DUNCAN
Red’s was packed with the sort of crowd that had been coming there every Wednesday night since long before I was sneaking in there with a fake ID back in the day. The place was a standard college town sports bar, rock music coming from the speakers and the bartenders working their asses off refilling pitchers and pints for the twenty and thirty-somethings lined up at the bar.
There were definitely some gorgeous women among the crowd. Lots of cute as hell college girls in tight jeans and short skirts with their hair down and inviting smiles on their faces. Just about every one of them cast at least one glance over at my brothers and me, their eyes moving from one to the other to the other as they considered which one of us they wanted most.
We were used to it. Hell, it was almost funny by that point. That night, though, there was only one woman on my mind.
Dream.
I scanned the crowd as I sipped my beer, hoping to spot her. The odds of her being there weren’t great, I knew. Dream had never been the partying sort of woman. She had friends in high school, but she’d always been more inclined to spend her evenings home working on her art rather than going out and causing trouble like my brothers and I often did.
Even though I didn’t want to get my hopes up, I kept looking.
“What about her?” Evan asked, nodding toward a slender blonde standing near the bar, looking around aimlessly in the way that people tended to do when standing at a bar waiting for a drink.
“She’s cute,” Jay said. “But…I don’t know.” There was a distinct lack of enthusiasm in his voice.
“You don’t know what?” Evan asked with a grin. “She’s gorgeous and she’s been glancing in our direction ever since we walked in.”
Jay sipped his drink, staring off into space.
“I don’t know,” he repeated.
Evan scoffed, shaking his head before taking a pull of his own beer.
“Don’t make that noise at me,” Jay said. “If you’re so keen on the woman, why don’t you go over there and say something? She’s looking at you just as much as she’s looking at me.”
“Don’t feel like it,” Evan replied. He didn’t hesitate for a second, but I could sense he’d shot out the words without thinking them over.
“Don’t feel like it?” Jay asked with a grin. “Dude, you’re acting like I’m not your damn brother and can’t see right through your BS. Since when the hell have you not felt like going after whatever beautiful woman happened to be nearby?”
“Since tonight. I’m here to chill out, have some beers, and relax with my brothers. Not every night has to be about girls.”
Jay laughed, and I could tell right then he wasn’t about to let up.
“Not every night has to be about girls, which is why you’re pushing me to go after her. Bud, I’m getting the distinct impression you’ve got some, ah, ulterior motives with what’s going on here.”
Evan shrugged. “Think whatever you want. Sue me for trying to get my brother set up with a gorgeous woman.”
I flicked my glance up at the blonde, her eyes still going back and forth between the three of us. There was a tinge of impatience on her stunning features, as if she couldn’t figure out why the hell not one of the three guys that she was all but putting herself on display for weren’t coming over to say a word.
Finally, some broad-shouldered college guy in loose jeans, a faded T-shirt, and backwards hat, stepped from the crowd and positioned himself in front of her. I watched as he put the moves on, tilting his head toward the other side of the bar. The girl smiled in a way that made it clear she was happy to talk to him, and eager to go sit down where he wanted.
Before she did, she leaned to her right to take one last look at us. The expression on her face seemed to say, “you sure?”
None of us took the offer, however. Disappointment flashed on her face for a moment before she turned back to the college guy. He stuck out two fingers to the bartender, and within seconds a pair of drinks was on the bar in front of them. He took one, she took the other, and then he put his hand on the curve of her hip and led her into the crowd, and they were gone.
“Well look at that,” Evan commented. “Totally blew it. What, you afraid to shoot your shot or something?”
“Worry about your own business,” Jay replied in the slight snarl his voice took on whenever he was irritated.
“Just messing with you, man!” Evan said, clapping his hand down on Jay’s shoulder. “Go after the girls, don’t go after the girls – doesn’t make any difference to me.”
Jay narrowed his eyes slightly, as if still trying to figure out what was going on.
Just at that moment, Dream stepped out from among the crowd and stopped whatever argument was happening in its tracks.
Damn, did she look good. Some of my earliest memories of Dream were of her in the grips of her awkward phase when her limbs were all kinds of gangly and her mouth was more braces than teeth. She was cute back then, sure, in a “kid sister you want to look out for” kind of way.