Page 83 of Just a Heartbeat Away

Via laughed delightedly, her mood significantly warming as she looked down at this kid she liked so much. He looked delirious with delight, and a little hysterical.

“Mary’s babysitting,” Seb explained. “And things always get a little out of hand when Mary babysits.”

“He looks like he’ll be a perfect angel when it’s time to put him to bed,” Via joked and Seb snorted again. “Where are they, though? You guys have a playroom I don’t know about?”

She thought of the second floor she’d never seen.

Seb leaned over her shoulder to look at the picture, he must have zoomed in before he handed it over because his arm snaked around her and he zoomed out now. She realized the green mat wasn’t a mat at all; it was a comforter on a huge, wooden bed frame. “Nah, they’re in my room.”

So, that was his room. She was staring at Sebastian Dorner’s huge, handsome bed. Cool cool cool. No big. No big at all. Her hand started sweating.

She took one last look at the picture and was just handing it back when a banner slid down from the top of the screen. He was getting a text. She didn’t see what it said, but she didn’t miss the name. Marisa Simmons. “You got a text.”

Her hands empty, Via filled them with the beer she suddenly didn’t want. She rolled the glass between her palms and scanned the bar, hoping she looked casual. It really looked like Greg was making time with Rachel up at the bar. She was sitting on a stool, tilted toward him, and he had one hand on the bar top, boxing her in. Via sighed a little as she looked at them. Rachel was pretty and sweet. Her top was, in her usual way, a little too tight for school, but whatever. They were definitely in the same age range. Via imagined they’d go home together and see what happened.

She was so jealous she was suddenly exhausted. She felt like she could sleep for a week. She wanted to find a cave and a double-wide sleeping bag. She’d stuff the other half of the sleeping bag with queen-size pillows and pull the blankets over her head. When she woke up, she’d still be single but maybe she wouldn’t be pining over the sweet giant sitting next to her.

“Another one bites the dust.”

“They look like they’re hitting it off.”

Seb and Via spoke at the same time. And then again, when they both identically said, “What?”

“Oh,” Seb said, shaking his phone a little. “I was just saying that I’ve had another strikeout from a woman.”

“She rejected you, you mean?” Via was very confused. She felt like she was on one of those wobbly chain bridges they had on playgrounds. He was talking to her about the woman he was texting? Was that a buddy-buddy type of thing to do or something else altogether?

Seb laughed. “Thanks for the vote of confidence. No, well, I guess she sort of did. She kept wanting to meet up at times that I was busy with Matty. She got frustrated. Bid me good night and good luck.”

“You weren’t busy with Matty tonight,” Via said quietly, her heart doing its best imitation of a hummingbird.

“I’m busy with you tonight.” Seb shrugged. Almost like it was no big deal. “What were you saying before?”

Via commanded her mind to start working more clearly. She was being ridiculous right now. She just needed to get herself together. Live in the moment. She could analyze everything later. “Oh, just that Greg and Rachel look like they’re hitting it off.”

“Yeah,” Seb mused, cocking his head to one side to study them. “Greg’s got way more game than the geeky hair initially implies. Like that, for instance. Solid move, Greg.”

“What move?” Via asked, confused. She must have missed something.

“See the way he stepped to the side just then? Well, he did it so that she’d turn to face him. Which she did. And now that she’s facing away from the bar, your Golden Oldie will be less likely to flirt with her. And he just boxed out that other guy. AND best of all for good old Greg, her knees are touching his leg now.”

“Wow.” Via was bemused. She looked for a second longer and then dismissed the idea, shaking her head. “I think you’re giving him too much credit. The guy just moved over a few inches. There’s no way he had that master plan cooking.”

Seb gave her a pitying look. “Via, if you’re a guy talking to a pretty woman at a bar, there’salwaysa master plan.”

It wasn’t lost on her that Seb was a guy, and she was a pretty woman, and they were, in fact, in a bar right now. If she were Fin, she would have immediately pointed that out, watched while Seb squirmed. But she was Via. So she kept things moving instead.

“Maybe,” she conceded. “But that move was so subtle. I really don’t think that was part of the Greg school of romance.”

“Trust me. As a man who used to do that,” he pointed toward the lovebirds, “fairly successfully, it’s thelittlemoves that count. The big ones are far less successful.”

Sebastian leaned back just a touch in his chair, and Via shifted to hear him better. She both thrilled and despaired at the idea of Sebastian picking up women in bars. It was sexy and deflating at the same time. “What do you mean?”

“I mean that Greg wants Rachel to only pay attention to him right now. And he wants to touch her, just a little bit. Now, he could have achieved all of that by just reaching out and grabbing her chin, tilting her face toward him.”

Via wrinkled her nose, and Seb pointed at the expression she was making.

“Exactly. Most women would hate that. Not all, and maybe if Greg had done that, Rachel wouldn’t have minded. But probably, she would have smacked his hand away, slid off the barstool and come back over here. So, instead, Greg just sort of moved over an inch or two and got what he wanted in a much more respectful way. And Rachel doesn’t feel pushed around or manhandled. Win-win.”

---