Butterface (The Hartigans #1)(67)
“Billionty?” Lucy giggled and took a drink of wine.
“It’s the longest unit of time ever,” Gina said in the most serious voice she could manage at the moment. “I’m a wedding planner. You can trust me.”
Trust me. The phrase fell out of her mouth and boomeranged on her, smacking her right in the feels. That’s what Ford said she could do with him. And she had. You’re an idiot, Regina.
“No, you’re not an idiot,” Tess said, sitting up and turning to face Gina.
Shit. She’d said it out loud again. No more wine for her.
“Yeah,” Lucy chimed in. “Don’t be mean to my friend. She’s a pretty cool chick.”
“I’m sorry, guys.” She let out a sigh and did some fast blinks to get rid of the tears making her vision all watery. “This whole thing just brought back a lot of stuff I thought I’d gotten past. You know, I thought if I acknowledged my own undateabilty that it would make everything easier.”
“But it didn’t?” Tess asked.
Gina just shook her her head. The double friend sandwich hug was immediate. She really did have the best friends.
“Nope, the thing is—” she said, getting a mouthful of Tess’s auburn hair as she spoke, cutting off what she was about to say.
That set off a giggle fit between all three of them that lasted through a trip to the kitchen for more chocolate and then coming back with everyone’s glasses refilled—Lucy with wine, Tess with Pibb Xtra, and her with water.
“What’s the thing?” Lucy asked once all three of them were back on the couch.
Gina took a deep breath and tried to think of prettier words to use, but the only ones that came to her head were the plain, unvarnished, rough-around-the-edges truth. “The thing is that this is me. Sure, I could have plastic surgery and tweak this and alter that, but I don’t want to. More power to anyone who wants to go that route, but it’s not for me. I don’t want to get a makeover. I don’t want to change my face. I just want a man who sees me and doesn’t see the ugly girl. He sees me and he loves me, not in spite of my face but in part because of it.” She’d never verbalized it before, but it was true, and putting the words out there lifted a weight off her shoulders that she hadn’t realized she’d been carrying.
The truth was, she didn’t want to be a beauty queen. She wanted to be herself, and no one could stop her from being the best her she could be unless she let them, which she sure as hell wasn’t going to. “And if that doesn’t happen, I’m okay with that. I like me just the way I am.”
Tess gave Gina’s shoulders a squeeze. “We like you, too.”
“Lies,” Lucy hollered, the wine obviously kicking in. “We love you—just the way you are.”
“Thank you, Mr. Darcy,” Gina said.
“You’re quite welcome,” she said in the world’s worst British accent, which got the three of them giggling again.
And as inappropriate as it may have been, they continued to giggle and cheer all the way through Kill Bill—because some days, watching a kickass female with a sword and a bad attitude was what a woman needed to get through a heartbreak.
…
Ford stared at the beer mug sitting on the bar. He’d been sitting on the same barstool at Marino’s for two hours in the middle of the afternoon and in that time, he’d watched the foamy head on his beer disappear but hadn’t taken a single drink. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to drink. He wanted to have all the drinks. But he lived too far away from Marino’s to walk, and in his present dark mood he wasn’t sure he could stop at one or two or twenty-five, and he wasn’t getting behind the wheel after that.
So instead of drinking the beer, he stared at it until the lack of condensation dripping down the outside of the mug proved the amber liquid inside was now room temperature. That had gotten more than a few comments from his brothers and sisters in blue who were playing darts in the back and checking each other out in the front. He’d ignored them. He didn’t care what they thought or didn’t think. None of it mattered.
After four days of being shut down every time he tried to reach out to Gina to explain, he wasn’t sure if anything mattered any more.
Of course, he’d known that was a possibility when he’d accepted the assignment from Rodriguez to check out the box Gina’s brothers had left. But knowing something could happen and having it actually happen were two very different things. One result made him drink a few beers. The other made him want to drink a few kegs.
The barstool next to him scraped against the floor as someone scooted it back and sat down. The flash of red hair in his periphery told him who it was before Frankie even opened his mouth.
“When Shannon called and said you’d been sitting here staring at your beer for the past two hours, I thought she was just trying to get in my pants again.” He winked at the woman behind the bar, who just rolled her eyes. “But here you are, like a man about to snap and, oh, I don’t know, join the police department or something.”
Ford cut a dirty look at his older brother. “I am a cop.”
“I know you are, moron. That’s what makes it funny. I give you shit for being a cop. You tell me to go eat smoke. We flip each other off and all is right with the world.” Frankie picked up Ford’s beer and took a long drink, then grimaced and set it back down on the bar. “You are fucking up the flow of things almost as much as this shitty, warm beer.”