The Duet(57)

I thought once was enough

You turned to me and called my bluff,

Maybe I should have walked away

but I couldn’t resist, I needed replay after replay





Chapter Eighteen





A few nights later, I found myself checking emails in my bed. It was only 8:00 P.M., but I’d opened the window in my room to feel the soft breeze a few hours earlier and promptly decided I wasn’t going to get out of bed again for the rest of the night.

Well, that is, until Derek interrupted me.

“Brooklyn, you decent?” he asked after tapping his knuckles on the door.

“Uhh, hold on!”

I quickly stashed the remnants of a candy bar and the romance novel I’d been devouring inside the drawer of my bedside table. It’s not that I’m embarrassed to read romance, but this particular book’s cover was a little over the top, even for me. Ripped hunk with billowy white top, tearing the corset off some damsel in the distress. i.e. the stuff dreams are made of. LuAnne had lent it to me.

“Okay! You can come in,” I said, sitting up and folding my legs like pretzel.

The door opened and his blonde head poked through the gap.

“I was going to go into town and grab a beer. Wanna come with?”

The invitation seemed easy enough, but then I thought about the fact that Hank wasn’t there to escort us.

Before I could even ask about security measure, Derek pushed the door open all the way and straightened up. “I know Hank isn’t here, but I can be your security guard for the night, and believe me, no one in this bar will recognize you anyway. I swear.” He puffed out his chest and flexed his biceps for good measure.

I laughed and rolled out of bed. My smutty read would have to wait until I got home. I had a craving for a cold beer.

“Do they have darts there?” I asked.

“Yep,” he smiled. “And the first game is on me.”

“I’m in,” I said, moving to my closet so I could change my top. I’d spilled spaghetti sauce on it at dinner and hadn’t bothered changing yet. “Give me two seconds and I’ll meet you downstairs.”

“Got it,” he said, backing out and closing the door behind him.

After finding a loose peasant blouse (that looked oddly similar to the cover model’s shirt on my book), I freshened up my make-up and trotted down the stairs. Derek was standing in the entryway twirling his car keys around on his thumb, and when he saw me coming down he smiled wide.

Seeing him standing there by himself made my smile falter. I’d assumed everyone would be going to the bar, but the fact that it would just be Derek and me left a tinge of guilt in my stomach.

Sure, Jason and I weren’t anything official, but we were having sex and we were becoming really good friends. I think. The sex was definitely happening, unless I was imagining that too.

“Did you ask Jason if he wanted to go?” I asked, trying to sound just the right amount of interested in the question.

“Nah, LuAnne said he was busy writing or something,” Derek said, stepping forward to guide me to the front door.

A part of me wanted to twist out of his arms and go up and talk to Jason myself, but maybe this was a good test. If things were truly the same between Jason and I— if we were simply colleagues— then I could go out and get a drink with Derek without having to worry about a thing.

Right?

…



Once the bartender had slid an ice-cold Corona with lime across the bar, everything seemed peachy keen. Derek challenged me to round after round of darts. In the beginning, most of my darts actually hit the dartboard. However, as the night progressed, and the Coronas kept coming, my dart-flinging abilities took a nosedive. (I stopped when one errant dart managed to wedge itself between the ceiling and the wall.)

“Pitiful! Just pitiful, Brooklyn,” Derek teased, walking forward to grab the darts out of the board while shaking his head. “You’re making me look bad in front of all of my friends.”

I turned around to inspect the small bar. There was one bartender and three patrons in total. One of which was Paulo, who looked to be on a date with a well-dressed man.

“There’s no one here, you liar! You’re just sad because you don’t know how to play my version of darts.”

Derek tipped his head back and cracked up. “I’m sorry. What version is that?”

I smiled confidently, but the beer was starting to get to me so my facial muscles weren’t quite cooperating. “Ceiling Darts. I just invented it.”

Derek squeezed his eyes closed, holding in his laughter. “Oh boy, it’s time to get you home. Jason is going to kill me. I already know it.”

He set the darts down back in their holder, snatched my Corona from me mid-sip, and dropped it into the closest trashcan. “Whoa! Party foul. Give me back my drink. And why will Jason be mad? Can he not play ceiling darts, either?” I asked.