Bait (Wake, #1)(51)

“Yeah, I haven't been in San Francisco more than four nights in probably the last two months. It's been wild. Why?”

“I don't know. I just...I don't know. I've been traveling a lot, too.” She huffed. “I guess we were bound to run into one another. Me with the food. You with the drink. Makes sense.”

I hated that she rationalized it. It was more fun when she thought it might be some cosmic force, but no. She was only befuddled because she hadn't thought of it.

It was incredibly difficult to be in the same space as her and not have her in my arms. They ached to be holding her, my mouth was dying to kiss her, but I kept my distance. It was excruciating.

I said, “Let's get a drink. Let me help you get this all set up first.” She only nodded and smiled.

She was right. She didn't have much. Two, vertical signs like ours, and a cover for the table that had pictures of their client's restaurants. She unpacked a few pamphlets and propped up a few things and that was it. She'd said that there would be more tomorrow.

That was true.

I’d seen from pictures online a small buffet and some of their favorite signature idea dishes. They displayed food with before and after menus. It was genius. Their company overhauled older, tired restaurants into new fresh versions of themselves. It was actually pretty f*cking cool.

As soon as she finished tidying things up for the morning she asked, “Can we walk around first?”

“Sure,” I said.

“Then we'll get drinks.”

“I said a drink,” I corrected, being innocuously argumentative.

She deadpanned, “I always overdo it when I'm with you. Why stop now?” Then laughed outright. “That was bad,” she said as she cackled. “I'm sorry. I'm sorry.”

I laughed, too, mostly at her laugh. It came straight out of her gut. Boisterous and loud.

My phone stole my attention away from her giggles. It was Aly. I silenced it and put it on vibrate. I didn't have time to talk to her. Not when everything was working out so well.



“So who is that guy with you? What does he do?” Blake asked me as we sat at the hotel bar in the early afternoon. We'd gone straight from the convention center to the restaurant in the hotel and bellied up to the bar. The hotel was full of other vendors and their inhabitants, making the bar loud and crowded, even for that early hour in the afternoon.

“He's an old friend. He doesn't actually work for Bay. He just doesn't have anything better going on and I got him to tag along. These things are better with backup.”

We didn't order drinks when we'd ordered our food. I didn't because she didn't. It wasn't until Troy swung by our end of the bar, that he coerced us into getting real drinks. And by coerced, he really only said, “Hey. You guys need drinks.” Then he lifted his half-empty Heineken in the air to be dramatic. “I'll buy first round,” he said. It definitely wasn't his first round.

The best part about a bar being loud and over-populated when you were there with a girl, was when it was so loud that you had to lean in to talk. I stood at the very end of the bar, because there weren't any more seats open and I let Blake have the one on the end. I stood and ate around the end side and moved back and forth as the wait staff came to pick up their customer's drinks. They didn't seem to mind though, so I didn't see any reason to move.

Blake ordered a BLT. She's a chef and she ordered a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich. Classic.

“Hey, I like what I like,” she said when I teased her about having a simple palate for a chef.

“Don't you want to see what that chef back there is really up to?”

“Nope. Not really,” she admitted while taking her last bite. Around a full mouth she spat, “I come in peace.” She tried to squelch herself from laughing at her own joke and a piece of bread flew from her mouth and landed on her plate. It was both disgusting and adorable.

When she finished swallowing and taking a drink of her beer, she said, “What’s amazing about a BLT is that they're always good. The perfect ratio of meat to veggie to bread. It does the trick every time.”

“Are you staying in this hotel?” I asked out of nowhere. All right, it wasn't out of nowhere. I'd been dying to know. I thought she would. I hoped she would, but I wasn't sure.

Even with my new flare for stalking, I recognized that would be too much.

Troy and I were staying there, but we had two rooms. It was part of his agreeing to come with me that he had to have his own room. Troy liked women and I didn't need to be around anything that might make me uncomfortable around possible clients and industry people the next day.

One time when we were in high school, he had sex with a girl on the floor of my bedroom. I knew he was a good dude, when he explained why he hadn't done it on the bed. “Dude, I didn't even know that girl. I wasn't about to mess up your shit. Besides the floor worked just fine.” Then he gave a few air humps to the closest wall for good measure.

“I'm staying here. Isn't everyone?” she answered.

I didn't give a f*ck about everyone else. My only concern was if she was sleeping there. “Yeah, I guess they probably are.”

“Are you going to that thing tonight? That party thing?” Blake asked.

I didn't really want to.