But I felt it, that “it” was strong, and I had to stop whatI was doing to look around.
I turned my head side to side to see everyone’s attention onme.
Even Axl had pushed up on my couch so he could look aroundthe back of it my way.
“Matchmaking shit?”Boone asked.
“Lottie’sgonnaset you boys up,”Mo told them.
I was?
“Let them be strippers.Please, God, if you love me even alittle bit, let them be strippers,” Mag prayed, head tipped back, eyes to myceiling and everything.
“Actually, Mag, we have a girl working her way throughcollege at the club.She wants to be an engineer.And she’d besoyourthing,” I told him.
His eyes came to me.“An engineer?”
“Software.”
Mag started to look like he might be quietly choking.
He clearly was when his next words sounded strangled.“Acomputer nerd?”
“Yep,” I said and turned back to my purse, trying not tosmile.
Though I would never, in a million years, introduce Evan tohim.He was a dawg.He was hot and he was funny and he loved Mo and he wassweet to me.
But he was a dawg.
And Evie was very pretty, in an understated way, when shedidn’t have teased-out hair and wasn’t (somewhat awkwardly, she never got thehang of it, but she was so pretty, it didn’t matter) slithering on a stage withbills poking out of herg-string.
I already felt bad enough—for Magandthe women heinvolved—that Mag was working out his heartbreak from Nikki by tapping as muchass as he could to block out the pain.
Mo had told me she was the reason he needed a place to live.Nikki and Mag broke up three weeks before Tammy and Mo broke up.He’d beensleeping on Axl’s couch, until Mo’s breakup saved him from chronic back pain.
I wasn’t going to subject Evan to his This All Could BeYours If Some Other Woman Hadn’t Fucked Me Up Routine.
Until…
“No offense to your friend, but I’ll pass,” Mag told me.
That bought him my attention again.
My attention with squinty eyes.
“You got a problem with smart girls?”I asked sharply.
“Well…” he shrugged, “yeah.”
I couldn’t believe my ears.
“Why?”I rapped out.
“Babe, if they’re smart, they can figure you out.Noteveryone is level-headed, even keeled and adjusted like Mo,” Mag returned.“Idon’t need some smart girl figuring out my shit.Ican’t even figureout my shit.What I know is, my shit is such shit, I don’twantitfigured out.”
“Has it occurred to you that if you had a smart girl around,she might help you with that?”I asked.
“As he said, this would require him wanting his shit sorted,and Mag prefers to be a hot mess,” Axl declared.“And not because he doesn’twant to figure out his shit.Because him not doing that is a woman magnet.”
