Spite Club (Mason Brothers 1)

Too late, I realized why women tended to come to these places in groups. Right now even Dar, or Heather, my roommate, would be better than standing here like a stick.

“Hi,” a guy next to me said. He nodded to me as the bartender slid his drinks to him.

“Hi,” I said back.

“Nice night, huh?” he said.

“Yeah,” I said.

He nodded again, picked up his drinks, and walked off.

That was when I started to panic. I wasn’t feeling confident anymore. I looked down and realized I’d drunk my wine too fast, but I needed another glass, or I’d be standing here with nothing in my hand. So I ordered another.

I was about to pull out my phone and pretend to be talking to someone when another male voice said, “Hi.”

I turned. This guy was all right: short dark hair brushed forward, a blazer and a shirt unbuttoned at the throat. I could work with this. “Hi,” I said.

“You here alone?” he asked. I mostly got the words by lip-reading, the music was so loud.

I nodded in answer.

“Come sit with me and my friends,” the guy said. “Let’s hang out.”

He pointed, and I looked past him. In a booth, watching us and nodding, were five other guys. Five. Two of them had backward baseball caps on. While the others weren’t looking, one of them waggled his tongue at me.

Um, that was a lot of men. There was no woman in sight. “You have a lot of guy friends,” I said.

“Come on,” the man said, ignoring me. “You like to party? We like to party.”

The guys in the booth waved. The tongue guy waggled his tongue again.

Great. I’d apparently replaced my Marriage Material sign with one that said Please date rape me. “I’m okay,” I said, the all-time lame version of No, fuck off that every woman seems to use in a situation like this. “I’ll just stand here.”

“It’s a good time!” the guy said, standing closer.

So I used the second weapon that women use in bars. “I have to go to the bathroom,” I said, and walked away.

Should I actually go to the bathroom? Was he watching? Why did I care? I ditched my drink—that creep had probably roofied it—and kept walking toward the back of the bar. Operation Get Laid hadn’t lasted fifteen minutes before a retreat to the ladies’ room. I needed a break before round two.

Forty-five minutes later, I was sweaty, tired, and depressed. I was going to die without ever having sex again, and I had the creeping feeling that my hair smelled like cologne. I might have to burn this dress, which sucked, because I liked it. If this was the selection to choose from of the male of the species, I was totally doomed.

The crowd was a thick, solid wall of bodies now, and I was making my way slowly through it on sore feet to make an escape when my phone buzzed. I looked at the display. It was Nick.

I tried not to feel excited. I really did. But when I couldn’t hear him over the pounding music, I had a moment of panic until my phone buzzed again with a text. Where are you?

I didn’t know why he was asking. Did he care? He was probably at a party himself somewhere, like he was every night. Maybe even with some girl he wasn’t saying no to. Cintano’s, I wrote.

What are you doing there?

That made me mad. He didn’t have to know I was teetering on the brink of existential despair, so I wrote You told me to find someone to fuck me. And you won’t do it. So here I am.

He didn’t answer that. Maybe he didn’t care. Maybe he was too busy with what’s-her-name (I already pictured someone better-looking than me in my head) to use his thumb anymore. Too bad.

People bumped in to me, and someone stepped on my foot. I wasn’t cut out for this; I had to face it. The fight went out of me as I looked at the long distance from me to the faraway exit. Confession, I typed to Nick almost without thinking. It isn’t going very well.

I’ll be right there, he wrote back. Don’t move.

My stomach flipped. In that split second, I forgot about my shitty situation and our fake relationship and our almost-fight, because Nick was coming to get me.