7. #IamCaesar #2
Jackie tilts her head up, her eyes confused behind her glasses. “How is that not offensive?”
Her na?ve question busts the table up laughing. Flynn pulls her to her feet. “I’ll explain it while we dance.” He takes her hand and leads her to the dance floor.
Ian puts his beer down. “Dancing sounds like a good idea.”
“You go ahead.” Trish waves him away without looking at him, her eyes still moving between Vance and me. She tends to take people watching to a whole new and creepy level.
Sighing, Ian tugs an unwilling Trish up and away from the table. “Good luck,” Ian mumbles to Vance as they move past.
Vance does that personal space invasion that some men do, where they turn their whole body toward you and lean forward, blocking you in so they can’t be ignored. It’s usually annoying as hell and a good reason for a well-placed knee into their junk.
But this time, a thrill runs through me.
I’m a disappointment to feminists everywhere.
“You look good.” His eyes travel low and high, taking in my high-waisted skinny jeans and one shoulder cropped T-shirt with my hot pink bra strap on display.
I fluff the wild blond mess that is my hair over my shoulders. “I do, don’t I?”
He smiles. It’s a good smile. A smile that does things to a woman’s lady parts. Made worse by the fact that I know all too well just how happy my lady parts could be if I gave in to it.
I shift in my seat and regroup. “So what was with the Elvis impersonators earlier?”
He huffs out a laugh. “To be honest, I’m not all that sure.” He runs a hand through his hair. “The boys and I just arrived when they were dancing. Then someone yelled ‘rat,’ and we were nearly trampled by the horde of sequins and pleather.”
“There was a rat?” I push my drink across the table.
“No.” He laughs and slides it back to me. “Turns out someone snuck in a cat.”
“A cat.”
“Yep.”
I pick up the drink and take a large swallow.
“Huh.” I look around, soaking in rustic night club glamor—antler lights over our table, a cowboy hat-wearing DJ, and a mixture of crystal chandeliers and disco balls over the crowded dance floor.
This place definitely has a cooler vibe than Big Texas. “You come here often?”
“Never been here until tonight.” The crinkles are back around his eyes. “Came here just for you.”
“Hmmm.” I was afraid of that. At the wedding it was easy to compartmentalize him as “man I’m done with.
” But now, knowing he’s Helen’s son, finding out tidbits of his upbringing and career motivation, seeing first-hand how well he holds his own with my somewhat intrusive, wisecracking girl posse—I’m interested . He doesn’t fit in the box anymore.
A waitress comes by and asks if we need anything.
He shakes his head, the silky black hair moving as he does.
I want to touch it. I tighten my grip on my glass.
Because even if I acknowledge my expanding interest in him (interested enough to want to hit it a few more times), I also know that our six degrees of Kevin Bacon is a lot closer than I’d previously thought.
Which means complications are inevitable.
I pole dance with his mother.
I’m best friends with his co-workers.
He was in high school when I was born.
He turns his attention back to me, his deep brown eyes holding mine. His eye crinkles deepen.
Ah, fuck it.
Like flipping a switch, I get my flirt on, fluttering my lashes at him. “Blow Job?”
He chokes on his own saliva. “Excuse me?”
Vance
My lip curls involuntarily when the bartender slides the Blow Job shots across the bar.
“What, your masculine pride can’t take it?” Rose smirks, grabbing one of the shots.
“No, my teeth.” I eye the heavy dose of whipped cream on top. I’m not a health fanatic per se, but it’s a professional hazard to keep in shape. “How much sugar you think is in there?”
“Sure, the sugar.” Rose rolls her eyes. “Just admit you don’t wanna do a Blow Job.”
Leaning against the bar, I give my best condescending look.
“Listen, Rosie-girl, as you love to point out, I’m older than you.
I’m not one of the immature boy-men you’re used to.
I’m secure enough in my masculinity to shoot a whipped cream topped drink, no matter what it’s called.
” To prove it, I push off the bar and turn to line up my shot.
“You want to shoot Blow Jobs? Let’s shoot Blow Jobs. ”
Rose looks impressed by my words, proving there’s a first time for everything. She follows suit and centers her shot glass as well. “Fine, old man. Let’s do this.” But when she reaches for her glass, I slap her hand away. “Hey, wh?—”
I tsk. “If I remember Jules and Jackie explaining this to me, and I should, because their aside during an EVA briefing about sexually named alcoholic drinks was fascinating” —I roll my eyes remembering that particularly long training session—"the correct way to drink a Blow Job is hands-free.” I arch a brow at her, daring her with a look. “Am I right?”
“Are you mansplaining a Blow Job to me?”
“Are you not doing it right?” I fire back, clenching my abs at the look she throws me, expecting a gut punch. I turn my hips in toward the bar in case she decides to aim lower like she did at the strip club. It’s a dangerous business riling Rose West up.
She glares at me a second longer before squaring up to the bar, shot glass lined up to her center. “Fine.” A few tendrils of hair fall forward when she begins to lean over.
“Wait.”
She huffs, straightening up. “Now what?”
I bite my lip to keep from laughing at her exasperating expression and brush her hair back, fisting it in a ponytail. “It’s the gentlemanly thing to do.”
If her eyes narrowed any more, they’d be closed.
With her hair out of her face, she bows forward, her rear end snuggled nicely against my crotch. I grunt at the contact, and she wiggles her ass, probably paying me back for irritating her.
But she really doesn’t need to, because as comical as I imagined the whole process of doing Blow Job shots would be, the reality of watching her lips wrap around the rim of the glass as she sucks just hard enough to form a seal so she can lift the glass off the table hands-free is torture enough.
She straightens, tilting her back toward me and swallowing the whipped cream and Baileys in one go before leaning forward and dropping the glass back down.
Shrugging my hands off her hair, she turns to me. “Your turn.”
By the look on her face, I can tell she knows that the last time she said that to me, she rode me like a champion rodeo queen in her family home.
The vivid memory has my eyes locking on her lips.
She licks them. Slowly.
I want nothing more than to kiss her. And if I had brought my 4Runner out tonight, maybe I would. But with no place to take this kiss any further, I pull my gaze away and square up to my own Blow Job shot.
One, because I told her I would and I’m not going to back down. It’s like I have to prove to her, and myself, that just because I may be more years older than her than I’d originally thought, I can still hold my own.
And two, because I’m still reeling from Jackie’s reminder on why I became an astronaut. And the sacrifices I knew I’d have to make when I became one.
I was seventeen when Herrington flew up and determined not to follow in my dad’s military footsteps. I was going to be an engineer. I was going to build things, not bomb things or be bombed. I wasn’t going to leave the people I loved behind.
And then Herrington changed it all. Photographs and videos of him carrying the Chickasaw flag in zero gravity lit up the news stations.
I watched him, on NASA TV, help build the spine of the International Space Station over various spacewalks.
He was a builder, just like me, but he was building in space .
And that called to a part of me I must’ve inherited from my fallen in action father.
“Chicken?” Rose taunts, pulling me away from my sobering thoughts.
The crowd that gathered around a hot girl doing Blow Job shots “the right way” laughs as Rose begins to bawk, bent arms flapping.
And just like that, Rose has me smiling and living in the moment.
I bend over and suck the shot up and back, managing not to choke on the large lump of whipped cream sliding down my throat. When the shot glass pops away from my mouth, the crowd’s applause is louder than their previous heckling.
“Fucker,” Rose says with a smile. I laugh, pulling her into me for a side hug, getting a high off the energy she emanates. She’s like the sun, radiating energy on all the people in her orbit. I can’t help being drawn to her.
The blaring music changes to a slow song.
Across the bar, Jules is shuffling her motorcycle boots in time with Holt’s cowboy ones, Trish’s eyes are closed as she rests her head on Ian’s chest while he rocks her to the music, and Jackie’s mouth is in constant motion.
Probably applying a multi-nuanced algorithm to the two-step’s rhythmic oscillation.
The thing they all have in common is the grin they’ve put on their dates’ faces.
A grin I’m pretty sure is just like the one I’m sporting.
A glance in my peripheral shows Rose also looking at her friends, a frown where her smile should be.
I’m not too sure what to make of that. And I’m too caught up in Rose’s orbit to find out.
“Another round?” I ask, bringing her eyes up to mine.
Sighing but now smiling, she turns back to the bar and slaps the surface. “Line ‘em up, old man.”