“Is that June? I didn’t recognize her.” Jackson looked at me bewildered.
“Yeah. But that asshole definitely did,” declared James. I noticed Brian’s gaze narrow to two slits.
“Ignore him, Brian.”
But he didn’t pay any attention to me.
Tiffany came back to us and said in a clearly over-the-top voice, “If anybody needs to have fun, it’s you two! Look at these two sad faces.”
“No, one drink and I’m going home,” I murmured unwillingly when she tried to offer me her drink.
“Me too. We have the game this weekend.” Brian got in line.
“Don’t be a grandpa! Look at what a pretty girl you have in front of you! And when is that happening again?”
“Indeed,” he whispered, bringing his emerald eyes to the floor. And if I never knew what to expect from Will and James, Brian always surprised me, but in a good way.
He had tattoos and a bad boy vibe, but deep down he was a good guy.
“All right, but just one sip,” he said to Tiffany, who was watching us smiling. She handed him what looked like a mojito, Brian pulled the straw toward him, and I did the same when Tiff handed one to me.
“You both look gorgeous,” he whispered in my ear in a seesawing voice, and I was officially trashed.
My head was enough of a mess. Adding Brian to the mix would mean making it even more complicated. And just as I formulated that thought, I felt Will’s eyes like two cutting daggers. The light atmosphere between us shifted as soon as Ari’s thin figure walked by us. Brian’s expression changed immediately. You don’t pick who you fall in love with, that was true.
“Ari.”
Brian pounced on her. He almost looked like he’d been waiting for her, like an addict in withdrawal. But Ari pretended not to hear him.
“Ariana,” he repeated resolutely. And if I’d only craned my neck before, right then I turned around. I saw Brian block her path.
“Brian, don’t start this again.” Ari sighed, almost annoyed by her ex’s presence. Brian said something to her, but I couldn’t hear.
“Let me go.”
“What the fuck are you wearing?”
“I wear what I want. We’re not together anymore, remember?”
I would’ve wanted to not notice, but it was impossible not to see the scorn in Brian’s eyes as she walked away.
“Are you okay?” I asked. He shook his head no.
She’d just made out with Will last night and I was supposed to be angry with her, but I had a weird sensation in the pit of my stomach, maybe it was what they called a gut feeling.
What if James was right, and I wouldn’t understand anything about the people around me? Ari greeted me curtly, and I glanced toward where Will had been. But instead of finding him, my eyes met James’s. He was talking to a girl who clutched his chest, and it was always the same rodeo. He did nothing but show off his charm. I wanted to take my eyes off them but I couldn’t. I shivered when they started making out. I didn’t understand how other people weren’t embarrassed by creating that spectacle in public.
Would I do the same thing if I had too much to drink? I wondered that as I stood staring at the girl’s thick hair becoming a messy heap between James’s hands.
Maybe his magnetic field was so powerful that it would make anyone’s brain go haywire around him. Was that the reason why I would’ve kissed him last night?
That thought made me dizzy. Or maybe it was just the drink I was holding that made me think like that. I gathered all my good efforts and tried to take my eyes off the racy scene, until James gently moved the hair out of the girl’s face. I felt it right in my chest. His touch seemed to flow on my skin like warm velvet, and it almost startled me when his narrow gaze went past the girl and lingered on me.
I let my gaze drift immediately to Tiffany.
“What’s going on?” she asked, seeing that I was pensive.
“Nothing, I don’t get it. I don’t understand what goes on in his head. He treats me badly then he worries about me.”
