just like it used to. “He’s in med school at Duke, top of his class. Going to be a surgeon.”
“Congratulations. You must be very proud.”
Ben grinned. “I am. Hey, remember the first thing you said to me the night we met?”
Izzie handed Ben his gimlet and he took a deep, satisfying sip.
Of course I remembered. “Hey, law douche. Bet you the bar tab you can’t take more shots than me.” Vintage Stoner.
Ben leaned an elbow on the bar. “You were always so competitive.”
“Youwere always so competitive. I was smart, broke and doing a tidy business fleecing your classmates.”
Ben’s eyes crinkled, and something inside me twinged. “Well, those douches deserved to be fleeced.”
“Fleeced you, too, if memory serves.” There I went, draining my martini.
“I let you win.”
“You have let no one win, at anything, ever.”
A slow smile spread across his face. “True.” He leaned in, and his voice grew deeper. Deliberately provocative. “Hey, policy douche. Bet you can’t take more shots than me now.”
The thrill of competition raced through me, raising goose bumps in its wake. This was good; this was my comfort zone. “I don’t need help paying the bar tab anymore.”
“Prize isn’t the bar tab. It’s whatever the winner decides. You still ballsy, Stoner?”
