Page 8 of Someone Just Like You

Jude:Gotcha.

Chapter Four

At 1:40 a.m. the next night, I was finishing a pitcher of beer with Esther on the outdoor back patio of Tuttles, a bar across the street from my apartment. The communal picnic tables that had previously been filled with twentysomethings were now mostly unoccupied aside from us. Our other friends had left, but it was in the unofficial friendship handbook that anyone who lived within walking distance of a bar wasn’t allowed to take off if someone else wanted to stay. There were limited exceptions to this rule, including puking and hooking up (hopefully not at the same time), but being tired wasn’t one of them. I was exhausted like I’d just disembarked a red-eye flight, and my buzz was all but gone, but since Esther wasn’t ready to leave, neither could I.

“You are pathetic,” she said.

I lifted my head, previously buried in my hands. “Say it again.” I pushed out my lips. “Please?” Four years of being her college roommate, and I still found her British accent irresistible, even more so after several beers and two Superman shots.

She rolled her big brown eyes. “Pathetic. Why are you so tired?”

I blinked. “Because I worked all day, waited until my date with Stan at close to midnight, met you out, and it’s almost two in the morning!” After cutting my date with Stan short, I had joined Esther and a few of her colleagues from the communications agency where she worked as a medical editor supporting their healthcare clients. The whole minor-league-baseball thing was a turn-on initially, and I liked his thick head of dark, messy hair, but I realized at some point during our first drink that we had nothing in common and no real chemistry beyond the first blush of physical attraction. I decided it was kinder to set him free than prolong our third date out of mere politeness, only to make two stops on a shared cab ride home at the end of the night. I’d texted Esther as much from the bathroom, and by the time I returned to Stan, a group of post-college girls had surrounded him like a swarm of flies. We parted ways with no hard feelings.

“Pitiful. I spent all day proofreading and fact checking data on clinical studies. I was seeing double before my first drink, yet I’m still fabulous company.” She poured the remains of our pitcher of Blue Moon evenly between both of our glasses.

I crossed my fingers she wouldn’t order another. It was last call, so it was now or never. “You’re living on European time.”

She blew a raspberry. “Nice try. I’ve lived in the States since college. I’m just cooler than you. And one month younger.”

“Oh, yes, I lived centuries in those four weeks while you were still swimming in amniotic fluid.” I would turn twenty-eight a month and three days before her, to be exact. The bar staff cleared away the empty tables around us. “They probably want to go home,” I whispered.

“Take your time,” a velvety deep voice said from behind me, so close the hair on the back of my neck stood up.

My head swung around. I found myself staring at the voice’s crotch. I looked up at the barback, a white guy with messy (sexy) dark hair wearing head-to-toe black.

“For the next thirty minutes at least.” He winked.

“You have great hearing.”

“You have a loud whisper.”

I pressed my fingers to my lips to suppress my giggle.

He gestured at our empty pitcher. “You finished?”

“We are.”

We locked eyes for a moment. When he was out of earshot, I turned back to a smirking Esther. “What? He’s cute. His forearms in that tight t-shirt are delicious.”

She tut-tutted me. “He looks like Stan, whose poor body hasn’t even gone cold yet.” Esther had met Stan the same night I did, when he and his friends had approached us at a bar earlier that summer.

“I’m sure the college girls at the bar are keeping him warm.” I changed the topic of conversation to our plans for the weekend. Esther was visiting her uncle and twin nieces. When her aunt-in-law had died tragically from a brain aneurysm the year before, leaving behind her husband and three-year-old twin girls, Esther became a source of support since the rest of their family lived in England.

“I’ll be there three days to help with theOh Crap! Potty Trainingmethod. I’m too young for this shit…no pun intended…but if I leave it to Uncle Colin, those girls will be wearing diapers at our age, and not as part of a drinking game. But I’m paranoid my automatic cat feeder will malfunction and Poppy will starve while I’m gone.”

“I’d say you were being paranoid if you didn’t already say it yourself.” Poppy was Esther’s rescue tabby cat.

“It happened to my assistant’s best friend’s cousin.” Esther’s eyes widened, and her trimmed eyebrows formed an upside down U.

I chuckled. “She’ll be fine. I’ll check in on her while you’re gone…make sure she’s been fed and hasn’t trapped herself under the couch again.” It wouldn’t be the first time. Esther would have taken Poppy with her to Connecticut if her uncle and both twins weren’t allergic to cats. But I, her trustworthy best friend who was also allergic to cats and needed Benadryl for extended contact, could handle this much.

“I hoped you’d say that. Thanks.” Esther ruffled the blond, nearly white bangs of her pixie cut. “I assume your plans are more scintillating than mine, and hopefully don’t involve excrement?” she asked.

I cringed at the phantom foul smell of her nieces’ poops, then groaned, remembering what a nice buzz had allowed me to tuck away temporarily. “I’m checking out a restaurant with Jude on Sunday.” Nicole had confirmed the head count for the party was between fifty and sixty depending on RSVPs. A far cry from Jude’s “about a hundred” estimate. But did he admit he was wrong? Of course not. If he’d been right, though, knowing Jude, I’d never hear the end of it. I wasn’t holding my breath for an apology for being sent to Bistrot Leo to meet Don Messwidme either.

I took a gulp of beer. It was almost too embarrassing to share with Esther, but I did it anyway. When I was finished, I said, “I can’t believe I didn’t see it coming.”

“Don’t blame yourself, hon. He’s a grown man acting like a wanker.” She pushed her empty beer to the side. “What’s the deal with you two anyway?” Esther didn’t know my history with Jude since it hadn’t come up until we were thrown together for the party.

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