“Haveyou been to this bar before?” I ask Piper.
We’re at her apartment, sitting on either side of her tiny kitchen table, each nursing a fruity cocktail. It’s Saturday night, and I’m finally letting my old friend drag me to a bar for the supposed purposes of meeting an older man. I’ve been nervous and excited all day. This is something I fantasized about doing for years, but it always seemed so far away, impossible to do while I was living at home.
Except that sitting here, I still can’t think of anything but Caesar. It was hard enough to fight off my desire when he was an imposing stranger. After welcoming me into his home and giving me pictures of Mack, my feelings have ballooned into a massive crush.
“Just once,” Piper answers with a smile. She leans back in her chair, one elbow on the table as she examines her manicured nails. “To keep a friend company, like tonight.”
“And you think I’ll be okay, just like this?” I ask, gesturing down to my outfit. I just picked a simple pair of jeans and a collared white shirt, like always, which I hope is neutral enough for me to blend in. I don’t really have a lot of clothes with my luggage, but I think this is cute.
Caesar might consume my thoughts, but I’ve promised myself I’ll be open to something else tonight.
“You look adorable, as always,” Piper answers. She’s got on a plain black tank top, paired with tight jeans and a mess of silver necklaces, and she looks way more put-together than I feel.
“I’m still living out of a suitcase,” I tell her, “but that’s not really an excuse. It’s not like I have a closet full of leather vests and flannel back home.” I raise an eyebrow. “Is that the vibe?”
“Kind of,” she answers. “The place is dark enough that I don’t totally remember.”
I chew my lip. “I guess that makes it easier to hide.”
Piper laughs. “You’re not hiding, Drew. We’re putting you on display, like a pot of honey for all the bears.”
I laugh. “That sounds horrifying.”
“Admit it,” she teases. “You’re turned on, too.”
“Maybe a little.”
Piper takes a sip of her cocktail, then frowns at me. “You are still living out of a suitcase, huh?”
“I got a good rate on the hotel, at least. And I’m making sure to live cheap while I’m here. But yeah, it’s getting old.”
My thoughts shift back to my hometown and the empty house that I’ve been trying to avoid thinking about, filled with all the memories of my mom’s life. It’s tempting to just keep ignoring that world. I devoted years to doing the responsible thing, and now I’m finally able to do stuff like this instead, taking risks and trying something new with my friend.
A different life flickers in my imagination, a life I want so bad it hurts. It should be time to go for everything I’ve been putting off, but now that I’m here, it’s terrifying.
“Uh-oh,” she says. “That’s not a good frown.”
“I was just remembering the women who work at the stationary store.”
“What about them?”
I run my finger over the edge of my cocktail glass. “I guess I could try to sell the store and move,” I say, admitting out loud for maybe the first time what needs to happen next. “But my mom made me promise that I’d take care of her employees. And even though I can scrounge together enough money for a Chicago vacation, paying them a healthy severance would eat up any money I got from selling the house, especially with the last medical bills that still need attention.”
Piper’s eyes light up. “You want to move to Chicago,” she says.
I laugh. Moving would be exciting, but I’m not there yet. “Let’s see how it goes at this bar tonight. I might need to run and hide from the bears in shame.”
Piper taps her nails on the table. “Well, it won’t fix all your problems, but I might have a partial solution.”
“You know someone who’s looking to buy a stationary store in Indiana?”
“No,” she says with a laugh. “But I do have a couch that folds out, and I spend half the week at Gabriella’s anyway. Why not stop wasting all that money on hotels and just crash here?”
I blink, surprised. “Wait, really? I couldn’t put you out like that.”
“It’s not putting me out,” she says simply. “So long as you’re not bringing silver daddies home for filthy sex every night…”
I laugh. “I think I can avoid that.”
