No one else had noticed Alex yet, so he remained alone after James departed. I shouldn’t have been staring so openly. If he noticed me, he’d no doubt scowl and march off in the opposite direction, but I couldn’t make my eyes obey. I barely even blinked.
After a few seconds, Alex’s gaze settled on Trevor, and a soft smile curled his lips. He shook his head slightly, exasperated by Trevor and his unrequited obsession with our boss—the worst-kept secret at Top Shelf.
I still couldn’t drag my gaze from him. I should. Staring was foolish. Any second now, his attention would swing my way, and he’d—there it was—notice me.
As though flipping a switch, his face screwed up and his shoulders bunched. You’d think he was the only one in the room who knew I’d committed a heinous crime with how fast his expression turned hostile.
I sighed. Keeping my promise to Trevor would be a challenge. The best thing I could do to avoid making a crack that would have Trevor coming for me would be to stay as far away from Alex as possible tonight, especially if we were both drinking. I’d likely say something insulting, and he’d scowl so hard his face would freeze. I could imagine trying to explain toour Top Shelf customers the reason his face had a permanent glower.
Well, you see, I was wasted and trying to get under his skin, so I called him freeloader like I used to when I was a dumb high schooler. After shooting lasers at me with his eyes, he scowled at me, and bam, face stuck.
Parker would fire me on the spot for damaging his golden bottle service boy.
I snickered. It might be worth it.
“Alex! You’re here!” Trevor bounded across the room to fling himself at Alex, who easily caught him. He smiled. Actually fucking smiled a huge happy upturn of his lips, complete with teeth and a half-laugh.
Something twisted in my gut.
What the hell? I’d seen the man smile before at work, plenty of times. Not at me, of course, and not those free but practiced smiles for our customers, and real ones for other coworkers.
Asshole.
Why the hell did I care? I’d made it my life’s mission to irritate that cranky fuck. His not ever smiling at me meant I’d accomplished my mission. Maybe it was less about Alex and more about the fact that no one had smiled at me that way recently.
Something had been off with me for the past few weeks. I had a huge friend group here in Boston, both from college and high school, but I’d barely reconnected with them since returning home.
I couldn’t put my finger on why, but I felt different. It could be the secret I’d been harboring about the change in my education and career plans. No one, and I mean no one in my friend group, would understand why I wanted to become a teacher when I had the chance to take over a billion-dollar empire. And that was okay. No one needed to understand it.Hell, I barely did, but I had a suspicion they wouldn’t support me either. And that’s the part that had me biting my tongue. I wasn’t ready for the criticism and pressure that would accompany the news getting out. My sister’s support meant the world, but all the naysayers would drown out her voice.
I turned my back on Alex and strode toward where Luke was chatting with Dominic, one of the bartenders. Dom and I had met but hadn’t chatted much beyond drink orders.
“Hey, Ryder,” Luke said as I joined them. This was my first time seeing the club’s host out of a suit. He dressed down well in jeans and a striped blue and gray sweater. “Dom was just telling me about a customer who followed him home and tried to climb in his window.”
“No shit?” I sat on the couch next to Luke and across from Dom, who’d perched on the coffee table as though the thing didn’t cost ten thousand dollars. “Was this last night?”
Dom waved his beer bottle back and forth as he shook his head. Dressed in baggy jeans and a band T-shirt with combat boots, Dom was a little gruffer than most of Parker’s staff. “This was a few years ago when I lived in Chicago. I worked at a wild place with a very different vibe from Top Shelf. The best part was that the person who followed me was a woman. It was a plain old sports bar, and she had no idea I didn’t swing her way. Poor thing got herself arrested tryna catch some dick from a dude who’d rather walk on broken glass than give it to her.”
“Amen to that,” Luke said as I laughed along with Dom.
“I had a girl offer me two hundred bucks to sleep with her in college,” I said before taking a sip of Parker’s very nice whiskey.
“Shit, I’da done it for that. Just close my eyes and imagine Idris Elba,” Dom said with a snort. “Did you do it?”
“I tried.” I shrugged. “Got as far as taking off her bra before I bailed. Tits were not made for me.”
Both Dom and Luke burst out laughing, and from there, the conversation flowed like we’d been friends forever. We laughed and drank, swapping stories and trying to outdo each other for the wildest ones. I hadn’t enjoyed myself so much in ages. Even the night I hung out with Turko and Manny, I’d had an odd sensation of not fitting in. Here, with these men I was just getting to know, I didn’t feel the pressure of confessing my secret.
After I’d finished my first drink, Luke insisted I have one more. He returned from the bar with my refill just as Parker announced it was time for dinner.
“Come into the dining room,” he said, waving us through an arched doorway. “I kept it simple tonight. Just pizza and salad.”
I couldn’t keep my eyebrows from rising to save my life as I purposely held back to let Alex in first. Hopefully, we wouldn’t end up sitting near each other. But I’d scale that mountain if I got there. “I’m struggling to imagine Parker Door Dashing a bunch of pizzas.”
Luke laughed at my expression. “That’s because he didn’t. You’ll see.”
Sure enough, we trailed Parker into the dining room only to find a long table with a red and white checkered tablecloth. Five platters of pizza, two giant salad bowls, and multiple bottles of red wine were spread out along the length of the table. But not just any pizza. These pies were clearly homemade in a wood-fired pizza oven. A chef stood off to the side in his gleaming white coat and tall hat. All that was missing was the Italian tenor crooning in the corner.
“Good evening, gentlemen,” the chef said. “Tonight, we have prepared for you five different pizzas. We have margarita pizza, barbecue chicken pizza, a white pizza with garlic and spinach, sausage and pepperoni pizza, and finally, one with sundriedtomatoes, chicken, and pesto. Don’t be shy. I have plenty more to serve if you finish these. Please enjoy.”
