Series: Like Us Series by Krista Ritchie
Total pages in book: 241
Estimated words: 236417 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1182(@200wpm)___ 946(@250wpm)___ 788(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 236417 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1182(@200wpm)___ 946(@250wpm)___ 788(@300wpm)
“It’s The Independent,” Donnelly says passionately. “There is no moving on, man. It’s supposed to outlive us all!”
Okay, I feel a bit better knowing I’m not the only one wanting to Medusa people and places so they turn to stone and stay right where they are.
Forever.
And ever.
Please?
“…and then she left happy,” Beckett finishes a short story to Charlie about a one-night stand. They both angle their bodies to include me, even if I haven’t said much. “It was fine, if not uneventful.”
“She was too nice,” Charlie deduces. They both nurse glasses of chilled tequila.
Beckett lifts the glass to his lips. “There’s nothing wrong with nice.”
“There is for you,” Charlie says, elbows on the bar. “You like a hate-fuck.”
Beckett sees me watching too carefully, and I wonder if my invisibility cloak is glitching. “He’s exaggerating,” he tells me like we’re discussing something mundane. Not, you know, his sex life. Except, maybe he does think his sex life is mundane! Bingo! I’ve solved this quadratic equation.
I shimmy my shoulders, drink some water, and ask, “By how much?”
“By nothing,” Charlie says the same time Beckett replies, “A lot.” To which Beckett says in a sip of tequila, “Let’s talk about something else.”
“What’s a Bad Anne?” I ask.
Charlie and Beckett swing their heads in unison to me. It’s one of the few twin-like mannerisms I’ve caught them doing tonight.
“Where’d you hear that?” Beckett wonders.
“Backstage at the ballet tonight. I overheard the staff, I think. They looked like instructors or directors of the company. They kept referencing a Bad Anne. Like a bad apple?”
Beckett winces like that’s not quite right.
Charlie is glaring. “You all call her Bad Anne?”
“Not us,” Beckett says with a sigh. “The staff knows she’s not up to par, Charlie.” Beckett explains to me, “There’s Beth Anne and Roxanne. Every dancer I know calls them by name, but our staff has taken to referring to them as the Good Anne and the Bad Anne. Partly because they’re close friends, but mostly because Roxy has been trailing behind NYBC’s standards.” He’s staring into his brother. “Stop.”
“I said nothing.” He downs a swig of tequila. I grimace at how that would’ve burned, but Charlie has the same irritated expression.
“You don’t even know her,” Beckett tells him.
He replies in French—with a phrase that I’m fairly certain means, I’m aware.
I sense tension. “Is it bad if he does?”
Charlie and Beckett say nothing, as if gauging how to respond. But Beckett ends up warning his brother, “She’s soft.” I know they’re still talking about the Bad Anne.
Charlie downs the rest of his tequila.
“Beck!” Donnelly calls on the other side of me. “What’s the name of that one hotel near Central Park? Where they put mints on your pillows?”
Beckett rounds my body and joins the other conversation behind me. Leaving me with Charlie, who’s flagging down the bartender and ordering more tequila. “Want anything?”
“Uh-uh. I’m hydrating.”
Charlie comes right out and tells me, “I promised Beckett I’d never be involved with anyone in his company.”
“But you like her?”
“I can’t like someone I don’t even know.” He spins his empty glass, then hears Eliot and Tom singing a French song loudly together while in pursuit of us. Charlie side-eyes me. “Your best friends.”
“Your brothers,” I tell him.
His lips nearly rise, then he pushes away from the bar, just as Eliot and Tom encroach.
“Going so soon?” Eliot tries to sling an arm over Charlie’s shoulder, who slips out of the embrace. “We’re running him off, Tom.”
“On my birthday?!” Tom scoffs in mock offense. “Charlie Keating? How could you?”
“How could I not?” Charlie says, moving in the direction of the bathroom, not the exit. Oscar is quick to detach himself from the other convo to follow his client.
“No pissing on Tom’s birthday!” Eliot shouts after him.
“Yeah, dude, you must pee your pants!” Tom yells.
I laugh, and they settle on one side of me since Donnelly is still holding my hand. Friendship trio intact. Eliot and Tom did not, in fact, rope Donnelly into it. Instead, every time I’ve hung out with my best friends, Donnelly has just spent more time with Beckett. Rebuilding the bond they used to have. But it’s different this time around, Donnelly said. He feels closer to him. Because he’s not his bodyguard.
He’s just his friend.
“What was that about?” Eliot asks me, referring to Charlie. “Spill.”
“Hate-fucking,” I shrug, then tilt my head. “I’ve never had a hate-fuck that I can remember.”
“That she can remember,” Eliot notes and mimes to the bartender more waters. Then he pushes the tequila that Charlie ordered at the birthday boy.
Tom sways, verging from tipsy to drunk. He holds on to the bar. “That’s depressing.”
I nod in agreement. “I don’t like thinking about BD.”
“Big dicks?”
“Before Donnelly,” I say.
“Dark times indeed,” Eliot props an elbow on the bar. We turn slightly to face the club. Pink strobe lights sweep bodies swaying rhythmically on the dance floor. I wonder how many professional dancers frequent this club.