Ripper(12)

“I called your brother about ten minutes ago,” Gil said.

“Damn it, Gil. Why would you go and do that? I’m perfectly fine. I don’t need my brother to come and get me. I can find my own damn ride home.”

“With whom?” Gil asked, looking around because it was a Thursday night and it was after midnight. All but the most hardcore of drunks had gone home. It was a testament to how fucked up I was that I was still here.

I glanced around the bar. At this hour there were exactly four men still in the bar, and none of them would be potential partners on a sober night. Then again, I tended to not get laid when I was sober so I figured sobriety was way overrated. I pointed to the least hygienically challenged of the four. “How about him?”

“Sweetie, he’s gay,” Gil said.

“Seriously?” The truth was my gaydar didn’t work after fourteen tequila shots.

“No,” Gil replied, shaking his long beard. “But the fact that you have to ask whether a fat ass guy with a tattoo of a naked chick on his forearm is gay or not is a testament to your inability to make proper choices.”

I laughed long and hard because it struck me as funny. I liked this place. It was nice. Oh, sure, it was followed by vomiting and a horrible headache, but for now it was a little like heaven. I was only thinking of pleasant things. I texted Liv and told her how much I loved her. If I’d had anyone else to call, I totally would have called them to express my love and appreciation, but I didn’t have phone numbers for my World of Warcraft guild. I would have called Crozier and told him to meet me at the tavern for a drink or two. Oh, he was a shaman in a MMORPG game, but he was the closest thing I had to a crush on an actual human being. He was a nice guy and not related to me, so I sort of fantasized about him. If he’d been there, I would have jumped all over that and I had zero idea what he looked like. My shot at getting a little something was low this evening.

“How about it, Gil?” The bartender was safe to flirt with. “I’ve been coming in here for almost a year. When are we going to stop fighting this attraction we have?”

Gil threw back his thickly bearded head and laughed. I was too drunk to be insulted so I joined him. “Darlin’, if I was thirty years younger you would still be too much woman for me to handle. I would take one look at you, think about how amazing the sex would be, and run the other way.”

“Is that your polite way of calling me a hot mess?” I played with the shot glass that apparently hadn’t held anything vaguely resembling liquor for a while. I needed to give apple juice another try. It was good. There was a little drop at the bottom of the glass and I licked the glass not wanting it to go to waste.

Gil shook his head. “Hot doesn’t begin to cover it.”

A good song came on the radio and I let Gil’s comment go, preferring to sway to the music. Then I decided swaying wasn’t a good idea and staying on my barstool was.

“Wow, that was fast.” Gil’s eyes stared past me toward the door. “I thought you were in Dallas.”

I started to try to turn, but then my head kind of hit my folded hands and it was really comfortable so I didn’t feel like moving. I laid my head down and started to drift off to a blissful sleep.

“I had my friend bring me out. He’s faster than a speeding bullet.” Ah, my brother Nate was here.

“I like to think so,” a deeply sexy voice said.

That got my head to move from its comfy place. I turned and saw a really gorgeous blond guy standing in the doorway, looking out over the bar. He was sexy as hell in a leather jacket, and my hopes of getting well laid shot up. He was roughly six foot two, with big broad shoulders and the kind of straight jaw you only saw on movie stars. So very nice. Unfortunately, he was standing there with my brother, who looked really disapproving.

“Jeez, Kelsey, what the fuck happened to you?” Nathan asked as he approached me.

“Life,” I replied with a little smile because I was still looking at hot blond guy. Wow, he was a hunk of masculinity. He stood there in his Green Lantern T-shirt and tight jeans and I knew he could rock my world. Sure, he looked like he was all of twenty years old, but it was a confident twenty. Looking at him, I could tell he was a dangerous boy. “Hello,” I said with a boozy grin. I tried to thrust my chest out appealingly. They’re small, but well rounded.

I saw Nathan go bright red. “Stop it, Kelsey. Leave him alone. He’s married with three kids.”

I stared at hot, young blond guy again and wondered if I had lost count of my shots. “Seriously? He looks too young to have three kids.”