Page 21 of Wild Side
“I’m Bash.” He sticks out his hand, and I give mine back, shaking firmly.
“Rhys.”
“You’re new in town, then?”
I grimace. Tabitha practically dropped me into a small-town pot of boiling water, and we still know nothing about each other. About our situation. About what we’re telling people.
And I’m certainly not dumb enough to think she wants me to spill the beans on why I’m really here. So I shrug again. “Sorta.”
“Are you a friend of Tabby’s?” West asks, now focusing his attention back on Bash and me. “Because any friend of Tabby’s is a friend of mine.” He flashes his white teeth at me with a charming smile. He’s clearly the life of the party with this crew. And even though I had an irrational moment of envy over hisfamiliarity with Tabitha, I suspect he’s the type of guy who’s impossible to dislike. Even if I wanted to, he wouldn’t let me.
“Something like that,” is what I settle on as I shake his hand and offer a flat smile.
“Great.” West claps my shoulder and then gestures toward the other man. “This here is Ford. My good friend and also the World’s Hottest Billionaire, according toForbes.”
Ford rolls his eyes and lets out an exhausted sigh. West grins wider. Like a little kid who gets a kick out of prodding a parent.
“Nice to meet you,” I say, reaching forward to shake Ford’s hand. He’s got polish. He’s dressed casually, but he screams money. I don’t know if the billionaire thing is a joke or not, but I opt not to ask.
“Likewise. Even though it’s overbowling.” His lip curls as he looks around.
“Hey, hey. Don’t disparage the charm of Rose Valley Alley.”
“Bycharm, he means sticky floors,” Bash mumbles from behind the rim of his pint glass.
“Why are they?—”
West’s arm slices across the space. “Nah. You can’t slander the place like that. It’s an icon. A relic. An attraction.” His finger shoots up triumphantly. “A heritage site!”
“Aheritage site?” Ford looks appalled.
“When the fuck did you become a thesaurus, West?” Bash stares at him with a tilt to his head.
“I read a lot, Bash. It’s good for the vocabulary. Maybe being a fire pilot doesn’t require you to know many words.”
“Oh, and training horses does?”
Their easy banter is amusing and unfamiliar all at once. I find myself watching them, head flipping from man to man and feeling entirely out of place.
Ford chuckles, shaking his head and taking a sip of his beer. “What about you, Rhys? What do you like to do in your free time?”
“And why is it ’roids?” West quips before covering his mouth with a palm. “Shit, sorry. Mouth is faster than my brain.”
Ford groans.
Bash scrubs a hand over his face. “Fuck’s sakes.”
And I laugh. I can’t help it. It feels unfamiliar in my throat. I spend an excessive amount of time alone, and the past week has been impossibly sad. But I still laugh. It was just too good-natured to offend me.
“No ’roids. Just a boring diet, great genetics, and too many hours in the gym.”
“Fair. Yeah.” West purses his lips and looks me over appraisingly. “Now that I take a closer look, you could definitely be bigger.”
Everyone laughs. They laugh even harder when I try my hand at bowling for the very first time.
I stay quiet, appraising. But as bowling progresses, I fall into a comfortable camaraderie with the other three men. For a couple of hours, I don’t think about Erika, or Milo.
I wish I could say I don’t think about Tabitha.
