“Hello ladies!”
They looked up to see a dark skinned man with a wide smile and greasy forehead hovering over them, a shorter friend flanking his side.
Brooke leaned back on the loveseat and batted her lashes. “Hello boys,” she grinned impishly, crossing her freshly shaven legs.
Their gazes gravitated uncontrollably to the shadow lurking just beneath the hem of her dress.
Her grin deepened. “How’s it hanging?”
The two men smiled and moved in closer, the bar’s soft light throwing shadows across their features.
“You look so serious over here,” the tall one said, glancing at his blond haired wingman to make sure he was still with him. “Thought we’d come over and liven things up a little. I’m Marcus and this is Chad.”
Evy took a lazy sip, rolling her eyes behind the glass.
“No, I don’t think you understand,” Brooke shouted over the music, scooting to the edge of the loveseat and clapping a hand over her chest to keep them from seeing down her dress. “When I asked how it was hanging, I really meant it.”
The tall greasy guy straightened back up, his shit-eating grin sliding into his neck. His friend blinked blankly while deep bass rattled their bones.
Brooke lifted her brow. “How big are your dicks?”
Evy choked on her wine and grabbed her cocktail napkin while Brooke anxiously awaited their answer.
The tall guy traded a bemused look with his friend, who was just as lost as he was.
“Just so ya know, we don’t touch anything under seven inches,” Brooke told them with a confident nod, pointing a finger at them. “And no banana dicks!”
The blond guy briefly panicked when he noticed his tall friend was already half way back to the bar. He turned back to Brooke and Evy, a sheepish smile imprinted on his face as he thumbed behind him.
Brooke smiled warmly and wiggled her fingers. “Don’t forget to drink your milk!”
Evy burst into laughter and covered her mouth, trying not to spill her wine. “Drink your milk?”
Brooke clicked her tongue off the roof of her mouth. “Does a body good.”
They laughed some more and then took deep breaths that left them studying each other over the rim of their glasses. Brooke’s red high heel rocked back and forth through the air.
“I’m sorry about this.”
Brooke pushed a hand through the air and adjusted her dress. “It’s not your fault guys want to put their things inside of us,” she said, examining her assets.
Evy threw her head back and laughed, her third glass of wine starting to do the trick. “No, I mean about everything, the Megan drama, the liquor license, business dwindling because of my lack of focus. I should be pimping Sugars out every chance I get, not crying over…some married guy.”
Brooke washed a laugh down the hatch with the last swallow of her drink. “That’s not fair and you know it.”
Evy held a hand up and shook her head vehemently. “No, I mean it, Brooke. You and Ben gave me a chance to start over and I have done nothing but bring bad luck your way ever since.”
“There’s no such thing as luck, and that’s not true anyway.”
“It is true! How can you even say that? And right when things were finally going good for the two of you. This should be the best time of your lives! Realizing your dreams with a new dessert lounge in a great city, and here I am ruining it for everyone.”
“Honey, you’re not ruining anything. Sometimes life happens.”
“Oh really? How much did we do today?”
Brooke shrugged, looking around for their waitress.
“How much?”
She turned back to Evy and flattened her lips, hesitating before answering. “Six hundred and thirty-seven dollars.”
Evy’s jaw plunged. “That’s it?”
Brooke ran a slow finger around the rim of her glass. “We’ll get through this, we always do.”
“But that’s my point, you guys have already been through so much. This isn’t right.”
The DJ made a play to get everyone on the dance floor but it wasn’t even nine o’clock yet and his invitation was met with the sound of people continuing with their conversations like they hadn’t heard him. He shrugged it off and cued up the latest Justin Timberlake song, gyrating to the beat with a headphone cradled in his shoulder.
“And what about Megan?”
Brooke’s eyes snapped back to her sister. “What about her?”
She leaned back and sighed. “I keep seeing Dean and I five years down the road - or ten or twenty - and every time we’re about to go do something fun, his phone rings.”
Brooke tilted her head to the side. “Megan?”
She nodded glumly in the blood red light. “Always something with their kid that she can’t handle herself, intentionally persecuting me until my last breath.”
“You don’t even know it’s his kid.”
Evy knocked the rest of her drink back just as the waitress finally stopped by.
Brooke ordered another round and watched the short redhead’s bubble butt wiggle its way back to the bar. “Is my butt that big?”
“I know it’s his kid.”
Brooke slowly turned to Evy, her eyebrows drawing together. “How?”
“I just do. It’s the Burnett intuition.”
Brooke shook her head. “I’m not picking that up at all.”
“Can you imagine?” Evy said, staring off into space. “We’re just about to go on vacation and Dean’s phone suddenly rings.”
“Oh brother,” Brooke murmured, taking a drink and remembering her glass was empty.
“And their little boy, Timmy, has a stomach ache and won’t go to sleep no matter how many stories she reads to him.”
“Timmy?”
Evy nodded adamantly. “Oh yeah, and Timmy is quite the little hell raiser, too. Just an evil little demon child with wild eyes and tantrums ta boot.”
Brooke smiled. “Like the kid in The Omen?”
“Exactly! I mean, we’re talking chairs suddenly being on the kitchen table, dead pets in the garden, people falling from ladders, the whole nine yards.”
Brooke placed a hand over her heart, searching for the waitress. “Oh my, I think I’m ready for that drink now.”
Evy’s face grew serious. “And what about Megan’s idiot father? He’ll always be there - the doting grandfather - stopping by out of the blue and poking his nose in where it doesn’t belong. I mean, can you imagine what Christmas at the Crawford’s would be like?”
“Sounds like a horror movie Ben would watch on AMC.”
Evy laughed. “It would be!”
Brooke shook the fog from her head and narrowed her smoky green eyes. “So what are you saying? If the baby is Dean’s, you’re going to end the relationship?”
The waitress sashayed back over with their drinks and set them down. “These are from the two gentlemen at the bar.”
Evy followed her nod, expecting to find the tall guy and his blond friend. Two older men in suits raised their glasses instead. Evy turned back around, pretending like she hadn’t seen them.
“Thank you, sweetie,” Brooke said to the waitress, bringing the fresh drink to her parched lips.
“Thank you,” Evy smiled, watching the waitress move on to another table. Evy blew hair from her face and crossed her legs, admiring her tan heels.
“Are those new?”
She nodded, lifting her leg higher for Brooke to see in the dim light.
“They’re so cute!”
“This is what happens when I get stressed out.”
“Better than gorging yourself on pizza and cake.”
“I’ve spent two hundred and thirty-five dollars on shoes in the last week alone.”
“Yeah, but at least you’re still skinny!”
“Only because I’ll be eating Ramen Noodles for the next month.”
“You ladies mind if we join you?”
Brooke paused to flash Evy a wry grin before turnin
g to the two men with insurance conference written all over their cheap suits. She rested a hand on Evy’s bare knee and smiled coyly. “Don’t even think about it. This is my pussy.”
Their faces soured.
Evy hid behind a facepalm, biting back a giggle.
“That’s right. Now, go on and take those nasty little penises back to wherever the hell they came from.”
The music got louder as they stared at her with stunned expressions, each holding what looked like a scotch on the rocks.
“Go on,” Brooke gestured. “Skedaddle!”
The two suits swapped incredulous glances and moonwalked back to wherever the hell they came from, one of them loosening his tie along the way, still shooting daggers.
Brooke covered her mouth and laughed. “I think I’m starting to catch a buzz.”
“That is so nasty,” Evy giggled, a shiver running down her spine. “How can you even think about something like that, let alone say it out loud?”
Brooke composed herself and thought about it for a moment. “Practice.”
They stared at each other and then broke into laughter, growing quiet again as the DJ garbled something into the mic they couldn’t understand. Sipping on their drinks while sharing a comfortable silence, they took in their surroundings. The bar was getting busier with each half hour that ticked past, the conversation level rising almost as fast as their blood alcohol level. The DJ looked relieved when a young couple actually started dancing. He turned up the music, making Brooke have to shout even louder.
“You never answered my question.”
Evy lifted her brow.
“If the baby is Dean’s, are you going to end the relationship?”
Evy glanced to the purple and black purses on the couch between them, tired of talking about it, let alone thinking about it. “I’m not sure.”
“Not sure about what?”
She finally looked up, meeting Brooke’s expectant gaze. “Anything.”
“I don’t believe you.” Brooke scooted closer. “Listen to me, big sister,” she said, pausing to collect her thoughts. “In real life, if you let something go…it may not come back to you.”
Evy was thankful for the low lighting camouflaging her watery eyes. She refused to blink for fear of what would end up rolling down her cheek. “I know,” she said, draining her glass.
***
Megan slammed the Jeep’s door shut and bent over to peer through the open passenger side window. “You have ruined everything,” she growled, hitting Dean with a sub-zero glower.
Dean grunted, one hand on the wheel, motor running. “That ship sailed a long time ago, sweetheart.”
Her cold eyes narrowed. She opened her mouth to say something else and hesitated before huffing loudly and stomping up the double drive, her flats scraping across the concrete. Dean waited until she stepped inside her new house before backing out of the drive, headlights sweeping across the neatly trimmed grass.
Dotted white lines zipped beneath him as he headed for somewhere he hadn’t figured out yet, wondering what he had just done, speculating on what would happen next. “Shit,” he said, squeezing the wheel tighter and grimacing with the pain in his hand. If he hadn’t messed things up good enough before, he sure had now. A slideshow of horrific images flickered through his mind: Sugars on fire, Ben with a broken leg, Evy with someone else. He shook his head, unable to blame her. He had put them through too much already. Her entire family must hate him.
He slowed down when he saw a cop and took the next right, deciding his condo was the next best course of action. He needed a minute to clear his head. Plus, telling Evy what had just happened wasn’t on the top of his list right now. He wasn’t sure how she would take it and didn’t have the heart to find out. Not yet anyway.
His condo was quiet inside and felt like someone else’s place. Dean dropped down heavily onto the couch and looked around. He had been so proud of this place when he had purchased it two years ago and now he barely recognized it. The faces of different female guests over those two years flashed through his mind, one at a time, each smiling at him with that look in their eye. He shuddered with the thought of returning to that lifestyle and turned on the TV only to turn it off again a few minutes later.
He stretched out on the couch and let his thoughts run wild, a big mistake. But before they could get too far, sleep took him to a place where they found him anyway. Three hours later, his cell phone jerked him from sleep. He stared at the screen, a kink in his neck, his heart lurching when he saw Evy’s name.
***
Dean helped Evy out of the Jeep’s front seat and guided her into her apartment.
She sank into the couch with a giggle rushing past her lips, her eyes half open. “You should’ve seen the looks on these guys’ faces.”
He peeled her heels off and carefully set her feet on the coffee table. “I bet.”
“She told one guy she had a dick,” she laughed, blinking slowly.
Dean rested his hands on his hips, surveying Evy’s droopy eyes and disheveled hair. “Oh, boy,” he mumbled to himself.
“Broofe is so dirty,” she slurred, staring at her TV like she was watching the night’s events play out all over again. “I wish I was funny like her.”
“You’re very funny,” he assured her, going over and closing the front door.
“You’re flunny!”
“Thank you,” he replied, coming back over and smoothing her hair.
“Take off your pants!” She fumbled with his belt and he stopped her. “Come on, Dean, I wanna take a picture of it.”
“Maybe later, hotstuff. How about some water first?”
She let out an unhappy groan and leaned her head on the back of the couch. “Take that picture to Target and blow it up into a door poster.”
Dean couldn’t stop a laugh on his way into the kitchen. “Door poster, huh?”
“Yeah!”
“Have to be a pretty big door.”
She giggled drunkenly. “A Downtown Abbey door!”
He laughed again, grabbing a cold bottle of water from the fridge. “I think it’s Downton Abbey, my Ladyship.”
She fell over onto her side and buried half her face into a silvery blue pillow, her laughter turning into a wistful sigh. “I’m not spending Christmas with Megan.”
Dean stopped in his tracks on the way back with the water, a lump caught in his throat. “What?”
When she didn’t reply, he came around the couch to see her breathing deeply with her eyes shut. He set the water down and sighed. “Thank you, Brooke,” he muttered, gently picking Evy up in his arms and carrying her into the bedroom. He set her down and took a seat next to her on the edge of the bed, brushing hair from her face and watching her inhale grave breaths of heavy slumber, wondering what he would do without her. He kissed her on the forehead, admiring the curves shaping her face. “I love you, hotstuff,” he whispered, climbing into bed next to her. She snuggled up against him and didn’t move again.
***
The alarm clock on Evy’s cell phone went off way too early the next morning, jarring Dean from a dream where he and Evy were running from something down the middle of a quiet residential street. Hand in hand, Dean yelled at her to go faster as the thing got closer and angry clouds churned above. He rubbed his eyes, trying to recall what the thing had been but it was already fading into the further. His leg brushed against Evy, reminding him this wasn’t his bed.
“What are you doing here,” she asked groggily, massaging her swollen face with both hands.
“I took you and Brooke home last night. You called me, remember?”
She groaned with the pain rolling through her body in sleepy waves. “I did?”
“I think that was only your second booty call.”
Evy stopped rubbing her face and quickly glanced beneath the sheets, exhaling a sigh of relief upon seeing she was fully dressed in last night’s outfit. “When was the first?”
“That night you and Bro
oke went to see Mumford and Sons.”
“Oh yeah, and I haven’t drank Irish whiskey since.”
“What were you drinking last night?”
“Wine.” She paused to think for a few seconds. “And tequila. I think. I don’t remember much after Brooke got her heel caught in a steel grate somewhere.”
“That was in front of Taylor’s, remember? We passed the broken part sticking out of the grate on the way to my car.”
“I just remember her hobbling up and down like a peg-leg pirate for half the night.”
He chuckled softly and leaned in to kiss her.
She turned away. “I must have the worst breath right now.”
“I wasn’t going to say anything, but now that you mention it...”
“Even my headache has a headache,” she moaned, suddenly sitting bolt upright in the bed. “Oh my God, what happened last night at Clay’s?”
The question made his gut clench. He didn’t feel like talking about it, but figured it was better to get it over with now rather than sitting around all day at work wondering how she would take it. Her face tightened as his story unfolded. Her eyes glanced at his bruised knuckles. At the end of the story, she sat without speaking, twisting her fingers.
“You might not be the father?” she asked, breaking the silence.
He nodded. “She finally admitted it.”
“Why?”
“Who knows why, Evy? The girl is like Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde. You never know what’s going to come out of her mouth next.”
Evy snorted, pinning that as the understatement of the year. “And how many…candidates are out there?”
“At least two.”
An uneasy laugh pushed past her lips. “Wow, what kind of girls did you used to date, Dean? Sounds like a real winner.”
He frowned. “Oh yeah, and you’re so perfect. What was Richie’s girlfriend’s name again? Mercedes?”
“Destiny, and that’s different.”
“Oh, that’s right. Destiny! Sounds like a real winner. Didn’t she go to Harvard?” Dean held onto the hurt look on her face for a little longer and then looked away, pausing to lower his voice. “And for the record, Megan and I never dated.”
“Oh, that’s right. You don’t date. You just have random sex with bar sluts.”
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