Clearly pleased with his new choice in conversation, he sat back and watched expectantly.
“Oh, um, yeah. I’m a sports journalist. I’m covering swimming at the moment. Well, one swimmer. He’s trying for the national swim team. Have you ever heard of Kane Bryson?”
As Randy shook his head, a deep chuckle came from the entry to the restaurant.
“My ears are burning, Cody. Could someone be talking about me?”
No.
When rubbing my eyes did nothing except smudge my mascara, I had to admit defeat.
Standing in the doorway, shit-eating grin on his face and Tweedle Dum at his elbow, Kane looked exactly the same as he had thirty minutes ago in my apartment. Gorgeous, lickable, and incredibly dangerous to my mental health.
“Is that… Cody Baxter?” Randy looked like he had won the lottery, tickets to the Superbowl, and the deed to the Playboy mansion all at once.
“This is a date. You two knuckleheads are not welcome,” I announced with as much dignity as I could muster, ignoring the lustful looks Cody was receiving from said date.
“Just thought we’d drop in for some pizza. What a coincidence. This seat taken?” Kane threw a wink sharp enough to cut, ignoring the furious shake of my head as he slipped into the seat to my left. Cody followed suit, sitting next to Randy and absorbing the last fragments of my date’s attention as they started talking about Cody’s pre-season games.
“I hate you,” I grumbled, sitting back in my seat and resolutely not feeling a sense of relief that the awkward date had been interrupted.
Really.
Kane
I was an ass.I knew it, but I couldn’t bring myself to care as I watched Darcy sulk beside me. Cody was in his element, having identified a true fan, and I knew they could easily talk away the next hour, or five.
When I left Darcy’s apartment, I had the best of intentions to leave her alone for the night. Let her cool down and try for something closer to friends in the morning. Cody and Evie had been doing the friends thing for years. Surely, Darcy and I could do it too.
My resolve had lasted for thirty seconds or so. Until I saw Mr. College Football pushing into her building. It hadn’t been hard to figure out who he was, and a couple of pointed questions had been enough to figure out where they were going.
And exactly how I could sabotage their date.
I didn’t want to look too closely at how much it bothered me to find out Darcy had been with other men. It wasn’t like I had room to talk. But seeing her walk around her apartment in her stockings. Seeing her compensate for her small stature by climbing to get the things she needed. It had felt like an intimacy that I wanted to hoard, and fuck if I was going to let Mr. Medical School be the one to reach for a wine glass next time she needed one.
Cody flashed a look at me that told me I owed him big time. I shrugged, and he shook his head slightly before tuning back in to the guy who was all but licking my friend’s shoes in hero worship. So I might have omitted the small detail of us crashing Darcy’s date when I invited him to pizza. The rest of what I told him was true.
Speaking of…
I hopped my chair a little closer to the sulking woman beside me, and leaned back, swiping Darcy’s wine and taking a sip like the whole situation was the most normal thing in the world.
“Think he’ll buy him dinner before he licks Cody’s asshole for real?”
While I managed to keep from spraying everyone at the table with what was in my mouth, my sinuses weren’t so lucky. I spluttered and wheezed, tears running down my cheeks as I groped for a napkin to blow the alcohol out of my brain.
Her lips tipped up in the barest of smirks, Darcy calmly reclaimed her glass and toasted me before taking a sip.
When I had blown my nose raw and could no longer feel alcohol dipping down the back of my throat, I glared at her half-heartedly. “You haven’t changed a bit.”
If I hadn’t been watching so closely, I might have missed the cloud that passed across her features. As it was, before I could comment, she shook off wherever she had gone and met my gaze, strong as ever.
“You got a problem with it? Take it up with someone who cares.”
I sniffed a little, rubbing my nose and regretting choosing her wine to steal over water. Memory had dulled the edges of the Darcy experience, but sitting beside her, listening to the one-liners that came to her as easily as breathing, I remembered why I liked her so much.
Too bad she was a jinx.
Coach had given me a pep talk about manifesting bad shit if I kept thinking of her that way, and I could see where he was coming from — the wholebelieve it to achieve itthing — and I had seen many an athlete self-sabotage with negative self-talk, but Darcy had proven herself bad luck. Hell, after what happened in high school, it was a miracle I had made it as far as I did.
