The bizarre gleam in Gracie’s eye disappeared and her face softened. She looked ashamed. “No, Riley. That’s ridiculous. You are one of my best friends. I just don’t want things to be uncomfortable. Garrett is just a friend. And you guys don’t even talk. So there’s no reason for us to tiptoe around him like he’s a stick of dynamite about to go off. Just promise me you won’t keep stuff from me in the future,” Gracie said, giving me a more genuine smile.
“Of course,” I placated, wanting the conversation over with. We stood there in awkward silence for a few more seconds until I started to develop a serious case of claustrophobia.
“We’d better get upstairs,” I said, making my way to the door.
“Yeah, we should. But let’s grab a drink after this. It’s been too long since we’ve done anything together,” Gracie suggested.
“Sure, sounds good,” I said distractedly, ready to put this strange discussion behind me.
Coming out of the bathroom, I found Damien waiting with another Styrofoam cup of coffee. I tried to be irritated with him. His need to make me happy was desperate and left a bad taste in my mouth. We had been there done that and I had the battle wounds to prove it.
“I’ve got to catch Garrett before I head up. Just tell Diane I’ll be right there,” Gracie said, heading off to another wing of the building.
My teeth clenched together painfully but I refused to comment.
So what? Gracie had to talk to Garrett. She had just said they were friends. Friends talk. Plus I didn’t care. Garrett could talk to whomever he wanted to.
And if I silently debated this out any longer, I’d look certifiably crazy.
I took the cup from Damien and gave him a smile. “You wanna come have a few drinks with Gracie and me after work?” I asked him. His face lit up and I felt the stirrings of warning in my gut. But I ignored it. I was through letting my gut do the talking around here.
“I’d love to,” he said, giving me that warm smile of his that used to make me melt. I was impervious to it now, but it still felt good to be in a place where I could accept that smile without bitterness.
I needed to focus on something, somebody that wasn’t Garrett freaking Bellows and the ambiguous status of his bed partner.
“Great,” I said with more conviction than I felt. We walked to the elevator together and I refused to question the sanity of my decisions.
“You invited Damien? Why?” Gracie asked as we drove to Hillbilly Tom’s, another local bar in Bakersville after our internship was over for the day. It was already six-thirty and I was ready for a drink or five.
I had been forced to cover a local flower show. Rioting good time it was not. Coming up with a hundred different ways to describe floral arrangements was not what I wanted out of my journalism career.
Damien had gotten to cover a fifteen-car pile up on the highway while Gracie had been invited to sit in on a court case involving a local dog-fighting ring.
And I had been handed the flower assignment. The gods were flipping me the bird that’s for sure.
I pulled in beside Damien at Hillbilly’s and cut off my car.
“I don’t know. I just offered. I thought it would be the nice thing to do,” I said, not feeling the need to explain myself. Actually I knew the reason I had extended the invitation and it had nothing to do with Damien.
“I just hope you know what you’re doing. He’s hanging onto some serious hope that you two will work things out. You’ll just be leading him on,” Gracie warned, pulling her lip gloss out of her purse and smearing some on her mouth.
“Who says I’ll be leading him on?” I asked irritably.
What?
I didn’t mean that. Why did I say that?
Gracie’s eyes widened. “Seriously?” she asked in disbelief, no doubt remembering my state of utter despondency after our epic breakup and my subsequent vows to never breath in Damien Green’s direction again.
“I don’t know. Just come on. I need a drink,” I said, getting out of the car. Gracie’s phone chirped and she started furiously tapping away.
“Girl, put the phone away and let’s get inside,” I said, though I was trying to sneak a peek at the screen.