Total pages in book: 65
Estimated words: 59603 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 298(@200wpm)___ 238(@250wpm)___ 199(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 59603 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 298(@200wpm)___ 238(@250wpm)___ 199(@300wpm)
“Hey, nice to meet you guys,” he said, shaking hands and flashing the megawatt smile that had caught me off-guard and made heat rise up my neck when I first met him.
He was as charming as I’d hoped, and everyone seemed to think he was fun and personable. Jade pulled me aside at one point to tell me how great it was that she and he had so much in common, which surprised me. Apparently, she had family from his hometown, and they knew some of the same people. They were both soccer fans and liked the same bands that I personally found to be a bit pretentious.
“He’s cute too,” Jade said, elbowing me in the ribs. “Does he have a brother or something? Hook a girl up.”
“What about that guy you were seeing?” I asked. “The one from Austin.”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m not as good at the whole long-distance thing as you are.”
We laughed and linked arms as we headed back to the stools. The guys were taking shots of something, which meant I was going to be dealing with a very drunk Tom in a few minutes. He was a great friend and a wonderful, soft soul, but the man had the alcohol tolerance of a mosquito. Liquor went directly to his brain, and before too long he was stumbling and giggling and incapable of controlling the volume of his voice.
We sat at the bar, me on my favorite stool, chatting and talking and getting to know each other for a few hours. Secretly, I hoped this was the beginning of something. The beginning of Trevor thinking that Murdock, Texas was better than where he was in Greene. The beginning of Trevor thinking that there really was something long-term here, and that maybe moving here would be the best way to take the next step in our relationship.
The more he got along with my friends, the better, and the easier it would be to convince him to come. With every laugh, with every smile, I thought for sure that I had pulled it off.
Six Months Later…
The same stool.
The same bartender.
Even the same damn dress.
Everything else was different.
This time, I was sitting at the bar all by myself. All the joy and fun that Big Danny T’s normally brought was gone. I was sad and angry and a ton of other emotions that equaled abject misery.
The drink in front of me was mostly untouched. I’d thought that alcohol would help me forget, but now that I was sitting in the bar, all the memories of the last couple of months came rushing back to remind me of how dumb I had been. How angry I still was. And how alcohol never seemed to make any of those things any better.
I picked up my plastic sword stirrer and jabbed downward. Another miss. The cherries moved in the pink, fizzy drink, sliding away. At first, I had been attempting to spear the cherries and eat them, but after ten minutes, it became just another mindless distraction.
Here I was failing. Failing even at stabbing cherries. How freaking appropriate.
“Hey there, stranger.”
Slowly, I turned around and found myself staring at a wide, muscular chest inside a tight T-shirt with a gym logo on the breast. My eyes protested the instruction to move up, but eventually followed and led to a thick neck, broad shoulders, and a gorgeous face on top. Short black hair and a wide pearly-white smile inside a five o’clock shadow.
I recognized Mark Murphy from years before, a good friend of my brother’s growing up and a boy that I had seen many times before he moved away.
Now years later, here he was. Standing in front of me, the dulcet tones of his velvety voice bouncing around in my ears and making my breath hitch in my chest.
Mark sure had grown up.
2
MARK
It took a few moments to recognize her when I first saw her at the bar. I moved from my seat in the corner to a stool across from her to make sure, sipping casually on my longneck beer and watching her stab a cocktail sword into her drink. She looked lonely. And sad. Also, drop dead gorgeous.
The last time I’d seen her, she was a teenager. Skinny and a bit mousy with an overbite, she was still cute back then. I was eighteen and friends with her brother, and about to head off to college. She was fifteen and just starting to figure out how to navigate the piranha-filled waters of high school. Even though it was silly and there was an age difference, I’d had a little crush on her. Too bad she was my buddy’s sister.
Now she was grown up. Like, very grown up. Big, pouty lips pressed together in concentration as she used her long fingernails to clench the sword and stab again, unsuccessfully. She sighed, her surprisingly large chest pushing at the thin blouse, making my stomach clench and my eyes dart away.