Page 31 of Drilled (Dad Bod Contracting 2)
“Hello? Audra? What is it?”
I didn’t even look at the time. I don’t really care. “Imogen? I—remember what I said about really bad or really good?”
“Uh huh.” Her voice is tired, but coherent.
“It was both.”
“Was?”
“I need so much wine right now.”
“Do I need to come over right now?”
“Unless you can get here sooner.”
“Sooner than right now?” she says, laughing.
“Can you be here five minutes ago?”
“Oh god.” She heard something in my voice, clearly. “That bad?”
“You have no idea,” I whisper. “I need to be really, really drunk, and I can’t do it alone.”
“Audra, you can’t drink your way past your feelings.”
“Watch me, bitch.” I say this with a laugh.
She sighs. “Okay, okay. Ten minutes.”
“Bring all the wine!”
She laughs. “How about I bring vodka and we get this done faster?”
“I like the way you think.”
“Do we need snacks?” she asks, and I hear her moving around, then Jesse’s voice rumbles in the background.
“No. No snacks. Just vodka.”
“Jesus.”
“Tell Jesse I’m sorry for dragging you away from him.”
She giggles. “Oh, don’t worry about him. We just finished having some seriously epic sex, so he’s fine.” I groan, and she inhales sharply. “Oh, I’m sorry, Audra—was that a bad reminder?”
“No, I just—” I laugh. “I just finished having some seriously epic sex, too. Only, that’s a good thing for you and not so much for me.”
“I’m so confused, Audra.”
“Just get here.”
“Ten minutes.”
It’s the longest ten minutes of my life.
Chapter 6
The security buzzer sounds, and I reach up to stab the button, allowing Imogen access to my building. An empty bottle of wine and a chunk of 85% dark chocolate sit on the coffee table. I walk over to the door and stick the bottle between the door and the jamb so Imogen will be able to come in and I won’t have to get up again.
As I sit on the sofa I hear Imogen approaching, talking on the phone—to Jesse, judging by the low intimate tone of her voice.
“Hi, Jesse!” I yell, as she shoves open my door, bends to pick up the bottle, and then enter my condo.
“Audra, be quiet!” Imogen hisses. “It’s nearly midnight.”
“Sorry. Hi, Jesse!” I whisper-yell.
Imogen eyes the empty bottle and my empty wineglass. “Holy shit, Audra. Did you drink that whole bottle by yourself in fifteen minutes?”
I shake my head. “No. Only half of it. Franco and I had the other half. After round one, but before round two.”
I hear Jesse tell Imogen to hand me the phone; I take the handset from her and put it to my ear. “Hi, Jesse.”
“Don’t get my girl too drunk, okay? Somehow, I doubt she has your liver.”
“No, I won’t. I’ll be getting wasted, but she’ll be fine. She’ll just have to babysit my stupid ass.”
There is a pause on the other side. “Hope you understand if I don’t get involved in this.”
“Yep. He’s your best friend; I’m your girlfriend’s best friend. I get it.”
“Good. Now both of you stay there. I’ll come back and get her when she’s ready to go.”
“You’re the best.” I sigh deeply. “She’s a lucky girl.”
“Got that backwards, babe. She’s the best, I’m the lucky one.”
“Both ways, then.”
“He didn’t do anything stupid, did he?”
I laugh. “Yeah, he did.” I pause for effect. “He slept with me.”
Jesse sighs. “Don’t get too crazy. It doesn’t actually fix anything, you know.”
“I know,” I say, cheerfully. “I just don’t want to deal with it right now.”
“He’s gonna be a miserable bastard to work with for a while, isn’t he?”
“Yeah, probably. You can blame me.”
Imogen takes the phone back. “Okay, give my boyfriend back.” She moves away a few feet and whispers into the phone. I’m not positive, but I think I hear her tell him she loves him.
I wait until she hangs up and puts her phone away and then stare up at her hopefully. “Vodka?”
She laughs, withdrawing a brand new bottle of Grey Goose from her bag. She eyes me. “You’re not gonna drink it straight, are you?”
I blow a raspberry. “Things are bad, but it’s not that bad. I have some strawberry Bubly in the fridge. We can mix it with that.”
In a few minutes we both have a stiff drink, and we’re sitting on the couch. Imogen knows better than to push me, so we turn on an older Iliza Shlesinger special and I suck down two more drinks before lowering the volume and pivoting on the couch to face Imogen.
“I went to talk to him.”
She snorts and rolls her eyes. “Yes, I know. I heard about it from James.”
“How?”
“James and Ryder came over for a while earlier this evening, under the guise of talking about the next project now that the Waverley build is almost done. But really, it was so they could gossip about you and Franco.” She laughed, shaking her head. “Men. They act like we’re the gossips, but they can be just as bad.”
