Alarm

I stared into his eyes, which sparkled with amusement. My skin warmed, and I became acutely aware of his closeness despite my intoxicated state.

I cleared my throat.

“My friends are waiting for me.”

I tried to pry my fingers off the muscled arms, but my hands seemed happy to hang onto him and made it difficult to release my grip. I finally talked my hands into releasing him enough for me to take a step back, and his arms dropped from my waist, leaving the voided space a little cooler than it had been when he was touching me.

I took another step back, and even from this new perspective, I still had to crane my neck to look into his eyes. They were deeply shadowed in the dim light, making them seem sinister enough that I shivered a little. His beard was short and looked more like a five o’clock shadow, but it didn’t extend to his neck at all. Instead, it all flowed in a tightly groomed line from his sideburns and into his hair.

“Sorry,” I said again.

“No worries,” he replied.

I walked carefully around him to keep my footing, glancing back only once to see him watching me walk away with his dark eyes and amused grin. It ticked me off a little. The last thing I needed was some lowlife laughing at me, drunk or not. I turned my head away from him and tossed my hair back off my shoulder.

And with that, I marched back to my friends.

TWO

Though I was pretty sure my drink had been nearly empty, a full one was sitting in my spot. My head had cleared a little after the shock of running right into a complete stranger—a really big, brick wall of a stranger—and I sighed and wrapped my fingers around the glass. The bartender had made another strong one, and I could barely detect the tinge of orange from the juice in the glass.

“So what’s the weekend plan?” I asked. I thought if I involve myself in more conversation, it might sober me up a bit.

“Helping my mom with her wedding plans,” Mare said.

Mare’s mother was about to try for husband number four. Mare was giving this one as much as a year, though the last had only survived about eight months. “We have to pick a photographer and a florist. You should totally come with me to pick the florist. I hate flowers.”

“Maybe you could do something other than flowers,” I suggested.

“Flowers are the norm,” Mare replied. “If my mom doesn’t get the norm, she’ll throw a fit.”

I pursed my lips, wondering why they didn’t just go to a justice of the peace and have it done. It would seem she’d be tired of all the wedding planning stuff at this point. I know I would have been.

“I know that look,” Mare said. “What are you trying not to say, Clo?”

I glanced at her, slightly pissed at myself for being so transparent, and shrugged.

“You never say what you’re thinking,” she told me. “Sometimes it drives me nuts. I know you have an opinion in there somewhere.”

“It’s not important,” I said quietly, tensing under the scrutiny. “Just forget it.”

“You’re just too uptight,” Nate said. He held up his glass and pointed at me with the one finger not wrapped around the drink. “Whatever you have to say is not going to hurt my feelings.”

“That’s her dad talking to her,” Mare said as she gave me a playful shove in the shoulder. “Always think twice before you speak.”

“Three times,” I replied with a smile. “He was usually right, too. People are always saying and doing things they regret. I think most of his clients were suffering from regret-syndrome.”

“Yeah, but he was a psychologist,” Nate pointed out, “and his clients were there because they regretted what they said or did. I say what needs to be said, but I don’t regret it.”

“Well, I don’t say or do anything out of line, so I don’t have to worry about regrets.”

Thankfully, that was the end of the topic. Well, at least outside my head. My own words seemed to be floating around in my brain even as the conversation turned back to flower hatred. “I don’t say or do anything out of line.” It was the truth, and a rule by which I’d lived my life. It kept me out of trouble, allowed me to advance fairly quickly in my career, and generally kept me safe.

And predictable.

As I pulled myself from my own thoughts, Mare and Nate had gone back to talking about the movie I hadn’t seen. I tried to focus—I really did—but I had no frame of reference. I looked down at my glass and let my finger slide through the condensation. The patterns were far too interesting to my intoxicated mind, so I looked away and back over my shoulder to find something to distract me from my own thoughts.

I saw Brick Wall again.