He looked at his phone. “About an hour.”
Jules remembered me standing next to her. “This is Reese. Reese, this is my little brother’s best friend, Christian.”
“Nice to meet you, Reese.” He nodded to me and turned his attention right back to Jules. “How about you drop the introduction as your little brother’s best friend now?”
“But you are.”
“Been trying to get you to see me as something different the last month.” He leaned down. “In case you hadn’t noticed.”
Jules waved him off, but I could tell there was a reason we were at Harper’s tonight, and it didn’t have anything to do with being able to skip the line. “Any chance you can get us a table? Reese needs to rest her dogs or we won’t make it an hour.”
“You going to have a drink with me when I get off?”
“If you’re buying.”
He chuckled and shook his head. Lifting a walkie-talkie, he called to someone inside and said he had VIPs who needed taking care of. A minute later, a woman who had to be six feet tall without her gargantuan heels came to greet us.
“Jesus,” Jules mumbled.
Christian smiled. “Kiki, this is Jules and Reese. Could you find them some seating on the second floor and hook them up with some drinks for me?”
“Sure thing, sweetie.”
The statuesque hostess led us to the second floor and opened a roped-off reserved table that overlooked a packed dance floor below. “What can I have sent over for you ladies?”
We ordered extra-dirty martinis and looked around in awe. The club was massive, and everything from the velvet seats to the shiny, black granite bars was top of the line.
“I feel like a celebrity,” I said. “And you’re fooling around with your brother’s best friend? How does Kenny feel about that?”
“I’m not fooling around with Christian. Yet. And Kenny doesn’t know.”
“How will that go over?”
“We’re all adults. He can’t tell me who I should go out with.”
I smirked. “So he’s gonna have a shit fit, huh?”
A grin spread across her face. “Pretty much.”
“Give me the backstory.”
“Kenny and Christian have been friends since pee-wee football. When I was thirteen, and Christian was eleven, he was big, but not huge like he is now. One afternoon, I walked in on him changing, and the thing was enormous, even back then. I mean, dangling enormous.”
“And?”
The waitress brought our drinks. “And what?”
“What’s the rest of the story?”
She shrugged. “That’s it.”
“So you’ve been pining to see his junk again for fifteen years.”
She sipped her drink with a wicked smile. “Pretty much. He stayed in California for a few years after college, then came back for the NYPD.”
“He’s a cop?”
“Yep. I ran into him on the street a few weeks ago, and we started texting. He looks so good in his uniform—the shirt, the pants. I’m totally making him cuff me and play cops and robbers.”
“Good for you. He seems into you—couldn’t keep his eyes off of you even when hot Amazonian woman was standing next to us.”
“What about you? How is that delicious boss of yours?”
I lifted the plastic toothpick from my martini and slipped off an olive using my teeth. “Even more delicious than this olive, and you know how I love my martini condiments.” I sighed. “But…he’s still my boss.”
“I absolutely get the reason you’ve put up the wall at work to separate business and pleasure. Not having one cost you a job you loved. I’d probably do the same thing. But damn…I might consider making an exception for that man.”
“Well, he’s definitely trying to get me to make an exception. Somehow he got me to agree to twice-a-week meal sharing.”
“Meal sharing? Like a date?”
“Nope. Sharing a meal in a non-dating capacity?”
“Let me get this straight…you’re sharing a meal twice a week, alone with him?”
“That’s right. In a non-dating capacity.”
“Which means what? You won’t be fucking at the end of the night?”
I sipped my drink. “Exactly.”
Jules cracked up. “He talked you into this crap?”
“What do you mean?”
“You’re dating him and don’t even know it. I might love this man.”
I wasn’t dating him. Was I? We were just sharing a meal twice a week. Getting to know each other. Not seeing other people. And thinking of each other while we took care of ourselves. OMG. I am dating him!
Jules sipped her drink and watched me, amused, as I came around to the same conclusion she’d gotten to in two seconds flat.
“Holy shit. Am I really this big of an idiot?”
“Sweetheart, I know you. You didn’t put up that wall to keep him out. You put it up to watch him break it down to get to you.”
I absolutely needed another drink. Make that a double.
For the next hour and a half, Jules and I took advantage of the free drinks. We were in a fifteen-dollar-martini bar, and I was glad we didn’t have to pay the bill. Sometime after midnight, we’d reached the giggle stage of our inebriation. We were mid-way between sober and slurring, settling nicely into what I liked to call the confessional stage, where everything seemed crystal clear, and sharing it seemed liberating.