“Lola!” I called as I approached the table casually, hoping to give her tense muscles some reprieve.
“Oh, my God!” she yelled—and I do mean yelled—as she jumped up to standing. Her cute little pumps made her legs look six miles long, and the short hem of her T-shirt dress didn’t hurt either. It floated just below the curve of her ass. “Reed! I’m so sorry about your sister’s…uh…cat…uh…Mr. Sprinkles’s death,” she mumbled, picking up her bag from the table and clutching it under her arm so she could be ready to run.
I laughed outright as I stopped in front of her. “It’s terrible, huh? Poor Mr. Sprinkles taken way before his time. I felt like I barely got the chance to get to know him.”
“Who’s this?” a guy in a suit standing right next to her interrupted before she even had time to laugh. I leveled him with a look. One I rarely employed and personally hated, but conveyed my point all the same. Step away from the woman.
“Her mortal enemy,” Jen said through a laugh at the same time I said, “Her boyfriend.”
Jen looked confused, and she wasn’t the only one. The eyebrows of the guy standing closest to Lola pulled together. “I thought you were a lesbian.”
A smile tugged one side of my mouth higher than the other as I slipped her hand in mine and did what I do best—lied.
I also couldn’t deny the surge of satisfaction I felt knowing that Lola had told these guys she batted for the other team. I had no claims to her, but it didn’t change the fact that I wanted her to give me those claims.
I sure as fuck didn’t want to focus my attention on anyone else but her.
Lola tumbled closer to me as I gave her hand a yank, but she didn’t put up a fight. I was her only lifeline, and getting out of here was way more important than a million dollars. “She was. I’ve always had a crush on her because…” I paused and gestured in a way that said, “Look at her, right?”
The guy smiled his agreement, uneasy and pissed off to be cockblocked as it was. He’d noticed the way she looked. In fact, it was the only thing he’d bothered to notice, and quite frankly, that pissed me off on Lola’s behalf.
“Well, years and years of watching her go through girlfriend after girlfriend, and she finally tried out some heterosexual porn one night when she was looking to get off.”
One of the guys’ hands went to his crotch in an effort to conceal his reaction, and I smiled bigger.
“Usually, she just got together with Jen, and they helped each other out. Right, honey?”
Lola nodded but never opened her mouth. Her eyes were wide with the effort to keep all of her hysteria inside. Jen, not knowing the joy of my friendship, didn’t engage in the same compliance.
“Uh, I don’t—” Jen started, but I cut her off.
“So she’s masturbating to guy-on-girl action, stroke for stroke, and bam! It’s like it all clicks. She’s not into chicks, after all. It’s the dicks.”
Guy One’s and Guy Two’s eyes had glazed over by this point, but Guy Three, the one closest to my Lola, still had some synapses firing outside of the head of his dick. “But she told me she was a lesbian tonight.”
I nodded as though that was completely expected. “Selective amnesia. Sometimes she forgets, but I just take her home and fuck her to remind her, you know?”
“Yeah…” he muttered, still confused. I wasn’t exactly thrilled with his proximity to my woman—let’s face it, she is—but I had to give him a little credit. He was obviously the best prospect of the three, choosing Lola as his target in the first place, and he didn’t let his baser instincts distract him to the point of becoming a robot.
Still, fuck him.
“That’s actually where we’re headed now.” I turned to Lola. “Ready, honey?”
She bit her lip and turned back to Jen and Abby. She didn’t even bother to include Simone, and somewhere deep inside, I smiled. I never understood the compulsion to pretend to be friends with someone you hated.
Oh, shit. A thought struck me like lightning. Maybe that’s what I’d forced her into with me.
It wasn’t like me not to consider both sides. But I’d been so fucking drawn to her.
I considered her closely as she leaned into me, and I wrapped my arm around her shoulders. “Sorry, guys. I gotta go.”
No. She likes me. She has to.
“Lola! You’re leaving with him?” Abby questioned disbelievingly.
“Yeah.” She glanced at me before turning back to Jen and leaning in to kiss her on the cheek. The crotch-coverer groaned. “I am. I’ll call you tomorrow, okay?”