“I have to cover for the customer service manager. I’ll be reconciling cash registers until midnight.”
“Ari come on! These are the dying days of our youth! In a couple of weeks, we’ll be scattered to di erent parts of the country, shut in all summer so we can study for the bar twenty hours a day. And when the test is finally over, it’s o to the real world. Don’t you want to enjoy these last days?”
Ari chuckled at her impassioned speech. “You make it sound like we’re going o to battle aliens on a distant planet.”
Jasmine crossed her arms over her chest and leaned back in her chair. “When you’re a baby prosecutor drowning in your impossible caseload, you’ll wish you’d listened to me.”
Ari
couldn’t
suppress
her
amusement.
“Your
transformation from midwestern girl to nagging Cuban grandma is going very well, I see.”
Jasmine chuckled before wiggling her eyebrows suggestively. “I’m pretty sure Nia would really like to see you one last time.”
The heat that had abated from Ari’s
cheeks returned with a vengeance. “I tried that friend with benefits thing.” She drank her last sip of co ee. “That’s definitely not for me.”
“I’m pretty sure you said she wanted more than a hook up buddy,” Jasmine pressed.
Ari bit the inside of her lip. “Yeah, but she’s going to DC.
That kind of long distance is not realistic, you know?” She didn’t tell her she’d been burned by that scenario before.
“Okay, okay, but won’t you come out? Just for a little bit?”
Ari couldn’t resist her pouty face. “Ugh, fine. How can I say no to a cheap keg and good friends?”
She’d pay the price for the late night in the morning, but Jasmine was right. At twenty-six, she was closing the chapter on her student life and embarking on something new. Something with significantly fewer kegs.
Gathering their things to leave, Ari regretted having lost sight of Sloane. As soon as she pushed her chair back, it nailed one of her friends in the thigh.
While the guy rubbed his leg, Sloane floated up behind him just a few inches short of his six-foot height. “Careful.”
Sloane’s voice was deep and taunting. “You don’t want to be charged with battery before you have your cute little shield to protect you.”
Ari glared at the guy exaggerating his injury before narrowing her gaze at the smirking Sloane. “I don’t know how you passed Crim Pro.” Her pulse throbbed in her neck as she stood taller. She couldn’t overcome their height di erence, but she’d be happy to cut it down by an inch if she could. “Battery requires intent. I can’t form the intent to hit him if I didn’t know he was there.”
Sloane’s throat danced when she chuckled. They both knew Criminal Procedure was one of the classes where Ari
beat her to the top spot. It hadn’t mattered in the final overall rankings, but it had been a pretty good day.
“It looked to me like you laid in wait until we were leaving. If that’s not evidence of intent, I don’t know what is,” she replied, her hazel eyes gleaming.
Gritting her teeth, Ari had to stop herself from sneering.
“Come on,” Jasmine said, wrapping her fingers lightly around Ari’s wrist.
Sloane’s shit-eating grin spread like a plague across her face. “You better listen to Samwise.”