Page 80 of Bad at Love
I sigh and look away. Laz is still down at the bar, trying to get the bartender’s attention.
“I don’t care, okay?” she goes on. “Seriously. You’re a grown woman and you know what you’re doing.”
I meet her eyes hesitantly. “What am I doing?”
“You like him. You more than like him. You’re in love with him.”
I scoff, though the words flame inside me.
I love him.
The feeling leaves me breathless.
I attempt to protest. “You can’t base that on what you’ve seen today.”
Because if she is, then that means I’ve been acting like a lovesick fool.
“I’m not. Naomi agrees with me.”
“Naomi is completely against this. Or whatever she thinks this is.”
“Because she hates men right now. Just let her be. She’s worried too. I was as well, but now I see the way Laz looks at you and I’m not going to stand in your way.”
I perk up. “What way does he look at me?”
“You know that scene in Pride and Prejudice?”
“The one we’ve watched over and over?” Back in college, Jane and I would literally watch that movie, the one with Keira Knightly, every Friday night and swoon and cry and wonder when we’d find our Mr. DArcy.
“Yes. By the lake. The way that he looks at her, like he’s bewitched, body and soul, that’s how Laz looks at you. And I know my brother has a terrible reputation when it comes to women and relationships but I honestly believe he has found something in you that he hasn’t been able to find with anyone else. You get a side of him that no one else does.”
I shake my head. “No,” I say quietly. “He still keeps that from me.”
“Give him time,” she says. “He’ll let you in.”
“How can you be so sure? What if…what if we end up being together and we break up. What if he pulls the same shit with me that he pulls with everyone else? I mean, I don’t even know why he does it, we never even got that far in our little dating game experiment before it…evolved. I know what’s wrong with me but…”
“Dude, there’s something wrong with everyone. Lazarusisn’t so special. People are fucked up and complicated and sometimes it’s just a matter of finding someone else as fucked up and complicated as you. Sometimes that’s all you need for love to work.” She takes a step back from me and makes the motion of dropping something. “Boom! Mic drop. Jane out.”
She turns around and heads to the dance floor, immediately twirling around a bunch of strangers like they’re all part of the same group.
“Need a drink?”
I turn to see a guy talking to me. He’s cute, dark blonde hair, scruffy beard, built like a linebacker. With his flannel shirt he looks like a lumberjack.
“Thank you but I’ve got a drink coming,” I say, pointing at the bar where Laz is taking two shots from the bartender. Great, Laz.Shots.
“Just wondered why a pretty girl like you was standing here all alone,” the guy says. “Didn’t seem right.”
I smile at him, flattered but a bit uncomfortable with the attention. I have no interest in this guy whatsoever but I don’t want to be rude either since not a lot of men hit on me in general.
“I’m doing good, I’m here with friends,” I tell him.
“What kind of friends?”
“Hiya,” Laz says appearing beside me with the shots. But though his usual greeting is easy, the look in his eyes is not. His gaze is hard and mean and fixed on the lumberjack with precision.
“Oh,” the lumberjack says. “I didn’t know…are you with her?”
