It’s just drinks.
Julie took another look at herself in the rearview mirror now. She was still wearing her suit, sitting in her car parked outside Frankie’s Tiki Room. She’d spent the last fifteen minutes debating and trying to conjure up the gall to get out and go find Nico by the bar.
She could do drinks, but the hell with liquid courage. Julie didn’t need it after the day she’d had. Searing hot adrenaline piped through her veins.
Damn it felt good to send Patrick and his bullshit lies packing.
Today, stuffy suit and all, she planned to walk right up to Nico, and let her lips tell him what her body wanted to do to him. And if he was game, Julie would let her player take her wherever he wanted, and gladly treat him to the happiest of happy hours.
She supposed that was why she’d agreed to drinks in the first place. There was no long time commitment, like with dinner. No sitting across from each other awkwardly searching for something meaningful or profound to talk about that wouldn’t bore the other person, or send them running in the other direction.
Plus, she wasn’t trying to impress him. Going out with him was simply a means to an end. If she were out with Nico, she wouldn’t be home analyzing and overanalyzing every second of Patrick’s visit to the bank. More importantly, she wouldn’t need more batteries.
So really, she’d agreed to see Nico because of what he could do for her. As opposed to some therapeutic step forward toward healing and rebuilding her life the way Liz had read into.
Basically, Julie’s inner self begging for Nico to kiss her, make love to her, and make her laugh. Ha! Her superego could go screw itself.
Who cared whether he could make her laugh or not? With the right drink, everything would be funny. They could skip all of the pretenses and protocols of the man’s role and the woman’s role. If need be, she could pay for her own Midori sour or vodka cranberry, and it wouldn’t be a big deal because throwing back a few swigs of liquor and lust together wasn’t that serious.
That was the point. It was just drinks, no matter what Liz said.
It’s an, “I might like you, so I’ll agree to meet up, but I won’t commit as much time as dinner requires.” Basically, it was a maybe. A digestible liquid form of “okay for now.”
And she was, for now.
She was better than okay. Her chest puffed up with the steam of a person who just put a deserving asshole in his place. In the rearview mirror, she pinched her cheeks to give them that flush, blushed look and swiped on a fresh coat of lip gloss.
With that, she clicked a button and armed her car, almost in sync with the pink neon lights of Frankie’s.
“Hi there,” some slimy guy ran his sweaty palm over her back as she entered.
She did her best to slither away from his hand and offered a quick, “hey,” as she weaved into the crowd.
Besides the thick smoke, she liked the atmosphere. Any bar that could expand on Disney’s Enchanted Tiki Room and make it an adult playground in the middle of Las Vegas was her kind of place. Just beyond the neon lights and the arched doorway were carved posts of monstrous island warriors, raffia grass-wrapped awnings above the bar, and a bamboo explosion on the walls and furniture. The whole place was shrouded in a red and blue glare from the hanging roped sea-glass lights.
It really was a liquid vacation, and in her state of mind, she could think of nothing else she needed more.
As the waning outside light faded behind the weighted red door, Julie caught a glimpse of Nico at the end of the bar. It didn’t appear he saw her, which was fine because it gave her a second to find her footing and enjoy the view.
He looked good. Better than good. He looked delicious and sexy in black pants and a rolled-sleeve chambray button-down. Even from where she stood at the front of the bar, she could etch the strong lines of his jaw and the sweet pucker of his full lips.
Without a moment’s hesitation, she marched toward him.
When she came within a few feet of him, a tall burly man with a bulbous gut and a creepy lopsided grin rose from a chair two seats over from Nico. She tried to inch past him, but he wouldn’t budge and she couldn’t imagine letting his sweaty belly hair creeping out from beneath his shirt touch her skin.
“Ah…excuse me? I’m just trying to get to the seat on the other side of you. My, uh, friend is waiting for me,” she explained. Her eyes flickered upward to meet his, but she wasn’t sure this guy could get past the look of distaste she was sure she had plastered across her face.
“Can I buy you a drink there, Brown Sugar?” Everything about him was slimy. Pervy. The man’s tongue slurped against his bottom lip as he rubbed the side of his bent index finger along Julie’s arm.
“Ugh, uh, no. No thanks,” she managed.
For a split second, she contemplated turning back toward the door or going around the full block of three or four tables to get to Nico, then the guy shifted on his feet as if he was going to move. But, he didn’t. He only closed the distance between them and now his hot breath fogged down into Julie’s ear.
She thought she might gag, or at least let out a dry heave at the smell of the rum-and-cigarette cocktail that billowed from him like a blow-dryer in a menthol tobacco factory.
“I’d really like to get by, so if you would excuse me…” She inched to one side, then the other, but the perv did the same, matching her moves on a dime.
“What’s the problem? I’m not good enough for you?” His volume raised a few octaves, the stench of saturated liquor permeating from him. He eyed her suspiciously for a beat too long as he took in her full profile from head to toe.
Julie’s eyes pleaded with the woman seated at the table on her left, but there was nowhere for her to move the chair. The space was cramped and the bar was packed. What’s worse, the giant douchebag was blocking her view of Nico, who might have offered assistance had he been able to see that she was there.
When the guy’s gaze reached hers again, he seemed to have drawn his conclusion. “Ah…I get it. You, uh, go the other way. You fish in the lady pond.” He announced these words to the room, which had been buzzing with conversations and music, and now seemed to be on mute as he called Julie out as a lesbian.
“That’s enough, Carl. I’m cutting you off.” A man with a handlebar mustache and slicked-back gray hair yelled to the man before her. “Want me to call Stella?”
From what she gathered, this was likely an everyday occurrence with this guy. Carl probably spent half of his days and all of his nights at the bar. The way the bartender spoke to him was more like how people speak to crazy aunts or frisky uncles. Mr. Mustache dealt with old Carl because he was one of them, even if he got out of hand nightly. He was tolerated by everyone, it seemed—except for her.
Julie steadied herself on her feet and sized the husky man up with a gaze holding a pinch of pissed-off and a full serving of fed-up.
“Carl, is it? I’m going to need you to get the hell out of my way. I’ve asked you nicely two times and now, you can either move or—”
At the same time that Nico caught Julie’s enraged eyes, Carl grabbed her by both arms, as if to rein her in, and received a blunt-force knee to the balls for his trouble.
Seeing a rather large grown man reduced to a hunched sack of mush—holding his junk no less—she would normally feel remorseful for putting him there, but not today. Not when just about every interaction she’d had with a man in the past twenty-four hours had gone south.
Julie tugged at the hem of her coat and adjusted her neck. “Next time, step aside when a lady says excuse me.” She shimmied past the guy, who was doubled over on the floor while his host of friends guffawed on his behalf.
When she finally took the seat next to Nico, she exhaled a chestful of air and turned to him. She rested her eyes on him as she sat up straight, her back rigid against the chair and legs crossed at the ankles.
“That was…kind of amazing,” Nico admitted. An approving smirk tugged the corners of his mouth, bringing out the thigh-clenching reflex in Julie. “You really handled that guy. I was just about to get up, and turns out you didn’t even need me.”
She sighed. “I’m so over this day.”
“Another article of clothing?” At Julie’s side-eye, his brows lifted. “What? Was it work again? The dictator?”
Julie centered her attention on the wall behind the bar lined with liquor bottles. If this night was going to be better than the day she had, it was definitely going to take a lot of alcohol. “I don’t want to talk about it.” She slouched in the chair, with her arms resting on the sticky lacquered wooden bar.
“Okay, so…Julie Laurich, are you going to loosen up, or are you going to try to sell me a checking and a savings account? I don’t think I have enough money on me to fund the account right now though.”
His face was dead serious, but she had learned the hard way that Nico liked to joke around. With his beautiful eyes fixed on her, she caved. “What? What are you talking about? And why are you staring at me and using my whole name?”
“Well, you’re obviously still in business mode since you still have your name tag pinned to your jacket.” He nodded toward her lapel.
Her eyes dropped to the name tag, and whether she wanted to or not, she laughed at herself.
Julie knew he was poking fun at her and she secretly loved that about him. How he could take a totally tense moment and make her laugh in spite of it all. But she didn’t want him to know that just yet, so she punched him in the shoulder playfully and held up a flexed bicep. “There’s more where that came from, so watch your step there, wise guy.” She squinted her eyes at him.
“Okay, okay. I won’t bring up your crappy day, or the fact that I think you might need anger management. You roughed up poor Carl pretty bad.” He gestured toward the big guy still picking his ego up off the floor.
When the moment passed with a beat of silence, he looked to Julie again. “In all seriousness, though. What made you agree to meet up with me tonight?” he asked.
She pinched the bridge of her nose between her index finger and thumb as if it pained her to admit it. “I kind of like you. You’re kind of cute.” Her gaze washed over him quickly and her heart began pounding against her chest again as she bit her bottom lip. “There, I said it. What’s it going to take to get a drink around here?” She deflected, blushing the whole time.
Nico cocked his head to the side with feigned concern. “So…you think I’m kind of cute?” His cheeks reddened as his lips parted just slightly.
It might have been the adrenaline talking, but Julie was feeling more than a little bit frisky. Oh my goodness, I want to take you home now.
“You’re not so bad, compared to old Carl over there,” she said, stifling a fresh batch of giggles.