Page 18 of Perfect Pursuit

“That’s the owner?” Austyn interrupts.

“Yep.” I wait for Austyn to sort out all the players she’ll meet tomorrow.

“And this Levi doesn’t do it for you on your ‘bang a hot older guy’ radar?” Austyn eyes me over the rim of her glass.

I snort. “He’s one of the most gorgeous men I’ve ever met.”

“Yet, you told me there wasn’t a man in Seven Virtues you’d bang?”

“Still true.”

“What’s wrong with him?”

“If I had a choice of doing a boy who couldn’t find my clit or doing Levi, I’d do the boy every time and twice on Sunday.”

At that, Austyn does a spit take into her glass. “Oh, crap. That says a lot about him. What makes him such a douche?”

I place my glass on the table. “He interrogates women like they’re going to rob him blind or he’s slotting them into his calendar for their assigned fucking. He has no business sense and demeans everyone who works for him. He?—”

She lifts her hand. “I get the point. Has he ever tried to hit on you?”

“He might have tried if I didn’t put him in place the day I interviewed.” I explain to her the tradition of the Indigo Girl’s song.

Austyn’s interest latches onto what I noticed immediately. “There seems to be something between him and this Caroline.”

“Like bad Nickelodeon slime. It’s front and present, and you can’t get away from it,” I agree.

She grins and every time it happens, something inside me relaxes infinitesimally. This is what we both need—each other. “Have you ever asked her about it?”

“I hinted once.”

“When?”

“When I asked her why she was moving out.”

“To which she said?”

“‘I don’t need my ‘landlord’ to be close enough to screen my dates.’”

Austyn’s face turns thoughtful. “Does he interrogate yours?”

“If it wasn’t for the fact he deducts my rent from my tips, I’m not certain he’d care if I lived here.”

She purrs, “Oh, this I can’t wait to see. I sense musical inspiration coming on.”

“So, you’re for certain coming with me to work tomorrow night?”

“I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

I tell her more stories since I started spending every available spare minute working at Galileo’s. She’s enthralled about the idea of the toast. “I’d swear, the big bad boy of Seven Virtues pouted every day no one sang his infamous bar song.”

Austyn clucks, “Poor baby. What did you do to soften the blow to his male ego?”

I explain. “After a month, Caroline shoved me up on stage at forty-one minutes past the hour with a Coke in hand. One minute later—in honor of the year Galileo died: 1642—I was singing Galileo’s theme song a cappella.”

The crowd joined in—lifting their glasses as well. The commotion dragged Levi from his office. His eyes bugged out. Caroline merely walked by and slapped him upside the head before she taunted, “Now, maybe listening to a woman will cause something to penetrate other than your dick.”

Austyn’s leaning forward like we’re watching a Turkish drama through our chai. “He must have been ready to have clubbed her and dragged her off by her hair.”

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