Lizzie Blake's Best Mistake (A Brush with Love, #2)(2)
Lizzie let out a deep breath. “Nope, I can’t blame him. Can only blame myself,” she said with fake cheeriness, patting Indira’s knee and pushing up from the couch. She headed toward her room, making a mental note to schedule an appointment with her psychiatrist. It’d been a while since they’d evaluated her medication. She was on a nonstimulant drug that wasn’t always as effective at bolstering her focus as she wished, but other options like Adderall gave her nasty side effects she had a hard time dealing with.
Lizzie made a second mental note to actually take her medication instead of continuing on ADHD’s most ironic loop of forgetting to take the thing that will help her remember.
“Well, do you want to order a pizza or something?” Indira asked, getting up and following Lizzie. “Or we could splurge on a twelve-dollar bottle of wine, maybe? I bet that would cheer you up.”
Lizzie laughed as she pulled her T-shirt over her head and flung it in the general vicinity of her buried hamper. “Twelve dollars? In this economy?” she said. “I’ll take a rain check, sweets. I have a date tonight,” she added, digging through a pile of wrinkled tops by her closet door.
Indira made a crooning oohh sound. “With who? That last guy that called himself ‘the milkman’ during sex?”
Lizzie shuddered at the memory. “Fuck no. I told him to get off me and blocked his number as soon as he asked me if I was ready for his ‘whole milk.’” Lizzie made a gagging face that was more real than pretend. “No, this is just some guy on Bumble. Strictly looking to break the dry spell.”
Lizzie had a strong sex drive and had used her early twenties perfecting a mutually beneficial dynamic of no-strings-attached hookups with carefully vetted people found on apps. But an unusual monthlong stretch of celibacy had her crawling out of her skin with want for the contact of another body. Another pair of hands making her feel good. The pressure and reassurance of another person’s weight over her rioting nerves.
“Don’t you get sick of having to figure out a new person?” Indira asked, bending to pick up a crumpled skirt by her feet and holding it to her hips. “Wouldn’t a consistent fuck-buddy be more ideal?”
Lizzie snorted. Going back for seconds was a recipe for disaster, leaving the door open for people to decide she’s a little too emotional. A little too crass. A little too much.
For her to get attached and hurt.
“No way. You know I’m a one and done. Slam and scram. Hit it and quit it. Wham, bam, thank you, man. Screw ’em and—”
“Yes. I know all of that to a graphic degree,” Indira said, holding up her hands to stop the onslaught. “I’m begging you, if you bring him back here, make it to your bedroom. I can’t walk in on another naked person on our couch at two a.m. and expect my heart to last me.”
“You got it, boss,” Lizzie said with a salute, slipping a pale blue sundress over her shoulders.
“But leave your phone-tracker thing on so I know where you are. Or where to find you if you get murdered or whatever,” Indira said, tucking the skirt behind her back like a dirty thief and moving toward the door.
“Duh,” Lizzie said, twisting her long red hair into a knot on the top of her head, giving her armpits a quick whiff in the process. “You can borrow that skirt by the way!”
Chapter 2
LIZZIE was four minutes and a half a drink away from giving up on dating. Or hooking up. Or whatever the hell phrase best described her desperate need for an emotionless, physical connection to a willing body.
Hooking up would probably suffice.
But she was being stood up.
Nate, five foot ten, brown hair, ironic mustache, who liked hiking (barf) and dogs (aw), was standing her up.
Lizzie finished off the last of her drink and gnawed on the ice cubes, knee bouncing and eyes fixed on the door. Being stood up wasn’t something she was used to, but it was happening with greater frequency, which was simultaneously disruptive to her regularly scheduled sex life and a kick to the tit confidence-wise.
She checked her phone for the seventy-third time, then tossed it back in her purse, resigning herself to the fact that he was ghosting her.
Whatever. She’d have one more drink, head home, and find comfort in her vibrator. It wouldn’t exactly calm the dead sprint of her thoughts the way the press of another body did, but an orgasm was an orgasm.
The bartender darted up and down the length of the bar, pouring shots and sliding beers across the glossy wood. She watched him work, quick and efficient. Focused.
If she were working behind the bar on a busy Friday night like this, she’d be forgetting drinks and neglecting patrons. Her sticky brain would latch on to a pretty face or the beat of a song, never following through the way the current bartender’s quick hands reached and grabbed, seeming to do one hundred things at once in a fluid sync.
He walked past her, and she tried to catch his eye, but he was looking ahead. She’d get him on the next pass. The place was packed, Center City’s young professionals grasping at all the joys (discounts) happy hour offered.
A warm body pressed a bit into her side to get closer to the bar, and the crisp brush of a cotton shirt against her bare arm made her want to purr at the contact. Lizzie needed touch like plants needed sun. It was fundamental.
The bartender rounded back, and Lizzie leaned forward to get his attention, but before she could get any words out, the body next to her spoke.