Page 57 of The Devil Wears Tartan

The place looks fancier than I expected, with a trendy metal sign spelling out the bar’s name in cursive letters above the door and a group of gorgeous women in expensive-looking pea coats and heeled boots milling around outside.

I hover a few feet up the sidewalk, trying to decide if I should text Kenzie to see if she’s here or just head in. My toes are starting to freeze in my Blundstones, and I shift my weight from foot to foot on the least slushy part of the concrete I can find.

A car pulls up, and the women outside the bar all pile inside, laughing and shouting about wherever they’re heading next. I slink a little closer, claiming their spot along the bar’s brick wall.

There’s no hope of getting a glimpse of Kenzie through the window; I can only make out the vague silhouettes of people shifting around tables in the dim glow from the pendant lights that dangle from the ceiling. I should just go in. If she’s not there, I could grab us a spot, maybe text her to get her drink order and start us off.

I don’t, though. All I can do is stare down at my plain outfit and wonder if I could somehow run into a late-night department store and grab something nicer.

I don’t go to places like this. I barely even go out at all. I like seeing friends, and the occasional visit to a bar is fun, but I’m more of a beer and board games at home after a long day at the studio kind of girl.

More of the boring kind of girl.

Suddenly the weeks of flirty texts from Kenzie don’t matter at all. Suddenly, all I can see her as is one of those gorgeous women in the heels and fancy coats, the women who know about bars like this and don’t have any trouble finding dates to take them there.

It’s like this whole street is a movie set, carefully constructed to show me—and the world—just how not enough I am.

I’m still standing there, my back to the bricks like a literal wallflower, when I hear someone call my name.

I look over and find Kenzie making her way up the sidewalk from the same direction I did.

She does look like one of those women—grey pea coat, heeled black boots, and mile-long, slender legs in a pair of dark tights—but no one in this whole city has anything on her face.

She’s got half her hair up in a ponytail, the lower section spilling down around her shoulders in straight, shiny layers. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen her with even half her hair loose, and the style makes her sharp features a little softer but not any less striking.

Her makeup has added a shimmer to the cut of her cheekbones, and her eyes look catty and dangerous, like she could absolutely devastate anyone she wanted with a single well-aimed glare.

When she flashes me a smile and lifts her hand in a quick wave, I forget all about the bar, my outfit, and the stupid sense of inadequacy that’s tying my stomach in knots. All I want is to feel her lips on mine again, to touch her skin, her hair, her body. I want so much more than I’ve already gotten.

I want everything.

After that day we kissed in the hallway, I spent a full hour laying on my bed wondering how the hell Kenzie and I went from years of hating each other to the complete opposite experience of wanting to tear each other’s clothes off before I realized that, for us at least, those aren’t opposites at all.

There’s always been a pull between us, something that draws our eyes to each other in every room, something that keeps us fuming over arguments for weeks and throwing ourselves into every chance for a competition like it’s a matter of life or death.

She makes me feel alive, and it doesn’t matter if we happen to be fighting or flirting. All it takes is being near her to make the whole world light up and burn so bright it almost hurts.

“Hey,” she says when she comes to a stop in front of me, her voice a little breathless.

“Hey.”

My voice mimics hers; even though all I’ve been doing is standing here for the past few minutes, I feel like I’ve just run a mile. I feel like I could take off and run a dozen more. Adrenaline is shooting through my veins and kicking my heart rate up faster with every second.

“You clean up good,” she says, her eyes dipping down to scan my body before meeting mine again.

She lifts a corner of her mouth in a satisfied grin, and I do my best not to gulp.

“Not so bad yourself.”

I congratulate myself on not blurting out how fucking incredible I think she looks and how I’m about two seconds away from calling this whole bet thing off and pulling her face to mine.

She turns to give the bar a once over. “Wow. This is kind of fancier than I thought.”

“You’ve never been here?”

She shifts her purse strap up her shoulder. “Uh, no. Have you?”

I try to stifle my surprise. I was expecting her to tell me this is her favourite bar in the city.

---