“Oh yeah?” I say. “About what?”
“She still doesn’t want to get a marriage license and make things official. She flat out refused and gave the ring back.”
“Shit,” I say, still thinking this entire situation is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard, but feeling bad for Lucas anyway since he looks so miserable. “So that’s it? It’s over?”
Lucas’s shoulders slump. “I don’t know man, I think it might be.”
“Let go of this marriage thing,” I tell him, shaking my head. “Go talk to her. Ask her to be your girlfriend like a normal person. Start over.”
“Yeah?” Lucas says, looking up at me hopefully. “You think that would work?”
“It’s worth a shot. Can’t get any worse than this, right?”
He nods. “Yeah, that’s a good point. Maybe you’re right.”
“I usually am,” I say, and Lucas shakes his head at me as he stands up.
“Not about this stuff you’re not,” he says. “But I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt this time, since you seem to be turning a new leaf. Anything new with the Gemma situation?”
I look down into the dregs of my coffee cup. “That’s over.”
“Oh,” he says. “So you fucked her and now you’re done?”
My head snaps up. “No, that’s not what happened.”
“What did happen?”
“Nothing,” I say. “Nothing at all.”
Lucas narrows his eyes at me, like he knows there’s more to this story, but he doesn’t press.
“Okay. I’m going to take a shower and then see if I can get Amanda to talk to me. I’ll see you at Kincaid’s tonight,” he says.
I’m still in a piss-poor mood when we get to Kincaid’s. Lucas’s talk with Amanda seems to have gone well, since they’ve been attached at the mouth since we got here, which is pissing Max off. And I really want a drink or twelve but I’m too chicken to go over to the bar, because that’s where Gemma is. I refuse to even look in her direction. I’m not sure I could if I wanted to. Not without a mental image of her and Dex popping into my brain.
“Hey, get me a beer, would you?” I ask Max when I see him heading to get one for himself.
“Get it yourself,” he grumbles, walking away.
Lucas and Amanda are making out in the corner. Lucas hasn’t set up any of his stuff yet.
“Could you two knock it off? Lucas, you need to get your shit together, come on before Max loses it,” I say. Lucas peels his face away from Amanda. Amanda scowls at me.
“What’s your problem tonight?” she asks.
“Why don’t you ask Gemma?” I say without thinking.
“He needs to get laid,” Lucas says, and I shoot him a dirty look.
Max comes back over, without a beer for me, and exactly like I knew he would, yells at Lucas to help set up.
“Hey,” a voice says to my left, and when I look up a girl with long dark hair and legs for days is smiling over at me. I smile back.
“Hi,” I say. Maybe Lucas is right. Maybe all I need is to get laid, and then I’ll feel better. Gemma messed something up in my head, but now I’ve got to move on. If she’s been into Dex this whole time I never had a chance with her in the first place. Which means I’m free to do whatever—or whoever—I want. And if Gemma sees and it makes her jealous than serves her right.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Gemma
The last place I want to be tonight is working at the bar, but here I am. I’m still a little hung over from last night and desperately want to be laying on the couch watching crappy reality TV, but I also desperately want to see Spence again.
There’s also no way Liam would give me the night off because I’m hungover.
As soon as the band shows up I can tell something is off. Spence won’t even look at me. Considering he hasn’t missed an opportunity to flirt with me since the moment we met, this feels like a red flag.
“Does Spence seem weird to you tonight?” I ask Amanda, who reconciled with Lucas and has barely disentangled herself from him all night.
She shrugs. “I don’t know. I haven’t been paying attention to him.”
Eventually Max comes over to the bar and I beeline over to take his order.
“What’s the deal with Spence tonight?” I ask him, not even bothering to beat around the bush.
“Why don’t you tell me?” he says, giving me a pointed look.
“Hey, whatever his problem is I didn’t have anything to do with it. He was fine last time I saw him.”
Max’s expression softens. “Sophie told me you guys ran into him last night.”
“Yeah, we did,” I confirm. “And he was fine.”
“That’s what she said, too. So you haven’t talked to him since then?”
“Nope, not a word.”
He frowns. “Well, he’s pissed off about something, I figured it had to do with you.”
“Wow, thanks a lot, Max,” I say, shaking my head.
“No offense, but it’s pretty clear he’s ignoring you and he wants you to know.”
“Yeah, I noticed that.” I sigh. “Should I go talk to him?”
“You can try, but I doubt it’ll do any good. He’s impossible when he gets like this.” Max glances over at Amanda, who is staring moony-eyed at Lucas. “And then there’s those two. I don’t know what you girls are doing to my band, but it would be nice if you would knock it off.”
I hand Max his beer, accidentally-on-purpose sloshing a bit of it on the bar as I do. He walks away, and I tell Dominick, the other bartender working tonight, I need to take five.
The bar is crowded and I have to elbow my way over to where the band is setting up. Spence’s back is to me, and as I get closer I see he’s talking to someone. A girl. She’s holding a drink in one hand and twirling her hair with the other, gazing up at Spence with a look of complete adoration on her face. I stop dead in my tracks.
The girl sees me staring at her and tears her eyes away from Spence long enough to glance over at me and frown. Spence notices and turns around to see what she’s looking at.
He has that look on his face. The one I love because it makes my knees feel like jelly, and the one I hate because he gives it away like candy to all the girls. Like he’s giving it away to this random girl right now.
When he sees me, his expression falters, but only for a second. He doesn’t even acknowledge me, just turns right back to the girl. She reaches out to touch his arm.
Tears sting at the back of my eyes as I rush back behind the bar.
“What’s wrong?” Amanda asks when she sees the look on my face.
“Nothing, I’m an idiot,” I say, shaking my head.
“Why, what happened?”
“Spence is over there talking to some girl.”
“Oh. Oh no.”
“I mean, it’s fine,” I say, getting a hold of myself. “It’s not a big deal.”
Amanda gives me a sympathetic look. “Right, totally. It’s not like you had feelings for him or anything.”
“No, absolutely not,” I insist. “I’m going to forget about the whole thing. It was a bad idea anyway.”
“Mmhmm,” Amanda nods. “For the best.”
A few minutes later, the band takes the stage.
The second Spence steps in front of the microphone it’s clear he’s not himself. He looks so tightly wound he could explode at any second. His typically charming stage demeanor is nowhere to be found. Lucas and Max exchange a worried look as Spence adjusts his guitar. He doesn’t say anything to the crowd, doesn’t acknowledge their presence like he usually does.
Losing Streak starts to play.
His voice is raw and gravelly and it sends cold shivers down my spine. He looks up as he sings and I don’t know how he does it, but he finds me immediately. This is the first time he’s looked at me all night and his expression is bitter. It’s a little scary, especially since I have no idea what I could have done to make him angry at me.
> The bar is too busy for me to spend much time thinking about it, though. I take orders, make drinks, move as fast as I can. The distraction is nice, and before I know it the band is finishing up and it’s almost last call. Amanda leaves her spot at the bar to go in search of Lucas. I’m exhausted and my head is pounding, and I fall into autopilot, cleaning and restocking.
I can’t help myself, and I glance over in the corner to where Losing Streak is packing up their stuff. Spence isn’t there. He probably grabbed his guitar as soon as he played his last note and ran off with the girl from earlier.
“I can finish up here Gemma, why don’t you head home?” Dominick offers. “You look exhausted.”
“You sure?” I ask, but I’m grateful he’s offering. All I want to do is go home and go to bed.
“Yeah, get out of here.” He flicks a towel at me. I thank him profusely, grab my stuff and head out the back door. When I get outside I stop dead in my tracks.
Spence is sitting on the front bumper of my car, jiggling his leg so aggressively the entire car is bouncing.
“What are you doing?” I ask him.
“Waiting for you,” he replies. His voice is raw and strained, like he’s lost it from singing. Serves him right.
“Waiting for me?” I say, surprised. “I got the impression you were done with me. What happened to the girl you were talking to earlier? Isn’t she going home with you?”
He looks confused. “No, she’s not. Would it matter to you if she did?”
“No,” I say quickly.
“Can I ask you something?” he says.
He doesn’t wait for me to respond.
“Have you been with him this whole time?”
“What?” I am genuinely confused. “Been with who this whole time?”
“That kid. From the bar last night. Dex or whatever his name is.”
And then I understand why he’s been ignoring me. What he thinks happened. The last time we saw each other, Dex was whispering in my ear. And when he came by the apartment last night Amanda told him I wasn’t home. He’s got it all wrong. What he thinks happened didn’t happen, didn’t even come close to happening.
“No Spence, I’m definitely not with Dex. Never have been, never will be.”
His shoulders visibly relax and his leg stops jiggling. “So you didn’t go home with him last night?”
“No, I didn’t go home with him last night.” I pause. “Would it matter to you if I did?”
“Yes, it would,” he says quietly.
My heart skips several beats.
“Let me take you on a date, Gemma. A real one,” he says, sincere.
It takes a moment for his question to sink in. I want to say yes, but I hesitate. I look at him, trying to tell if he’s serious or if this is another Spence joke. His leg is still jiggling and I can tell from the look on his face that he’s nervous. I’ve never seen Spence nervous before.
“Okay,” I agree.
Spence looks relieved. He stands up off the bumper, dimples on full display, smile like Christmas morning.
“Really?” he asks.
“Really.” I smile at him. “I’d like to see what Spence Hurley considers a real date.”
He smirks and steps closer to me. “Well, you haven’t considered any of our other dates to be real, so I guess I’ll have to pull out all the stops for this one.”
“I guess you will.”
He takes another step closer to me. The smirk is still on his face and the sincerity in his eyes has been replaced with determination.
My eyelids flutter and I tilt my chin in anticipation of his kiss. Despite my best efforts to forget about the Monopoly incident, his mouth is all I’ve been thinking about since that afternoon in his apartment.
But he walks right past me, opens the passenger side door of my car, and gets in.
“What are you doing?” I ask, yanked away from the moment I thought we were about to share.
“I need a ride home,” he says. “The rest of the guys already left.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Spence
Gemma gives me an irritated look, but she doesn’t kick me out of the car.
“So you really didn’t go home with Dex last night?” I ask her.
“No. In fact, he has a girlfriend. She was out with us last night. She’s friends with Sophie, you can ask her if you don’t believe me.”
“I was only talking to that girl tonight to make you jealous,” I confess.
I wanted Gemma to feel jealous the same way I did last night. Very mature, I know. But when Gemma came over and saw me talking to that girl, the look on her face cemented what I already knew. I’d realized it the second I’d started talking to her—there was no way I was hooking up with anyone else tonight. There was no other girl that could ever erase Gemma from my head.
“That’s real mature,” Gemma says.
“Yeah, well, I thought you were blowing me off for that idiot who almost puked on you at that party.”
“Please, don’t remind me.” Gemma shudders. “Last night is a little fuzzy, but I’m pretty sure I was flirting with you, not him.”
I smile to myself, remembering. Last night isn’t fuzzy to me. “Yeah, you might have been flirting a little.”
She groans and puts a hand over her face. I reach over and gently pull it away.
“I liked it,” I tell her.
“I’ll bet you did,” she replies.
We’re back at the apartment and we both get out of the car.
“Want me to walk you home?” I ask her.
She smiles. “All the way to the third floor? I think I can make it.”
“You know I’m going to walk you up there anyway, right?”
“I figured.”
We head inside and I let her go up the stairs in front of me. Both to be a gentleman and also because of the view. She stops when she gets to the third floor landing and unlocks her door.
“Goodnight, Spence,” she says, turning to look at me with one hand on her doorknob.
“Goodnight Gemma. I’ll be in touch about that date.”
Gemma doesn’t move. It’s obvious she’s waiting for me to do something. She has an anxious look on her face and she bites her bottom lip. God, what I wouldn’t give to nibble on her bottom lip right now.
But no, I’ll be patient. Last time I moved too fast and it blew up in my face.
Gemma opens her door and goes inside, casting one last glance behind her into the hallway. I smile to myself and head downstairs.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Spence
It takes a couple days to get everything finalized, but by Thursday night everything is set. I call Gemma to tell her.
“Tomorrow night,” I say when she picks up the phone.
“What?’s tomorrow night?” she asks.
“Our date.”
“How do you know I’m not busy?”
“Well I know you’re not working because I had Lucas ask Amanda. And if you have other plans you’re going to need to cancel them, because we have a date.”
“You can be very bossy, has anyone ever told you that?”
“Yes, actually, Samuel tells me that all the time. When I’m babysitting and have to tell him to get ready for bed,” I tell her. “I’ll pause to let you imagine me babysitting, because yes, it is as adorable as it sounds.”
She laughs.
“Let me start again,” I say. “Gemma, if you are available tomorrow evening I would like to take you on a date.”
I can hear the smile in her voice. “That sounds agreeable.”
“Excellent, I’ll pick you up at seven.”
“Where are you taking me?”
“It’s a surprise,” I say, grinning into the phone.
I spend the afternoon before my date with Gemma swinging from feeling sick to my stomach or like I might pass out.
“What’s up with you today?” Lucas asks. He’s trying to watch TV, but I can’t sit still. I keep getting up and
wandering the apartment, then sitting back down.
“It’s date night,” I remind him. Lucas has known about this all week.
“Oh, right,” he says like it’s no big deal.
“I’ve never taken a girl on a date before. Not like this, anyway.”
“Ohhhh,” he says, his face spreading into a sly grin. “This is adorable. Spenny is nervous because he’s going on his first big boy date.”
I reach over and punch him in the arm. “Don’t be a dick. And don’t call me that.”
“Chill out dude,” he says, rubbing his arm where I punched him. “It’s just a date.”
“I don’t know how to do this,” I confess. “What if I mess it up?”
“You won’t. What are you doing, going to dinner?”
I nod. “And a movie.”
“Yeah, you’ll be fine,” Lucas says, shaking his head at me, bemused. “This isn’t a big deal.”
“What if she doesn’t like what I have planned?” I’m feeling sweaty just thinking about it.
He gives me a look. “Does she not know where you’re taking her?”
“No,” I shake my head. “It’s a surprise.”
“Oh,” Lucas says, thinking this over. “Eh, you’ll be fine. How can you mess up dinner and movie? You’re not taking her to like, McDonald’s, right?”
“No,” I snap. “I’m not that bad at this.”
Lucas shrugs. “Hey, I like McDonald’s. I’d think that was a solid date.”
“I don’t know, this is making me anxious. Maybe it’s too much.” My mind is spinning and I need to chill out.
Lucas stands up and walks to the kitchen. He rummages around on the counter and then holds up two bottles. “We have vodka or tequila, take your pick,” he says.
“Gimme the tequila.”
He pours us each a shot.
“Here’s to Spenny’s first big boy date,” he says, grinning wickedly before knocking back the shot. I give him a whack on the side of the head and take mine.
“You’re the worst, you know that?” I tell him.
I take another shot before I leave. Then I spend a few minutes fending off Lucas, who is trying to take a picture of me before my first real date. Sometimes I don’t know who’s worse, him or my mother. I’m at Gemma’s door at seven on the dot.
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