"What?" But he disappeared into the crowd, and she glanced around the room, trying to spot Molly and Gina who’d headed straight for the bar. There were people everywhere, drinks in their hands, bolts, nuts, attempts just like that guy had done to her when he'd put his too small...
Her face flamed. Oh, God. She… She… first, she’d just told a guy that his, uh, was too small, and then she'd let him, ugh, jam it in her... She was going back to Dairy Haven and stick with dipped cones. Damn, that sounded gross too.
Molly surfed through the crowd and handed her an iced tea. She put it against her right cheek. "Thank you." Molly didn’t blink at that but sucked her own drink out of a fiery pink straw. Gwen joined her, but it wasn’t iced tea, although sweet and "totally delicious."
"They make a great iced tea."
"This is iced tea?"
"Yeah. It's how they make them in Long Island."
"Huh." Gwen took another drink, felt her cheeks cooling from the inside out. "Well, don't leave me alone. I just did a stupid thing with my nut."
"Oh, I know. Licking it doesn't make it fit any better."
Gwen choked, swallowed some more.
Gina shrugged. "Some things just aren't meant to be."
That was the right attitude to have in a bar. She was definitely going to loosen up. Gwen fished her lemon wedge out and decided an orange slice fanned out against a wedge of lime would have been much prettier in the drink. "Some things just aren't."
As the night wore on, she’d avoided what she'd come to think of as the dolts with bolts. Maybe she wasn’t ready yet for a get screwed theme night, but she had danced and that was fun, even if it was mostly with Molly and Gina. And only after the second drink. Damn but the folks in Long Island really knew how to make iced tea. She’d finally been driven off the floor by a slow song. She couldn't take a spin around with Molly and Gina, even if she loved the ballads. There was something about those tough rocker guys singing about love that really got to her. Molly danced because she’d found a bolt that fit without spit, and Gina was just the kind of girl who always had her share of askers. Gwen had said no twice, so there was no reason to complain.
She reached in her pocket and pulled out the nut, that after the first mishap, she'd lied to half-a-dozen guys about possessing. What she really wanted was another drink, but the possibility that the buzz in her head would only be louder if she ordered another iced tea made her wonder if she should. Still, it was a nice mental fuzziness she had going, like her brain was wrapped in a big pink sweater. She watched a cocktail waitress zip by but was too slow to catch her. When she turned her head back to the table, he was there.
Handsome and smiling at her, his smile was a little crooked, but it matched his handsome that also looked a little tilted. It was a hunter's humor in his eyes. She might not understand a bar game about bolts and nuts right away, but she knew charming boys were trouble. Her mother specialized in the grown-up version of them. She ought to get up and run, but before she could get the message to her legs, he held out his hand. She would have said no, but he tipped his head like he was amused, like he knew she wouldn't hand it over, like he'd made a bet with himself, and he was gonna win it.
She held the nut up, eyed it in the light like it was a diamond, and she understood its value and was reluctant to part with it. She saw him move and knew he'd given her one of those inside laughs that only shook the body an inch and was never intended to be out loud. But she'd heard it, so she met his eyes, daring green and aimed right at her. She smiled just enough so he'd understand she possessed knowledge he'd never have and that even though she was young and wearing the wrong kind of jeans, she was female, and he would always be the gender that came begging. With the nut held in front of her, finger and thumb, she slowly licked around the top of it, and dropped it in his