All the Prospect Around Us by C. S. Humble

Author:C. S. Humble
Format: epub

Chapter 14

14.

There is a particular kind of dread that comes with meeting your boyfriend’s friends. You know they’re grading you. Judging you. Using their dumb male instruments to measure you, like you’re a goddamn fish their pal reeled in, and they get to help decide if you’re going to get thrown back.

It’s a whole special kind of bullshit.

I mean, girls do it too, but more out of protection than inspection.

I had a leg up on Gabriel’s friends. They’d already met me. Lugosi I was sure would have tried to take me home in a heartbeat. Although, had I not been working for a big tip that night at the Rex-Room, I wouldn’t even have given him the time of day.

But James Goodnight.

James was another thing entirely. He was better looking than Gabriel in the traditional sense. Charming and funny. I think I could have crushed on him like a college freshman does on her first handsome professor. He spoke like someone twenty years more mature than his age, and though Gabriel had told me that James could spin a yarn, I was not prepared for what he threw at me the night we met outside the drinker/barmaid ecosystem.

Typically, this first mixing of the intimate and platonic cocktail happens in a bar or a restaurant. That way, everyone feels like they’re on neutral ground. So, I was surprised when Gabriel asked me to come over to Lugosi’s for dinner.

“It’ll be great. I’ll cook. Lugosi can mix drinks, and you can get to know them. You can use me in the kitchen as home base.”

“A baseball analogy? Yuck. I’m out,” I had said, lacing our fingers together on the couch. We’d been together for two weeks at that point. The time was short, but we quickly dove into each other. We never grew bored of hearing the other talk about their life or opinions. Even when we weren’t in the same place, we would stay up late, texting each other. Asking questions. The intensity of our bond was exhilarating. Scary, even. And it was a point that Lugosi brought up the night I met them for dinner at his place.

I dressed in a long red number designed for warmth and maximum confidence. Which is more difficult than you might think. I wanted to look great for Gabriel. I wanted to walk through the door and for him to think to himself that I was the best goddamn thing in his life. Because that’s how I felt about him.

I snagged a cab and it pulled up to the snow-powdered curb. My door toppled a little mountain of the stuff, clearing my path.

I knocked on the door, and before my knuckles hit a second time, there was Lugosi, toothy smile flashing beneath his bushy mustache. He was wearing a red, white, and green Christmas sweater populated with the heads of reindeer.

“Amber!” The word was so loud it shot down the Christmas-lighted street. The whiskey on his breath hit me flat in the face.

“Jeeeesus,” I said, my word linking up with his.

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