“Do you want to find your friend or not?”
I groaned so loud it rattled the windows, then tugged the waistband down a fraction of an inch. “Happy?”
Darla squealed like Christmas had come early. “Yes! That’s it! That’s art.”
“This is actually called blackmail.”
“Art,” she corrected, angling her phone. “Now, tip the hat forward. Just over your eyes. Mysterious cowboy. Brooding cowboy. Man who loves horses.”
“I don’t even like horses!”
“Pretend!”
Click. Click. Click.
By the time she was satisfied, I’d posed like a tragic cowboy, a sexy cowboy, a confused cowboy, and—her words, not mine—“a man who just lost his horse but still wants love.”
I was sweating. I was humiliated. And I was praying Jace was at least getting waterboarded for this level of sacrifice.
Finally, Darla lowered her phone. “Okay, sugar. Let’s get that app open.”
She plopped down beside me, crumbs falling in between the couch cushions from the cookie in her other hand, and took my phone. Two taps, one swipe, and boom—Jace’s blinking dot lit up on the screen.
“That’s it?” I choked. “You made me do all that for two taps?”
She tucked her phone into her tote bag, smiling smugly. “Sometimes art requires suffering.”
“How dare you bring that up at a moment like this,” I snarled at Jace, coming back to the present as I racked my weights and sat up fast enough to see stars. “That wasn’t part of the deal. That was a private moment in exchange for tech support to help your sorry ass.”
Jace shrugged, all casual betrayal. “I feel like the American people have a right to know.”
Parker glanced over from the dumbbell bench. “I have two questions,” he said, pausing for dramatic effect. “Why is this a noteworthy moment for the American people? What pictures are we talking about? And why do I already regret asking?”
“That was three questions, Big Brain,” I snapped. “Guess all that genius doesn’t come with basic counting skills.” Hewasbasically a genius—honors program, perfect GPA, probably solving quantum equations for fun—but he liked to play dumb sometimes when it suited him.
Cough. Like to get Casey, his girl. Cough.
Parker huffed, wiping sweat off his forehead with the edge of his T-shirt. “I was being rhetorical, dumbass.”
Jace smirked. “I’m still going to call him Big Brain despite his mistake,” he said seriously. “Even if his brain doesn’t come with an extra inch.”
I groaned. Loudly.
Because, of course, he’d bring that up as well.
My one collective lapse in judgment—a drunken post-win “scientific” comparison that should’ve stayed buried in the hazy depths of tequila and bad decisions.
Jace was never going to let it go.
The stupid thing was, I didn’t even know if Jace actually had the extra quarter inch he claimed. We’d been too drunk tosee straight, too busy laughing to measure anything properly. It could’ve been a trick of the light. Or the angle. There was no way my hands had been steady while I measured.
Hell, we might’ve been the same damn size…or I could even be bigger than him.
Still, every time Jace brought it up, he got smug and I got annoyed, which meant it was basically tradition now.
I made a mental note that in the near future, we would be remeasuring.
For science, obviously. Not because I had any interest in seeing any more of my best friend’s dick than I already did in the locker room.
