I glanced over at Ashley, and her eyebrows were inching up as she picked up on Pat’s sudden interest. Bryce was too busy trying to flag down a waitress to notice. Thankfully, the band started again. Poor Ashley got pulled out of her chair to go dance with me.
“You better watch that one, or you’ll soon be married to your first wife,” she teased.
“I kind of feel sorry for Bryce.”
“Don’t. I know him, and he’s a real douche. As it happens, I sat next to him during a training class at the Realtors Association, and he wouldn’t shut up about how good he was. I had your mom check his sales numbers, and I sold more than double what he did in January.”
Inwardly, I chuckled because realtors were competitive. Mom kept hinting that I should get my real estate license. She knew that if I got started, I would be hooked.
Someone tapped my shoulder. It was Bryce.
“Mind if we swap?” he asked.
“That sounds like fun,” Ashley said as she pushed me towards Pat.
Ashley was so dead. If there was such a thing as defensive dancing, that was what I had to do. Pat seemed intent on rubbing her body parts against me in inappropriate ways. When the song ended, I all but ran off the dance floor to the men’s room. I took my time until I was sure I had grown my spine back and was ready to face ‘handsy’—my new nickname for Pat.
When I got back to the table, I found that Bryce had bought the table a couple of rounds of tequila shots. I had two sitting in front of me when I sat down.
“Thanks, but I don’t drink,” I said.
“That’s right, you’re too young. I forgot they let underage people into this place,” Bryce said.
Ashley reached under the table and grabbed my knee before I reacted.
“Why don’t you help me out? This is a celebration of your big sale, after all. As a matter of fact, let me buy a round,” I suggested.
He smiled when I pushed the shots to him. He slammed them both. When my shots came, he’d had five shots in less than thirty minutes. Ashley and Pat had declined my offer. I successfully hid a smirk when Bryce decided that he and Pat should go back to his place and all but dragged her out of the restaurant.
His act had put a cap on the night, as far as I was concerned. I was done having fun.
“Can we get out of here?” I asked.
“Yeah, I think we better. If I stay, I’ll probably get drunk and regret it in the morning,” Ashley predicted.
On the way home, we spotted Bryce pulled over and taking a field sobriety test. Karma was a bitch sometimes.
“Aren’t we picking up the boys and Carol?” Ashley asked.
“Peggy said they were having a sleepover so you could have a night off,” I said.
“Oh.”
“We can go get them if you’d rather.”
“Yes … no … it’s just that … I don’t know. I’m used to having them around.”
“Take a night off,” I suggested.
“Sort of like you?”
She had a point. It was easy to just put my head down and do what I had to do. If I weren’t careful, I would wake up at graduation and realize I’d spent my whole high school career doing stuff other than having fun.
“Want to come up, and we use the hot tub?” Ashley asked.
“I don’t have my suit.”
“No one uses it this time of night.”
No regrets, right?
◊◊◊
Once we got to their condo, Ashley put on a bikini and robe to head upstairs. She lent me Scarlet’s big fluffy robe, which I could barely close. Ashley also grabbed a bottle of wine and a couple of plastic glasses. When we got upstairs, the pool area was indeed empty.
Ashley busied herself with opening the wine while I slipped into the hot tub. I turned on the jets and began to relax. Ashley handed me a glass of wine and joined me. The hot tub was designed for ten people, so I was a little disappointed when she sat across and not next to me.
Then my mind did that thing where I contemplated whether I should make a move on Ashley or not.
“Are you okay?”
I jumped a little at the sound of her voice.
“Yeah. I was just overthinking something.”
“Want to talk about it?”
“No, not really,” I said as I got up, slid across the hot tub, and pulled her into my arms. “Talking isn’t what I have in mind.”
“Oh,” Ashley sighed and sank into our embrace, tilting her head as if she expected a kiss.
I didn’t disappoint her; our lips came together. I teased her lips open with my tongue, and our kiss deepened. When we’d gotten back, Ashley had put her hair in a ponytail to keep it out of the water. I reached up and removed the band so her hair could fall down her shoulders. A stray hair had fallen on her face, and I brushed that away and looked her in the eye.
“You okay with this?”
Ashley licked her lips before responding.
“You want to know something funny? I haven’t been with anyone since our little adventure,” she admitted.
“Not even the guy your dad wanted you to marry?” I asked.
“Especially not him. I would have slept with Kent, but I hear you stopped that.”
“Yep, my bad. I gave him and Chuck the ‘you take a drunk girl home’ speech.”
“At the time, I wasn’t happy, but the next day, both Scarlet and I were grateful you’d done that. Not that Kent is a bad guy. It’s just that he was headed back to LA.”
