I did a lame little wave. “Hey,” I muttered, focusing solely on staying upright. The transition from sitting in a car to standing on a sidewalk messing with my mind slightly.
She grinned at me, looking me up and down, but not in a bitchy way. Her gaze was warm. Friendly. “Bex has told me heaps about you, I’m glad to finally meet you in the flesh.”
She surprised me by engulfing me in a hug. I wasn’t a hugger. I avoided human contact with strangers if I could possibly avoid it. I wasn’t one of those girls that hugged their friends every time they saw them. I didn’t like it. But maybe it was the alcohol in my system, or the fact that this new Lily was a hugger or the weird sort of comfort in the perfume and alcohol laden hug had me relaxing.
“Sorry about your mom, babe,” she whispered in my ear.
I jolted slightly at the reminder of my old life. The life I’d left behind when I put on clothes I didn’t normally wear, drank things I didn’t normally drink. Of that big sadness I was trying to escape. As if she knew what I was trying to do, the sympathetic look was quickly wiped from her face, and her drunken grin replaced it.
“Let’s party, bitches,” she said as the bouncer moved the rope aside to let us in.
Bex winked at me over her shoulder, and I followed, intent on forgetting everything.
I was on a bar. Like on top of it. Dancing. Grinding. Never in my twenty-three years had I thought I’d be on top of a bar in a crowded nightclub, dancing with my best friend and her posse. I was pretty sure most of them worked at Bex’s club, on account of their mad dance moves. The old Lily, given the choice, would have rather wrestled with an anaconda than dance on a bar. But I wasn’t the old Lily. I was the new and improved and appropriately liquored Lily. This Lily thought dancing on a bar was awesome.
Bex grinned at me. “You all good, babe?” she yelled over the music, her hands going to my hips. Her eyes were bright, unusually bright, with the shots we’d just done I guessed.
I beamed at her, having a feeling it was slightly crooked. I was feeling slightly crooked.
“I’m great,” I yelled back.
We were currently dancing to “Timber” by Pitbull and everyone was cheering us on. There were more cheers as Bex executed the perfect “slut drop” against my body, a term I had learned, and practiced this past week. I threw my hands in the air, twirling, closing my eyes. I soaked it all in. The cheers, the music, the exhilaration that masked the exhaustion. I tried to let it fill me up to replace the emptiness. It didn’t work. It didn’t make me forget about it, but made it seem somehow distant, or more removed.
When I opened my eyes, I was facing the crowd. It was blurry, a mix of bodies moving. But somehow, between the bodies I spotted him. Maybe because he was hard to miss. He wasn’t laughing, dancing, or grinding on anyone. He was standing near the edge of the gyrating sea, his arms crossed and his eyes firmly on me. They captured me from across the room. He had a couple of other men behind him I noticed, one was them was from the strip club, the other I couldn’t see properly and not really worth focusing on. Not at that moment. Instead of turning red, of scurrying off the bar and escaping this situation, the burning behind those distant eyes, I gave him what I hope was a sexy grin. I moved my hips, threw my hands up in the air again, and moved my body against the music.
My eyes didn’t leave his the entire time. My whole body burned with need, and somehow, this new Lily had the boldness to execute this way of communicating it.
“Holy fuck,” Bex shouted in my ear. “That’s the biker? My memory does not do him justice,” she declared in amazement, stopping her movement to gape at Asher. We had talked about him, in great detail this afternoon, when she had stumbled out of bed, but she hadn’t gotten a proper glance at him the night before. Well she had, but she said she’d been too “shitfaced” to remember him. And three years was a long time in Bex’s world, especially when she didn’t dream about him every night like I did. I guessed she was getting an eyeful now.
I didn’t move my eyes from him. “Yep,” replied.
At that moment, Asher’s burning eyes seemed to change, and he pushed from his spot to part the crowd like the Red Sea, his cut, his general menacing air making people scurry out of his way. I didn’t miss the way women’s eyes roved over him as he passed them. He didn’t notice. He only had eyes for me.