Page 52 of Loathe at First Sight

Her ankle must be feeling better because she’s in her pointy high heels again. My eyes travel from the shoes all the way up her long, lean legs to where her short black dress falls. It covers everything up, but if she bends over, I’d imagine everyone around would get quite the view.

Immediately, I wonder if she’s got that little stringy thong underneath.

Damn it.

This woman drives me up the fucking wall. I shouldn’t have any type of attraction to her—let alone be thinking about her undergarments.

You can look, Jack. Just for the love of God, don’t touch.

When I finally pull my eyes away from her body, I move up to her face. Her curls are wild and crazy, but her makeup is flawless with her smoky eyes and dark lipstick.

“Hi,” she says, stepping up to the bar to get a drink.

“Hello,” I reply, hoping she didn’t notice that I was staring.

“I’m a little surprised to see you at Singles Night.”

I nod. “Back at you.”

I don’t why this is so awkward right now. We may not like each other, but usually, our banter and insults can bolster the conversation fairly well. Now, we seem like a couple of nervous kids at a middle school dance.

“Is your ankle feeling better?” I ask.

She looks down at her foot while twirling it in a circle. “Oh, yeah. Much. You were right. I think I just sprained it. Thank you, by the way, for making sure I was okay and all that.”

Trying not to appear as in shock as I am, I reply, “You’re welcome. Just glad it wasn’t anything worse.”

“Me too. Hopefully, I can get back to running this week.” She pauses a moment and asks, “Will I see you there?”

I nod. “Every morning.”

With a sly smile, she says, “Good. You’re going to need to get in some practice to keep up.”

That gets an unexpected laugh out of me. “You’re sure full of yourself for someone who fell and twisted her ankle in a hole.”

Without missing a beat, she quips, “I was running too fast to see anything on the ground that wasn’t more than a blur.”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah.”

When the bartender hands her a drink, Liz takes a sip, and says, “Well, I guess I’m going to go mingle.”

As I watch her ass walk away, I find myself hoping that the short dress rides up a little.

Stop it.

Swigging the last of my beer, I realize that I’m going to need quite a few more of these to make it through with her around.

An hour later, a woman named Angie is standing in front of me, telling me all about the charity organization she works for. She’s cute and apparently lives in one of the neighboring towns. She’s nice enough, but I’m only half listening to everything she says.

My interest is occupied with watching Jamie do his best to hit on Liz. I figured he would crash and burn within the first few minutes, but he’s had her laughing for the past half an hour.

I like Jamie, but the whole idea of him trying to get with Liz is absurd to me. Not only does the age gap between them seem a bit much, but as Dylan said, Liz would eat Jamie alive.

And I can’t imagine they have anything in common. What the hell would the two of them do if they went out?

If Jamie had his way, I’m sure that they’d fuck, and he would end it there.

What about that makes me so mad?

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