Jake half-heartedly clinked his empty bottle against Milo’s, but before he could respond, a woman wiggled between them, shoving Milo aside so she could wrap her lean, tan arm around Jake’s waist.
“Hey, handsome! Are you with the station?” She pursed her glossy peach lips and leaned into him.
“Ah, no—” he started to say, but Robbie jumped in and hollered, “Hell yes, he is!”
“Great!” She fluttered her lashes like she was trying to kick-start a tidal wave. “I’m Wendy, and I’d be a great Brick Babe. Wanna know why?”
“No,” Jake said flatly, looking over her head at Milo. An undercurrent passed between them, one forged in the fires of countless crowded Chicago bars at which Jake had perfected the art of tactfully directing any woman approaching him with a gleam in her eye to his eternally receptive friend. But tonight Milo seemed to be the only one with any tact.
“Tell me instead, beautiful,” Milo said, smoothly leading the blonde toward the opposite end of the station table where Brandon was, in fact, making notes on a clipboard in the middle of a dozen or so number-sporting women. Jake’s old roommate sent him a sloppy smile and an even sloppier salute, and Jake grimaced in return. He turned to look for Robbie, but as he did, he spotted a different blonde. Mabel, frozen in place across the room.
Their gazes locked, and all the sound in the bar dropped away as he stared into her wide eyes. His old friend panic came roaring back as he considered how this must look. He was standing in the middle of the hot-girl applicant pool, and Mabel undoubtedly thought he was an enthusiastic participant. He hadn’t taken the chance to explain himself to her, hadn’t tried to make her understand why an event like this didn’t have the power to move him at all while one single word from her lips could make him tremble.
His first instinct was to cross the room and lay it all out for her: how rare his attraction to her was, how devastating it had been to lose her before they’d even begun, how much he still wanted to be with her. But he forced his feet to stay planted on the sticky floor. She wanted to keep things polite and professional? She wanted to hit the bar with some new guy? Then she could goddamn well deal with him trying to pick up his life and move forward too.
When the crowd around him shifted, it broke the spell, and Mabel blinked and turned her head sharply to laugh at something her date said.
Her fucking date.
Screw politeness. This was a hot, crowded nightmare, and nothing about his night would be improved by sticking around. “I’m going,” he called to Robbie and Milo over the bass thumping from the speakers six feet away.
“You sure?” Robbie swiped his sleeve across his sweaty forehead and gestured around them. “Lots of ladies here. Lots more fish in the sea.”
“Nah, not for Jake. He’s picky,” Milo said lightly, and a slight bit of tension in Jake’s chest eased at having a friend in town who got him without the need for a long conversation. Then Milo followed Jake’s gaze across the bar to where Mabel was whispering with Aiden.
“Is that her?” Milo moved to stand next to him. When Jake nodded, Milo looked back at her and her date. “Christ. No wonder you haven’t wanted to talk about it.” Then he turned to Robbie. “Hey, man, we’re gonna call it a night. Maybe grab some burgers on the way home. You good here?”
“Oh yeah,” Robbie said, casting his eyes toward Bettie Page, who smiled back shyly from a few feet away. “I’m good. You guys go ahead.”
Without bothering to say any additional goodbyes, Jake and Milo weaved through the press of sweaty bodies to reach the cool evening air. Once they were buckled into his Jeep, Jake rubbed his ears, which still throbbed from the blaring dance music.
“So do you want to talk about it now?” Milo asked as Jake put the car in drive and left the parking lot.
“I chose work when it mattered.” He kept his eyes on the twin circles of yellow his headlights splashed on the road. “I wasn’t wrong to do it, but at the same time she wasn’t wrong to be hurt by it.” He clenched the steering wheel until his knuckles whitened. “I guess in the end, she was my person but I wasn’t hers.”
Milo exhaled but said nothing, and Jake was grateful. They drove through the dark streets of Beaucoeur in silence.
As Milo snored on his couch that night, Jake tossed his phone from hand to hand, then tapped out a message and hit Send before his better instincts could wave him off.
So that was awkward.
The whoosh sounded, and he dropped the phone on the mattress as if it had burned him. So much for keeping his distance. But it was the only way he could think to say, “I didn’t like the way tonight went down and also please don’t still be with that guy.”
Just when he was starting to worry that she’d blocked his number, the phone buzzed, and he snatched it up.
Mabel:Nah. Seeing you surrounded by women just reminded me of a joke.
Jake:A joke?
Yeah, tonighthadbeen a joke, and not a very funny one. But that’s not what she meant.
Mabel:What do you call an accountant who’s spotted talking to someone else?
Jake:What?
Mabel:Popular.
Triumph burned through his veins. If she was texting him, that likely meant she wasn’t still with Murdoch.And he could play this game. He could play this game all night.
