Page 18 of Unofficial

Sure. "Okay."

"How do you and Lena know each other?" Joe jumps in, trying to save his friend.

Lena opens her mouth and closes it again, staring hard at Jess. "It's a weird story."

"Like, sexually weird?" Joe asks, his eyes finally turning and settling on Jess.

She gets a weird vibe, and even Lena seems taken aback. Instead of fluffing up the story, Jess decides to put it all out there, and if it ends the date, so be it. "We were dating the same guy."

"And you're still friends?" Landry asks, his eyebrows raised almost up to his hairline.

"We weren’t friends. Didn't even know each other. I was dating a guy for about five months and had no idea he was dating other women. I went to surprise him one night, and I was the one surprised."

Lena swallows and looks at Joe. "Jess walked in on Kade and me having sex."

Joe’s jaw drops, and he looks at Landry before looking back at her. "What?"

"In the kitchen," Jess says. "I got quite the eyeful."

"And you just stood there and stared, which was just as weird," Lena says with a giggle.

Jess laughs with her. "It was like watching a horrific car accident. But the weirdest part was how fixated I was at how close you were to the coffee pot I showed him how to use. And all that stuff with it, yeah, I bought it. You almost touched your butt to my coffee syrups."

"You dated a guy in a relationship?" Joe asks, and for the first time, the unwavering affection seems to waver.

"I didn't know," Lena says. "I would never!"

"She freaked out when she realized he'd been seeing me for five months. He told me she was his cousin, which contributed to the shell shock when I walked in there, and she was not happy about that fact, either."

Landry chokes on his salad. "You thought he was screwing his cousin?"

"I kind of assumed she wasn't really his cousin, but I didn't know for sure," Jess says and laughs.

Lena breaks out into laughter. "I got dressed and begged for her forgiveness. Kade, with nothing else to do, grabbed a pot from the stove to cover his junk. Now that I think back, watching him stand there, like that, is pretty funny."

"He said it wasn't a clean pot, either," Jess tells her. "And that's the story of how Lena and I met. By all accounts, we should hate each other, but I couldn't be angry with her. She stood defiantly with me in a show of female solidarity, and that's a girl's girl right there. It wasn't her fault we both were seeing a jerk."

"You're an evolved woman," Landry says.

She narrows her eyes at him. "I can't tell if you're trying to be a dick, or if it's just your natural personality."

Lena's jaw drops, and Joe chuckles. Landry appears taken aback. "Excuse me?"

"You're difficult to read, and you say things that come out so jerk-like. But I don't know if you're actually trying to be one, or if it's just how you talk."

"I'm not trying to be a jerk. I guess it's just my natural personality," Landry says with a shrug.

At least he's honest. "No one's ever told you that you sound like a jerk, have they?"

"A few people have, but they were very different situations. Never on a date."

The server stops by with their orders, and she lets the man swap out her salad for the seafood dinner she's been craving ever since she found out they were meeting here. She nearly melts as the delicious scent of butter and garlic wafts into her nostrils. Even if she has to pay for her own dinner, this is worth it.

They all make small talk as they eat, but Landry surprises Jess when he takes a drink of his wine with the steak. His mouth turns downward into a frown, and she expects to have to drink the red wine. Instead, he says, "That's not half bad."

"Really?"

"It does pair well. Who would've thought?"

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