20. Riley #2
The bartender has their back to us, but I can see all the bottles around them. They turn around with their creation and it’s a small-sized bucket. Yes, BUCKET, complete with a handle and a few twirly straws coming out of it.
“What the fuck is that?” I ask Mabel in disbelief.
“A Long Island iced tea in bucket form.” She laughs as she waves her hands in front of the bucket in a flurry. “I wanted to try it, but the girls didn’t feel like splitting it. Luckily, you are my drinking buddy tonight.” She pokes a finger in my chest.
“Lucky, maybe. You might need to carry me back after this.” I laugh as I lift the bucket from the bar and turn to go back to the booth. Fortunately, the crowd of people behind us see the bucket and part so we can get through.
Setting the bucket on the table in the booth, everyone stops their conversations and stares at it with as much disbelief as I did.
“What the fuck is that?!” Cole exclaims, his mouth in a smirk.
“A Long Island iced tea, in bucket form,” I reply, holding back a smirk, too.
“Good luck there, bud,” he replies and goes back to his beer.
“It’ll be fine! We don’t have to finish it.” Mabel bounces from behind me and sits down on the free bench seat. The booth is dark with a dim hanging light in the middle, and bench seats create a ‘U’ shape, each couple sitting on a bench to themselves but talking together.
“I was just letting everyone know that Shelby, Dave, and Nikki finally decided on joining us for the last few days of the trip, and then will head to MudPit with us before the end of the break,” Sophia informed us.
“That’s awesome. I miss working with you and Dave.
” I shoot playful daggers in Javi’s direction, to which he pretends to be real interested in the ceiling, then smiles.
Unable to keep up the charade. Last season, Rayna and Javi came in and offered Sophia, Dave, and Micah roles in his team.
And while it was absolutely the best opportunity for three wonderful people in my team to progress their careers, I still like to give him shit about it.
“I needed that championship-winning team.” He shrugs back.
“You’re an asshole. That’s what you are, champ,” I say, popping the ‘p’ at the end.
Mabel takes a sip of the bucket and pushes her hand into my arm. “Oh! This is really nice! You should try it!”
I take a straw that is close to me and nod in agreement. It is actually really nice. Not too overrun with alcohol that it is all that you taste, but this will definitely be my only drink tonight.
We sit around talking some more before a song comes on that the three girls want to go dance to together.
We move so they can exit the booth and sit back down to mind their bags.
“Relegated to bag bitches,” Cole muses, checking the time.
We have been out for about two hours and he already pre-warned everyone he would be a short stay as he didn’t want to leave Otto on his own for too long.
“Okay, I have about an hour left in me and then I am out,” he announces.
“I am going to hit the dance floor with the girls to make it worth pushing my bed time out so late.” Javi moves so Cole can get out of the booth.
“You good?” Javi asks me as I suck on the straw.
I nod. “Yeah. All good. If you want to go dance with Sophia, go ahead.” I wave him off to the direction of the dance floor .
He pauses briefly, but can see that I am okay and heads over to the dance floor.
I glance over at the dance floor and I can see jack shit.
It’s crowded now and none of them are visible from this booth, set far away in the depths of the nightclub.
I take another long sip and sit back, enjoying the buzz, when a flourish of honey brown hair and sparkling black approaches fast.
“Hey!” she sings out and bounces down close next to me, her leg instinctively finding its way over mine under the table. My hands go instantly down to squeeze her thigh, enjoying she wore a dress and I can feel her warm skin under my fingertips.
“What are you doing here? You should be dancing and enjoying yourself,” I reply, leaning towards her more.
“Fleur and Cole are doing some choreographed routine, Sophia and Javi are in their own world slow dancing to the fast song, and I needed a drink. Plus, I didn’t want you to be on your own for too long.
” She smiles at me, putting her hand on my neck and playing with my hair that falls longer at the back, something she does when we are watching TV together, and I melt into it every time.
“Hope you recorded some of that dance routine for me. I could do a lot of blackmailing with it.” I wink at her, my hands absentmindedly massaging her thigh.
She bends down for a sip of the bucket and says, “Left my phone in my bag here. No where to stash a phone in this dress.” She motions to her outfit and I wish she didn’t.
Her leg on my knee has caused her dress to bunch up shorter, giving me a delightful view of her toned, olive thighs, which my mind fills in a lot of blanks.
“Ohhh! I forgot!” she shrieks, moving her leg and sitting on my lap to reach for her bag tucked into the back corner of the booth. She turns to face me and places something on my head.
Confusion grips me as I am lost to what she’s put on my head. “What is it?”
She laughs and in a hurried flash of movement, pulls her phone out, snaps a selfie of us, and spins the phone to me to show us looking pretty cute together.
Her brilliant smile looks at the camera, hair slightly ruffled and me staring at her with white fluffy cat ears on a white fluffy headband atop my head.
I burst into laughter. “Why do I get these? Shouldn’t you be wearing some black cat ones? ”
“It was a bet. And I just won,” she said triumphantly, closing her phone and putting it away.
“A bet? With who?” Curiosity gets me.
“Fleur and Sophia. More so Fleur. We were out shopping and we made a bet on who would put it on one of the guys first. But you have to keep it on until they get back,” she informs me.
“What do you get now that you won?” I ask.
“Five second head start at the next go-karting day.” She smiles.
“We’re rubbing off on you. Getting into the competitive, racer mindset,” I say, wrapping my arms around her waist, bringing her into me, our faces close together.
She doesn’t pull away, but brings her lips to mine and I sink into the kiss, giving it all I have.
I want to show her how much I like her, enjoy her company, being around her, in any capacity.
Her fingers entwine in my hair and I am going to lose it and be indecent in the back of a nightclub. I break away and raspily say, “Probably better not keep doing that. I’ll definitely get kicked out for taking it too far.”
She smiles sweetly, but rocks her ass into my crotch and my head tips backwards, resting on the wall of the booth. “You’re such a sadist.”
“No idea what you are referring to.” She laughs and slips off my lap to the side. I am thankful I wore jeans to contain my excited dick.
We lean in to drink more of the bucket when Cole and Javi approach, with Fleur and Sophia behind them. My attention is immediately drawn to their heads where Cole has a pair of fluffy, pink bunny ears and Javi has black, fluffy panda ears.
All the girls groan at the same time, realising they all did the ears at the same time.
“Does this mean we all get five second head starts, or no head starts?” Sophia asks Fleur.
“Why don’t you all take the head starts?” Cole offers, removing the ears and putting them on Fleur. “Okay, I am heading off now. Catch you all later.”
Fleur waves her hands after she finishes her drink and collects her bag. “Walk me back to the hotel. I am done.”
“We’ll go too,” Sophia offers, reaching over for her bag.
“How about you two?” Javi asks .
“We’ll finish the bucket and head back soon. Thanks though!” Mabel answers, getting up to hug the girls as we all say our goodbyes.
“Thought you would want to call it a night,” I say once they leave us.
“No, I want to dance with you on the dance floor and not be worried about who is watching,” she replies, keeps her eyes glued to their disappearing heads. Then she grabs my hand and her bag, and we leave the bucket and the booth behind.
She leads me to the dance floor, and I wouldn’t care if she was leading me to my death. I would gladly follow her anywhere, no questions asked.
We dance and she moves more freely than when I first arrived, closer to me, touching me.
She doesn’t shy away from my hands on her, drawing her to me, pressing her against my body.
A slow tempo song starts playing, and she encircles her arms around my neck as mine are around her waist. Our faces back to impossibly close proximity and she leans in to kiss me.
This time I have nothing holding me back in any capacity, and my arms tighten their grip as her fingers thread through my hair.
Breathless, she pulls away. “Did you want to get out of here?” she whispers as she pulls my hair, and I have not been more ready in my life.