Chapter 38
THIRTY-EIGHT
Davis
New Year’s Eve
“I’m givin’ you thirty more seconds before I come in there and grab you!” I shout from Sophia’s couch.
“She’s gonna take another hour,” her roommate tells me with a laugh. “She’s been in there since three.”
If I was an asshole, I’d strongly consider putting the top down for our ride…if I was an asshole. Which I’m not. When it comes to her, at least.
I pull the sleeve of my suit back to check the time. “Twelve seconds!”
“Shut up, giant!”
I chuckle at her while I push myself up, walking toward her door, and I rest against it as I tick down the seconds in my mind.
As soon as I hit zero, I grab onto the door handle and shove it open, lifting an arm to lean against the frame of the door while I look at Sophia’s back.
“Time’s up, Sugar,” I tell her with a smirk.
She turns toward me and throws one of her face paintbrushes at me. “You are insufferable!”
I should probably say something to her, but all I can do is stare at her, letting my eyes scan her from top to bottom.
Most of her dark hair is pulled up at the back, with two pieces on either side left out to frame her face.
She’s got silver on her eyelids and her eyes are rimmed with black, and she has on a black dress with long sleeves that cut across her shoulders.
The bottom of it has a slit that damn near cuts all the way up to her hip, and a pair of skinny black high heels give her a couple inches of extra height.
I let out a low whistle, reaching for her hand. “Let’s see ya.” I give her a spin under my arm, watching her smile light up as the bottom of her dress flares out around her. “Lookin’ good, Miss Costas.”
“Thanks, my boyfriend keeps sending me to fancy stores and making me buy things with his money.”
“I’ll bet he likes it,” I wink. “Come on, we got a stop to make on the way.”
It doesn’t take us long to get to our first destination; we stop in front of a line of little shops, mostly clothing, but there are a couple of other places mixed in, like a hair salon and a pastry café. They’re all closed for the night, but it’s fine, we’re not here to shop.
“When you said we were making a stop, I thought you meant to pick someone up or something,” Sophia tells me while climb out of the car. “Not to hang out on a creepy, dark street.”
“We’re here for your graduation present.”
I take her hand in mine, walking down the row of shops until we land on one smack in the middle.
A window takes up most of the front of the storefront, the inside of it hidden by drawn curtains, and a glass door sits at one side of the window.
Right over top of it, spelled out in a classy-but-modern font, it says…
“Sugar Rush Nail Bar?”
“Ava helped with the name,” I tell her.
“Eric! This is— you seriously— Eric!”
She rounds on me, and I think she might give me a good whack upside the head for a second, but I just laugh at her.
Her hands are out in front of her and her eyes are just as wide as they were the night that I found her in Envy – except, they’re not sad anymore.
It’s nothing but excitement behind those eyes.
Pulling the key from my pocket, I hold it out to her. “Go on, take a look.”
She snatches the key from my hand and runs toward the door, lifting up the bottom of her dress while her heels clack against the stone walkway.
She looks like something straight out of a damn movie.
I stuff my hands into my pockets and follow after her while she turns on the lights and takes a look around the room.
“Rowan and Ava picked most everything out in here,” I explain, “so if something’s not the way you want...yell at them, not at me.”
I lean against the threshold of the door and watch while she flows through the room, trailing her hand over the tables, lamps, chairs, shit that I have no idea what purpose it’s supposed to serve.
I’m honestly not sure she even knows I’m still in here with her.
She pulls open drawers and digs through them, opens cabinets and flicks on the faucets near the back to check the water flow.
She spends probably twenty minutes fussing around the salon before she finally comes back to me, wearing a smile so damn big I think she might explode.
“I think this is the longest you’ve ever gone without talking,” I tease her.
Without warning, she launches herself at me, throwing her arms around my neck. “I can’t believe you. You couldn’t have waited until after the party?”
“Hell no,” I tell her, “I’m about to get drunk and spill all my secrets.”
“Let’s get out of here, then,” she says with one more look around the room. “Thank you, Eric. I just...thank you.”
·
Vision is packed more tightly than a can of sardines when we walk in; between the dresses, the suits and the decorations, I’ve never seen so much damn glitter in my life.
Even the dancers in the plexiglass boxes are covered in a thick layer of body glitter in place of their usual outfits, and it lights up with every movement of their bodies under the neon lights.
“Look,” I tell Sophia, pointing to the dancers, “you can find ‘em easier if you lose them.”
“Shut up,” she laughs.
We find Colt near the bar, sipping on a drink while he greets and laughs with some of our guests. I run up behind him, launching myself at him and latching onto his back like a spider monkey, forcing a loud ‘oof!’ from him.
“Happy new year, ya old bastard!” I shout, patting him on the cheek.
“Jesus, Davis,” he laughs, “get off of me.”
I hop down, reaching forward to steal his drink, and I take a sip of it.
Fucking ginger ale?
“Where are wifey and eldest spawn?”
With a shake of his head, he tells me, “They’re not going to make it tonight. I’m only here for show, I’m out of here by ten thirty so I can ring in the new year with Rowan.”
“Take one shot with us.”
“I will toast your shots with my ginger ale,” he laughs, and I roll my eyes at him.
New Year’s Eve is the one night that I used to be able to consistently get the guy to let loose and get more wild than he usually does.
Five years ago, the night ended with a tie around his head, drinking champagne straight from the bottle, and eating cereal by the handful.
I still have no idea where he got the cereal. I felt like a proud father that night.
Tonight, he really does just sip on a damn soda, toasting while Sophia and I throw back shooters.
At ten thirty on the dot, he gives us each a hug and heads home to his wife.
I wanna give him a hard time for always tripping over himself when it comes to her, but I suppose I don’t have much room to talk, anymore.
As soon as he heads out, Sophia reaches into the pocket of my suit, digging around until she pulls out two brightly-colored pills with a smirk tugging at the corner of her mouth. She drops one of them onto her tongue, then the other onto mine, and we swallow them down at the same time.
I watch Sophia while our highs hit, and it’s like she’s moving in slow motion.
While her body bounces to the music, she closes her eyes, running her hands through the pieces of hair that frame her face.
She looks like a goddess, brought down to Earth for the night to hang out with us measly humans.
I don’t even realize that I’m stuck in place, not moving because I’m too damn busy staring at her, until her hands reach out for mine and force me to match her rhythm.
“As pretty as you are standing there,” she teases, “it’s even better when you move.”
We dance with each other -and the people around us – until a five-minute warning sounds over the speaker system that the ball is about to drop.
I grab Sophia by the wrist and pull her through the crowd, heading toward the bar with two minutes to spare.
Grabbing her by her sides, I hoist her up onto the bar and climb up after her.
I bend down to grab one of the bottles from the bar, giving the bartender in front of me a wink while I pull the pour spout of of it, and I throw a swig of rum down my throat before offering the bottle to Sophia.
“To fate,” she says, raising the bottle in the air, “and the games that she likes to play.”
I smile while she drinks down a healthy portion of the liquor, then wrap my arm around her neck with a kiss to the top of her head.
The music stops and the crowd quiets down while the TVs behind us play a thirty-second countdown to the new year, and every single one of us starts to count along with it once the timer hits ten seconds left.
If someone came to me as a kid and asked if I ever thought I’d be here, with a woman on my arm who belongs to just me, staying loyal to her and thinking about her all the goddamn time, I would have told them ‘hell no.’ There are a lot of things I didn’t think I’d have, even up to last year.
This girl…
‘Five!’
‘Four!’
‘Three!’
‘Two!’
‘One!’
I am so insanely in love with her, I don’t even recognize myself.
Sophia is already waiting for me when I angle myself down to meet her in a kiss, slipping my tongue past her lips to taste the rum she drank seconds ago. Somehow she makes it taste sweeter. She makes everything just a little bit sweeter.
“Happy new year, Sugar,” I tell her, pressing a quick kiss to the tip of her nose, which she crinkles at me.
“Happy new year, giant.”
I kiss her one more time before turning toward the crowd, grabbing the rum and raising it over my head.
“Now let’s fuckin’ party!”