Page 16 of Late Nights

“What can I get you?” Robby asked, interrupting our conversation again.

“Just sparkling water.”

Robby nodded and filled a new glass, sliding it over to Cannon.

It looked like Robby had been telling the truth when he’d said Cannon didn’t drink much. He’d only had one drink and looked like he was done for the night.

So if he wasn’t coming here to drink, he had to be coming here because of the women. There were definitely enough here to choose from. In the half-hour we’d been here, the crowd had doubled, and I assumed it would only get busier as the night went on.

He might be open to us becoming friends, but I doubted he wanted to talk about women with me, so I’d let the topic drop. For now.

The last two days I’d spent the afternoons training with Robby, learning more about alcohol than I thought I would ever need to know. It was a lot to remember, but I was a great note taker—Robby had mocked me about it—and had studied them each night before I’d gone to bed.

Cannon was still pretending not to avoid me. I’d been alone at the apartment both nights, wondering if the conversation we’d had at The Bridger about us being friends had really happened.

I’d asked Robby if Cannon had been coming to the bar, but he said he hadn’t seen him since he’d helped me get the job.

I shouldn’t care where or with whom he spent his free time. He could be a part of an underground fight ring. He could be smuggling drugs and selling them on the black market. He could have a secret girlfriend. Whatever it was, I shouldn’t care. It was his life. I didn’t have any right to know what he was doing.

But should was a precarious word. One that had a lot of power. It could either push you to do better, or it could make you feel like a failure. When it came to Cannon, there were a lot of things I should stop doing.

I should stop thinking about him.

I should stop caring about where he was.

I should stop wondering why he thought the idea of being friends with me was so hard.

I should stop thinking about how good it had felt to be against his bare chest that day in the kitchen.

I should stop reliving the moment he told me he didn’t have any brotherly thoughts about me.

And I should definitely stop imagining what it would be like if we became more than friends.

But you know what else the word ‘should’ was? A judgmental jerk.

As I sat on the couch going over the different types of drinks customers could order, I couldn’t find it in me to care about any of those ‘shoulds.’ I wanted to tell those ‘shoulds’ they could go back to whatever hole they had climbed out of. I could feel however I wanted about Cannon.

Except no matter how confident I felt in my reasoning, I couldn’t help wondering if one day those ‘shoulds’ was going to come back to hurt me.

6

Cannon

Igrabbed my jacket and put one of my arms in, working to get the other side on when the front door opened.

“Hey, man,” West said, walking into our apartment and shutting the door behind him. “Where are you headed?”

I straightened my jacket. “To The Bridger.”

“Again? You’ve been going there a lot lately.”

I grabbed my shoes. “Yeah, well, I’ll be going there even more.”

I hadn’t told him about Demi’s new job, and I had a feeling she hadn’t told him either.

“I was hoping we could hang out. Do you have to go tonight?” he asked.

I wished I could stay and hang out with him too. We’d barely seen each other outside of the office now that he was living with Halle.

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