His smirk disappears when he glances at me.
“For me and for Rhyson. I actually am on your side in this. I believe he should be doing his own music, too, and he will. But he has to come to it for himself.”
I bite my thumbnail and shake my head, turning my eyes back to the traffic crawling by.
“How do you guys live with this traffic?” I ask, needing to dispel some of the heaviness in the car.
“Like New York’s much better?”
“True. But you don’t have to drive in New York.”
“Well, it sounds like you may have to endure it with the rest of us soon.” We’re sitting still, jammed in a tight line of vehicles, so he looks at me fully, a question in his eyes before he asks it. “Were you serious about moving here when you graduate?”
I nod and swallow my nerves as I wonder if he’s asking for Rhyson or if he might have a personal interest in my relocating to the West Coast.
“That’s the plan.” A
self-deprecating smile wrings my lips. “The ridiculous plan based on Rhyson doing something he has no intention of doing. You must think I’m crazy, huh?”
“It is crazy.”
My heartbeat stumbles. I know it’s farfetched. I know it’s irrational to stake my entire college career, my future, on the dreams Rhyson isn’t even dreaming, but to hear Grip affirm my lunacy chafes. Then his lips, which are a contradiction of soft and sculpted, curve into something especially for me. A smile just for me. When he turns to look at me, it warms his dark eyes.
“And I don’t know what Rhyson did to deserve you,” he says.
9
BRISTOL
I’M NOT SURE I like this club.
Another scantily dressed woman walks over to the booth and passes Grip a slip of paper, presumably with her number on it.
That might have something to do with why I don’t like this club. And it’s ridiculous. I met the man yesterday. But in my defense,
we’ve squeezed weeks of conversation into the last two days. Still, that doesn’t excuse the jealousy gnawing my insides. When I add that to the lingering hurt from my argument with Rhyson, it makes it impossible for me to enjoy myself.
“Are we gonna dance or just hold up the bar all night?” Jimmi moves her shoulders and ass to the Drake song in Grip’s rotation.
“Sorry. I’m not a very good dancer.” I shrug, not really sorry. “And I’m kind of tired.”
And horny.
My midterms took it out of me. The internship essay took it out of me. This trip has taken it out of me. I need a good drink and a good lay, in that order. I don’t know Jimmi well enough to confess it. She’d probably hook me up with some stranger, and that isn’t what I want.
That isn’t who I want.
I glance over at the booth where Grip has been all night, keeping the music going.
I’m not letting myself go there. I purposely look away, only to clash eyes with some frat looking guy a few feet away eye fucking me. He flashes me a too-white smile. That smile would glow in the dark. I don’t return it, but deliberately look away, hoping he gets the message.
The message being no.
“I love this song,” Jimmi says. “Grip has great mixes.”
“Yeah, he does.” I sip my Grey Goose, waiting for the buzz that will numb the hurt Rhyson inflicted. Something to take the edge off this sexy itch I haven’t scratched in months.
Months?