Page 15 of Late Nights

The seconds stretched on, and I wanted to grab his arms, to shake him and tell him to spit it out already. Was it so bad that he couldn’t say it without hurting my feelings? Or could I dare to hope he might see me as more than a friend?

“You guys need anything else?” Robby’s voice cut in, snapping our attention away from each other.

“We’re good, thanks.” It didn’t take a genius to hear the relief in Cannon’s voice or to see how his body relaxed at what I assumed was a welcome interruption.

“All right, well, flag me down if you want another drink.” Robby knocked on the counter and then walked down to the other end of the bar.

Cannon grabbed his drink and took a long swig. The glass thudded against the counter after he set it down. “Friends.” He nodded as he looked straight ahead at the wall full of different kinds of alcohol. “We should be friends.”

The sentence was simple, common even. But for Cannon to say those four words, it was momentous. I didn’t think he’d ever uttered that phrase before, not even with West. They’d become friends slowly. It had taken years for Cannon to trust West enough to call him a friend. So yeah, this felt momentous. Ten years in the making, but still momentous.

“I’d like that.” A small smile escaped me, and I hurried to cover it by taking another sip of my drink. I didn’t want him to see how giddy I was at the prospect of getting to know him, at the idea of having a relationship outside of being his best friend’s little sister.

“So…now that we’re friends,” I said, swiveling back and forth on my stool, sure I had a goofy smile on my face. “Does that mean you’re going to tell me all your deepest, darkest secrets?”

“You wish.” He shook his head before taking another drink.

I had been teasing him, but there was a part of me that actually did wish to know what he kept locked away in that head of his.

“Okay, so maybe we won’t be sharing our deepest, darkest secrets, but what if we ask each other getting-to-know you questions?”

He gave me a wary look. “Like what kind of getting-to-know-you questions?”

I shrugged one of my shoulders. “I don’t know…just stuff you’d like to know about your friends.”

“Demi,” he said pointedly, his amused expression not matching his tone. “It’s not like we don’t know anything about each other. I’ve known you since you were sixteen.”

“Yeah, but I’m not sixteen anymore.”

His gaze went from my high heeled shoes all the way to the top of my head. “You think I don’t know that either?” A flicker of heat flashed in his eyes for the briefest second, but it was enough to have my cheeks turning pink.

I fidgeted in my seat. “I know you know that, but…” I searched for the right words to tell him I was looking for a real friendship between us. “All I know about you is that you go through women like cigarettes, you’ve never had a girlfriend, West is your only friend, and you don’t like to talk about your past before you met West in college.”

He tipped his drink toward me. “Congratulations, that’s more than anyone else knows.”

“And that’s how you like it?” I asked slowly, struggling to understand why he would want to keep people out of his life.

“Yep.” He was staring down at his drink again, only ice remaining in the glass.

Okay, so he obviously wasn’t going to open up to me all of a sudden just because he said we should be friends. That was a dumb assumption on my part.

“So if you haven’t been out late the last few nights hanging out with friends, what have you been doing?” I asked conversationally.

“Wow. We’ve only been friends for five minutes, and now you want to keep tabs on me?” he said playfully.

“More like I didn’t picture you as the kind of guy who goes out to the bar every night.” I guessed I really didn’t know Cannon at all. Maybe he was that kind of guy. “I just wanted to make sure you weren’t trying to stay out of the apartment because of me.”

He choked a little, on what I’m not sure, since he’d already finished his drink. “What? What would make you think that?” He looked like he was having a hard time swallowing. He raised his hand, trying to get Robby’s attention.

“Oh, I don’t know. Maybe how you never come home until late,” I pointed out. “And how you can’t look at me right now.”

He swung his gaze to me. “It has to do with me, not you.”

I cocked an eyebrow. “Wow. We’ve only been friends for five minutes and you’re giving me the ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ excuse?”

That had him laughing, and I couldn’t help the warm feeling that spread throughout my body at knowing I’d put that smile on his face.

“Touché.”

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