“Wait! Did you take care of your office? Lock things up? What about our computers?”
He shrugged. “It’s all fine. Leave it.”
“But Wick!”
He didn’t stop. “It’s fine.”
I held in a sigh, and he grinned at me, not letting my hand go, not even when we encountered a group of people leaving. My face flushed, but he only smiled and waved at everyone on the way out the door.
The drive to the bar wasn’t long, and it was easy enough to find the Bus Stops Here, which was exactly as it had been described to me by Lacey, only a thousand times better. Each of the eight buses that had been fitted together to make up the “building” that housed the business had been painted a different vibrant, metallic color, creating a rainbow. The front end of the first bus and the rear of the last bus had been left intact, so the result looked like a mega party bus; however, the structure sat firmly on the ground and the wheels were purely for show. The pink-tinted windows allowed us to see directly inside, and a good part of the bottom floor seemed to be dedicated to booths and dance space.
“This seems fun,” I said.
Wick nodded. “Don’t know if it would be good in a windstorm, but it’s fine for now.” He eyed up the place, and I chuckled.
“You don’t have a lot of faith.”
“Yes, well, I wasn’t involved in this project.”
I slapped his shoulder, and he stuck his tongue out at me as we entered. The atmosphere reminded me of a street party with the multicolored lantern lights strung along the ceiling on each side. At the far end near a small DJ station a disco ball glittered overhead, and Wick pointed at it. “Someone must be reliving their glory days. I haven’t seen a real disco ball in years.”
“You aren’t old enough to have ever seen a real disco ball, are you?”
He gave me a narrow-eyed glare. “I’ll have you know that Tangerine used to have one.”
“That old club in the Pleasure District they tore down in the late nineties? You never went in there.”
He chuckled. “I snuck in once. Got kicked out ten minutes after I weaseled through the front door.”
I gave him a side hug. “You’re lucky you weren’t arrested.”
“Luck had nothing to do with it—my name did.”
I rolled my eyes as we made our way to the pink steel bar directly across from the door. “Seems like it’s wider inside than one bus, doesn’t it?” I asked Wick over the dance music blasting from a speaker far too close to us.
He nodded and grinned. I let him order our drinks without any input from me, and I texted Lacey to find out where she was hiding. I’d barely sent the message when my phone buzzed in my hand.
Lacey:Upstairs. All the way in the back.
I showed Wick the screen and leaned against the bar.
“Hey, Maurice!” I turned and spotted Cooper resting an elbow against the other end of the bar. He gave me an enthusiastic wave that had me smiling, and I returned the gesture. Cooper was dressed for a night out in a nice white shirt with the top buttons undone and jeans that hugged his thighs and hips. A woman standing behind him was staring at his ass without an ounce of shame, and the bartender blasted him with an extra-wide smile as he passed over a bottle of beer.
“He’s cute. How do you know him?” Wick asked, and I had to laugh because he wasn’t doing a very good job at looking uninterested in my answer. His eyebrows dove as he studied my face like it held all the mysteries of the universe.
“That’s for me to know.”
His mouth fell open.
I laughed.
“You’re terrible. How do you know him?”
I shook my head, and he slid his arm around my shoulders, doing his best to mark his territory without pissing on me, but I didn’t mind him staking a claim. It made me happy inside when Cooper caught my eye and gave me a thumbs-up.
After the bartender passed us mugs of a dark beer that smelled like coffee, Wick and I found a light-lined set of spiral stairs to the left of the bar, which would surely be a hazard to anyone who’d had too much to drink, and we climbed to the second floor. It was much quieter and relaxed on this level with mellow acoustic guitar music buzzing in the background, but the gentle sounds were losing the war to the noise of the party below. We moved toward the back of the room and spotted Lacey at a square iron table someone had taken the trouble to paint pink.
When we reached her, I was confused because a scowl twisted her lips to the side. I’d never seen her looking this ready to go off on someone without an argument already in full swing. She’d curled her hair and the bouncy strands hung in spirals around her head, making her resemble a doll. She tugged at the strap of the purple dress that clung to her curves and dragged it back on top of her shoulder.
