Page 101 of A Shot of Pretty Poison

I can tell he’s enjoying this by the way snickers. “One Shirley Temple coming right up.”

Glaring at him, I reach into my back pocket and pull out my fake ID. I put it on the bar in front of me and push it toward him. He lets out a breathy laugh as he picks it up and looks at it, then slips it into his own back pocket.

“You can’t just keep my ID,” I tell him.

He shrugs. “Sure I can. It’s a false document. That’s not your last name.”

With a wink, he leaves me speechless as he walks away.

My fucking fake has Blanchard on it.

It’s things like this that I swear he does to torture me. Every once in a while, he’ll say something like that, and I will spend the next three days overthinking it and wondering what the hell it could mean.

Take this, for example. Is he saying he wants me to still go by Wilder? He told me when I got here that he wouldn’t give me a divorce, but he was just being spiteful, and I didn’t want one anyway. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t worry one day he’s going to come home with those papers though. I’ve had nightmares of him leaving them on the table and telling me he’s sorry but he just doesn’t think we can get through this.

“How can you talk to him like that?” a woman sitting beside me asks. “You don’t get nervous and forget how to speak when he looks at you?”

It takes me a second to figure out what she’s talking about, and then it hits me.

Oh, Jesus Christ.

“I’ve known him for a while,” I answer.

She keeps her eyes on Hayes as she sighs. “Lucky. I’ve been coming here almost every weekend, trying to get up the nerve to ask him for his number.”

I choke on my own saliva, forcing me to cough before I clear my throat. “Oh. Well, I hate it break it to you, but he’s married.”

Her jaw drops. “Is he really?”

“Yep,” I tell her, looking over at Hayes. “His wife is a total bitch, but he won’t divorce her for some reason. I don’t know.”

I watch as he laughs, and I know he just heard every word. He drops a couple cherries into the glass and brings it over, placing the Shirley Temple in front of me. I look down at it and back up at him.

“That’s not what I ordered.”

He smiles and steps back. “Three more weeks.”

The wink he shoots me makes me want to drag him into the back room. Someone raises their hand on the other side of the bar to get his attention, but just before he walks away, he stops and looks at me.

“Try not to let Mali drink that one, too.”

I put my tongue in my cheek as I laugh, because of course he was watching me. He’s always watching me, even when I think he isn’t. But I’m not complaining. He can have his eyes on me anytime he wants.

THE PROBLEM WITH GUYSat the bar is that once they start to get a buzz going, they either become complete idiots or way too ballsy. Rarely do you ever see someone with a happy medium between the two. It’s usually because they’re with their friends and they want to impress them by scoring a “hot babe”to go home with.

Sometimes they’re fine. My issue is when they don’t take no for an answer. Take this guy, for example. It was relatively funny when he had the guts to come up and ask Mali and me for a threesome. Mal even pretended to consider it for a second, until we both broke out into a laugh. But apparently, he took that as an invitation to stick around. We even try moving to another part of the bar, but he doesn’t seem to get the hint.

“What are you drinking, sweetheart?” he asks. “Let me buy you something.”

I shake my head politely. “No, I’m good. But thank you.”

“I insist.” He reaches up and twirls a piece of my hair around his finger. “Can’t have a pretty girl like you going thirsty.”

Taking a step back, I put distance between us. “Seriously, I’m flattered, but I’m not interested.”

“That’s just because you don’t know anything about me yet,” he presses. “Give me a shot before you rule me out.”

This guy looks old enough to be my father, and I wonder if he knows he’s hitting on a twenty-year-old. Then again, as long as I’m legal, I don’t think he cares.

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