Gracie looked like a vulnerable little girl but she was one of the fiercest bitches I knew. I knew she could be maliciously cruel or have your back in a cage fight. It was hard to tell which Gracie I’d have the pleasure of conversing with.

“Sure, what’s up?” I asked, figuring feigning ignorance my best solution at this point.

“First thing, how are you holding up? You know with your dad and all that?” Gracie asked and I relaxed a bit. Maybe we wouldn’t be having a chick fight in the bathroom.

“Eh, I have my days. Thanks for asking,” I said sincerely. I hoped this was a sign that our weirdness was at an end.

“I know things have been weird between us,” Gracie stated, reading my mind.

I laughed uncomfortably. “Weird like wearing different color of socks or weird like hanging out with your grandma at prom?” I asked.

“Uh, definitely grandma weird,” Gracie giggled and I felt myself relax a little bit more. This was good. We were being almost normal. Maybe our relationship wasn’t completely messed up.

Gracie’s eyes twinkled strangely and she had me off balance again. This was not the friend I was used to. This girl reminded me of the person I loathed before we had formed a friendship. The evil sorority girl that I wanted to eradicate from the planet Godzilla style.

“But it shouldn’t be, Riley. Garrett explained everything. He said it was a mistake. That the two of you would never be together. That he didn’t even like you enough to be friends,” she giggled even as she ripped me a new one.

“So that’s the plan? For you and I to snark out over a dude? Really? Because I’m not in the mood,” I said tiredly.

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 dyn**ite 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.

“Sorry,” Gracie mumbled, finishing up her text. I looked over her shoulder and saw Garrett’s name and then made myself look away. Something was definitely going on between those two.

“Garrett’s gonna be coming by in a bit after he gets off work,” Gracie informed me almost defensively. She drew herself upright as though waiting for an attack.

“You sure are spending a lot of time together,” I commented, refusing to take the bait that Gracie seemed to be putting out there.

Gracie shrugged. “We like being together. I hope that’s not a problem,” she said, blinking at me innocently. What in the hell was she playing at? All day I felt as though I were being tested and I didn’t appreciate it one bit.

“Why would that be a problem?” I asked defiantly. Gracie opened her mouth but was interrupted.

“What’s taking you guys so long?” Damien called out from the front door. Suddenly spending time with my ex seemed almost bearable. Anything to avoid whatever was brewing with Gracie.

“Sorry, apparently Garrett Bellows is going to be joining us,” I said dryly and watched as Damien’s face paled.

“Is it all right that I’m here?” Damien asked looking at me pointedly. I sighed wishing everyone could just forget about that stupid show of testosterone at Barton’s.

“This is most definitely not a problem,” I said firmly and then flashed Damien my brightest smile. He seemed to relax then and the three of us found a table near the back.

“G and T?” Damien asked, making it a point to show that he remembered my usual drink.

“Sure, why not,” I answered, reaching into my purse to dig out some cash.

Damien held up his hand. “I’ve got this one. You buy the next round,” he said and I felt better knowing he was treating this as a casual get together rather than something more significant. He turned to Gracie.

“What about you Gracie? What’s your poison?” he asked. Gracie gnawed on her bottom lip and seemed conflicted, which was strange for her. I watched her closely trying to get a read on her mood. She had been trying to be cool up until she revealed Garrett would be joining us. Something told me he was the source of her sudden tension. I just couldn’t figure out why, considering the way she had thrown the information in my face.

“Uh, a beer. Yeah, just a beer. Something light. Like a Miller,” she finally said after an exorbant amount of time dilerbating over it.

Damien clearly didn’t pick up on Gracie’s strange attitude. He gave her a quick nod and headed for the bar to put in our order. Once out of sight, Gracie pounced. “What is up, Ri? Why in the world are you hanging out with Damien? On purpose no less?” she asked, eyeing me questioningly.

I shrugged. “Don’t you ever get tired of being mad at someone? Holding a grudge is exhausting,” I explained, hoping she would take my double meaning.

I had grown tired of being angry with Damien, particularly after it became obvious I wasn’t really mad at Damien as much as I was mad at myself. Mad that I had been caught off guard and that something I had depended on had dissolved under my feet without my realizing it.

But I was also speaking to Gracie and her apparent grudge against me. Even if she wouldn’t admit it existed. I saw it. I knew it was there.

Gracie’s eyes narrowed, apparently not agreeing with my reasoning. “Uh, when Mila borrowed my green dress last year without asking and then spilled red wine all over the front, I did not ask the bitch to come out drinking the next night. No way! She had ruined something that was mine. She had violated my trust. And that was just over a dress, Riley. Damien violated your heart. That is way worse. I think you’re letting him off way too lightly,” she scolded, frowning at me as though I were disappointing her.

Yeah, the girl obviously missed my point completely.

“Well it’s a good thing Damien didn’t stain my dress then. Just drop it already,” I said, feeling tired.

“Here you go, girls,” Damien said, appearing with our drinks. I shot Gracie a pointed look before thanking him and taking my cocktail. Gracie took her beer from him with a forced smile.

We drank our respective beverages in relative silence. The bar was pretty busy with the after work crowd but even in our noisy surroundings, the lack of talking at our table was almost deafening.

Damien cleared his throat. “So, how was the flower show, Ri?” he asked.

“Probably not as cool as covering the interstate crash. Plus I had an allergic reaction to a huge display of hydrangeas and spent the last half hour sneezing my head off,” I complained. Gracie and Damien each laughed at my misfortune and I grinned, taking one for the team. Hey, if my snot filled afternoon alleviated the weirdness, then I would share away.

“Yeah, well Kim, who was I shadowing, was about to kick my ass. Personally I thought the mucus made that hideous arrangement look better,” I chuckled.

“It seems like you guys are having a good time,” a voice said from behind me. Gracie looked over my shoulder and waved, her face lighting up in a smile. Damien went a pale and gripped his beer tighter as though expecting to have it hurled in his face.

I, on the other hand, felt chills run down my spine at the sound of the voice I had heard not so long ago, as he begged me to watch him as he made me come. I definitely shivered that time. The memory was too much for my poor brain to handle.

But my desire was quickly replaced with irrational rejection as Garrett walked around me, his arm brushing against my back as he went to Gracie’s side. He pulled out a bar stool and sat down. I couldn’t take my eyes off him.

He didn’t acknowledge me, however. He didn’t bother to look my way once. He glanced down at Gracie’s beer and leaned forward to whisper something softly in her ear. She looked up at him, her eyes seeming to plead with him. They spoke quietly, only to each other, and I wished like crazy that I could hear what they were saying.

“You want to go play a game of darts?” Damien asked, pulling me out of my masochistic voyeurism. I tore my eyes away from the pair across the table and looked over at him, giving him, or at least what I hoped to be, my sincerest smile.

“Sure, that sounds good,” I said overly loud. Okay, so I was hoping to get Garrett’s attention. Sure it was childish and pathetic. But I hoped he would remember it was just a week ago that he had shown an entire bar how much he wanted me.

The problem was I couldn’t decide if this need was about my feelings for him, or once again about a misplaced sense of pride. Because Garrett had wanted me. And now he seemed to want nothing to do with me. And nothing hurt an ego more than being cast aside for one of your friends.

I scraped my chair back, making a big production of leaving the table.

Look at me, damn it!

And then he did. Garrett looked away from Gracie and finally met my eyes. He glanced from me to Damien and something unidentifiable flickered in their depths. And then whatever I thought I saw there closed off and then there was nothing.

He turned back to Gracie and spoke quietly to her again, picking up her half empty beer and setting it aside. He held out his hand and she nodded, placing her smaller palm into his much larger one.

Gracie looked up at me and there was no self-satisfaction on her face at having Garrett there beside her. In fact she seemed upset. I wish I understood what was going on between them. Were they dating? Or were they just friends as Gracie claimed. And why oh why didn’t I have the guts to come out and ask like I normally would have?

“Garrett’s going to give me a ride home. I’ll see you on Wednesday,” Gracie said and I couldn’t read the tone in her voice.

“Are you sure you don’t want to hang out longer?” I asked, glancing at Garrett who seemed to be looking at everyone but me.

“Garrett, you don’t feel like staying?” I asked him, taking the leap to address him directly.