Page 73 of Dear John

She shrugged and grabbed the drink in front of Fox. “Bottoms up!”

I could walk out of here or I could stay and have a drink. Going back to the room and drinking alone didn’t sound very good at this point. One drink couldn’t hurt.

“What are you having?” the bartender asked, grinning at me and my wild hair.

“Do you have something to make you forget the possessive boyfriend who neglects to tell you important things and bursts into interviews to ‘save the day’?”

He pointed at Fox and I shook my head, redirecting him to Kavanaugh.

“Ah,” he nodded. “Well, I can recommend something fruity, something spicy, or something really fucking strong.”

As good as strong sounded, I needed to have my wits about me for tomorrow.”

“Something fruity.”

“Figures,” he mumbled.

Okay, I was offended by that. “Hey, I am perfectly fine with strong, but unlike my jealous, possessive boyfriend—” I spun to face Kavanaugh. “By the way, that look is only good on men in romance novels—” Then I turned back to the bartender. “Unlike him, I have a very important interview tomorrow. And no, you will not be joining me.”

“Me?” the bartender asked.

I pointed to Kavanaugh. “No. That was directed at the jealous, possessive boyfriend.”

“I’m not jealous,” he grumbled.

I snorted in derision. “You were jealous of IKE.”

“Can we not bring him up again? It was a momentary lapse of judgment.”

I scoffed, turning to face him. “You were just as pissed at him when all he did was walk me back to the hotel! And you’re the one who called him out here!”

“Why did he call another man?” the bartender asked curiously, still tending to my drink.

“Ooh! I know the answer to this one!” Fox said, bouncing on his stool with his hand raised in the air.

“I’ll tell you why. Because my boyfriend has a problem telling me the truth about things when he thinks he’s protecting me.”

The bartender’s eyes flicked to Kavanaugh, his eyebrows raised not in surprise, but in that kind ofman, you’re screwedtype of way. “Yeah, I get a lot of your kind in here.”

I spun in my seat and gave Kavanaugh a satisfied smirk. “He gets a lot of you in here.”

“Can we not talk about this with the bartender?”

“Well, if we go back to the hotel, I’m likely to shove my heel up your ass.”

The bartender set my drink down in front of me with a chuckle. “If it makes you feel any better, I mostly deal with men who have already fucked things up beyond repair. It sounds like you still have a shot at fixing this.”

“Tell me something…” I waited for him to give his name.

“Charles.”

“Really?”

He shrugged. “You can call me Charlie if you want.”

“Okay, Charlie. Tell me this, if your girlfriend kept lying to you, all in the name of protecting you, would you be okay with it?”

“If I had a woman protecting me, I think I might not be okay with anything.”

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