28. Darcy #2
“You doing okay over there?” Tyler asks, leaning in just enough that I know he knows exactly what’s happening.
“Great,” I swallow. “Totally great.”
“You look a little warm.”
“It’s crowded.”
Tyler’s laugh brushes my ear.
I grab the menu off the table just to have something to focus on as Mack’s thumb traces a slow circle on my clit above my panties.
I am going to die in this booth. People will have to explain this to emergency services.
“I’m gonna look at appetizers,” I announce to absolutely nobody.
Tyler’s hand slips beneath the hem of my skirt to rest lightly at my hip as I lift the menu in front of my face, and at almost the exact same moment, I feel Mack ease my panties aside.
Both of them.
In a booth…with our friends. At the table.
These are the choices I’ve made.
I stare at the appetizers section with the kind of concentration usually reserved for final exams while Mack slides a finger in my slick center.
Tyler follows a different path, taking over for Mack’s thumb and rubbing with the kind of pressure that is going to be a genuine problem in the next thirty seconds if they don’t—
My grip on the menu tightens.
Nobody is looking at you.
You are sitting normally.
You are a normal person having a normal time at a bar. You are absolutely not about to—
Mack adds another finger with maddening patience while Tyler never breaks his rhythm, and my entire body locks up so suddenly I have to disguise the sound that escapes me as a poorly timed throat clear.
My free hand clamps around Mack’s forearm beneath the table, my knuckles turning white against his shirt.
Tyler doesn’t miss a beat. He slips an arm around my shoulders and pulls me into him, kissing me right there in the middle of the booth, his mouth swallowing the sounds I’d been seconds away from making while my body gives out in one sharp, dizzy wave that leaves me gripping the edge of the table trying desperately to resemble a functioning person.
Oh my god oh my god oh my—
Tyler pulls back slowly, his thumb brushing once across my jaw before turning back toward the table like kissing me senseless in the middle of a bar was a perfectly normal thing to do. Underneath it, Mack’s hand settles back onto my knee with two light pats.
I look over just in time to catch the corner of his mouth lifting over the rim of his beer.
Cocky bastard.
Coop is openly staring at us. Even Marco’s looked up from his phone, and across the table Bex is watching me over the rim of her drink with an expression I’ve known since we were twelve.
Oh, no.
“Well…” Coop says.
“Coop,” Mack warns.
“I wasn’t going to say anything.” He raises both hands. “Darcy, you good over there?”
I just had an orgasm in a public booth. I am, in every conceivable way, the furthest a person has ever been from okay.
“Fine,” I insist. “Great. Who wants wings?”
“Already ordered them,” Marco says, and looks back at his phone.
Bex continues to watch me like she’s already drafting tomorrow morning’s interrogation.
I look down at the menu still clutched in my hands.
I am never coming back to this bar.
Ryan arrives around nine-thirty, slipping into the booth beside Marco like he’s been there all night.
“Look who finally decided to show,” Tyler says.
Ryan steals Tyler’s beer before answering.
“Some of us still had to work.”
Tyler rolls his eyes.
“Help yourself.”
“Planning on it.”
He takes another sip before his attention drifts around the table, landing on Bex.
“Mack said there’d be a journalist.”
Bex laughs.
“Is that your idea of an introduction?”
Ryan reaches across the table.
“Ryan.”
“Bex.”
She takes his hand.
“You’re the best friend.”
“Last I checked.”
Ryan doesn’t drop his gaze.
“Nice to meet you, Princess.”
Bex just blinks at him. I notice it immediately because Bex almost never reacts before she’s decided how she wants to.
“Princess?”
Ryan shrugs slightly and reaches for Tyler’s beer again.
“You’re sitting here like you already own the place.” He takes another sip. “But you’d absolutely leave a Yelp review if the service disappointed you.”
Bex laughs before she can stop herself, surprised enough that she lowers the wine glass afterward like she needs a second to recover.
Interesting.
Choosing to see this as not my problem.
Coop immediately points across the table.
“See? I told you Ryan was weirdly observant.”
“I’m choosing to hear that as complimentary,” Ryan says.
“It wasn’t.”
Bex is still looking at Ryan, more curiously than polite now.
“I’m not sure if I should be offended by that nickname.”
“You’d know if you were supposed to be offended.”
Bex folds her arms and leans back into the booth looking at him over the rim of her wine glass. I know that look. She’s collecting evidence.
Ryan just looks back at her, looking entirely too pleased with himself.
Absolutely not my problem.
Coop tries to give Ryan a proper introduction anyway, which Ryan waves off with the hand not holding Tyler’s beer.
The night unwinds gradually after that. Nobody announces they’re leaving. It just starts happening once the pitchers empty and jackets reappear and the music shifts into that last stretch of the night where everybody gets sentimental or reckless.
Coop’s the first to call it, loudly announcing his departure to people who’d already watched him put his jacket on five minutes ago. Marco follows after another beer, steadying himself briefly against the table while he stands.
“Good meeting you,” he tells Bex. “Don’t be a stranger.”
“Me? Never,” she grins.
Trick gives her one of his small nods on the way out, which somehow feels warmer than half the conversations people usually have at bars. Ryan buttons his coat beside the booth and looks at Bex again.
“You here all weekend, Princess?”
“Why?” Bex asks. “Running out of observations already?”
“Not even close.”
“And here I was beginning to worry.”
“You worry about me already?”
“Don’t flatter yourself.”
“Too late.”
Ryan smirks.
“See you around, Princess.”
I watch him go before looking between Tyler and Mack.
“…Should I be worried?”
Tyler follows my gaze.
“About Ryan?”
“About Bex.”
Tyler smiles.
“Nah. Ryan’s harmless.”
I look at Mack instead.
He doesn’t answer right away, just slips into his jacket, thinking about it a second longer than I’d like.
“I wouldn’t worry.” Mack shrugs. “Ryan gets bored easily.”
“Usually.”
Mack reaches for the door before anyone says anything else.
“Come on,” Tyler says. “It’s freezing.”
A minute later we’re out on the sidewalk, the cold slipping beneath my jacket the second the door swings shut behind us. We decide to walk anyway, Tyler beside Bex, Mack beside me, all four of us falling into step automatically.
Tyler and Bex are already halfway into conversation about Philly when we hit West Broadway, Bex saying something about the restless feeling of realizing you’ve outgrown a city before you’ve figured out where you actually belong.
Tyler listens with that genuine focus of his that makes people keep talking.
I only catch pieces of it because Mack’s hand brushes mine once between us. Then again. The third time, his fingers simply thread through mine, warm and loose and so natural it feels like we’ve been doing this for much longer than we actually have.
My stomach flips anyway. That part is apparently still evolving.
Tyler falls back beside us sometime during the last block, his hand finding the small of my back beneath my jacket as we cross the street, and just like that, I’m walking home between them.
Mack’s fingers are still laced through mine. Tyler’s hand stays warm against my back, absentminded and steady, like neither of them has thought twice about where they’re supposed to be.
My brain, meanwhile, is still trying very hard to file this entire situation under something that resembles normal. It’s not going well.
We stop when we get to the stoop. Bex is midway through a story about one of her editors while Tyler laughs, both of them already carrying on like they’ve known each other longer than a few hours.
Mack steps closer to me while I’m watching them. When I turn back, he’s already looking at me. He tips my chin up with two fingers and kisses me gentler than he ever has.
“Goodnight,” he whispers against my lips.
I don’t even realize I’m smiling until I answer.
“Goodnight.”
By the time Mack steps back, Tyler’s already there, tucking a loose strand of hair behind my ear before leaning in to kiss me too.
“Text us when you wake up. I’ll make breakfast.”
I laugh softly.
“Okay.”
Tyler smiles, the kind that reaches his eyes, before he and Mack head toward the front door, still talking about something from the bar as they disappear inside.
Bex loops her arm through mine as we head upstairs.
“Tell me again how this isn’t a thing?”
This time, I have no answer.