Page 94 of Enemies with Benefits
"As if."
"Alright, then don't bitch about how infuriating men are when you keep willingly dealing with them."
That earned another eye roll, but I took the victory for what it was. Honestly, bickering about each other's respective gender was a form of small talk for us after working together for so many years. She said all men were stubborn, piggish, egotistical assholes with no sense of self-preservation, and I said that women were all crazy, wildly inconsistent, couldn't say what they meant, and the biggest gossips the world had ever seen. Then we'd do a shot together, and she'd bitch that it was unfairthat I got to be with other guys because guys understood another guy better than a woman ever would, meanwhile, she could understand another woman easily, but was stuck only liking dick. Then we'd start rating patrons while commenting on just how stupid people could be.
She was about as close as I got to having a best friend, just the kind of best friend I only talked to when I was in town.
"Go," she said, waving a dish rag over her shoulder, clearly irritated with my constant refusal to talk about the 'real stuff' as she put it.
I glanced over one more time, letting my eyes linger on Jace for a while before pulling my attention away again. I was lucky that this time, no one invaded his personal space, but Jace hadn’t appeared to mind and seemed to enjoy the invasion. I dismissed the thought before it found root and instead focused on the good image. The sight of him standing there in clothes that fit him perfectly, almost a little too well, actually. Smiling in my club while he held one of the more potent drinks the bar had to offer, clearly enjoying himself.
I was probably going to need that image with the renewed sounds of fighting coming from outside.
JACE
The club was warm, like...really warm. Normally, I wasn't happy being hot, but I wasn't quite there yet, just pleasantly toasty. It didn't hurt that my whole body felt pleasantly loose, which just showed how often I went through my day feeling tense. My skin buzzed nicely, and there was a slight fogginess to everything that made it a lot easier to think...well, sometimes.
Okay, yeah, I was drunk, and if not, I was close. Not so drunk that I was wobbling all over the place, slurring every other word, and unable to think clearly, but definitely enough to feel pretty damn good. It was hard to think about how my life had gone down the shitter from the moment I saw blood on the thigh of a girl too young to deal with the monsters the world created. Instead, all I could think about was the feel of the music as it thumped, almost as pleasant and warm as the feeling of the bodies around me.
Honestly, why didn't I do this more often? Sure, clubs and bars could be a little crowded for my taste, but there was always the option to have a few drinks and let my hair down, so to speak. There wasn't much hair on top of my head, considering I kept it buzzed enough to make a drill sergeant happy, but still, with a bit of booze inside me, I was clearly able to enjoy myself.
One of the guys, uh...Ryan, looked over at me and smiled widely. "I have to say, you look like you're enjoying yourself."
I held up my drink, still the Virgin Special, and gave it a shake—no idea why it was called that, because there was clearly nothing virgin about it. I wasn't exactly a drinker, I'd always been careful when it came to alcohol, considering the beast it often turned my father into whenever he got too deep into a bottle, but I still had a decent tolerance. Of course, my size might have something to do with it, but clearly my size was not a defining factor when it came to whatever the hell the bar kept throwing my way, because after a few of them, I was starting to feel it.
Ryan shook his head, and I watched as his hair fell across his forehead. It looked soft, and I had to resist the urge to reach up and confirm if it was, which was another reminder that a lot had changed with me. Not that long ago, I wouldn't have thought something like that. Well, okay, that wasn'ttotallytrue. I would have had the beginning of that thought, and it would have been trampled down by every instinct in my body so quickly and so harshly that I’d barely be aware it was gonna happen in the first place. So barely aware that it wouldn't do more than brush against the conscious part of my brain, meaning I basically wouldn't know it was going to happen. Some part of me would know, but the awake part would easily ignore it.
That was the funny thing about alcohol, it definitely made things muddier, but it could make other things a lot clearer too. Sometimes a littletooclear, but right now, I could see pretty damn well how much I had been holding myself back over the years. That part of me had always been there, contained and locked up tight, but there all the same. It managed to slip out on occasion, but jailbreaks were corrected swiftly. It made me want to laugh when I realized that a jailbreak had happened again, but this time it had been someone else who had to break in. OnlyMason fucking Beckett could come swinging in like a dynamite wrecking ball to ruin the cage I had formed around that part of myself, leaving only chaos, but a wide gap for that part to come out finally.
And here it was, creeping out far more than before. It was one thing to begrudgingly admit that yeah, Mason was a damn fine-looking man, and was enthusiastic about doing things that made my toes curl and eyes roll into the back of my head. It was something else entirely to look at this blond man with his cheeky smile and a laugh that sounded like tap dancing and wonder what it would be like to plunge my hands into his hair, grip it, and pull it back to hear how different his gasp of pleasure and anticipation was from Mason's.
I realized Ryan and the rest of the group were staring at me, and I blinked, knowing I'd missed something but was too far lost in my own swirling thoughts to have the slightest clue what. Feeling awkward, I tried to smile. “What?"
The woman who resembled her brother, especially that mischievous smile, shook her head. "I asked when your buddy was going to stop ignoring you. I mean, don't get me wrong, we're loving the free drinks?—"
"And your company," Ryan threw in quickly, glancing at his boyfriend and giving him a wink. "But we had other places to go tonight. If you aren't going to be spending the night with your buddy, you could always come with us."
His boyfriend, whose name I couldn't remember, smiled and nodded. "Definitely."
He was a man of fewer words than Ryan, which I totally understood because I wasn't usually a talker either. So it was maybe a little odd that it was the far more outgoing and openly flirtatious Ryan that I had taken to quicker than the rest. The girls had been pretty obvious about their intentions with me if I'd let them, and it was weird to think that with a word, I couldprobably have both of them disappear somewhere private with me. The guys, though, well...apparently being in a relationship didn't exclude bringing other people into the mix.
They'd been more subtle about it, but I could tell they were interested in a lot more than sharing drinks and conversation with me. At first, I'd tried to push the suspicion away because clearly they were together. That was until Ryan waited until his sister and her friend went to get another round of drinks for everyone and told me that if I didn't want to go off with the women, I could come back to their apartment. Which might have been alarming, but his boyfriend had been right there and had smiled, draining the rest of his drink in what had to be not just acceptance, but full-on agreement.
"No," I said slowly, still not sure what to do with blatant, open displays of interest. Mason had clearly been trying to make a point, and these four people were making his point for him quite readily. It was uncomfortable to be sure, but it was also welcome. Having people show interest and not wariness was nice. Sure, Mason did that all the time, but that wasn't the same thing. Our shared history, as messed up and nasty as it had been, was enough that he wasn't going to be worried about me. "I've gotta get back with him when he comes back."
The other girl, Rebecca, looked past me and raised her artfully shaped eyebrow. "Looks to me like he's already settling back in just fine."
Confused, I turned to see what she was talking about. I didn't know how long it had been, but the bar was open, and Mason was leaning against one end. He was talking to a couple of women, though even from here, without needing to hear him, he looked to be talking themup. I could see quite clearly that they were interested and were standing pretty close, one of them having a hard time keeping her hands to herself.
He had apparently decided that when he was done with business, he was going to let these four continue babysitting me while he got his ego stroked. Though I bet if they kept going, he was going to end up with a lot more than that being stroked. Hell, one of them looked like they were about to slip her hands down the front of his pants right there and not worry about the crowd.
I skipped past annoyance and went straight to anger as I watched him laugh, not pushing the hand on his chest away as he continued talking. I could understand being left with strangers while he dealt with business. There was more than enough security in the place that I wasn't needed, and it wasn't like my presence would somehow help with the cops outside. But to finish up with that and decide to take his time flirting while I was left to my own devices was just...too much.
"Uh, oh," Ryan said. "Well, I think that's our cue."
"For sure," his sister said, sounding nervous. "You have a good night, Jace."
"Yeah," Ryan said, and I felt something pushed into my back pocket before the four of them walked off, leaving me to fume and glare in Mason's direction.
