Page 53 of The Ex Effect
Sure, easy for her to say. Frankie looked like a badass biker bitch with her cropped hair and motorcycle boots. Not to mention she looked like she could bench-press all the guys in this place. “Not even for a second.”
“I bet they don’t play Britney Spears here, unfortunately for you.” Frankie nudged my elbow.
“Why would I care if they played Britney Spears?” I asked.
Frankie lifted a brow. “Do you seriously not remember? You forced me to learn the choreography to ‘…Baby One More Time.’”
“I did?” I searched back far in my memory bank until…Oh yeah. Sophomore year, a local radio station was offering a five-hundred-dollar reward for the best Britney lip-syncing contest. I giggled at the memory of an absolutely irate Frankie having to swap out her gym shorts for a plaid skirt, pigtails, and crop-top button-down shirt. And if memory serves, we did pretty good but failed to earn top spot. “How do you even remember that?”
Frankie glanced down at me. “I remember a lot of things.”
Me too. A playful smile tugged at Frankie’s lips, but I felt anything but playful. All I wanted was to recreate everything from last night, and then some. Screw consequences, broken hearts, and repeating history. I wanted to take Frankie home, ravage-style.
“Hey, can I get you two something?” the bartender asked, flipping a towel over his shoulder.
“No thanks. I’m here to chat with Tag. Is he around?” I scoured the dozen patrons to see if one of them was what I remembered as Tag.
“Oh yeah, he’s in the employee break room.” He flicked his finger toward the kitchen doors. “You guys can just head in there. In the back past the kitchen, take a left.”
Wasn’t there something deeply unsanitary about having two non-employees traipsing through the kitchen? No matter, though. Hopefully I’d be in and out, drop off a contract for the gig, and then hang around for a bit to make sure his DJ equipment worked.
“I’m curious what Tag looks like nowadays,” Frankie asked as we weaved past the tables to the kitchen. “Seems like the type of guy who probably peaked in high school.”
“Shhh. Small town, remember? Whatever shit you talk willget back to him, and I need him to DJ the wedding.” Although Tagwasthat type of guy. Sort of like the universe giving his peers a parting gift for putting up with his crap for all those years.
Frankie followed me when her phone rang. “Hold up, one sec. It’s Quinn.” Frankie put the phone up to her ear. “Hey, I’m just about to head in somewhere, can I… Wait, what? Okay, slow down, slow down… Are you sure… Quinn, you gotta breathe… Okay, give me a second.”
Oh no.This did not sound good. I searched Frankie’s eyes to see if this was a “somebody died” call or a “my boss is an asshole” call.
Frankie pushed the mouth receiver under her chin. “Sorry, I’ve got to take this. Something happened with Quinn’s work. I’ll be outside. You good?”
Chivalry for the win. “For sure.” I tugged my sweater across my chest. “I’ll come find you when I’m done. Shouldn’t take more than five or ten minutes.”
Frankie lifted the phone back to her mouth. “All right, I’m heading outside so I can hear you better. Start at the beginning…”
As Frankie moved to go outside, I crossed the bar to the kitchen doors and swung them open. A wave of humidity and a cloud of cooked onions funneled out. The two cooks glanced up with a totally uninterested look as I went past the prep station overflowing with plates and burger fixings to the employee break room.
Outside of the closed wooden door with a danglingEmployees Onlysign, I knocked. A moment passed before I realized the man who opened was, in fact, my former classmate. Too bad Frankie couldn’t witness this—half the hair, twice the size, and already a solid smoker’s cough.
“Morgan Rose.” He crossed his meaty arms around hisway toosnugshort-sleeve, shiny button-down shirt. The top threebuttons were opened with tufts of chest hair sticking out, and his fourth was threatening to burst.
Oh, Tag. Already so little has changed.
“Man, you don’t look a day over twenty-one.” He snapped his can of chewing tobacco. “Did ya get carded when you walked in here?”
Ewww.That whole “you look so young” was never a compliment. The maturity and wisdom I gained with age was a gift. “Good to see you. Thanks so much for messaging me about possibly performing at the wedding. I know the timing is short notice.”
He crossed his arms, the movement hitting me with a nauseating wave of spicy cologne.
“Sure, sounds like I saved the day, huh?” He packed his chewing tobacco into his gums and leaned in. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”
Yep. High school rushed back. Confirmed—Tag was still a tool. Whatever, though. I could handle just about anything for one day. Jerk or not, I was absolutely out of options for DJs at the reception if this didn’t pan out.
Tag stepped back and let me into the break room. In the corner, the small TV showed Sports Center. A rickety round table with two folding chairs held a pile of discarded newspapers. A green couch, which looked like it was freshly hauled off the street with aFreesign attached, lay in the corner. It smelled like nicotine and alcohol, although that could’ve been seeping from his pores.
The quicker I could get out of this place, the better. I dug out papers from my purse. “Here’s the contract for the wedding, with the rate we messaged about.” I laid it on the table. “If you could just take a peek, make sure it looks good and?—”
“So, whatever happened with you, anyway?” He slumped on a chair and tilted back on the legs, pointing at the adjacent chair. “You stayed back in Spring Harbors, huh?”
