Follow Me(27)

I tried to hide my aggravation as I stood up from the booth. I couldn’t sit there and watch Cat stare down at the scratched tabletop all night and offer meek, monosyllabic answers whenever Connor spoke directly to her. That wasn’t why I’d painstakingly glued individual false lashes to her eyes.

“Where are you going?” Cat asked, panic threading her voice.

“To the jukebox,” I said faux breezily. “If I hear ‘Tiny Dancer’ one more time, I’m going to murder someone.”

I stalked away, silently adding that the someone I would be murdering would be Cat if she couldn’t get her shit together. Honestly, sometimes she had the personality of a baked potato.

Be nice, I admonished myself. I didn’t know why I expected anything different. Cat had never been good at flirting, not even at college parties that were little more than Bacchanalian mating rituals set to pop music.

As I stood at the jukebox, considering the Tom Petty offerings, a large hand clamped down on my shoulder. I whirled around to find Connor grinning broadly at me. I glanced behind him in the direction of the booth.

“Where’s Cat?”

“She had to go to the restroom.”

Of course she did. The coward would rather hide than take action.

“Here, let’s get some Journey in there,” Connor said, leaning around me to touch the screen. “ ‘Don’t Stop Believin’’ is my karaoke jam of choice.”

Despite myself, I groaned. “Oh, man, we have to find you some new material.”

“What’s wrong with ‘Don’t Stop Believin’?” He sang the first couple of lines for my benefit, as though I had mistaken it for another song.

“Nothing. It’s just everyone’s karaoke song.”

“Ouch, that hurts,” he said teasingly. “But I’ll let it slide. You know, even though you wound me with that sharp tongue of yours, I’m glad you came tonight.”

“Yeah, without me, your team wouldn’t have gotten that answer about Kanye,” I joked. “You’re desperate for someone up on Kardashian-adjacent trivia.”

“That’s not the only reason,” he said, his voice going husky and his eyelids lowering.

Too late, I realized he intended to kiss me.

“Connor, no,” I said, pushing him away.

“Wait, Audrey, I—”

“I’m going back to the table,” I said firmly, stepping around him. “Cat’s waiting.”

“Audrey,” Connor started, putting his hand on my arm. I shook him off and walked briskly to the booth where Cat sat alone.

“How was the jukebox?” she asked.

I glanced uneasily at Connor, who smiled guilelessly. I knew I had to tell Cat that Connor made a pass at me. She was my friend—right then, she was my best friend—and she deserved to know that the man she was interested in was pressing himself against other women in bars.

But how could I tell her that after she’d laid bare her insecurities? After everything she’d said about her low self-esteem and her mistaken belief that I stole men’s hearts, how could I tell her that Connor had tried to kiss me?

For her protection, I swallowed my bitter discontent and said, “Great. The music selection should improve shortly.”

She smiled, and I felt like a traitor as I smiled back. But what else could I do? I knew how fragile Cat was.

? ? ?

I INVENTED A headache as an excuse to leave the bar. I couldn’t spend another minute there, couldn’t watch Cat pine after this guy who wasn’t into her and who, frankly, wasn’t that attractive anyway. And I couldn’t tell her that he wasn’t worth her time, not without having to tell her about what had transpired at the jukebox, and I really, really didn’t want to tell her that.

I couldn’t break her heart like that. Not again. Even though this thing with Connor was decidedly not my fault, I worried that Cat would see parallels to the Bruce Gellar incident from sophomore year. Back then, Cat had a crush on this guy Bruce, who was cute in a very Jim–from–The Office way, but who also was an idiot who kept a three-foot bong named after a porn star in his room and who had a broken arm from jumping off the frat house roof two weeks prior. He was a bad match for sweet, studious Cat, and I told her so. I assumed she agreed, so later when Bruce went to kiss me at a party, I didn’t think twice. Like I said, he was cute, and I was soaked through with spiced rum and THC. It was one dumb little kiss, but the way Cat reacted you would have thought I’d married the guy. For weeks afterward, I’d felt the fury pulsating off her in waves. If Cat could generate so much anger over some dopey stoner, I could only imagine how enraged she would be about Connor, this man whom she’d been obsessed with for something like seven years.

As I stalked home, I grew more and more frustrated with Connor for ruining the evening. Why couldn’t he have responded to Cat’s overtures like a normal man? She was textbook hot—maybe a little awkward, sure, but so was he—and she was plainly into him. So why had he come on to me instead? I hated that he had inadvertently reinforced Cat’s dumb theory that everyone loved me and that she was unlovable. It wasn’t true, and I worried it was driving us apart. And I couldn’t lose Cat, not when she was the only real friend I had in this city. It was so unfair that Connor was the one who had made a mess of everything, and yet I was the one who had been chased from the bar, who would now have to spend the rest of the night alone and angry.