“I see where your loyalty lies.”
“I’m not getting in the middle of this love note erotica game. I do not consent.”
A disgruntled noise rumbled out of me. Sometimes you had to do things yourself if you wanted them done with any dignity. I set out for the bar just as Angelo found us, and before I had time to apologize for leaving him behind he brushed past me and toward an uncharacteristically quiet Mia. He pushed her forgotten sequined skirt into the center of her chest wordlessly and expectantly, and her eyes widened in shock. The next thing I knew she was tearing the garment out of his fist and stomping away to go put it back on.
I’d never seen two complete strangers take such a firm dislike to one another, but I couldn’t worry about them now. Instead of going directly to Tally I found an open space farther down the bar and asked the bartender for a pen, pulling a cocktail napkin off the edge of a caddy.
You have every right to be upset about Angelo’s text.
“Could you send this napkin and a cosmo with a splash of orange juice down to that woman in the white dress, please?”
The bartender looked me over. “Okay, but you do realize she’s getting married, right?”
I fought back a smile. We were strangers here. I’d worshipped every inch of that woman’s body with my tongue, brought her to the edge of ecstasy, held her trembling body while she cried in pleasure, washed my cum from between her thighs under the rain of our shower, inourhome—but right now, she could be anybody. I could make her mine again for the first time.
“Yes, I realize,” I told the bartender. “Don’t let your fiancé keep you from meeting your husband, am I right?”
“I’m just here for the tips.” She sauntered away to do my bidding. I glanced out of the corner of my eye, elbows stuck in something unsavory on the wood of the bar top, as she placed a martini glass in front of Tally and handed her the note.
I enjoyed this little cat-and-mouse game. Normally, Natalia would too. I lived to please her. She lived to give me a headache and a complex and remind me that a love like ours wasn’t easy, it was formed like a diamond under pressure. We were just in the middle of one of those duress timelines.
“Congratulations.” The bartender returned several minutes later, dropping a gin and tonic in front of me with another napkin. “She answered your pigeon post. Her soon-to-be husband is a lucky guy.”
“You have no idea.”
Is that all I have the right to be angry about? A cosmo isn’t an apology, by the way. Any man at this bar is up to that task.
Crumpling the napkin in my fist, I flicked it toward the wet mats. Tally was hiding a smirk under her hand when I looked toward her again, that shiny rock I put on her finger glistening in the fiery sunlight. I picked up the drink she sent over for me andlifted it toward her. She did the same with hers, and we both took a long, hostile sip of liquor together.
Touché.
Cheers to her undying spirit, her incredible grudge-holding stamina, her smarts, her wit, her pure vitriolic refusal to come out on the bottom of an argument even if it meant spending the entire day in Vegas trading snide commentary and heated glares.
At the pool Wink leapt from the platform again, higher and larger than the first, thwacking against the blue-green water to another chorus ofhumphsandoofs. When he broke the surface with a smile, waving his arms up and down, motioning for the crowd to get louder and louder for him, they answered in waves. The music was an unbelievable beat of bass and techno spurring even the least likely Pike to sway from one foot to the other with an arm wrapped around Ophelia. I pulled out another cocktail napkin.
There’s not another man on this planet that could handle you, and we both know that.
P.S. The bartender thinks you’re throwing your marriage away for me so we might as well give her a show.
The woman in question reluctantly swiped the message out of my hand with a roll of her eyes on her next sashay by me, dropping it in front of Tally at the other end with a pointed glare down at her engagement ring. I couldn’t help the chuckle that rumbled out of my chest.
Tally scribbled something out on a new napkin, and I analyzed the twitch of her lip and the involuntary way her tongue poked out at the corner of her mouth. This was morepainless than facing my hot-headed fiancée head-on after the morning. I might be dumb but I wasn’t stupid. She folded the napkin while the bartender waited in front of her and sealed it with a big, dramatic lipstick kiss. My grin was as wide as the state of Nevada.
When the bartender returned she pushed the napkin back to me with one slow finger, leaning over the bar with it. “It’s so much easier to go sit next to her.”
“Debatable.” I opened the note quickly and she tugged the napkin holder out of my reach.
The only show you’re going to be putting on is a dance number in Key West. I’m feeling extremely motivated to prove just how hard I am to handle at the moment.
I turned toward Tally instead of wasting the time writing it down, and I could tell she was just as surprised as the people between us at the bar as I shouted over them, “So you still plan to marry me then?”
Her dark eyes flared golden for a short second. All that mischievous playfulness I knew so well showing up like a break in the clouds. I let her sit with it.
Wink stepped up to the platform a third time. It was down to him and one other very large, red-bellied man. His opponent lifted a beer to his mouth, chugging it in three repulsive gulps, and crushed the plastic cup against his bald head.
Our wedding party chanted for Sam, and the cheer picked up steam until more than half of the onlookers were hooting his name in unison like a battle cry. Wink beat on his chest, unscathed apart from a tinge of rosy skin on his stomach. He took a deep breath, centering on the platform, then bent hisknees and leapt, getting enough air to tuck into a full front flip, level completely horizontal, and land belly down in the pool like he’d been practicing for the moment his entire life. The crowd went wild, splashing and screaming; the chants of Sam’s name got so loud they drowned out the electronic music beating through the speakers.
Natalia stood, heading back down the sand toward our friends but she stopped briefly beside me, not letting herself look up, though every fiber of my being begged her to. “Marrying you was never the question,” she said. Her soft perfume floated over me with the breeze she left in her wake and I watched her every stride as she walked away.
