“Have a seat, Austin,” I said. “Shit—I mean shoot. I forgot the napkins. Be right back.”
“I work as a dancer, but it’s just a temporary thing until I find something better,” Naya went on. “I know exactly where you’re coming from. We all want something better for ourselves. Is your family here with you?”
“My brothers are here.”
“Not married?”
I almost cringed as I grabbed a stack of paper napkins from the kitchen and returned. Austin was still standing beside the table. When I sat down and took a sip of wine, he pulled back his chair and relaxed in his seat. The legs creaked as he settled.
Austin stared at my finger as it tapped repeatedly against the wood table. If he remembered anything about me, he knew I was a finger-tapper whenever something was irritating me. On a table, on a wall, on my leg, on a keyboard—didn’t matter.
It was just my thing.
Naya and I had grown used to the music blaring from the neighbor’s apartment, but with company over, it was embarrassing. Apparently, the cop hadn’t put enough of a scare into them, so we sat there listening to the Who singing about a teenage wasteland.
“Naya, you left your phone over here last night,” I said conversationally.
Relief washed over her lovely face. “Oh, thank God. I was looking everywhere for it this morning. I get so many important calls and half of them don’t leave messages. That’s my biggest peeve.”
“Naya doesn’t have a home phone,” I pointed out.
She shook her head and savored a small sip of Merlot. “Who needs a home phone? You don’t even have a cell phone. Get with the times, girl. Where did you put it?”
“On the bar next to the deck of cards,” I said, pointing over my shoulder. “Hope you don’t mind that I used it.”
Lucky for me it didn’t break when I threw it earlier, thanks to the lawnmower man who hadn’t cut the grass in over a month.
“Damn, Naya, this is really good.” I took a second bite of creamy noodles and made an approving moan. Only Naya could whip up something decadent from a can of soup. “Naya’s a great cook,” I said to Austin, giving her a few brownie points with him. “If you ever taste her lobster, you’ll probably want to make babies with her.”
“Lexi,” Naya said with a giggle.
Austin twirled his pasta but didn’t take a single bite of it. That was his pissed-off look. I’d seen it plenty of times. He’d given it to a guy who called me a hot piece of ass when I was seventeen and walking out of a convenience store. Austin had left me in the car with my Popsicle while he and Wes got out, locked the doors, and yanked that redneck out of his green Ford pickup truck. They dragged him around the side of the building and when they returned, Wes had a bloody lip and Austin’s knuckles were bruised.
“Don’t you like it?” Naya asked.
The fork clicked against the plate and Austin stood up. “I’ll be right back.”
“Where are you going?”
He lowered his chin. “Stay here.”
When he left the apartment, Naya finished her wine. “He’s a beast of a man, Lexi. This is your old friend? Hot tamale, girly. You’ve been holding out on me. Any feelings still there?”
“I don’t even know him anymore,” I said with a pitiful sigh.
“Can I get to know him?” She lifted her hands defensively and laughed. “If you want him, Lexi, just say the word and I’ll take my dinner and go.”
“Nah. He’s practically family.”
“I thought you liked big, strong men?”
“Beckett was the exception. I don’t usually go for all the roughnecks,” I lied. Well, at least not all the time. “Remember Lance, the guy who worked at the coffee shop?”
“The painter?” she said with disdain. “Come on, Lexi. Aspire to something greater.”
“Muscles don’t make the man.”
“True, darling, but they give you something nice to hold on to,” she said.
“I just can’t be with a guy who worships his body more than mine.”
Naya raised her hand for a high five and we laughed.
Which abruptly stopped when the silence became deafening.
“The music cut off,” she said, stating the obvious.
I swiveled around to look at the clock. “That’s a first. It’s not even close to midnight.”
Naya chewed on a bite of spaghetti and froze when the heavy sound of footsteps came up the stairs. Naya got nervy about unlocked doors. We knew it was probably Austin, but when the knob turned, her eyes went wide.
But it was him.
Austin gave us a demonstration of swagger as he crossed the room to claim his chair. Naya did a little finger swirl around the rim of her glass. She must have been used to crystal, because mine was made of glass and barely made a squeak.
“You forgot to lock the door,” Naya pointed out.