Craving The Player (Amateurs In Love Book 1)(18)
"When's the last time that you smoked pot? It's been a couple of years at least.” She’s grinning now, sitting on her bar height chair as I do the same.
"Back in freshman year.” I find myself laughing, folding my arms and leaning back. God, we were wild in college. I was wild. Back when everything was as simple as waking up for an afternoon class and then stumbling back home wasted out of your mind the following morning. Weekdays blurred into weekends when you were living on cloud-nine, naive to the world and drunk ¾ of the time. But life is a nasty, vengeful bitch just waiting for her chance to push you off a cliff and watch you drown in a world of responsibilities and credit card debt once you hold that diploma in your hand.
"Those were the days," she sighs, reminiscing.
"Being a grown-up could be worse. My new boss seems super nice. Especially considering he walked in on me having an internal freak out and didn’t say anything about it. Even told me to call him Cole." Pushing a stray piece of hair out of my eyes, I watch her eyes double in size.
"Is that his first name?"
"Well yeah." I nod.
"Yikes."
"Yikes? Why yikes?" I rush, starting to get worried. I've already shot myself in the foot, haven't I?
"He wants to bang you, babe," she replies, her tone too casual for my liking. This is not the time to be casual.
"This is so not a joke, Soph. Maybe he's just the laid back, down to earth type. It's pretty common for employers to tell their employees to call them by their first name, right?"
"Maybe," she starts. "But you're too hot for it just to be a casual thing. I would watch out, S. He might go cray-cray on you."
"Noted," I mumble, dropping my gaze to the cracks running along the wooden table. It looks like somebody attempted to fill them with a brown crayon.
"Want a drink? I do. Be right back!" Sophie is out of her seat and rushing past me before I can reply. As I watch her perfectly curled hair bounce with each step she takes, I find myself tugging at my straight strands, too thin to stay in a curl for longer than five minutes tops. A feeling similar to jealousy flicks at my spine before I shake it away with a lift of my shoulders.
A couple of minutes later, a massive round glass is set down in front of me, the all so familiar slush of a margarita bringing out my smile.
"Thank you." I wrap my lips around the thin straw and close my eyes, nearly moaning when the familiar flavour hits my tongue. I peek open my right eyes when I hear Sophie throw herself in her seat. There’s a wicked smile tugging at her lips and I feel my head shaking before she has a chance to speak.
"What?" I ask, voice shaking with nerves when her eyes keep ping ponging from me to the bar behind my back.
"So, you remember that guy from the other night, right? The one with the hot roommate and the huge di—"
"Yeah, I remember him, Sophie," I cut her off, rolling my eyes. She knows that I haven’t forgotten about him. How could I not? I spent far too long in the bath last night because of him and the memory of his tongue between my legs.
"Well, he's sort of sitting at the bar right now."
"What?” My stomach drops to the floor, heat rushing up my neck. I nearly choke on air when I spin around in my seat and meet a pair of pantie-wetting, bold, amber brown eyes waiting for me. I'm embarrassingly breathless when he grins, a set of adorable dimples resting on both of his cheeks.
He slowly raises a glass bottle to his parted lips as he takes a longer than needed drink before setting it back down gently. He starts to trail his eyes down my figure that I wrapped in a tight fitting maroon dress, and my heart begins to thump against my chest bone. His intensity heats my skin, forcing me to cross my legs when a familiar ache grows between them. I know what he's doing, staring at me like he wants nothing more than to bend me over this table and have his way with me, and fuck do I wish that I don’t want the same thing.
A twitch in his right eyebrow pulls me back to reality, or close enough to it, as he pulls out his wallet and places a stack of cash down on the bar. Braden stands up, confidence dripping from his wide shoulders, and heads for the restroom sign hung above the hallway entrance without a second look at me.
Squeezing my eyes shut, I blow out a shuttered breath and slowly spin back around, willing the throb between my legs to disappear before I soak through my underwear, leaving a wet spot on the stool.
"You're going to follow him, aren't you?" Sophie asks coyly, nodding to the hallway when I open my eyes again.
"Should I?" No, I shouldn’t. Right? I don’t think there’s a right answer here.
Sophie rolls her eyes dramatically before waving towards the restrooms. "Yes, you idiot. Go!"
I can't find the words to reply as my head subconsciously moves up and down. "I'll meet you at home? Or maybe not?"
My margarita remains barely touched as I collect my purse from the back of my chair and beeline it to the bathrooms, not bothering to give Sophie anything more than a quick wave goodbye. I have no idea what I'm doing, going to meet a guy in the bathrooms for a quick fuck, but all I know is that if I don't, I can't help but feel like I'll regret it forever.
My heart beats harder against my ribcage with each step I take towards the bathroom. I turn down the hallway, the heels of my shoes sliding along the tiled floor, my stomach tied in knots. I ache to feel the cool metal of the pen in my jacket pocket, my anxiety flashing like a caution sign with the words, turn around written above it in thick black letters. I can always turn around. I don't have to do this. But I want to. So damn bad that it makes my knees shake.