my lap and messes up my hair.
“You love me, you dick,” he says, finally giving me a shove. “Don’t try to hide it.”
I hold my hand out to shake his. “Hi, I’m Alex Vega. I love your work. ‘Your Body is a Wonderland’ is one of my favorite songs.” I can’t even say it with a straight face, but anytime I can get a John Mayer dig in, I go for it.
He smacks my hand away. “Asshole.”
“God dammit, you both smell amazing.” Nico’s sister/Shane’s wife is a perfumer who custom designs scents for them. I nearly choked to death from all the Axe body spray and overpowering cologne and perfume when I walked through this club, but these guys are literally a breath of fresh air. “I’ve missed you guys.” I put my arms around their shoulders.
“We’re leaving in like five minutes,” Shane says apologetically. “I promised Willa I’d pick up matzo ball soup from Canter’s on the way home.”
“And I promised Kat I wouldn’t stay here past ten because I don’t want to.”
“I knew it.” I shake my head. It’s barely ten o’clock. “I should have come earlier. But I didn’t want to.”
“Par-tayyyyy!” Shane flashes the sign of the horns with his hands, and then we all show each other the latest pictures of our kids like total badasses.
“Ryder with Nova tonight?” Nico asks.
“Yeah.” I don’t need to get into why I haven’t seen my son in over a week. They were never big fans of Nova’s, even back when I was madly in love with her.
“Let me guess,” Shane says, reading my face like a creepy face reader. “She’s been feeling down lately and asked to keep him at her place because he cheers her up.”
“You’re not an actual wizard, okay? You can’t read minds.”
“No.” He blinks at me, empathetically reaching for my hand. “But I can read hearts.”
I snatch my hand away. “You’re both assholes. Yes, that is basically why I don’t have him this week. She hasn’t booked any dance gigs in a while. I miss Ryder, but it’s better for everyone if she’s not depressed. And don’t tell me it’s too much responsibility to put on Ryder, because it was his idea.”
“Okay,” Shane says, patting my knee and obviously thinking it. “I won’t tell you that, then.”
“Let’s talk about your sad love life instead.” Nico smirks. “You still seeing that goth makeup artist?”
“She went to one goth night thing one time, and no. I finally introduced her to Ryder, and it…wasn’t a good match. Haven’t seen her in months.”
“So you want us to be your lazy wingmen?”
“No, I do not.”
“Let’s be lazy wingmen,” Shane says, ignoring me.
They both lean back, cross their arms, and do the annoying comedy bit that they’ve been subjecting me to ever since they both became smug married people.
Surveying the all-you-can-eat buffet of totally inappropriate female clubgoers before us, Nico raises his chin at an orange-tinted busty young lady who’s currently taking a selfie about twenty feet away. “How about this guy? You two probably have a lot in common,” he mutters, pointing his thumb in my direction while looking at his phone. She can’t see or hear him, and that’s the point.
Hilarious, right?
“She looks nice.” Shane nods in the direction of about ten women. “Hey,” he mumbles into his glass of seltzer water. “This guy’s great. You should bone him.”
“Take your pick, hotshot.”
“We got ’em lined up for you.”
“Thanks, fellas. You’re the wind beneath my wings.”
“Our work here is done.” Nico polishes off his ginger ale. “We’re gonna take off.”
I turn to him, waggling my eyebrows. “Okay, but tell me…how’s Grammie doing? She still single?”
He glowers at me. “She would eat you alive, and she is way out of your league.” I get a smack up the side of the head. “Putz.”
“Hey. We’ve always had chemistry—had to ask.” Truth is, Nico’s grandmother scares the shit out of me. She caught me making out with a production assistant on the Wizard set once and tore me a new one. After that, she scowled every time she saw me and referred to me as The Tongue.
Shane pulls his phone out of his pocket and answers by saying, “Leaving now, babe.” He looks at me and mouths, I’m not whipped at all. Back into the phone, he says, “Summer, is that you? Does Willa know you have her phone? … No, Zac Efron is not here, I told you … Yes, Nico is here, but you can’t talk to him—why are you awake?