Page 59 of Crazy About Love (All About Love)

Chapter 15

PRESENT DAY

It smells like sex in here.

“Twenty-five hundred!”

Alec slides across the stage, pulling a maneuver I never expected from him. I’m so turned on and surprised and turned on and shocked and turned on that all I can do is stand here with my tongue hanging out of my mouth, only slightly aware that the bidding has gone up and up and up and I haven’t even shouted out my highest number.

Liz told me this would work. That no one pays over three grand for bachelors at a bar auction. But she isn’t here. She’s not here to see the panty-dripping, sweaty,oh my holy hellsweet abs carved by angels and unicorns, and he’s dancing in front of not just me but a roomful of hormone-crazed women ready to jump on that stage and lick his…well, lick his anything.

And then, right there in the middle of his magic thrusting, he looks at me dead on. He looks at me and dances forme. He grins teasingly, like it’s some kind of joke, like we’re having a laugh at his expense, that I’m somehow going to be punished later for making him do this. But I’m not laughing. All I can feel is the moisture building along my hairline, neckline, and panty line.

Three thousand.It’s there on the tip of my very salty tongue in this sweat-filled room while he basically has air sex with me. It’s all the money I have; the money I saved for this moment. This is my grand gesture, the big sign that saysI’M READY FOR YOU, ALEC TUCKER!

“Four thousand!”

The voice comes from the way back, and both Alec and I rip our gazes from each other to figure out who it belongs to. I see her right away. Purple hair, tattoos up and down her arms and across her neck, short—a punk pixie.

The dreaded four-letter word echoes through the room through the microphone.

“Sold!”

He’s sold.

My entire vision for the evening—professing my love for my best friend, redoing all the things I did wrong the first time around—shatters in front of me.

People clap for the winner. I don’t.

Hell noI don’t. That bitch with the perfect smile and hipster style stole my grand gesture. The anticlimactic end to a week’s worth of preparation slams down on me, and I have to find the strength to pluck up my feet and let them carry me out of here.

I get through the crowd in a haze, telling Katrina I need air and asking if she can finish up the auction without me. She nods, gesturing toward an employee exit door that I can use.

The air outside isn’t any better. I feel like I’m suffocating on the visual of him kissing another girl at the end of the night. Or even before the end of the night. Oh God, what if they do way more by the end of the night and they get a morning after?Wedidn’t even get a morning after, and I never got to ask him why.

I yank my phone out and mad-text Liz.Got outbid! Tell me how to fix it!

Then I pace the sidewalk, pulling at my earrings and checking my phone, but there’s no answer from her. Maybe I go tell him right now. Barge into the backstage dressing room and say,Damn it, Alec, I love you and I’m ready.Then what?Go on your date, because it’s for charity, but don’t you dare touch her.

That’s reasonable, isn’t it?

The alleyway stinks like hangover and weed, and I trip in my hurry to get out into more breathable air. I feel my thoughts tangling with each other, desperate to find a solution to my conundrum. I seriously question my intellect in this moment, because I should’ve prepared for this. Alec’s a delectable specimen that even a blind woman could appreciate. Top dollar in my head was severely under what people were evidently willing to pay. Spirit-crushing replays of what just happened play on a loop in my head, and I mad-callmy best friend.

“Pick up, pick up, pick—Liz, what do I do?”

“Hang on a second,” she says, and I hear the distinct noise of a toilet flushing in the background. You know someone’s a good friend when they take your call no matter where they are. “ ’Kay, sorry. How much did he go for?”

“Four grand, Liz.Four grand. I don’t have that kind of money!”

“Try to find the winner and talk her into giving him up. Offer her forty-five hundred; see if she takes it. I’ll be down there as soon as I can.”

“You can’t give me fifteen hundred dollars.” I shake my head. Even if I take the money, asking someone to give up her bid on the man capable of Magic Mike dancing would be spitting into the wind.

“I can too. I’m sure you’ve given me that much money over the course of our friendship in the form of laundry quarters, rent coverage, and groceries, and that doesn’t even count the time we lived together.”

I push my hair back and turn toward the loud cheers that just sounded through the bar behind me. Seems the last bachelor has sold, and Katrina is telling all the winners to pay. If I’m going to do this, it’s got to be now.

“Get down here, quick.”

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