10. Ronan
“ Y ou’re lying. It’s impossible to get kicked out of Sin!” Dean, a leggy guy with a protruding Adam’s apple and glaring tan lines, exclaims around a mouthful of his sub sandwich, thin strands of lettuce spilling out of his mouth as he talks.
“And yet superstar here managed it, all by himself.” Connor’s heavy hand falls on my shoulder. “I can’t decide if it was the blow job or you fingering the cocktail waitress that pissed off the bouncers more.”
A raucous chorus of applause and laughter erupts in the staff area behind the Wolf Hotel—a plain fenced-off area of picnic tables and a few planters—as the guys react to Connor’s dramatic retelling of Friday night.
“And then what happened?” Lopez, a guy from customer service whose first name evades me, asks.
He seems decent. The kind who lives at home and does everything his mother asks of him, including marry the good Catholic girl from down the street.
She wouldn’t approve of him sitting with our degenerate lot.
“We left.” I ball up the wrapper of my own sandwich and chuck it into the trash can, then lean back on the park bench and revel in the warm sun. Unlike Connor, I’m not one to fuck around and talk about it.
“Yeah, but?—”
“Come on, now.” I nod toward a group of female employees sitting at the table next to us, pretending not to listen. They don’t need to hear a bunch of pigheaded crew guys talking about blow jobs and fingering.
“And then we swapped,” Connor goes on to say. “And damn, did that girl know how to suck a cock.”
“So, you basically had three chicks that night?” Lopez gazes at me with awe.
“In one form or another,” Connor answers for me, earning my warning look.
A group of women emerges through the back door, and the guys shift their focus off the topic of me and my dick to ogle them.
“How did David manage to land her?” Franco, another crew guy, asks, as we watch the blond who was at Sin with Ryan’s ex stroll out, a flowery lunch bag dangling from her fingers, sharing a secretive laugh with her friends as they take a nearby table.
And so it begins, the gossip, the speculation. These guys all know about it, which means Ryan would have heard about her ex by now. I wonder how she’s taking it.
After this morning’s shower stunt, I shouldn’t care, but I actually find myself replaying the exchange and chuckling. Good for her. Nothing wrong with a little spite fuel.
“I’d tap that.” Connor tips his head back to finish his can of Coke. He lets out a loud belch, earning frowns from their table. Of course, most of them melt away when they see who it’s coming from.
“How do you get away with that?” Franco gapes at Connor.
“Same way I get away with asking a girl if her friend can join.” Connor’s face splits into a wide grin, showing off his dimples. “I’m so damn irresistible.”
Another round of laughter erupts.
I’m reaching into my pocket for my Marlboros when the exterior door swings open and Ryan steps out, her brown paper bag in hand. Heads automatically turn. Her cheeks flush as she quickly seeks us out and begins walking over.
“She eats lunch with you?” I ask.
“Never, which means something must be seriously wrong.” Connor grabs the trash from the space between us, making room for her. “Baby sis! What a rare pleasure!”
“Shut up. I’m only three months younger than you.” She wipes the bench with a readied napkin before sitting down gingerly.
I shake my head.
“What? I just picked up my clothes from the dry cleaners.” Her gaze skims my dusty pants, telling me without words that she thinks I’m dirty. At least she doesn’t sneer.
The other guys have drifted off into their own conversations—which, thankfully, are too low for us to overhear because I’m sure they’d only prove Ryan’s theory that the crew is a bunch of STD-riddled cavemen.
Connor nudges her shoulder with his and asks softly, “What’s goin’ on?”
“Nothing. I … needed to get out of there.” She quickly unpacks her lunch onto her lap. Yogurt, apple, grapes, and a cheese sandwich on thin dark bread that is probably healthy but is cosplaying as cardboard. I’ll bet her meals are as predictable as the sun setting each night.
Connor must be thinking the same thing. “Don’t you ever get sick of eating the same thing every single day ?”
“No.”
His baffled expression is comical. “But don’t you ever want to order a big, greasy burger?”
“No.” She glances at the messy remnants of his pizza sub. “ Do you understand how bad it is for you? It’s full of fat and salt and preservatives.”
Connor lifts his shirt up and smooths his hand over his belly, as hard and sculpted as mine. “Does it look like it matters to me?”
She snorts. “You need to start eating better.”
“Fine.” He offers a one-shouldered shrug. “You cook and I’ll eat better.”
“ As if . It’s bad enough I have to clean the bathroom after him .” She jerks her chin toward me.
“Well, you won’t have much to clean today, what with my two-minute cold shower and all,” I remind her dryly.
“You deserved that.”
I smirk. “Yeah. I did. You win.”
She falters. “Wow, conceding already.”
“What can I say?” I tap my chest. “I have no ambition, remember?”
Her gaze follows my gesture, and the hint of a smile curls her lips. It’s wiped off quickly as the door creaks open and her ex steps out.
David’s eyes skim over the area. They pause on the bench where the three of us sit, widening slightly—I can almost hear the curse in his head—and then he quickly averts his gaze to where his new girl sits.
“Hey, David!” Connor hollers, waving at him. Ryan lets out a noise of mortification. “How was the rest of your night on Friday?”
David’s shoulders sink a little as he heads for the other table, claiming the spot next to Ryan’s replacement.
Connor watches them, perfecting a menacing stare I didn’t think he could pull off. “I should nail her just to piss him off. What do you think, Ry?”
Her face is pale as she takes in the scene, and I can almost see the pieces click in her mind.
Fuck .
She didn’t know.
“I think I’m going to finish my lunch inside.” She begins collecting her food, her hands shaking.
“No. Stay.” I settle my hand on her leg, just above her knee, before she has a chance to stand. “Make him think you don’t care.”
Her body tenses in response. To my touch or my words, I can’t say. Probably both. “You don’t get it.”
“Don’t I?” I study her profile in the noon sunlight. She has smooth skin, not a scar or pimple in sight. And her face is actually a lot prettier than I first appreciated, in a wholesome way.
I know exactly what she feels like. Two weeks after Tasha and I broke up, I was sitting in a bar when she walked in with Anthony—a guy I’d known since I was seven. I had three choices: leave, pick up a chick, or start a fight.
My knuckles took a while to heal.
“If you get up and go, you’re the heartbroken girl who’s running into the bathroom to cry. Is that what you want?” Because it’s not the person who’s been causing me stress at home.
She shakes off my hand from her knee. “No.”
“I didn’t think so. You want to look like the woman who doesn’t give a shit and has moved on already.
Fake it till you make it and all that. Let him be uncomfortable.
” That’s what this sourness is, I’m guessing—a shield.
Unfortunately, she doesn’t know how to wield it properly. Everyone gets the brunt.
“He’s right. Just sit here between the two of us and eat your weird bread and pretend you don’t care.” Connor stretches his legs and, leaning back into the bench, closes his eyes.
With a deep breath, Ryan shifts her focus to her yogurt, peeling off the foil lid. “You saw him on Friday night?” she asks quietly.
“Yeah,” I admit without hesitation .
“So, you knew about her ?”
I can see Ryan replaying our conversation that night, when I brought up her honorable accountant. “Yup.”
Her jaw clenches. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“When was I supposed to do that?” I give her a pointed look. “You were too busy yelling at me and plotting revenge. I figured you’d hear about it soon, anyway.”
“Still, I would have liked more warning.”
“We should get off on another foot, then. A friendlier one.”
Her gaze cuts to me before refocusing on her lunch. “Do you think …” Her voice drifts.
“That he was with her before you broke up?” I finish off the question that would be on my mind if I were in her shoes. Hell, I did ask it. To this day, I’m not convinced Tasha and Anthony weren’t fucking around behind my back.
She peers up at me, blinking repeatedly. I don’t need to say it aloud; she’s figured it out.
“This is humiliating,” she whispers under her breath.
“Forget about that loser.” I collect her apple and toss it in the air once before setting it back gently in her lap. “He doesn’t deserve you.”
Her brow flinches as if she wasn’t expecting that answer. After a long pause, she says, “I’m trying, but it’s not easy.”
“Find a fuck buddy,” Connor drawls lazily. “Works like a charm.”
She scowls. “Great brotherly advice.”
“What?” Connor shrugs. “You know, everyone thinks you’re banging Ronan. You may as well start.”
“No, they don’t.”
“Am I lying, Ronan?”
I can’t tell if he’s being serious or being … Connor, but I’ll play along. I stretch my arm along the back of the bench and start twirling the ends of Ryan’s brunette hair through my fingertips. It’s silkier than I expected. “I wouldn’t say everyone thinks that. Not yet, anyway. ”
“Bullshit.” She shifts her head away, making me lose my grip.
I reach for another strand and continue toying. “What did you expect? We live together. You’ve seen me naked?—”
“Because you flashed me.”
“Great foreplay, by the way,” Connor offers. “Good job, man.”
“And everyone knows what those dirty crew guys are like,” I mock. “And yet here you are, eating lunch with us. You came out to us .”
“To Ronan ,” Connor interrupts, egging her on. “A lot of flags, if you ask me. Everyone’s gonna be talking.”
Ryan’s cheeks begin to flame. “This is payback for the shower this morning, isn’t it?”
“Yup.” I steal her apple right off her lap and take a big bite. And I’m going to enjoy every second of it.