After several seconds of silence, Harlow asked, “Uh, babe? How did you see his penis?”
Fuck my life.
Pepper giggled into her drink. “Man buns?”
“Oh, God,” I grumbled, dropping my forehead to the table and banging it against the wood a few times before Harlow slid a stack of napkins underneath to cushion the blows. “I walked in on him naked in the kitchen one morning,” I answered, still in my slumped position. “The image is burned into my brain.”
“And you got a good shot of his penis and… man buns?” Harlow asked, trying—and failing—to choke back a laugh.
“Yes,” I answered as I sat up straight, pulling off one of the napkins that had stuck to my forehead. “And it’s so hard to hate him when I know what he’s rockin’ in his jeans. And I really, really wanna hate him.”
“Men suck,” Harlow voiced, holding her drink up in solidarity. It was at that moment I realized I hadn’t gotten that refill I desperately needed.
“Yes, they do,” Pepper added, clinking her glass against Harlow’s hard enough to spill most of its contents onto the table. “Locklaine men, in particular,” she continued, unfazed by her party foul.
Had I been in my right mind, I would have jumped on that breadcrumb, demanding she give us all the dirty details of what was going on between her and Griffin. At that moment, though, I was too focused on getting as liquored up as possible.
“Where the hell’s our waitress?” I asked no one in particular before finally spotting her across the crowded room. Waving—quite possibly flailing—my arms excitedly to get her attention, I yelled, “Hey! Can I get another drink?”
I could have been seeing things, especially considering everyone in the bar seemed to have a twin as the night progressed, but I could have sworn the waitress rolled her eyes before making her way over to us. Well, there goes her tip.
“Sorry, sweetheart. You’ve been cut off.”
“What? By who?” I demanded indignantly to the triplet waitresses standing in front of me—or were there four of them? It was so hard to tell with my chair being as wobbly as it was.
“Bartender’s orders. You three have had enough. You’re starting to make a scene.”
“Oh, that’s bullshit!” Harlow chimed in, downing the last of her drink before slamming the glass back down. Only she missed the table top by several inches, basically throwing the glass to the floor with a loud shatter that had the majority of the bar patrons glaring in our direction. She stared down at the broken glass with a surprised look on her face. “Whoops.”
“I’m gonna have to ask you ladies to leave,” the burly bouncer spoke up as he stopped at our table. His big, meaty arms were crossed over his chest in an intimidating stance that would have had me running scared had it not been for the fact that I was already fuming at the male population as a whole. And at that moment, the asshole with a Mr. Clean head was standing between me and my next gin and tonic. Eff that!
“Back off, cue ball,” I spit nastily, standing from my chair so we were chest to chest—well, chest to hips, actually, seeing as he towered over me by about a foot and a half. But I wasn’t backing down. I was pretty sure I could take him. “You don’t wanna piss me off. I’m two seconds away from getting a stepladder so I can kick your ass,” I said as I drilled my finger into his barrel chest.
“That’s it,” he grumbled, grabbing me by the arm and hauling me toward the door. “You’re outta here.”
I heard my friends shout in protest approximately three seconds before the shit hit the fan.
She was avoiding me again. And what pissed me off the most was I had no one to blame but myself. I’d lost count of the number of times I called her after nearly shoving that pushy photographer out the door. Each and every call went unanswered.
Finally, deciding to put my inability to sleep to good use, I sat behind my desk and attempted to write. Unfortunately, the story I was contracted to write wasn’t coming to me as easily as I’d hoped. The heroine was supposed to be broken and scarred, scared of her own shadow. But every time I sat down to write, a fire came out in her personality that wasn’t supposed to be there. A fire very similar to the one I saw in Navie’s denim colored eyes each time I looked at her.
Leaning back in frustration, I raked my hands through my hair, trying my damnedest to get into the headspace I needed to be in to write. Just as my fingers landed on the keys, my cell vibrated on the desk next to me, the shrill ring echoing through the room like a siren. Not giving two shits how desperate I sounded, I snatched up the phone up without so much as looking at the screen.
“Navie?”
Griffin’s rumble of laughter came through the line, sending a bolt of agitation through me. “No such luck, lover boy.”
I didn’t bother to hide my irritation. “What the fuck do you want? It’s after midnight.”
“I need you to come down to the station. I have something you want.” Typically, hearing he needed me to come to the police station in the middle of the night would have worried me, but there was humor lacing his words together.
“Got news for you, cuz. There’s nothing you got that could make me drag my ass down there right now.”
“That so?” He chuckled.
“Yep.”
“Have a good night then.” Just as he was about to hang up, I heard a familiar voice yelling, “Hey, asshole! Let me outta here!”
A red haze of jealousy clouded my vision. “What the fuck? What’s Navie doing with you?”
“Told you I had something you’d want. See you in a few.” And with that, he hung up.
I was pretty sure I broke the land speed record getting my ass down to Griffin’s station, which was damn near impossible to do when driving in New York, but never discount a determined man. Pulling up in front of the building, I slammed my car into park before coming to a complete stop, not caring in the slightest about fucking up the transmission on my Mercedes S550. The damn thing cost a mint, but at that very moment, I couldn’t care less. It only took a few minutes to clear the front desk and make my way back to Griffin’s. Being related to one of the detectives in the precinct had its advantages.
“What the hell’s going on?” I asked, not bothering with a friendly hello. Griffin was leaning back in his chair, his feet propped casually on his desk as he, Dex, and some of the other guys laughed. I hadn’t paid attention to where their eyes were trained until I heard the voice that made my blood run hot.
“You called my boss? God, you’re such a dick!”
Spinning around, I saw Navie with Pepper and her friend, Harlow. The sight of the bars surrounding them had me stunned silent for all of two seconds. “You threw them in the drunk tank, Griff? Seriously?”
His hands came up in surrender as he dropped his feet to the floor and stood up. “Hey, man, I’m not the asshole here. Dex threw his own sister in there.”
“And I’m telling Mom as soon as I get out of here, limp dick! Just wait until she finds out you locked up her baby girl. She and Wendy are gonna string you up by your balls!” Pepper hollered. Dex’s face paled as the guys standing around them burst into laughter.
“Someone wanna tell me what the hell is going on here?” I asked, looking back at Griff for answers.
He pointed at a young guy in full uniform. “O’Neill got a call for a drunk and disorderly. When he got to the bar, your girl and her friends were three sheets to the wind, trying to take on the bouncer for kicking them out. Gotta hand it to you, man, you got a little firecracker on your hands. They said Navie was clinging to the poor guy’s back like a goddamned spider monkey when they pulled up.”
The retelling of the story sent the guys into another round of hysterics. But for the life of me, I couldn’t imagine Navie getting into a bar fight. Let alone with another dude. “You’ve got to be shitting me. They press charges?”