Dirty Rowdy Thing (Wild Seasons, #2)(26)

We greet Mr. Furley, order our drinks, and head to the booth en masse. Finn follows, unsure.

“This seems very ritualistic,” he says, opting to lean against the side of the booth rather than sit next to me.

“You stay here long enough and you’ll get the routine down. It’s a little complicated, though.” I hold up my fingers and count off the steps for him: “You walk into the bar. You order whatever you want as you pass Fred over there. You then walk to this table.”

He nods slowly. “Walk, order, walk.”

“Good puppy.”

Finn surprises me by touching his thumb and forefinger to my chin and gazing down at me sweetly before turning to Ansel.

Our drinks show up, and we decide to order some food, and then Lola and I spend some time catching up in the comfort of the booth. She recently signed a contract with Dark Horse for a comic book series, and my first response, pre-Google, was “I’m so happy for you!”

My second response, post-Google, was to nearly crap myself. Although this happened almost as soon as we got back from Vegas, I still sometimes can’t get over what a big change this is going to be for her life. In only a few months, the press will start: She has some interviews, a couple of trips to little boutique shops, and then her baby, Razor Fish—for which she’s been drawing characters since she could hold a crayon—will be launched into the wild.

While we talk, Finn wanders back over, leaning against the booth and listening to the tail end of our catch-up.

I peek over his shoulder. “Your drink is empty.”

He shakes his glass, looking at the liquid sloshing over the ice. “No, I have a little left.”

“Oh, just mine is empty, then.” I hand it to him, eyes wide and innocent.

He laughs, taking the glass.

“Tell them to put it on my tab,” I call to him as he heads over to the bar.

Finn throws me a dirty look over his shoulder. “I got it.”

“Smooth, Mistress Vega,” Lola says, her eyebrows raised.

“Harlow Vega?” Not-Joe asks, blond brow quirked.

I nod, popping an olive into my mouth and repeating, “Harlow Vega,” around it.

“Did your parents ever want you to go to college, or did they plan for you to go straight to the pole?”

I cluck my tongue at him, licking my fingers. “Careful, Not-Joe. Your boner is showing.”

“Oh!” Not-Joe says, turning to Lola. “Speaking of boners. I’m excited for your book to be out and selling like crazy, and then at Comic Con it will be unreal. You’ll be in your chick author getup, strutting around. Wearing a sexy mask, and spand—”

“Are you high?” Lola asks.

I realize it’s rhetorical so it cracks me up when Not-Joe answers, “Well . . . yeah.”

“I’m not going to deep-throat a corn dog and then go make out with a bunch of chesty girls in Catwoman costumes just to show I can hang with the comic guys.”

Oliver chose this moment to arrive and looks a little stunned, eyes wide behind his thick frames. He stares at her, gaze softening with what clearly appears to be admiration. His speechless reaction makes me do a slight double take. Is quiet, sweet Oliver beginning to fancy Lola? I meet Mia’s wide eyes and can tell she’s wondering the exact same thing. Swear to God, if my head weren’t so f*cked-up right now, I’d be all over getting these two together.

“But would you let a comic book guy make out with you if he wore a Catwoman costume and deep-throated a corn dog?” Ansel asks, tilting his head to Oliver. “Theoretically speaking.”

“Reckon the fanboys will be gobsmacked regardless,” Oliver deflects, collecting himself. “Corn dog deep-throating or not.”

Mia scrunches her nose, shaking her head at Oliver. She almost never understands his thick Aussie accent, which is ironic considering she’s married to someone who speaks English as a second language.

“Happy fanboys no matter what,” Lola translates in shorthand.

I remember the first night we hung out with Oliver—after Mia and Ansel disappeared down the hall and it was just me and Lola, way drunker than the two strangers in front of us. After closer inspection, we realized Oliver had a black Sharpie flower drawn on his cheek.

“I’m curious about the flower,” Lola said when he’d settled onto the seat next to her. He wore his usual thick-rimmed glasses, black straight jeans, dark T-shirt. I was almost positive it wasn’t a face tattoo . . . almost.

“Loss a bit,” he said cryptically, and then returned to silence. It took several beats for me to recognize that he’d said, “Lost a bet.”

“Details,” Lola said.

And Finn supplied them happily. Apparently they’d just done an abbreviated version of the biking trip across the States that brought them together six years earlier. “The deal was, whoever went through the most tire tubes had to get a Sharpie face tattoo. Oliver here can’t help but treat a road bike like a mountain bike. I’m surprised his tire rims don’t look like tacos.”

Oliver shrugged, and it was clear to me he couldn’t care less that he had a flower drawn on his face.

He was definitely not there to impress anyone.

“Do people call you Ollie?” Lola asked.

Oliver looked at her, completely dumbfounded by the possibility of this nickname. She may as well have asked him if people call him Garth, or Andrew, or Timothy.