by Payge Galvin
Em fiddled with the label on her bottle, eyeballing him coyly—as if she’d ever had a coy bone in her body—and I felt like I was suddenly watching a complete stranger. “What do you wanna know?” she asked.
“Well, since you have a carload of suitcases and a serious accent, why don’t you start with where you’re from.” Lucas stated.
She wrinkled her brow and gave her standard: “I don’t have an accent, silly.” Which came out so full of drawl she may as well have been wearing chaps and swinging a lasso. She actually had the nerve to giggle then, making me glare as I impatiently waited for either of them to even notice I was still siting at the table, or for Lucas to stop flirting for a second so he could elaborate on the whole key thing.
He didn’t. Instead, he chuckled at Emerson while he took a long pull from his beer and eyed her hungrily. “Oh yeah, you totally do. Besides, even if you didn’t—which you do—your car has Arizona plates. So? Where you from? And I mean originally, because you definitely aren’t from Arizona, either.” I wondered how many hours he’d spent in front of the mirror perfecting that fuck-me stare of his because Em was totally buying into it.
“You caught us.” She shrugged, flashing me the same it’s not my fault look I had seen from her a hundred times before, like she couldn’t help that guys were drawn to her like moths to a flame. “I’m from Dallas. Originally. Or just outside it—a little place called Highland Village. Lo here is from the suburbs of Denver, but we met at ASU Rio Verde.”
“So, you decided to, what…beach-bum it for the summer?”
Em shrugged, looking to me to see if she should elaborate. “Something like that…”
Uncomfortable with the way this conversation was headed, I reached out and tapped the table in front of Lucas until he stopped ogling Emerson long enough to notice me. “About this Billy guy…”
“Uh, yeah…like I said, I couldn’t get his attention.” He pointed to the bar, where a thick cluster of scantily clad blondes flocked like there was a blowout sale on Prada bags. “Busy night,” he told me dismissively, taking another drink to let me know he’d given it his best shot.
“Yet, somehow you managed to get our drinks,” I persisted, ticked that he wasn’t taking this seriously.
He sighed. “Different bartender.”
I looked again, and saw what he meant. At the other end of the bar, where it was far less crowded, a dark-haired girl was working behind the counter.
I huffed impatiently as I shoved away from the table. “Fine. I’ll get ‘em myself.” Busy or not, there was no way I was walking out of here without our keys.
I waded through the sea of tanned and toned bodies, feeling out-of-place in my worn blue jeans and Grateful Dead t-shirt. Whenever I was pushed, I pushed back, and I tried not to be skeeved out by the fact that when I did, my hands met exposed flesh more often than not.
If you judged by looks alone, Emerson could easily pass for one of these California girls, with her straight-from-the-bottle blonde hair and those superlong legs of hers. It wasn’t until she opened her mouth and you heard her twang, or you learned of her undying love for Taylor Swift and spangled clothing, that you knew she really belonged deep in the heart of Texas.
Me, I knew I wasn’t the typical California beauty, but I’d never really been the typical anything. I hadn’t inherited my mother’s sultry Cuban looks, and frankly I didn’t even pass as Hispanic on the surface. But I didn’t have my dad’s superblonde Waspy thing either. I’d landed somewhere in between mousy and uninspiring.
Still, I had my assets, and I’d learned early on how best to utilize them to my advantage. But I wasn’t like the other girls in this place who felt the need to put those assets on display wherever I went.
Once I finally reached the bar, after managing to wiggle and squeeze my way through the crush, I exhaled audibly.
A girl with sleek mahogany curls, skin that looked airbrushed, and full scarlet lips called out to me from the other side of the counter. “What can I get you?” She’d just cracked two beers and passed them to a guy who handed her a twenty. She didn’t offer him any change in return.
It was louder over here, where it was so much more crowded than the rest of the place, and I had to yell to be heard, “I’m looking for Billy!”
The dark-haired bartender looked me up and down, and I could tell by her less-than-impressed expression that I’d been found lacking. “Yeah? Well, you and just about every other girl here.” She indicated the swell of bodies squeezed together and clamoring for attention near the other end of the bar.
I followed her gaze, and realized why Lucas had come up empty-handed when he’d gone after my keys.
Girls. A whole lot of them, all converged in one location like a school of sharks locked in a feeding frenzy. I perused the mob of overglossed lips and barely-dressed bodies, and tried to see what all the fuss was about. Then I managed to catch a glimpse past them to the bartender beyond.
Billy, I presumed.
Billy, with his tousled hair and a t-shirt fitted so snuggly there was almost no need to imagine the muscular chest hidden beneath. Billy, with his too-good-to-be-true boyish looks. Who laughed in all the right places and flashed his Colgate-worthy smile and revealed just the hint of a dimple as he slid drink after drink to the predatory girls who swarmed on the other side of his bar, desperately trying to make him notice them.
Billy, who had the keys to my new place.
I stormed toward him, not sure if it was him I was annoyed with because he was the reason I was here in the first place, surrounded by a gaggle of horny beach sluts rather than tucked away in my new “cozy beachside bungalow,” or at myself because the reason he had them at all was because we’d been later than we’d expected. Either way, this wasn’t how I’d imagined spending my first night in California.
Managing to find an open patch of bar, I leaned over its sticky, over-shellacked surface. “Are you Billy?”
A girl glowered down at me from my side of the bar, her platform heels making her at least six inches taller than me. “Hey! Wait your turn!” She sneered and shouldered me out of her way. It was amazing to watch the way that nasty expression of hers transformed the second she was in front of Billy again, her game face firmly back in place. She gazed at him adoringly, as if she’d never bared her fangs at me at all.
The guy behind the counter stopped what he was doing and looked me over, and I wondered if he was thinking the same thing the other bartender had—that I didn’t quite measure up to the other girls in here. Then his eyes narrowed the slightest bit as he plucked a glass from the rack in front of him. “Name’s not Billy,” he said, almost absently. He pulled the handle on the tap, filling the glass to the top before handing it to the girl who was still blocking my way. He winked at the girl. “On the house, Daph.”
She picked up her beer and took a not-so-demure sip, batting her false lashes at him while her tongue licked the foam from her heavily lined lips. Her tongue made several more trips around the block, just in case the gesture had been too vague.
It so wasn’t.
“Thanks, Will. You’re a doll,” she cooed.
I stood there for a moment, blinking as I realized what she’d just called him…
Will. His name was Will.
“You coming to the Sand & Slam on Friday night?” she asked, not yet ready to give up on him.
Will-not-Billy gave the girl a sheepish grin while my cheeks grew hot over the fact that I’d mistaken him for someone else. “Sorry—can’t,” he explained.
“Aw, you’re always busy,” the girl huffed. She took another sip, her tongue doing that weird licking thing as it took another provocative pass around her lips. And when Bartender Will turned his back on her dismissively, she finally called it quits, casting me a Good-luck-with-that look, before tottering away on her too-high platforms.
I didn’t move right away, so when he spun back around, I opened my mouth, thinking maybe I should apologize or order a drink or somethin
g, but I never got the chance.
“Who told you to call me Billy?” His tone and mood were far less banter-y than they had been a moment ago, when he’d been giving free drinks to the Lip Licker. It only took me a second to make the connection I’d been missing.
Will…Billy. Of course. I hadn’t been mistaken. Billy was short for William.
I narrowed my eyes at him. “You are him?” My irritation at being here in the first place returned full force. “I don’t know what difference it makes whether you’re Bill or Billy or William . . .” My voice raised, and I couldn’t help noticing that my accusation had drawn the attention of several pairs of heavily made-up eyes. “But Lucas told me you have my keys, and I want them back.”
The noise that had been deafening just seconds before died down to a dull roar, and now it felt like everyone was listening to us. To me.
I turned to glare at those around me, and then I snapped back around to face Will, but he was giving me the cold shoulder now too, his back facing me as he ignored me the same way he had the Lip Licker.
“Hey!” I pounded my fist against the bar. I no longer cared if I attracted a full-blown audience. I refused to be brushed aside. When he still didn’t respond, I reached up and tugged the cord of a giant bronze bell that was hanging above the bar.
The metallic clang vibrated loudly through the air, ringing hollowly in my ears. “You!” I shouted, and when he finally whirled around to see what was going on, I pointed at him.
But before I could demand he hand over my keys again the strangest thing happened. The entire crowd erupted into earsplitting cheers, and I was suddenly being grabbed and pushed and pulled. When I was lifted off the ground, I struggled to escape, flailing against those who held me. But it only lasted a second before I was deposited on the edge of the bar.
I started to hop back down when I heard the first person yell the words, “Body shot!” It was quickly followed by another and another and another, until soon everyone was chanting the two-word phrase.
—◊—
Read the rest of Lauren and Will's story in Unfiltered & Undressed, coming June 14, 2014 from Payge Galvin & Meg Chance. If you want to be notified when future books in the series are released, sign up for the mailing list here.
Table of Contents
From the back cover of Unfiltered & Unraveled
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
A Note From Payge
A Sneak Peek of Unfiltered & Undressed
