“I—” She stops talking long enough to glance behind her, finally feeling me looming. “Duke?” It takes her brain a few moments longer to register me. “W-What are you doing here?”
She goes to stand, then thinks better of it, plopping back down as quickly as she started to rise.
“Sorry to interrupt,” I apologize, all kinds of awkward.
“Well, youdid,” a young woman with jet-black hair and dark eyes glares at me from across the table. She is not having whatever she thinks I’m about to serve up.
Everyone is glaring at me tonight.
I feel victimized by my own bad choices.
“Um.” Posey anxiously takes the napkin off her lap and sets it on the table to keep her hands busy. “Duke, this is Molly—Eli’s girlfriend. And that’s Anna, who just had a birthday. And this is Anna’s roommate, Brigid.”
“Delicious cake,” I can’t help saying.
The girl with the jet-black bob-cut gives me a curt smile.
“And this is Kate. Kate Cohen is actually Eli’s sister.”
Ah. This I did not know.
“Your ears must be positively burning,” Kate Cohen muses with a genuine smile.
Thank God. Anally.
I need one of those in this group. “They were. I also got an earful from Mrs. Galvin.”
Posey looks up at me from her chair. “Mrs. Galvin—don’t tell me she’s here, too.”
“Ha, no. But I borrowed her car.”
Posey’s giggle sounds manic. “And what do you owe her for that favor?”
“New sheets for her bed, from Costco.”
All the women at the table have surprised expressions on their faces.
“And I had to give the valet fifty bucks to be seen in it. I’m hopin’ he leaves it unlocked down the street with the keys in the ignition,” I joke.
A few of the ladies crack a smile.
Good.
Progress.
“So—what are you doing here?” Molly demands peevishly. “We’re in the middle of girls’ night, and after this, we’re going barhopping so we can find Posey a man.”
Find Posey a man?
Er.
I’m not sure what to say to that. Did she not tell her friends that she and I… that me and she…
Fucked?
“I was hopin’ to have a few words with you.”
“And you came all this way to do it when you could have called her on the phone?” Molly rolls her eyes. “Oh wait—that’s right. You never asked for her number when you snuck off in the middle of the night.”