A Little Night Magic (5 page)

I pulled my hand back. “Nothing.”

“You keep shaking them out.” He eyed me. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing,” I said again, and crossed my arms over my stomach, tucking my hands under my elbows. “I’m just…”
Insanely, stupidly, unjustifiably jealous.
I sighed. “You have to understand what it’s like growing up with someone like Stacy Easter. She’s beautiful, she’s smart, she’s thin. Confident. Strong. She’s got that whole sexy librarian thing going on…”

Tobias’s mouth quirked at the edges. “Maybe you should have slept with Stacy.”

I gave him an unamused look, and he dropped the smile.

“Sorry.”

“I’m always ‘the friend’ with her,” I said. “She’s the hot one, and I’m the one men talk to to get access to her.”

He stared at me for a moment, his eyes narrowing. “That’s crazy.”

“Oh, please. On my best day, I’m average looking. I eat waffles all day and I look like it. I’m wishy-washy. I have freckles. No one should be almost thirty with freckles. I’m graceless and my hair is the weird kind of curly and I just thought that…”

He waited for a moment, then prodded. “What?”

I huffed out a sharp breath. “I thought that maybe, just once, at least with you, maybe
she
was the friend. And to find out that I’m just the consolation prize after things didn’t work out with her—”

“Okay, shut up.” He took a sharp step toward me, his eyes blazing. “You’re nobody’s consolation prize.”

“Right,” I said. “I’m not even that.”

He put his hands on my shoulders, gripping them hard. “Listen to me. The way you see yourself is completely messed up, and I put up with it because arguing with you about this stuff is like talking to a brick wall, but I’ve had it. Stacy’s … just Stacy. Yeah, she’s pretty, but she’s the kind of woman who makes a man want to get a blow job under the pool table at Happy Larry’s. Women like that, they’re a dime a dozen. You, Liv … you’re the kind of woman that makes a man just
want,
and that’s rare. And amazing. A guy finds that maybe once in a lifetime. If he’s lucky.”

His eyes moved over my face, and his breath was a bit ragged, and for a moment I thought he was going to kiss me, but then he took a breath and released his hold on me, blinking a couple of times.

I stared at him, dumbfounded, and then in a sudden fury put the flat of my hand against his chest and pushed as hard as I could. Taken off guard by the assault, he stumbled back a bit, and I advanced on him, poking my index finger into his solar plexus.

“See,
that’s
what I’m talking about! You say stuff like that to me and then you don’t kiss me. And then when I kiss you, you treat me like I’m insane. Well, you know what? I’m not insane, and I’m not making this all up in my head! Stop gaslighting me, Tobias.”

“I’m not trying to gaslight you, I’m just…”

I stood there, tapping my foot but as usual, he went silent just as things got interesting.

“Okay, you know what?” I said, cutting into the dragging silence. “This suddenly silent thing you do was cute for the first fourteen months or so, but now, it’s getting old.”

I started toward the alley to make my way out to the street where I could only hope an eighteen-wheeler would come speeding out of nowhere and put me out of my misery when Tobias said, “Don’t go.”

I turned back to face him. “Don’t go …
what
? Don’t go from here? Don’t go to Europe? What, Tobias? What do you want?”

He opened his mouth as if to say something, and then stopped, the same way he had last week when I’d kissed him and
he’d kissed me back, damnit,
but then held me at arm’s length and looked at me and said
nothing.
Except now, he wasn’t even looking at me.

He was looking at my hands.

I glanced down, and realized I’d been shaking them out again, absently trying to shake off the intensifying tingling. I tucked them under my elbows again and said, “What?”

“What’s happening with you?”

“Nothing. I’m fine. Now, what were you going to say?”

“Liv.” His voice was stern, and the tone took me a bit by surprise. “You need to tell me what’s going on.”

I crossed my arms over my stomach and tucked my hands under my elbows. “Nothing’s going on. My hands keep falling asleep, that’s all.”

His brow knit. “Since when?”

“It doesn’t matter. Stop changing the subject. Do you have something to say to me or not?”

His expression was dark and worried, his eyes still focused on my hands. Finally, he raised his eyes to mine and slowly shook his head.

“Liv, I don’t…” He released a breath. “I can’t right now, but—”

“Stop.” I closed my eyes as it all hit me at once. The pain, the loss, the humiliation, the stark desire for something I would never have. It was too much. I felt the tears prickle at the edge of my eyes, and I knew they were going to fall, and he was going to see them, and there wasn’t a damn thing I could do to stop it. I took a deep breath, and my chin quivered a bit.

Damnit.

“Liv,” he started, but I held up one hand to stop him as I used the other to swipe at my face.

“Believe it or not, now’s a good time to shut up, Tobias.”

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.

“Don’t be,” I said, meeting his eye as dryly as I could. “I’m fine.”

Then I turned on my heel and headed out toward the road, ignoring him as he called my name.

3

Happy Larry’s is exactly the kind of windowless pit of doom you’d expect from a dive called Happy Larry’s, but there are days when a girl needs to match her bar with her mood, and that day, Happy Larry’s was a match.

Happy Larry, scruffy and growly in his mangy, sleeveless
MANAGEMENT RESERVES THE RIGHT TO KICK YOUR ASS
T-shirt, did not appear to be very happy with my appearance in his establishment. You could never tell with Larry; between the untamed beard and Coke-bottle glasses, he was a hard man to read on facial expression alone.

“What the hell are you doing here?” he growled, confirming my original suspicion.

I took a stool and leaned over the bar. “I’m here for the same reason that everyone else is here. Too miserable to be anywhere respectable, not quite ready to jump off a bridge.”

Larry stared at me.

“Fine. Be that way.” I reached into my front jeans pocket and slammed a twenty down on the bar. “Serve me whatever is going to get me drunk the fastest. What do I want? Vodka? Tequila? You got anything in an IV drip?”

Happy Larry’s expression remained unchanged. “Go home.”

I drummed my fingers on the bar for a moment while I deliberated, then made the call. “Make it tequila.”

Happy Larry grunted something, but he took the twenty, then set a salt shaker, a shot glass, and a slice of lime in front of me. He pulled a bottle of tequila out, and filled the shot glass. I stared at it for a moment, then glanced up at him.

“How many calories are in this?”

Happy Larry stared at me blankly.

“I’m going on a diet,” I said glumly. “Starting today. When I get on that plane, I’m going to be svelte.”

Nothing from Larry. Jesus, it was tough to crack this guy.

“Okay. Maybe not svelte. But I wanna wear my skinny jeans. I figure fifteen hundred calories a day ought to do it, and you know what that is, Larry? That’s two pieces of lettuce and a whiff of a chocolate-chip cookie. So, what I’m asking you, Larry, is … how many calories?”

Happy Larry continued to stare at me.

“So you don’t … know? Then? The calories?”

Slowly, he shook his head.

“You know what? That’s okay. No, really. Don’t apologize.”
I bet Stacy never asks about the calorie content.
“It’s early in the day, I’ll look it up and adjust for it later. Or, you know. Maybe start tomorrow. You gotta work your way up to these things.”

Then I salted my hand, licked it, downed the shot, and sucked the lime.

“What?” I said as I nudged the empty shot glass back at an obviously surprised Happy Larry. “I went to college. I know how to drink tequila. Give me another one.”

He shook his head as he poured. “You puke on my floor, you’re cleaning it up.”

“God, Happy.
One time,
I puked on your floor. I was sixteen. Let it go, man.” I salted my hand, did the shot, then shook my head. I may not have gotten rid of the tingling in my hands, but now the rest of my body at least matched. The sharp edges of agitation that had been poking at me seemed to soften a bit, and I felt my spirits lift.

“You know what?” I said. “Tequila’s good. Gimme another.”

“You bet.” He stuffed the twenty in the till, gave me two fives and three ones in return. “In twenty minutes.”

“Grudge holder.” I swiped my money off the counter and shoved it back in my pocket, then swiveled around on my seat to take in the place. The only other customers were Frankie Biggs and Doug Holt, playing a game of pool in the back, and some guy sitting in a booth in the dark corner opposite, scraggly hair hanging down as he leaned over his glass. I let my gaze wander back to the pool table, and Frankie Biggs. Another man who couldn’t keep his hands off of Stacy Easter.

They were everywhere.

“I’m gonna go play pool,” I announced.

Happy Larry motioned toward the pool tables. “I care deeply.”

I got off the bar stool with a little trouble—
Wow, I’m a cheap date
—and when I looked up, my eyes locked with the guy in the corner. Or, at least I think my eyes locked with his; I couldn’t see him very well, the combined effects of the dim lighting and the eighty-proof tequila in my bloodstream. In a knee-jerk response of vigilance after a thousand cautionary tales from my mother based on True Stories from
Reader’s Digest,
I took in little details about him for the police report I’d probably never have to file—tallish, dirty-blond hair, midthirties, beat-up work boots, jeans, dark T-shirt, a few days’ of beard growth on his face—and then I looked away and made my way over to the pool table, where Doug was chalking his cue.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Doug said.

“You know what I love about this place?” I said. “The way everyone makes a girl feel so welcome.”

Doug’s eyes went from me to Frankie and then back again. “Did Amber send you here to check in on Frankie?” He looked at Frankie. “I’m telling you, man, you need a restraining order.”

I shook my head. “Amber didn’t send me.” I turned to Frankie. “But I’ve seen her recently in CCB’s, and I think the restraining order could be sound advice. She’s really pissed off.”

Doug gave Frankie a told-you-so look, and Frankie shook it off. I stood there, one hip jutted in what I thought might be a sexy manner, maybe, and wondered what Stacy would do in this situation, what it was about her that made her so instantly irresistible to every man walking the planet. The truth was, even though I’d been with her in a ton of bars and watched the men come streaming over, I never noticed anything in particular that she did. It was just something she
was.

“You want something?” Frankie asked finally.

I thought about all the sassy, sexy, alluring responses I could give to that question, but as I looked at Frankie, all I could see was the ferret attached under his nose, and I just couldn’t do it. Try as I might, I was no Stacy Easter, and I had to accept that.

“No.” I sighed and unjutted my hip. “I just came over here to see if you would try to sleep with me.”

Both guys looked up immediately from the game. Seriously, it was like dogs with a whistle.

“We’d have a shot?” Frankie asked.

“No,” I said quickly. “Nothing personal. I just kind of wanted to see if you’d
try.
You know. Medicate my wounded pride. It was either you or that guy in the corner—” I motioned to the corner booth and paused. “Oh, he’s gone.”

“For what it’s worth,” Frankie said, chalking his cue, “if I thought I had half a chance, I’d try.” He took his shot, missed, and Doug started casing the table.

“Really? You’re not just saying that?”

Frankie examined me for a moment, then shrugged. “Sure, I’d give it a shot.”

I have to say, that was much less comforting than you’d think. But still. It was nice of him.

“Thank you, Frankie.” I stared at his
Magnum, P.I.
moustache for a moment. “You ever think of shaving that thing?”

Frankie ran his hand over his mouth. “Are you kidding? You wouldn’t believe what this does to girls in the sack.”

“Gross,” I said. There was a moment of awkward silence, and I added, “Well. I’m just gonna go back over there, then.”

Frankie smiled and nodded at me, and Doug grunted something and took his shot.

I stepped away from the pool table slowly, cheeks flush with embarrassment, and started back toward the bar. Before I got there, I could hear Doug saying something about, “crazy fucking chicks,” and I poured myself onto a stool and rested my face against the bar.

“Let me ask you something, Happy,” I said. “If I find out a guy I know has slept with one of my best friends, and it bothers me enough that I go confront him and then come here to get drunk, that means I should move up my trip to Europe, right?”

“I’m not pouring anything for another fifteen minutes,” Happy said.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought, too.” I raised my head and gave him a grim look. “Serve me now, and I’ll leave immediately.”

Happy grabbed the bottle and poured.

*   *   *

When I stumbled sideways into the alley beside Happy Larry’s, I thought at first that it was the tequila making me lose my footing. I didn’t realize I’d been pulled into the alley until my elbow hurt from someone’s stone grip, and my face smacked into someone’s hard chest.

“Ow!” I said, touching my left cheek as I pulled back from him. “That’s still sore!”

“You Olivia?” His voice was rough and scratchy, layered with deep country and, unless I was mistaken, whiskey. I stepped back and squinted up at the guy, immediately recognizing him as the guy from the booth in the corner. In addition to the details I’d taken in at the bar—
your paranoia has finally paid off, Grandma
—I noticed that his eyes were slightly red at the edges, likely the result of Happy Larry’s cheap whiskey and refusal to adhere to state indoor smoking laws.