The Player Next Door

“Hey, I think your friends are looking for you,” he says carefully. “Maybe you should go and check on them.”

If that isn’t a dismissal … My anger flares. “They’ll find me if they need me.” Shane definitely doesn’t want me hooking up with Dean. Well, too bad. I set my jaw to hide the fact that my next words sting to acknowledge. “But hey, I think I saw your little blond friend looking for you a minute ago. Maybe you should go and check on her.”

Shane cocks his head. “Who, Susie?”

The one you’re trying to screw.

Shane’s jaw drops, and I realize I just said that out loud. Apparently five shots of Jim Beam will loosen my tongue faster than any sci-fi truth serum ever could.

I don’t notice when Dean removes his arm from my shoulder—or maybe it’s me who pulls away from him—but suddenly I’m squared off against Shane in the middle of the bar, boozy courage flowing through my veins.

“Scarlet, I—”

“After all the shit you’ve been saying to me these past few weeks, how dare you try to play me again?” I jab his chest with my finger, making him flinch. “Once wasn’t enough?”

“What?” His eyebrows pop. He has the nerve to act surprised. “How am I playing you?”

“Have fun on your date.”

Realization flitters across his face.

Yeah, that’s right, asshole. I heard what was going on.

He falters on his words. “She asked me out.”

“Oh, well, by all means, then, enjoy.”

His head falls back with a sigh of exasperation. “Fuck, I can’t win with you, can I?”

“What? I’m sorry, you thought you’d ‘win’ with me”—I air-quote the word with an exaggerated crook of my fingers—“by hooking up with someone else in front of me?”

He sighs, looks around, as if he’d rather be anywhere but here. “Come on, it’s just dinner, with a friend.”

“Yeah, a friend who can’t keep her hands off you!” I accuse, even as a glimmer of hope stirs in my chest that I’ve misunderstood this as quickly as I misunderstood Penelope at Shane’s front door. Maybe these dinner plans with Susie are just friendly plans, after all. Maybe he’s not trawling to get laid on one end of the bar while sweetly flirting with me on the other.

“You’re one to talk.” He shoots a pointed glare Dean’s way.

“Oh, I haven’t even begun to touch him yet.” I make a point of smoothing my palm over Dean’s torso, over the hard ridges of muscle, and then letting my finger hook over his belt, giving it a slight tug before letting go. But it doesn’t elicit a spark of response in me. I’m too furious with Shane to feel anything—physical or otherwise—for anyone else.

Shane’s eyes narrow as they follow the move and then he glowers at his friend.

“Whoa. Hey … Innocent bystander here.” Dean throws his hands up in surrender.

A dark glint flashes in Shane’s eyes as he turns back to me. He’s angry. “What is this, anyway? You’re the one who said you didn’t want to complicate things between us.”

“How am I complicating things?”

“Because you’re chewing me out for going to dinner with another woman when you’re the one who keeps turning me down. Do you understand how unfair that is?”

Not just a friendly dinner, after all. That momentary blip of hope is deflated by a sharp prick to my chest. “I told you, I don’t care who or what you do!” Thankfully, the band is loud and drowning out our shouts for anyone but Dean and Steve, who are watching with obnoxious, amused smiles. “And you don’t get a say in anyone I decide to hook up with either!”

Shane crosses his arms over his chest as he looms over me. “Fine! Just not him.” He nods at Dean.

I match his defensive, arms-crossed stance in a challenge. “And why not?”

“Because …” He grits his teeth as if trying to keep his words from coming out. “Because you just don’t want to, trust me.”

“Dude! Come on.” Dean gives him a cocked “what the hell” look.

Shane matches it with a severe look of his own. “Don’t, man. I’m serious. It’s not cool. She won’t be okay with it.”

“I wouldn’t be okay with what? Banging the hell out of him tonight?” I make a point of ogling Dean from head to toe. “I beg to differ.” That last shot is really hitting me now.

Dean grins at his friend. “See?”

Between the boozy fog and the growing tension swirling around us, I don’t notice the platinum blond until she’s snaking past me, her hands pawing muscular male arms in a fraudulent act of trying to gain space as she sashays toward the bar. Lo and behold, they part for her like the Red Sea did for Moses.

“Mom?”

She glances over her shoulder at me and offers a lazy smile. “Fancy meeting you here, darling.”

Great. She’s in that magical drunken sweet spot, in between being annoyed-sober and belligerent-drunk, where I’m her darling, her honey, her sweetheart.