16. Chapter 16
sixteen
M ax stepped into the comedy club and swore under his breath.
The place was fucking packed. And the only seats left were two chairs at a small round table, front and centre. They couldn’t get any closer to the stage if they tried.
“Wow,” Willow said, walking to the empty table. “These are great seats.”
Max shook his head. “Not if you want to disappear.”
She bunched her eyebrows at him. “What?”
“The best seats in the house are back there,” he said, jerking a thumb over his shoulder. “We’re gonna get called out by the comedian.”
She laughed as she removed her jacket, and every thought in Max’s brain fell away. As if the short black skirt wasn’t bad enough, she was wearing a stunning red top that was tightly fitted against her body and scooped low in the front, showing off her cleavage.
She draped the jacket on the back of her chair and sat down, and he had to literally force his eyes off her as he did the same. Not staring at her all night was going to take all his strength.
He caught the eye of the waiter and waved them over, thankful when they came right away. He needed food and a good stiff drink.
“We’ll take the nachos, fried pickles, a cheeseburger, and a chicken burger, and I’ll have a Canadian Club on the rocks,” he said, hoping the waiter was getting it all. He glanced at Willow. “What do you want to drink?”
Willow’s pretty little mouth lifted into a smirk. “Just a Diet Coke for me.”
The waiter left, but Willow continued staring.
“What?”
“Hungry?”
“Naw,” he said with a smile. He’d worked through lunch and only had some fries from Luis about an hour before they left. He was ready to eat his fucking arm off. “They have a limited menu, so I ordered everything. We can share.”
“I could have ordered for myself,” she said.
He rolled his eyes. “No. I know how you operate. I’d be here all night waiting for you to decide, and I’m already starving.”
She let out that little ugh that he liked so much just as the lights went down and the MC came onto the stage.
“Hey, everybody, how are you all doing ton— Whoa,” he said, stopping on stage as his eyes landed on Max. “Can everyone see me, or have I disappeared behind this guy?” he asked, pointing at him.
Max dropped all expression from his face as the crowd, and Willow, laughed. He wanted to be more annoyed, but when he caught the sound of Willow’s laughter and the way her nose crinkled a little when she smiled, he stopped caring that there was anyone else in the room. Or that they were making fun of him.
The comedian moved on as the waiter came and dropped off their drinks. Max immediately asked for another drink. A double this time.
It took a few minutes for the MC to get through warming up the crowd before the first comedian, a weirdo with a suitcase full of props, came out and began.
Willow seemed to love the guy, but he knew she had an affinity for the ridiculous, if her hiring Jer was any sign. Luckily, their food came after that, and Max ate the burger Willow didn’t want in three bites. He felt a lot better and realized that the weird suitcase guy actually wasn’t that bad. He’d just been too hungry to laugh.
He wrapped up his set to a roar of applause and left the stage, and the MC came out to introduce the next comedian. Max was feeling pretty good after his whisky and burger until the MC announced that the next comedian was known for his crowd work.
“Great,” Max muttered under his breath.
“What’s wrong?” Willow asked.
“I hate crowd work.”
“What’s that?”
“When the comedian makes fun of people in the crowd.”
Willow pushed his arm in a friendly “Get outta here” gesture, but the contact felt good.
“You didn’t like being called out for blocking everyone’s view?” she asked with a smile.
Max raised an eyebrow. “No. Maybe all the short people should have sat up here.”
She rolled her eyes, but before she could make her next snarky little comment, a new comedian came out onto the stage.
He spoke for a while and told jokes and stories that Max had to admit were hilarious. But once his bit was done, he started calling out people in the crowd, including a newly divorced woman with thirteen cats, and a drunk twentysomething guy who showed everyone in the crowd his favourite tattoo—a Pokémon on his ass cheek.
Max checked his watch; the show was almost over. He wouldn’t be called on. He actually started relaxing, but that quickly passed.
“What about you, darling? You have a great laugh, by the way,” the comedian said to Willow.
“Oh,” she said, surprised. “Thanks.”
“What do you do for a living?” he asked.
Willow glanced at Max, then back at the comedian. “I’m a brewmaster. I’m opening a brewery here in town.”
The comedian’s eyebrows shot up. “Marry me?” he said, and the crowd laughed.
Willow laughed along but shook her head. “I’m engaged.”
That’s when the comedian’s eyes swerved to Max, and shit got incredibly awkward. “You’re a lucky guy to be marrying a hot brewmaster.”
Max swallowed. “Not me.”
“Oh . . .” the comedian said, looking at the crowd with his eyebrows raised. “So you two are . . . ?”
Max wanted to tell the guy to fuck off, so he said nothing. But Willow locked eyes with him for a moment, then smirked before saying, “We’re business partners and pains in each other’s asses.”
The comedian’s eyebrows shot up, and he laughed. “You seem pretty close. How does your fiancé feel about the two of you hanging out?”
Willow shook her head. “Uh . . .”
She glanced over at Max, and he gave her a shrug. He was just about to lie to get them out of the awkwardness, but the comedian spoke before he could.
“You two seem to have some secret language.”
“No,” she said.
“Have you fucked?”
The audience roared with laughter as Max’s fists bunched.
Willow shook her head, trying to keep her expression light. “No.”
“But you’ve thought about it . . .” the comedian said, leaning in toward her, his ear moving closer as if he was waiting for her to confess.
Willow spared Max a tiny glance before she gave a shrug. “Um, maybe a little.”
Max turned to look at her, to see whether she was just saying that to get the guy to back off or whether she actually meant it.
When she met his eyes, she cringed a little, then mouthed, “Sorry. ”
Max stared at her for a moment, trying to process the idea that she might think of him the way he’d been thinking about her. He wasn’t sure whether he should be happy that she was into him or horribly disappointed that she would think of a different guy when she was engaged.
The lying to her fiancé was one thing. He could justify it, given the circumstances. But cheating? No.
“Oh, come on, buddy,” the comedian said to him. “You’re not really surprised, are you? I’ve been out here for three minutes, and I’ve thought about fucking you.”
Max rolled his eyes as the crowd howled once again.
“They all have, too,” he said.
“I have!”
“Me too!”
Max shook his head, refusing to look at the female voices coming from behind him. Mercifully, the comedian stopped, said something that Max was too distracted to process, and thanked the crowd for being so great. He walked off the stage just as the lights in the place came on, and people started filing back out of the room.
He pulled some bills from his wallet, placed them on the table, and stood.
“Sorry, Max,” Willow said, putting her coat on.
Max shook his head. “Nothing to be sorry about.”
They silently, awkwardly walked out the door, up the stairs, through the parking lot, and into the car. It wasn’t until they were halfway back to the pub that the silence finally got to him, and he broke it.
“Were you being honest?” he asked.
She looked at him. “When?”
He rolled his eyes. “You know when.”
She held onto her answer for a couple minutes before her soft voice came. “Yes.”
Max’s grip on the steering wheel tightened. “Why are you thinking about me like that when you’re engaged to someone else?”
Willow blew out a breath. “Well, you’re . . .” She gestured at him with her hand, and he couldn’t help but want to stop the car and drag her into the back seat.
He’d never really felt a sexual attraction to random women. Honestly, the attention he got from the women in the crowd in there had made his skin crawl. But knowing Willow wanted him was completely different. Attention from her made him hot as fuck. Which was a total nightmare, because that meant that he liked her.
“And . . .” she added quietly, “things between Shane and me aren’t really the best.”
Shane .
Max tamped down the jealousy. He’d fucking hate the name Shane as long as he lived. “How so?”
She shrank down in on herself in the passenger seat, looking small, and he resisted the urge to reach over and tip her chin up, force her to feel about herself the way he felt about her.
“He kind of cheated on me.”
Max’s grip on the steering wheel tightened even further. “How do you ‘kind of’ cheat on someone?”
She huffed out a sigh. “He was having an affair with someone online. But only online. They were texting back and forth. It was pretty . . . explicit. But it was only with some random woman through text.”
Max’s anger built, and his head began shaking on its own from the anger.
“Why did you stay with him?”
“I left him when I first found out. But he wanted to get back together, and then he proposed.”
Max stayed quiet. He knew that if he opened his mouth, he’d start yelling.
“Well, proposed is a strong word,” she continued. “What actually happened was, he said, ‘We can get married,’ and I said okay.”
They sat in silence for a while, Willow becoming smaller and smaller in the seat while he tried desperately to see this from her point of view. How could she agree to marry him after that ?
“I’m just confused,” she said, twisting to face him. It seemed as if, now that she had started opening up, there was no closing her.
“He’s hard to talk to. I never know how he’s going to react to things. And it’s been months since we’ve had sex. And we never talk about it and it’s so awkward and I don’t know how to fix it. And you’re so . . .”
Max glanced at her, still shocked about the six months thing.
“I’m so what?” he asked, refusing to let her leave him hanging like that.
“So . . . easy to talk to,” she said, releasing a breath.
Max thought for a second, then gave a nod. He felt that way about her, too. “Maybe it’s because we’re alike.”
She looked up at him as if he’d lost his mind.
“Well, okay, maybe not alike ,” he said. “But we have similar backgrounds and similar goals.”
He turned into their parking lot in silence and pulled up next to her rental car, but she didn’t move to leave.
“What about you, Max? Why aren’t you in a relationship?” she asked.
His initial reaction was to tell her to get out, but when he looked at her, his shoulders relaxed for the first time since they’d walked into that club. Why wasn’t he in a long-term relationship? Probably because every time he got close, it always fell apart.
“I just can’t seem to make it work,” he said. “One thing or another goes wrong, and it all falls apart.”
She nodded as if she understood what he was saying. It was likely that she did. She’d just stuck it out longer than he ever had.
“I think relationships are just really hard work,” she said. “Nothing’s ever perfect.”
“Yeah, maybe. I just hoped that when the right person came along, things would feel easier.”
Like they do with you.
He shook the thoughts from his head. He was so fucking screwed.
“Can I ask you something?” she said.
He wanted to say something sarcastic but couldn’t summon it, so he nodded.
“What’s your definition of cheating?”
Max thought for a moment, then shrugged. “I think it’s more of a feeling than a hard definition. But if you think what you’re doing is cheating, and you want to do it anyway, then you should just break up with the person you’re with.”
She turned contemplatively, looked out the window.
“Did you feel like coming out with me tonight was cheating? ”
She stayed still for a long moment, then finally nodded.
“But you wanted to come, anyway?”
Her face turned toward him, her pretty green eyes taking on a sad look, and she gave another nod.
He stared at her, wondering why the hell she was still with that guy. He knew she was wishy-washy, but he hadn’t realized it was this bad.
Willow unbuckled her seat belt, opened the door, and stepped out, then awkwardly bent back down to talk to him through the door.
“Thanks for coming with me,” she said with a smile. “I had a lot of fun, except for, you know, the whole thinking-about-fucking-you thing.”
Her entire face turned pink as he let out a laugh that snapped away all the tension that had grown between them.
She shook her head. “I can’t believe I just said that. I’m just gonna . . . okay.”
She closed the car door, turned, and walked to her car.
Max watched her leave, tortured with the jealousy and sadness that she wasn’t available and probably never would be.
She obviously wanted to make it work with Shane , and there was no way he was going to be some guy she cheated on her fiancé with.
He swept all his feelings back up and shoved them into the box where they belonged. Now he just needed to keep them there.