Chapter 32
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Andrew
Grace has been taunting me all night. Gliding her hand up and down her pool cue while she waits her turn.
Bending far over the edge of the pool table as she lines up her cue ball with the solid colors that seem to be dwindling down as the game goes on.
Maybe boys versus girls was a bad idea. Who knew Grace and Hayley would be hustling us the whole time.
Hayley went as far as asking how to use the pool chalk, feigning ignorance as she ran it over a wayward striped pool ball rolling her way.
Before we know it, the girls are giggling over their impending victory.
“Is this why you didn’t play?” Jake hollers at Ro. He’s sitting in the corner, nursing a drink while watching me and Jake get our asses handed to us.
Ro nods. “I made a silent pledge to never play pool against Hayley,” he admits.
“And you couldn’t warn us?” I accuse as Hayley smacks the cue ball into the solid red, knocking it into a corner pocket.
“And miss this?” He gestures his hand to our smothered dignity, laughing at our diminished arrogance and how far we’ve fallen.
Hayley misses her next shot, not that it matters since the stripes-to-solids ratio is laughable at this point. Jake lines up his next shot at Grace saunters up next to me.
“What’s wrong, sport? Sad you’re going to lose to girls?
” Her lips carry a glistening shimmer, an effect from the lip gloss she applied between turns.
They act as a homing device, her lips the target and my horniness a missile, the two ready to combust right here in this sticky bar with loud music and zero privacy.
My hand lands on her hip, and I give her a determined squeeze. “Easy there, slick,” I warn. “You haven’t won yet.”
She points her index finger at the table, showing how inaccurate my statement is about to become. “I think it’s safe to call it at this point.”
I scoff. A faux jeer meant to brush off her competitive streak with indifference. But in all honesty, all I want to do is perch her ass at the edge of the pool table and make her spread her legs.
“Your turn, Grace.” Grace turns around at Hayley’s signal, ignoring the looks we’re getting from my friends from every corner.
“Excuse me,” Grace says, confidently pressing against my groin with her hip.
“You’re in my way.” She bends at the waist right in front of me, the cue ball at the perfect angle from where she’s standing.
I take a step backward, enjoying the view.
I take in how the soft muscles on her back move as her arms get into position.
My eyes trail down to her thighs where the bottom hem of her dress has lifted, exposing the soft skin I know feels like silk.
A loud crack splits my thoughts, and when I look up, I see Ro eyeing me with a smirk. Grace whips around to face me, an arrogant grin splitting her mouth in two.
“I guess I should’ve bet something, huh?” She tilts her shoulder and clicks her tongue in smug triumph.
“Yeah? And what would you have bet?”
She taps her finger to her chin. “I don’t know. I was thinking something like a drink but then realized how boring that is.”
“Then something more daring?”
She nods. “Something risky.”
“Hmm…something risky,” I comment. “That would’ve made this game much more interesting.”
She leans forward, and I run my fingertips up her arm, seeing a smattering of goose bumps follow in their wake. She gasps, her lips in that limbo stage between a smile and the round shape it makes when she moans.
“We can still make it interesting,” she suggests, her mouth hovering over mine. “Pretend I didn’t just wipe that pool table with you, and we can set the stakes a little high.”
I squeeze her waist, and it elicits a sharp shudder.
A tremble rattles just beneath her thin dress.
The same dress I want to hike up just so I can get a good look at what’s underneath.
My other hand, the one just hanging at my side, slips across her thigh as soon as I lean forward to move another inch closer to her.
I feel the smooth skin right where her knees touch.
Where it feels fiery and feverish. Her thighs squeeze together, and I move higher, lifting the hem of her dress.
“Watch it,” she warns. “Those hands are getting a little too curious there.”
I smirk, forgetting our wager or how her pool skills surprised the shit out of me.
I almost forget the fact that we’re in public.
That there are people who can see how Grace’s face turns flushed from my wandering hands and how I’m getting just as turned on with my dick painfully pressing against the zipper of my jeans.
“Hey, Andy! You and your girlfriend want a shot?”
Grace covers her mouth to snuff a discreet giggle and ducks her face.
I immediately cup my hand over the back of her head.
To shade her from an embarrassing moment.
To let her know that, as compromising as this moment has just become, the idea of her being referred to as my girlfriend makes me want to kick my feet in the air.
“Yeah, we’ll take a round,” I call to Ro over Grace’s shoulder. I look back down at her, my hand now gripping her nape. My fingers tangle with the soft strands of her hair, and she smiles up at me. “That okay with you?”
I don’t clarify if I’m asking about her new title or a second shot of tequila, but regardless she smiles up at me and answers, “Sure.”
“That was fun.”
I look at Grace over the curve of my arm.
My wrist is draped over the steering wheel, and from this angle, she looks absolutely adorable.
Her hair is a little disheveled with whips of it slashing across her face.
She’s slouched against the passenger seat, her bare feet propped up against the dash.
I see the small Band-Aid she applied before we left still intact, and I want to reach for her toes.
Rub my hands into them and lull her into a peaceful sleep.
“Yeah?”
She nods lazily. “We should hang out with your friends more often.”
“They said to bring you around again. Looks like they like you more than they like me.”
She laughs and her head lolls to the other side where she peers out the window with a dazed look of bliss on her face. “Looks like you’ve got some competition,” she says, through a deep yawn as she sinks lower into her seat.
“Maybe I should meet your friends,” I suggest. “Even the playing field.”
“I don’t have very many friends. The only one I have, you’ve known longer than I have.”
“That’s it?”
“I guess,” she muses. “I have my sister.”
“I can meet your sister.”
She eyes me skeptically. “You want to meet Jade?”
“Yeah, why not?”
“I don’t know. I just…didn’t think you’d want to meet her.”
“Of course I do. Maybe I can babysit your niece with you next time.”
Grace laughs. A sleepy chuckle that makes her voice raspy and sexy. “Sure. If you like watching Blippi for three hours.”
“What’s Blippi?”
Her hand slides over my thigh, giving me a placating pat. “You don’t want to know.”
It’s just after two in the morning. We still have about twenty miles to go to get to her condo.
After that rousing round of pool, the excitement dwindled down to casual talk and nonalcoholic beverages.
We sat around a table, ordered some onion rings and fries and caught each other up.
I told Ro about my interview with Thad after Grace insisted it was more important than I made it out to be.
Grace told my friends about what she does for a living and the hospital she works at.
Jake told me about the cat he adopted. Though adopted doesn’t seem like the appropriate word when the little guy just snuck into his apartment when he had the door propped open to bring in a new coffee table.
We could’ve talked until the sun came up, but as soon as Hayley grew weary against Ro’s side, and Grace started stifling the first of many yawns, I knew it was time to head home.
“You know, we never did decide on the bet.”
I keep my eyes on the road, but I’m sure Grace gets a glimpse of my smirk even in the dark. “No, we did not.”
The dashboard lights glint off her impish grin. “I was thinking the loser has to…” She pauses, clearly in thought, before she excitedly exclaims, “Get me hazelnut waffles.”
“Right now?”
She nods. “Alcohol makes me hungry.”
“Okay,” I answer without putting up a fight. It’s a good thing Marie’s is open twenty-four hours.
I love seeing this side of her. She looks so loose and happy, and I wish I could always see her like this.
I start to wonder if maybe this idea of us and keeping things a secret is what causes her to be wound up sometimes.
Almost as if the constant reminder that no one is supposed to know about us is the cause of the tension sitting between her shoulders.
After tonight, maybe she can see it doesn’t have to always be this way.
Sure, maybe we can keep things quiet for now.
Ease our relationship out to the surface with time and care, but maybe that’s the point.
We can move slowly but keep moving. Get to a place where we don’t have to hide things, and she can always be this way. Buoyant and carefree.
The car continues to whir in the quiet night, and I glance at her before adding, “I’m sorry if that was weird.
You know, them calling you my girlfriend.
” I worried it might have caused a few warning bells to go off in her head, but I loved it.
It made a beam of pride burst through my chest. My girlfriend.
I imagined introducing her that way. To my friends or my family. To anyone.
“Don’t be,” she answers. “I…kind of liked it.”
“You did?”
“Yeah.”
It’s quiet, and when I peek over at her, she’s beaming at me with a sweet smile I just want to kiss. She reaches to hook her fingers over my bicep. She gives me a tight squeeze, and I take her hand in mine, kissing her knuckles gently.