“No idea.” Mia cuts me off. “He and Finn went out for beers earlier and back he comes with it. He hasn’t taken it off in hours, but has refilled it three times. Stand back ladies”—she bends, digging a beer out of the cooler—“he’s all mine.”
And at the mention of his name, I catch sight of Finn across the room. He must have come in with them. My stomach does an annoying clench-warm-flip move when he laughs over something Ansel says and lifts his arm to adjust his baseball hat. His bicep flexes and my stomach ignites. I chug half my beer to make the feeling go away, imagining the hiss and steam as the metaphorical flames are put out.
“I didn’t know Finn was coming tonight.” But what was I thinking? That they would leave him at home alone? Finn is just one more complication my already frazzled brain can’t quite handle right now.
Mia twists the cap off her beer and watches me, a little smile in her eyes. “Is that okay?”
Civil. Band of misfit buddies, I remind myself. “You know it’s fine.”
“As long as it doesn’t try to speak, right?”
Laughing, I nod. “Right.”
Lola rubs my back and then tilts her head, indicating she’s going to join the people gathering to play cards. “You good here?”
“Yeah,” I tell her. “I’ll probably just hang back and watch you guys be awesome.”
After making sure I don’t need company, Mia follows her, and I’m left alone in the brightly lit kitchen, watching the small group around the dining table. Ansel licks his thumb and then begins dealing cards, tossing them expertly across the table to each player. I feel a little lost, like I shouldn’t be here but unable to go home, either. I’m too tight in my skin, too warm in this apartment.
A shadow dips past me and when I turn, I find a bleached-blond mohawked guy bending to pull a wine cooler out of the fridge.
“Interesting beverage choice,” I say. “Passion punch!”
He turns and laughs, nodding in total agreement. He’s gorgeous, if not a little dirty, but his smile showcases a mouthful of perfect, white teeth—a La Jolla hippie boy. Of course. “Have you ever had these? They taste like juice!”
The cheap wine cooler is a newfound, amusing novelty? Definitely a La Jolla hippie boy.
“I’m Harlow,” I say, extending my hand. “And if you want juice, why don’t you just drink juice?”
He shakes it. “There is very little trouble to be had in juice,” he says, before pointing the bottle at his chest and adding, “Not-Joe.”
“ ‘Nacho’?”
“No. Not. Joe. Oliver, my new boss? Calls me Joey. I think he’s fucking with me, like a kangaroo thing because he’s Australian? But it isn’t my name.”
I wait for him to give me his real name—obviously he can’t have known Oliver long enough for him to be called Not-Joe more than a few months—but he doesn’t. “So you go by Not-Joe?”
“Yeah!”
“All the time?”
“Yep.”
“Well, okay then, it’s nice to meet you.” Despite the fact that I fear Not-Joe is a few synapses short of an invertebrate, I look him over and instantly like him, anyway. He’s wearing board shorts and a T-shirt and clearly has absolutely nothing but earnest giddiness to be right here, doing exactly this. “So you’re going to work at the store?”
When he nods, gulping down half his wine cooler in a single swallow, I add, “Tomorrow should be pretty exciting for you guys.”
“It’s gonna be good. Oliver is the best boss. Or, I can tell he’s going to be. He’s just so laid-back.”
I look across the room at where Oliver is concentrating so hard on the cards in his hand I fear they might incinerate. Unlike Finn, who doesn’t seem to worry much about his appearance, but tilts the odds in his favor by keeping his hair cut short, his face usually clean-shaven, Oliver is hot in an accidental sort of way. I haven’t really decided if he’s as oblivious about it as he seems, but I do know he’s a pretty intense guy, and given that he’s only thirty and opening a high-profile comic store in the hippest area of San Diego, I don’t think he’s quite as laid-back as Not-Joe is hoping.
I look back to the hippie boy. “What are you going to be doing there?”
“Selling comics and stuff.”
I laugh. This guy unsupervised must be a sight to behold. “Oh, you mean working the front?”
“Yep. Working the front. And sometimes the back.” He laughs to himself. “The re-gis-ter,” he sings.
“Exactly how high are you, Not-Joe?”
He stops moving and seems to do a lengthy mental inspection. “Pretty high.”
“Want to do some shots?”
Because really, there’s no way I’m ever having sex with Not-Joe, but my second favorite thing to do with guys is watch them get drunk.
We line up a couple and toss them back, just as I see Finn stand from the table. He tosses down his cards, clearly folding as he pulls off his cap, scratches his head with the same hand, and then slips it back on again. I hate that I find the maneuver so completely sexy. When he looks up and sees me in the kitchen with Not-Joe, he narrows his eyes for a beat and then starts to walk toward us.
“Oh, shit,” I mumble under my breath.
“Does the Hulk belong to you?” Not-Joe asks, tilting his head.
“Not even a little.”
“Still. Look at the intensity in his eyes,” he whispers drunkenly. “The lion prowls.” With a little shiver, he seems to clear his trance and chirps, “I’m headed to the little boys’ room.”
“Thanks,” I grumble to his retreating back, as Finn slides between me and the counter, leaning a hip against it.
Tonight I’m missing my usual armor—my social enthusiasm, my confidence, and the ease that comes with knowing life is okay for everyone I love. A tiny alarm in my brain signals that talking to Finn right now might be a terrible idea. We will either end up fighting or fucking, and Finn does neither with any sort of tenderness. But I refuse to step back and can feel the heat coming off his chest. His hat is pulled low over his eyes, so I have to rely on the curve of his mouth to interpret his mood. So far, he seems . . . bored, angry, pensive, or asleep.
“Fancy meeting you here.”
“Finn.” I acknowledge him with a little nod.
His smile starts at one corner and twists across his lips. Damn him and his amazingly flirty mouth.
“Harlow.”
I saw my teeth over my bottom lip as I consider him.
Mindless chatter won’t work here, but I’m not entirely sure I can handle his rough edges tonight when I’m feeling so threadbare myself. Finn doesn’t fit into any of my easily predetermined boy-categories, and maybe there’s a challenge in that.
He is hard to read, easy to look at, and no matter how bad an idea it may be, it’s nearly impossible to resist pulling him closer.
Fighting or fucking.
Both of those options are starting to sound pretty good.