I went ice cold.
Not because she was ugly.
She wasn’t.
Not because she had done something I hadn’t allowed other women to do a hundred times before.
Because my body recoiled before my brain could dress it up.
I caught her wrist and moved her hand off me, careful enough not to hurt her, firm enough that she got the message.
“No,” I said.
Her smile dropped.
The sorority girls went quiet.
The blonde’s cheeks flushed, anger replacing seduction in half a breath. “Wow. You really are no fun.”
“I said that.”
“You could have just said you were gay.”
Pink bikini gasped. Glitter girl made a face like she wanted drama but not enough to get involved.
I looked at the blonde. “I could have said a lot of things. I chose no.”
Her mouth tightened. “Asshole.”
“Tonight? Yeah.”
She slid off the stool and walked away, hips swaying hard enough to prove she wanted me watching.
I didn’t.
The girls followed a few seconds later, whispering and offended, taking their coconut-vanilla cloud with them.
I lifted my hand for the bartender.
He came over, brows raised.
I looked at the bottle in his hand, then slapped a hundred-dollar bill on the bar. “Screw it. Give me the whole thing.”
He glanced from the money to my face, then shrugged.
Tourists asked for worse.
He set the bottle down in front of me.
I twisted it by the neck and stared at the lipstick mark the blonde had left low on my skin. I could feel it there. Sticky. Wrong. Like evidence from a crime nobody else would call a crime because men like me were supposed to want anything offered.
A woman kisses you in a bar, you enjoy it.
A woman presses her body against yours, you take the compliment.
A woman looks at you like you’re a good time in human form, you become one.
That was the script.
