by Lizzie Shane
“Yeah.” Tori squeezed back. “Deal.”
Chapter Twenty-Six
On a Tuesday night in April, TV’s Josh Pendleton sat in his Divorce Guy apartment and decided he was officially done being pathetic.
Admittedly, he’d been pathetic for a long time, but now instead of wallowing self-indulgently in the depths of his own patheticness, he found himself itching with the urge to fish himself out of the mire of lameness he’d fallen into.
It was Sidney’s Girls’ Night In that threw his life into sharp relief.
He hadn’t seen her every day—though he found himself texting her constantly for the most inane reasons—but whenever he had wanted to see her she’d been available. Until tonight.
She’d begged off, citing a prior commitment to her Girls’ Night, and he’d been totally cool with it, utterly unbothered—okay, fine he’d still wanted to see her, was more tempted than he cared to admit to try to talk her into seeing him instead, but that seemed like a screaming red flag that he was getting too invested so he kept his mouth shut and wished her a good night. She wasn’t his life. He was fine with not seeing her. Fine, damn it.
Until he’d arrived home, sat down in his depressing apartment, realized he’d already caught up on the entire new season of House of Cards and was forced to confront exactly how pathetic his life had become.
He didn’t have friends.
He used to have friends before he became TV’s Josh Pendleton. His frat brothers had been more than just drinking buddies. They really had been more like brothers. And in his early twenties he would spend three or four nights a week hanging out with the guys.
But then he’d met Marissa and his career had taken off and being seen at the right places with the right people had become more important than grabbing a beer with the same guys he saw all the time. Until gradually he wasn’t seeing them all the time. And then not at all.
It hadn’t bothered him at the time. He’d been growing up. Maturing. That was what people did. He couldn’t stay a frat boy forever. So of course he’d spent more time at industry parties, playing the role of TV’s Josh Pendleton. He’d loved being that guy. That first shot of fame had been heady and he’d wanted more.
It was only recently that it had begun to taste a little bitter. Only recently that he’d started to be exhausted by the need to play that part all the time. He kind of missed hanging out with the guys and just being Josh.
That part of his life was lost. He wouldn’t know how to reconnect with his brothers if he wanted to. He could hardly expect them to still be hanging around the same clubs. Going to the same pub trivia night at Flannigan’s every Tuesday night.
For all he knew Flannigan’s had probably closed years ago. Although they’d had the best damn burgers within a twenty mile radius and plentiful cheap beer, so the odds were good they were still hanging in there.
Struck by a sudden jolt of nostalgia, Josh grabbed his car keys and headed out the door, headed back to his old stomping grounds to see if the burgers were still as good and the beer still as cheap as he remembered.
Thirty minutes later he walked through the oh-so-familiar doors of Flannigan’s Pub and realized even less had changed than he thought. The lighting was still dark to conceal the stains, the floors were still sticky with spilled beer—and his frat brother Brian, who had been known as High Ball for as long as anyone could remember, was still holding a microphone, hosting the pub trivia contest Flannigan’s held every Tuesday night.
High Ball spotted him as soon as he stepped through the door and immediately broke off mid-trivia question with a disbelieving laugh. “Ladies and gentlemen, I’m sorry to interrupt our regularly scheduled programming, but we appear to have a celebrity in our midst. If my eyes do not deceive me, we have been graced by the illustrious presence of Mr. Almost Perfect himself!”
Josh crossed to the podium where High Ball held court, stepping behind it to slap him on the back and receive a bro-hug in return. Only then did he register the cheers and jeers from a nearby table and realize High Ball wasn’t the only familiar face on site.
Three of his frat brothers had laid claim to the large corner booth that was considered premium territory during Flannigan’s trivia night due to its proximity to both the bar and High Ball’s podium where all answers had to be delivered on little slips of paper.
Josh approached, smiling even as he felt a stirring of nerves in his stomach. He wouldn’t blame them if they were bitter about his defection. He’d vanished on them, choosing his career over his friendships, and they’d be within their rights to hate him. But the same you’re-not-such-hot-shit grins and “How are you, you asshole?” greetings met him when he reached their table.
Tate and Surrey hadn’t changed much, but Short Stack had gone entirely bald and looked like he’d aged fifteen years in the last seven—but still no one had ever looked better to Josh as all three of them rose, slapping him on the arm, asking him where the fuck he’d been, and welcoming him home like the freaking prodigal son.
“Hey Carly!” Tate called out to the waitress weaving between the tables. “We need another round. The good stuff this time. Our boy made good. Gotta buy this son of a bitch a beer.”
“I should be the one buying the beers,” Josh said as he slid into the giant corner booth. “I’ve got a lot of years to make up for.”
“Don’t worry, Pretty Boy,” Surrey said, using his old college nickname. “The next round’s on you.”
And so it began.
They didn’t pay much attention to the trivia questions High Ball was dishing out—though they heckled him whenever possible in true brotherly fashion. Tate got on his phone and within the hour two more of their brothers had arrived.
Round after round slid down his throat until he knew he’d be taking a cab back to his apartment. It was like coming home again, catching up with these guys he used to know better than he knew his own family. Tate was married for the second time, Short Stack divorced with two kids, while Surrey remained a tom cat with at least five girls on speed dial. Rodriguez—when he arrived after Tate’s text—explained that he hadn’t been to trivia much lately because he and his wife had just had twin daughters. Homer traveled for business most weeks, but he video chatted with them from Tokyo for a few minutes before he had to go board a plane. Lucas was out of touch, deployed overseas, but they snapped a picture of the rest of them together and emailed it to him in whatever Middle Eastern nation was his current residence.
Everyone had grown up and moved on, but stayed together somehow, and they welcomed him back with open arms. It was a smaller group than the dozen or so that had once made it a weekly tradition, but everyone tried to make it when they could and there were usually three or four guys there every week—even with jobs and families and other obligations pulling at them.
When the pub quiz ended, High Ball joined their table and they grabbed another round before migrating to the dart boards. The bar had cleared out now that the pub quiz was over and they had the area entirely to themselves. Sadly, Josh was still just as shitty at darts as he had always been and the six beers he’d already had weren’t helping his aim.
He and High Ball were dueling it out to see who could get the least pathetic score at one of the dart boards. His old buddy rocked back to throw, tossing out an idle comment along with the dart, “We had a bet going, some of us, if you were going to show back up again now that you’re divorced.”
Josh frowned, running his fingers along his own darts as he waited for his turn. “Do a lot of guys come back to the fold after a divorce?”
High Ball shrugged. “One or two. You just seemed the type.”
“What type is that?” Josh asked, unoffended.
“You know. The kind of guy who drops his entire life when he meets a girl to try to be whatever she wants you to be. It was pretty obvious when you met Marissa that she wanted you to be TV Guy, so you became TV Guy. No surprise there. A bunch of us were just betting on whether you’d still be TV Gu
y now that you aren’t with her anymore.”
“I’m still TV Guy,” he said.
“Yeah, but you’re only here with us now because you aren’t seeing anyone.”
It was on the tip of his tongue to argue that he was seeing someone, but he bit back the words just in time. “Maybe,” he admitted, though it bugged him to say it. He wanted to defend himself—and Sidney. He wanted to brag that while he’d tried to become whatever Marissa wanted him to be, he was still himself with Sidney.
He wasn’t sure if that had ever been true of any other woman he’d dated. He did have a habit of making himself into whatever his girlfriend wanted him to be—the perfect project boyfriend—but with Sidney he wasn’t hiding anything.
And that was scary as hell—but he didn’t want to give it up.
Not yet.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
“Sidney!”
She opened her eyes, squinting into the dark, wondering if she’d imagined the hoarse call coming from what sounded like the stairwell. She lay in bed, listening in case it came again, and within seconds it did. An odd whispered shout of her name from the stairwell.
In a familiar made-for-television voice.
“Josh?”
She scrambled out of bed, grabbing her wrap and tugging it around her automatically as she rushed to the door before he could increase his volume and alert Victoria and Lorelei to his presence. She peeked through the peep hole and sure enough, there was Josh Pendleton, slanted against the wall on her landing, looking like he was one unruly sway from tumbling headfirst down the stairs.
She opened the door and he lurched away from the wall, his face lighting. “Sidney!”
“Sh!” She caught his arm and steadied him before he could take a header down two flights, pulling him inside before he woke the apartment below.
“I missed you,” he declared, slurring in a manner that was entirely too adorable. A man who was staggering drunk should not be attractive in any way, but trust Josh to make it charming somehow. “But ’s not cuz I need you to tell me who I am. See!” He spread the lapels of his jacket showing off his chest. “I’m me again.”
“Good for you.” If by him again he meant falling down drunk. He stumbled against the back of the sofa, barely catching himself before he face-planted into the cushions. “Tell me you didn’t drive here in that state.”
“O’ course not.” He drew himself up to his full height, dripping dignified outrage. “I’m drunk.”
“I noticed.”
“Missed you.”
“You said that, but drunken booty calls are harder to explain away as wedding planning meetings. This isn’t exactly stealthy.”
He held up a finger, visibly proud of his own masculine brilliance. “Ah, but this way my car isn’t here. So we can spend the night together.”
“What about the taxi that drove you here? How can you be sure he won’t sell the story to the tabloids?”
“Wasn’ a taxi. And high ball can be trusted.”
“You realize you aren’t making any sense.”
He snorted, lurching away from the couch and prowling toward her in a way he probably thought made him look like a panther, but instead made him look like a clown still learning how to walk in the floppy shoes. “I am making perfect sense,” he declared, stopping inches away from her and tapping her on the nose. “You are the one who’s…”
He trailed off, seeming to forget the rest of his sentence, and Sidney bit her lip on the urge to laugh, failing to completely contain her grin. “What are you doing here, Josh?”
“I wanted to see you,” he said, brown eyes liquid with sincerity and the concentration required to stay on topic. “Marissa makes me TV Guy, but you make me Josh. I like being Josh.”
“I’m glad,” she said, completely giving up on making sense of his babble tonight.
He nodded decisively, then his thoughts seemed to slide sideways again and his gaze went blank for a moment.
“Josh? You feeling okay?”
He focused on her again and a little boy grin about melted her heart. “I like you. Even though your eyes are impossible.”
“I like you too.”
“No, I like you.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
“You’re so you. That’s what I love…” Her heart fluttered stupidly at the word and he swayed toward her, clearly intending to steal a kiss, but his coordination was a distant memory and he wound up landing a glancing buss on her cheek before lurching to the side and nearly taking them both down, his arms tangled around her.
Sidney choked off a laugh, stabilizing him as best she could. “Okay, Romeo, let’s get you to bed before you break something.”
Or say something you’ll regret.
He twisted in her grip, pointing himself toward the bedroom, and began to sing an off-tune rendition of a song about breaking hearts. Sidney smothered another laugh, wishing she had a video camera to capture this moment for all time. Always cool, always together, always poised Josh Pendleton was a very cute drunk.
She had to wonder how he’d gotten in such a state—even that first night when they’d met, he hadn’t approached this level of inebriation—but that was a question that would have to wait until the morning. There was no way she’d get a sensible answer out of him tonight.
With one of his arms slung over her shoulder, she managed to steer him on an almost steady path to the bedroom. When they reached the small space, he spun toward her—the rapid movement proving too much and he went down onto his side on the bed with a grunt.
“Careful, cowboy. You’d better take it easy.” She managed to get his shoes off while he was wrestling with his suit jacket—and losing. He had somehow pinned both of his arms behind his back by the time she had his feet bare.
Wishing again for a video camera, she helped him free his arms and folded his jacket on top of her dresser. When she turned back around, he was battling his belt with more enthusiasm than success. She helped him get the belt off, but then had to stop him before he could strip entirely. “I think you need to sleep it off, hot shot.”
“Hey.” He caught her around the waist, hauling her down onto the bed with him before she knew what he was about and curling himself around her until she was wrapped in a warm cocoon that smelled of man and beer. “I’m not a hot shot, or a cowboy, or a Romeo,” he insisted, with the careful concentration of the deeply drunk. “I’m a Josh. And I like it when you call me Josh. Cuz you make me me.” He rolled so they were lying side by side, face to face on the pillows. “You, Sidney Dewitt, are the only woman who makes me me when I’m in love. So do that.”
Her heart hitched, seeming to stop for a second before drumming hard. He hadn’t just said it. The L word. Twice now. She closed her eyes, reminding herself that he was drunk. Telling herself to keep it together and not get carried away. When she opened her eyes, his face was inches away—
And slack with the sleep of the dead.
Wasn’t that just like a man?
*
Josh’s first thought on waking was that this must be what seasickness felt like. Combined with a mild case of plague. The room was spinning and his entire body ached with the kind of fatigue that should only come from running marathons.
And it wasn’t his room.
Sidney’s bedroom.
He had no memory of how he’d gotten here.
Which was why his second thought on waking was that he was too damn old to be getting blackout drunk.
Then coffee hit his olfactory receptors and Josh groaned with undiluted lust.
“You have to sit up to drink.”
Her voice was from right next to the bed and he belatedly realized he’d closed his eyes in self-defense against the spinning. When he cautiously opened them again, the rocky room seemed to have settled down at least enough for him to lever himself up the few inches required to be rewarded with the cup of heaven Sidney held out for him.
It probably wasn’t the best coffee in the histor
y of mankind. It just tasted like it.
“You are a goddess,” he groaned into the cup.
“Are you talking to me or the coffee?”
“Can it be both?”
She chuckled and sat down on the bed, which bounced his stomach, and Josh cringed as it kept on bouncing around inside him for several uncomfortable seconds until he placated it with another careful sip of java heaven.
“What happened to you last night? I’ve never seen you that hammered and that includes the night we met. Wild bachelor party?”
“I didn’t tell you?” he asked, stalling for time to try to remember himself.
“You were pretty incoherent. Though you did keep telling me you were Josh, so that was reassuring in a way.”
He told her what he remembered. “In my quest to overcome my Divorce Guy persona, I reconnected with some old college buddies. We had a few beers… then I seem to remember shots… and very little else.” He managed to sit up all the way, cradling the coffee like the nirvana in a cup it was. “I didn’t drive here, did I?”
“I don’t think so. You were pretty insistent that your car wasn’t here. Then you started babbling about drinking high balls and I stopped trying to make sense of it.”
“High Ball. That’s Brian’s nickname. He’s not much of a drinker and tends to wind up as our de facto designated driver. I must have given him your address instead of mine.” A decision he wasn’t going to examine until he was fully sober. If ever. “I don’t suppose I can persuade you to give me a ride back to my car? I can call a taxi, but being picked up at dawn at your place is exactly the kind of thing the tabloids would love if someone recognized me.”
“I can make time this morning. Cowboy.”
There was a certain emphasis to the last word that had him wincing. “God, I didn’t do some sort of rodeo act, did I?”