Page 50 of Bang Buddies With Benefits
I heaved a sigh and shook my head at her. “Flair. For the hundredth time, it’s called flair.”
“Anyway,” she said with a teasing smile, dimple and all, “I was like hello, dude, I only have so long until I’m missed, and I’m after the magical effects found in that bottle, not watching you juggle it through the air.”
“Don’t act like you weren’t impressed.”
This time, Catalina’s laugh was one hundred percent genuine and totally at my expense. “Oh yeah, I was super impressed when you broke the bottle in front of me.”
My jaw about hit my lap—she’d really gone there. Everyone laughed, getting a kick out of the story. Even Joy softened the tiniest bit, and since the tension leaking out of the room was as good for Noah and Jeremy as it was for me, I decided there was no reason to attempt to preserve my ego.
“I’ll have you know that I hardly ever drop a bottle. You just…” Keeping in line with the truth telling, I laced my fingers through hers, lifted her hand to my mouth, and kissed the back of it. “You caught me off guard. And the truth is, I’d break a hundred more bottles to get you behind my bar.”
Pink flared through her cheeks, another victory for me, as I hadn’t thought bashfulness was in Catalina Mendes, Attorney at Law’s repertoire. Better yet, as she locked eyes with me, I knew it was 100 percent genuine. I dove to kiss her again, capturing her chin so I could deepen the kiss.
As I pulled away, she sank her teeth into her bottom lip, much the same way they’d done that night. “I wanted to deny the immediate spark—especially since all of two seconds later you were insulting me.”
“You insulted me first.”
“Urgh, see? You seriously have this knack for pushing all my buttons and driving me crazy, and yet…That night, everything in me screamed I’d regret it if I didn’t return and explore that tug deep within me that insisted my life would never be the same.”
Real or fake? Things were getting jumbled up in my head and my heart, and I was way too close to falling so hard for this woman who’d declared several times that she didn’t believe in long-term. My heart swelled, testing the bounds of my rib cage, and since I wanted it to be true, I delivered a truth of my own. “Don’t worry. If you hadn’t shown up, I would’ve hunted you down.”
This time, she initiated the kiss, and then we grinned at each other like love-sick fools.
“When was this?” Julia asked, andshit. Talk about a landmine, one I should’ve seen coming. “You don’t do flair bartending much anymore.”
She was right, and yet what came out was, “Sometimes at parties people still request it. Zoie’s taken it over for the most part, but—”
“When?”
So much for our truce. It was a nice twenty or thirty minutes. The idea of lying beckoned, but then the timeline would only get messier. “We originally met several years ago,” I said. “We never dated, though, not until recently. We didn’t reconnect until recently—a couple of months after you and I broke up.”
Julia nodded and nodded and nodded some more, and the rest of us sat like statues, waiting to see which way to attack or dodge.
“It’s my fault,” Noah said. “I urged him to find a date, and that’s when he reached out.”
More nodding. Julia’s eyes went shiny, and I kept my poker face on instead of wincing, since that seemed to provoke her. “Guess I know why it didn’t work. Believe it or not, it’s good to know. Now I can stop blaming myself.”
“Julia, it wasn’t you—”
“And here’s the next round.” The wait staff presented it with a flourish, not aware of the awkwardness crowding the air. “It’s—”
“Thank you,” Julia said. “We’ll let you know what we think.” She lifted her fork and stabbed at the pasta, and what else could the rest of us do but follow her lead?
It wasn’t until later, while being rushed to the ER in the back of an ambulance, that I wished I never would’ve picked up that fork.
23
Zac
“Where’s Catalina?” I asked, as soon as the doctor and nurses had finished administering all the things and my brother stepped into the room.
The last time I’d seen her, she’d been backing away, hands over her mouth, staring at me with such horror. I’d tried to assure her I was fine, but funny thing about not being able to breathe, it made it hard to speak and even harder to reassure people you were fine.
Noah ran a hand over his face, calling attention to the stress pinching his features, and I hadn’t meant to skip over his worry.
“Sorry for ruining another one of your prenuptial events, bro. I’m uninvited to the wedding, aren’t I?” It was supposed to be a joke, as Noah and I didn’t usually do serious, but he didn’t look amused by it and he sure as hell didn’t laugh. “Hey, I’m good. I always assumed I wasn’t a seafood fan because I was being picky. Now I know it’s because it was going to try to kill me someday.”
If I’d known there were chunks of lobster in the butternut squash pasta, which I thought seemed like a slight to our Tomassi heritage, I would’ve likely picked them out. But they were covered with creamy sauce, and even then, I had no idea about the shellfish allergy until my throat and mouth got itchy and my airway began to close up.
