It’s almost seven and my chest has never so felt so constricted. Every breath burns as I wipe down the bar countertop for the thousandth time in minutes. My elbow aches from the movement, but I can’t settle myself.
I’ve been lying to Caitlin, and while I’ve told myself it’s for the best long-term, this still has the potential to blow up in my face. Epically. I’ve spent all day mulling tonight over in my head. I can come clean and tell her everything. It’d be the more honorable thing to do. But fear spikes when I consider it. Caitlin’s made it clear she doesn’t want a relationship. For all I know, she can still be using this app to find a new fuck buddy, if she hasn’t already. Telling her the truth now, that I’m the guy who’s been sending her vague texts, could make her run, and I’d lose my chance at her forever. She might laugh in my face, think it’s ridiculous I could believe she’s changed her mind at all about actually dating me.
Hell, there’s the chance she’s over me completely, and that’s assuming she ever felt anything for me past wanting to climb into my bed in the first place.
“Fuck,” I groan and toss the towel I’ve been using to scrub off the top layer of the bar’s sealant to the side. I shove my hands through my hair, and cringe at the shortness of it. I hated cutting my hair as soon as I did, but it couldn’t be helped. One night of Ashley tugging on it while my face had been buried between her thighs had made me think of another woman. I’d almost groaned out Caitlin’s name when Ashley scraped my scalp with her fingers. I should have known then things with Ashley and me were destined to end, and I felt another range of ache at how I’d led her on for so long, trying and trying and trying to make myself feel more for her than I did.
All because my head is still twisted up over a woman who might not want anything to do with me.
“Jesus. This is fucked up.” I spit the words out and reach for a glass. I fill it with a good old-fashioned American lager and take a large drink. The bar is relatively slow on a Sunday night, and there are only a few taken tables. At the more private table, there’s a group of four women, mid-twenties, who have been eyeing Tucker since they walked in with that gleam in their eyes that says he gets to have his pick of any of them if he wants it. One married couple sits at another table, quietly talking, grinning at each other like they’re recently married. And at another table, there’s a male couple, enjoying a martini and some cheese boards. Dating, I’d guess, based on their body language and the smiles when their hands brush together. There’s the sound of murmurs, a few boisterous laughs from the table of women occasionally, but it’s pretty quiet. Soft jazz music plays through the speakers, and it’s usually a pretty chill vibe.
There is not a single thing vibing or chilling inside my body, though.
Tucker heads into the restaurant from the back hallway where he’d been taking his break, smirking.
“Won’t it be funny if you’re the one that ends up getting stood up?” he asks as he reaches the bar, hands slapping the top of it.
The clock behind the bar says she’s already five minutes late.
I take another swig of my beer. “She’ll be here.”
“Because you’re irresistible behind a screen?” He’s giving me shit, but he’s continually made it clear this plan is bass-ackwards. His words. And I learned new vocabulary while listening to him bitch.
For a young guy, he’s pretty smart, but there’s so much to my past with Caitlin he also doesn’t get. Like how much it fucking hurt the day I told her I wanted more and she couldn’t look me in the eyes as she tried to nicely let me down. I still haven’t recovered, and so yeah, this plan might be ridiculously stupid and it might end up blowing up in my face, throwing me way back beyond square one with Caitlin, but the risk of opening my heart and handing it to her on a silver platter, only to have her crush it in her sweet little palm, is still terrifying.
I swipe my hand over my face, scratching at the scruff lining my jaw. “It’s the best way. Besides, I don’t even know if she likes any of the guys she met.”
Like the guy she left with earlier this week. Logan.
Has she had any contact with him since? She said it felt like he was just her friend, but I was at one point that, too, and I know exactly how that ended up. With me holding her close in my arms after wearing us both out, wrapped beneath the covers of my bed, the sweet scent of her shampoo on my pillows for weeks afterward.
Shit.
A burst of cool air blasts me from the side, and I can’t help but take in everything about Caitlin’s entrance. She whips in, red hair flying like a matador’s cape, and pulls the door closed behind her.
“Goodness,” she exclaims, shivering in her tan wool coat. She pulls it close to her, shoulders bunched to her ears as she turns to the bar. “It’s cold out there tonight.”
She blows into her hands as she scans the restaurant quickly and those bunched shoulders fall. Her lips slide to the side as she heads to the bar and pulls up a chair.
“Hey there,” I say.
She takes off her coat, draping it over the barstool behind her, and fluffs her hair, adjusts her scarf. “Hey. What are you doing here?”
She’s surprised, and I don’t blame her. I rarely work Sundays. “Had some things to catch up, thought I’d stay.”
“Oh.” Her eyes flicker to the door and back to me. “That’s cool. How are you?”
Scared out of my damn brain, but playing this cool is the only way to have a chance. After all, no one knows me as well as Caitlin.
Disappointment flashes in her eyes as she glances around the bar again, only to realize the person she’s supposed to be meeting isn’t here.
“What’s up?”
“Nothing.” She slumps to the bar, and rests her cheek in her palm. “Can I get a club soda and lime?” My brows lift, and Caitlin huffs. “I’m meeting someone so I’ll wait until he gets here to order something else.”
“Got it.” I turn my back to her. Can she see my heart racing at the base of my throat? It’s going a mile a minute, stampeding against my flesh with the roar of thunder. God, what a dick I am.
Tucker might have been right last week. If I don’t quit this bullshit, I might not be the guy who deserves her, either. I squeeze the lime and drop it into her glass and grab my beer before joining her at the bar. This has been my plan. Bring her in on a slow night, give her a reason for it to just be me and her, talking, hanging out, laughing.
But as she takes her drink, thanking me quietly, her lip finds its way to her teeth.
“He’s probably just late, you know. Maybe having a hard time parking.” It’s hard to say that last one with a straight face.
Caitlin’s mouth twists. “Parking on a Sunday?”
“Okay. So that’s a stretch. Talk to me, do you like this guy?” It’s like eavesdropping in middle school when you could do a three-way call, hiding yourself on the line, while your best friend asked your crush if she likes you back. It’s smarmy and the taste of sour milk curdles in my stomach. I’m not entitled to these thoughts of hers.
She drags her fingernail around the rim of her glass. She always has her nails painted, saying pedicures and manicures are one of her few indulgences. Tonight her fingernails are a bright teal color.
“I’m not really sure.” She shrugs, and her eyelids flutter before her eyes meet mine. They’re green like the glass, darker now from the soft bar lighting, but I’ve seen those eyes light up in a variety of shades over the years. “He’s different, hasn’t really given me a lot of himself, but I don’t know. There’s something…” Her finger taps the glass before she grips it and brings it to her mouth. “It’s weird talking to you about this.”
It’s even weirder hearing her talk about me and not know it. But this might be good news. It surprises me that she keeps returning messages when I’ve been elusive. Maybe she recognizes the connection between us even if she doesn’t know it?
I lean forward with my arms on the bar, spinning my beer glass in a circle in my palms. “Well, if you want company, I can hang out until he gets here.”
She glances around the restaurant. “It’s slow tonight. You wouldn’t mind?”
“Of course not, Caty. Tucker can handle this. Now, would you like anything to eat or a real drink?”
She smiles, and it’s that smile that shoots straight to my dick like it always has. So unencumbered, easy, and light even though she’s still disappointed. She tilts her head toward the stool next to her. “Get over here and sit. I’ll wait on food and drinks.”
“Anything you ask, m’lady.” I bow dramatically, smiling as she laughs.
“You’re an idiot,” she says, still laughing.
Behind me, Tucker booms, “You don’t know the half of it, woman.”
I turn to refill my beer, giving him my best shut the fuck up look, to which he winks. Then I head around the bar and grab the best seat in the house.
The stool right next to Caitlin.