After dinner, Diana—who’s a little drunk—grabs Danielle’s arm and tells her she has to go to the bar near the pool and have a drink with her, celebrating her last night as a “single lady”.
“I don’t feel like drinking,” Danielle tells her sister.
Diana dramatically gasps. “Are you pregnant?”
Danielle rolls her eyes. “I’ve been drinking all night, and not drinking doesn’t mean someone is pregnant. That conclusion annoys me, actually.”
“Well, by the way you two were all over each other, I wouldn’t be surprised,” Diana laughs.
Danielle gently pulls her arms from her sister’s grasp. “Go get a drink and enjoy the night. We…we, uh, want to be all over each other again.” Danielle cringes as she talks, and I’m feeling the pressure even more to tell her this isn’t just some sort of no-strings hook-up. I don’t want her thinking that’s what I see this as.
I love her.
“Come on,” Diana pesters. “Just have one drink. And isn’t Logan having drinks with Dad and Peter? We’re all going to be family soon anyway.”
“It’s okay,” I tell Danielle, knowing part of her hesitation was so I wouldn’t have to suffer through fake conversation with her father.
“Fine. One drink,” Danielle tells Diana. She looks at me, and I can’t help but smile, feeling heat flood my veins, tingling the tip of my cock. Dammit. “And I’ll call you when we’re done, and we can meet back up.”
Diana pulls Danielle out of her seat, looping her arm through hers and leading her away from the table.
“Logan,” Peter calls as Danielle walks away. “You’re joining us, right?”
“Yeah. I am.”* * *
I sit back, swirling whiskey around my glass before taking a drink. Never in my life did I think I could be sitting outside at a bar along the ocean, drinking top-shelf whiskey that I’m not even paying for, and want to leave.
For the last twenty minutes, David and Peter’s father have been complaining about how a country club back in Connecticut takes “any kind of people” nowadays “as long as they pay.” I’ve considered breaking my glass and using the shards to gouge my eyes out just so I can have a legitimate reason to leave this conversation, but then my mother’s voice rang loud in my head.
Country clubs and Ivy League schools are their thing. And that’s okay. I shouldn’t chastise them for having different interests as me. But this white-collar, keeping-up-with-the-Jones thing isn’t me.
And it isn’t Danielle either.
“Logan,” David starts, setting his glass on the bar top. He’s a man used to intimidating people, I can tell. It’ll piss him off when that shit doesn’t work on me. “We don’t know each other well yet, but we do have one thing in common.”
“We both care about Danielle and want her to be happy,” I supply, and he nods.
“Right you are. She’s my little girl, no matter how old she gets. You understand that, right?”
“I do. Making Danielle happy makes me happy.”
“Good, good.” He claps me on the back. “She’s smart and has so much potential. You might be the last one who can convince her to go back to grad school. Between you and me, I’ll be able to get her into a top-notch internship that will set her up for life.”
I shake my head. “Danielle doesn’t want to go back to grad school.”
“Of course she does! Grad school is hard, trust me, I know.” He looks at the others sitting around us and laughs, making sure everyone knows he went to grad school. “But the payoff is worth it. She’ll thank you when she has a good job.”
“I disagree.”
Everyone in our party stiffens.
“You disagree?”
“Danielle doesn’t want to go back to grad school,” I repeat. “She told me she doesn’t want to.”
“You haven’t known my daughter that long. Grad school has always been part of the plan. She’ll regret it if she doesn’t go. She needs it to get a good job and be successful.”
“She doesn’t think so.”
David slowly shakes his head. He’s not used to be questioned, and it’s taken him aback. “A good education, a solid, respectable job…how can you argue against that? It was our ten-year plan and the thing Danielle has wanted her whole life. She’s going through something, which is common, but she will regret it if she doesn’t get back on track and out of that town.”
“Have you even asked her what makes her happy?” I finish my whiskey and set the glass on the bar. “It’s not grad school or fancy jobs.” I lean toward David. “You say she’s going through something, but have you ever stopped to consider the pressure you put on her to follow a life she doesn’t want to live is the cause of all of that?”
“I…she…how dare you speak to me like that.”
Out of respect for Diana and Peter—though I don’t think that asshole deserves any—I leave it at that and get up and walk away before my temper gets the best of me. I don’t really know where I’m going, but I keep walking until I’m back in the lobby of the hotel. Stopping to get my phone from my pocket, I realize I still have Danielle’s phone too. Fuck. I don’t know where she went with her sister. Assuming they stayed at the resort, I head through the lobby to check out another bar.