The truth was, she didn’t want to be a beauty queen. She wanted to be herself, and no one could stop her from being the best her she could be unless she let them, which she sure as hell wasn’t going to. “And if that doesn’t happen, I’m okay with that. I like me just the way I am.”
Tess gave Gina’s shoulders a squeeze. “We like you, too.”
“Lies,” Lucy hollered, the wine obviously kicking in. “We love you—just the way you are.”
“Thank you, Mr. Darcy,” Gina said.
“You’re quite welcome,” she said in the world’s worst British accent, which got the three of them giggling again.
And as inappropriate as it may have been, they continued to giggle and cheer all the way through Kill Bill—because some days, watching a kickass female with a sword and a bad attitude was what a woman needed to get through a heartbreak.
…
Ford stared at the beer mug sitting on the bar. He’d been sitting on the same barstool at Marino’s for two hours in the middle of the afternoon and in that time, he’d watched the foamy head on his beer disappear but hadn’t taken a single drink. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to drink. He wanted to have all the drinks. But he lived too far away from Marino’s to walk, and in his present dark mood he wasn’t sure he could stop at one or two or twenty-five, and he wasn’t getting behind the wheel after that.
So instead of drinking the beer, he stared at it until the lack of condensation dripping down the outside of the mug proved the amber liquid inside was now room temperature. That had gotten more than a few comments from his brothers and sisters in blue who were playing darts in the back and checking each other out in the front. He’d ignored them. He didn’t care what they thought or didn’t think. None of it mattered.
After four days of being shut down every time he tried to reach out to Gina to explain, he wasn’t sure if anything mattered any more.
Of course, he’d known that was a possibility when he’d accepted the assignment from Rodriguez to check out the box Gina’s brothers had left. But knowing something could happen and having it actually happen were two very different things. One result made him drink a few beers. The other made him want to drink a few kegs.
The barstool next to him scraped against the floor as someone scooted it back and sat down. The flash of red hair in his periphery told him who it was before Frankie even opened his mouth.
“When Shannon called and said you’d been sitting here staring at your beer for the past two hours, I thought she was just trying to get in my pants again.” He winked at the woman behind the bar, who just rolled her eyes. “But here you are, like a man about to snap and, oh, I don’t know, join the police department or something.”
Ford cut a dirty look at his older brother. “I am a cop.”
“I know you are, moron. That’s what makes it funny. I give you shit for being a cop. You tell me to go eat smoke. We flip each other off and all is right with the world.” Frankie picked up Ford’s beer and took a long drink, then grimaced and set it back down on the bar. “You are fucking up the flow of things almost as much as this shitty, warm beer.”
He flipped off his brother. The idiot just laughed and clapped him on the back. Then, he threw some bills on the bar and stood up. “Come on, you’re coming with me.”
“Why?” Ford asked as he eyeballed his brother, not trusting where the impulsive giant was going with this.
“Because sitting in a cop bar talking about your feelings,” Frankie said, making the last word sound like an infectious disease, “is not something I want to do.”
That made two of them. “We aren’t talking about my feelings.”
Not now. Not here. Not anywhere. He was going to sit here and stare at his beer and not think about Gina Luca and how he’d fucked up the best thing to have ever happened to him. He put his elbows on the bar and laid his arms on either side of the beer mug and gave it his full attention.
Frankie snorted, obviously unimpressed. “But we will be talking about your feelings, because your head is wedged so far up your ass right now that you are insufferable even for you.”