Me: No stress, another time.
Summer: How about you take someone else? I can set you up? (Wink emoji)
I laugh and groan at the same time. No way is that happening.
“Is that Summer?” Joel asks, bringing me back to the bar. Shit, I’d completely forgotten I wasn’t alone. He can’t possibly see my screen, can he? “Ask her if she wants to have lunch on Friday?” he adds.What the fuck?I look down at my phone and back up at him.
“It’s not Summer,” I say, with no clue why I’m lying.
“It’s not Summer?” he repeats, his eyebrows practically hitting the ceiling by how much he’s not buying it. “So, you’ve got yourself another girl then?”
“What, no!? There’s no one else,” I’m quick to respond. He smirks and I realize my mistake. “No one ingeneral,” I correct.Not even Summer.
“Okay, well, if you happen to text Summer, ask her about lunch.” He laughs and takes a swig of his beer. Why does he want to have lunch with her? Is there something going on? I’m too curious for my own good, so I ignore her question about a date for me and instead ask about Joel.
Me: Joel asked if you want to have lunch with him on Friday???
Dammit. What’s with the three question marks? One will suffice.
Summer: Tell him I’d love to.
Great. That makes me feel worse. That was so easy, but I got a no.
“She says she’d love to,” I state without looking up from my phone. My tone issobitter I can taste it. I feel Joel’s smirk without having to witness it.
“Great! Thanks,” he replies nonchalantly.
My gaze shoots to his, and I stare him down.Don’t ask, don’t ask.“Why are you having lunch?”I ask.
“We have lunch together every Friday. Ever since we had the class together at the beginning of summer,” he says with a shrug, like it’s no big deal.
“How did I not know this?” I accuse.
He shrugs again.Asshole.
And why would he get me to ask her if they always have lunch? Does he want to annoy me? What an ass.I want to tell him to stay away from her. I want to punch the little smirk off his face. I want to…Shit!I see what he did, and I stupidly fell for it.
He’s watching the emotions play out on my face and starts laughing out loud. “Man, you have it so bad.”
“Fuck off.”He’s not wrong.
“So, you like her. It’s no big deal,” he continues, really pushing my buttons.
“She’s just a friend. She isn’t interested in that.”
“Are you sure about that? After what I witnessed the other night…”
Fuck!“You saw that?”
“Everybody saw that. I may have been drunk, but it was hard to miss the back and forth between you all night. And then the kiss. Good on you. It was so full on, I don’t even think you can call it a kiss. Kiss is tooPGfor what I witnessed. And don’t think I didn’t see you disappear into the restroom.”
I cringe as I remember how that panned out. “If that was true, you would have also seen us come straight back out.”
“Oh yeah, I saw that.” He chuckles to himself. “You may not have succeeded, but the intent was there. Not like you at all, really.”
“What does that mean?” I ask, though I can guess the answer. I don’t have sex in bathrooms, or in clubs, or parties, or…basically anywhere public.
“It means you like her, and you’re hooked.” He stares me down.