Page 6 of Rich Girl
“No,” James’ tone turned defensive. “I was sending her to you.”
They went back and forth for a while until Kyle cut them off.
“Ray,” he called out to me from across the table. “I dare you to sign up for this cluster.”
By that point, I had enough alcohol in me where I didn’t care if they dared me to jump off a tall building and into a shallow pool.
“I bet you I could get a hot girl off there,” I replied. “And you couldn’t even get a goat.”
That’s pretty much the last thing I remember.
“Thank fuck Cal gave me a ride home,” I now tell Alex. “I don’t even remember getting to the car.”
“Hydrate, dude,” Alex advises. “I feel the same, though. I’m glad my condo is only a couple of blocks from the bar.”
My coffee is finally done. I grab it and take a sip, wincing in pain when the hot liquid touches my tongue, but unwilling to stop. I really need this right now, unless I want to walk around like a zombie for the rest of the day.
“So, when are you signing up for it?” Alex asks.
“Sign up for what?”
“TheHolidatesapp.” The way he’s talking to me, it’s like he’s confused by my confusion.
“Wait,” I snort in amusement. “That wasn’t real.”
“It sure was, buddy,” Alex is quick to respond. “I got twenty bucks riding on this.”
“You bet against me?”
“No, dumbass. Kyle said you’d never do it. But I stood up for you,” he says proudly.
“So you made a bet on my dare,” I comment right before taking another sip out of my coffee cup. “Fuck it,” I shrug, even though he can’t see me. “I’ll do it. I got nothing better going on anyway. At least I’ll get a date out of it,” I continue. “It’ll be a nice change from just bar food if I can meet someone at a real restaurant.”
“There ya go,” he cheers me on with excitement. “You need an event to bring her to.”
I frown at that and buy myself some time before responding by taking another sip out of my coffee.
“Why do I need to bring her to anything?”
Alex lets out a snort of incredulity.
“How are you going to prove that you got someone off this app if we don’t see her?”
That makes me laugh. “Is my word not enough?”
“In this case, no,” Alex deadpans.
I continue sipping on my cup of coffee as I stare out the window.
“I don’t even know what I get out of this,” I suddenly realize.
Alex is just as surprised by that as I am.
“You are proving yourself to be the stud Evelyn says that you are,” he finally says.
Evelyn Moore, proud owner of a flower shop in town, is someone we all have a crush on to some extent. I met her for the first time when she and Cal Prentice, her now fiancé, ran his truck into a pond on a remote property that’s about twenty minutes out of town.
She was obviously embarrassed at the time, hardly able to meet my eyes when I went to pick them up after Cal called for the tow service. It wasn’t hard to guess what they’d been doing out there, so maybe my smile as I looked at her was a little bigger than the situation warranted.
