I’ve had dinner, dessert, and I’m on my second vodka and cranberry. I’m a little too relaxed, a little too unguarded for my own good, but I’m not caring much at the moment. I stare into Dylan’s eyes and lean closer to him until we’re only inches away from each other.
“You look beautiful,” he says to me.
“So do you.”
My gaze moves to his mouth, to those lips Lilla called kissable. I picture those lips all over my body, and I squirm in my seat. My dress feels too heavy on my breasts, and I have the urge to rip the fabric off.
Jesus. I swallow and look into Dylan’s dark eyes again. His are searching mine.
“What do you think?” he asks me.
“I think you scare me,” I say honestly.
“How come?”
He’s so close I can feel his warm peppermint breath on my skin.
Before I have to answer him, Marcus White saves me.
“Hey, you guys want to double-date?” he says as he and Lilla walk up to our table.
Dylan shakes his head no, but I take the out. Lilla’s always a good distraction.
“Sure,” I say.
Dylan looks at me and furrows his brow.
When Marcus and Lilla leave for the lobby, he says, “You afraid to be alone with me again?”
I flush with heat. “Don’t be ridiculous—of course not!”
“What’s that phrase?” he says as he stands up. “I think the woman doth protest too much?”
I make a face as he grins and holds out his hand to me. Ignoring the gesture, I stand up on my own and we walk to the lobby to meet up with Lilla and Marcus.
“Oh, my God! Jase, this is going to be so cool!” Lilla squeals in my ear as she links her arm through mine and we step out of the hotel. “A double-date with two football stars. I can’t wait to tell everyone back home!”
“Shh.” I shake my head at her and hope Dylan didn’t hear her.
If he did, he doesn’t act like it. He and Marcus stride in front of us and chat about football. We walk about five short blocks, and Marcus leads us into The Ivy.
The second we walk inside the bar, I can tell this is not my kind of place. This is the type of bar people like Lilla will talk about for weeks, about how cool it was, how swanky, how chic. It’s tastefully decorated, but I’m more concerned about whether or not I feel safe, and in this environment, the answer would be no.
The interior is dark, which unnerves me. I can hardly see where I’m going. People are hanging out on couches and low-seated chairs, and they stare at us as we walk by.
There are tons of young women, and they all turn and focus on Dylan and Marcus. I stand at the bar and pretend I don’t notice, but I do. I tug at my dress nervously and glance at Dylan, who’s telling Marcus what drinks to get for the two of us.
Dylan tries to talk to me, but I’m distracted and end up meeting the eyes of a woman who looks like she’s not much over eighteen and definitely not of legal drinking age. She’s at a stool a few feet away, and she raises her eyebrows at me in a challenging kind of a way, almost like she’s trying to see if I actually have Dylan or if it’s not really that serious. The man next to her has his arm around her while clearly flirting with a woman on his other side.
I frown at her and turn away.
Then Dylan gets mobbed by a group of loud women about our age. One asks Dylan to sign a piece of paper, which he does. One asks him to sign her shirt, which he does, on the sleeve. One asks him to sign her bra, which he declines. She follows up with a request that he sign her boob. Again he says no, this time with a sideways glance at me.
I stand with my arms crossed, wondering why I ever thought it would be less painful to go out than to be alone with Dylan.
Marcus turns around from the bar and hands Dylan two beers.
“Let’s sit in the back,” Dylan says in my ear.
