Big Dick Energy - Cindi Madsen Page 0,84

realize I’m nowhere near drinking age. I told him that hello, there wasn’t enough makeup in the world to pull that off, and they’d obviously card me if I even sneezed in the direction of the bar.” She jutted a thumb in his direction. “But Mr. Overprotective wasn’t having it. Marking up my hands was our compromise so that I didn’t have to miss out on hearing him singing Taylor Swift.”

“Your idea, I presume,” I said, and two adorable dimples flashed in her cheeks as she widened her grin. I lifted the remains of my margarita, and Izzie lifted her glass of 7Up and tapped it to mine. “Cheers. I owe you one.”

“Seeing my big brother so happy after a week of being a grumpy wreck is all the thanks I need.” Izzie beamed at him, and Archer rolled his eyes but failed to hold back his smile. I kept my aww on the inside as I basked in how cute their relationship was and how it continued to grow.

Which prompted a lightbulb moment that had me turning to Ellie. “What was all that about a group date? You lied to me.”

Ellie’s finger whipped up so fast it rattled the table. “So did Cat.”

“I expect that from her. She’s a lawyer.”

“Hey!” Cat’s mouth dropped, and she tossed a coaster at my head. I ducked in time for it to smack into Archer’s shoulder instead. “It’s called evasive maneuvers and spinning the truth, so you can deliver it at the best possible time to make your case. Don’t be jealous because I’m good at it.”

“Can you teach me?” Izzie asked Cat.

“Sure,” she replied at the same time as Archer said, “No.”

Seeing he was about to lose another fight to a group of women, he pinched the bridge of his nose and shook his head. “Heaven help me. I was already outnumbered, and now I’m going to be severely outmatched as well. Before long, my arms will get stuck in the surrender position.”

I leaned into his embrace and brushed my lips over his jawline. “I happen to find that very sexy. And for the record…” I looked across the table at my friends. “I’m glad you two stretched the truth.”

Ellie shrugged a shoulder. “We could see how miserable you were without Archer, and the way you missed him was different. Since we’re also overprotective of our shiny Penny, it took him a while to convince us he was sorry enough for us to agree to help him pull off his plan—he had to survive an interrogation from Cat—but he won us over eventually.”

Cat tipped her imaginary hat to Archer, and he nodded his thanks. Not that I needed my friends’ permission, but being onboard was huge, and Cat wasn’t an easy person to win over. “Not that we wouldn’t have backed you up had you decided not to forgive him.”

“But no one knows better than I do how hard it is to find love,” Ellie said with a longing sigh. “I’ve dated half the city and still can’t find anyone I click with, and no one’s ever put so much as an ounce of that effort into winning me over.”

“It’ll happen, Ellie.” I reached across the table and squeezed her hand. She’d been searching for “the one” since college, working harder at dating than I did. And Cat preferred no-strings-attached hookups for the most part. “I know the right guy is out there. The idiot’s just taking a while to find you so you two can play out an epic love story of your own.”

For her sake, I hoped it’d be sooner rather than later, although I’d learned love didn’t seem to give a damn about timing.

“Well,” Archer said, giving my thigh a pat. “We should get Izzie home.” He pressed his mouth to the shell of my ear, causing me to squirm at the tickle of his warm breath. “We have all that making up to do.”

We’d stood and started our goodbyes, when Ellie’s eyes bulged out of her head like a cartoon character’s. “No, no, no.” She tapped her phone. “Stop it. Why are you doing this to me? Someone make it stop.”

“Make what stop?” I asked, and Ellie swiveled the screen in our direction.

“The wifi auto connects here faster than my apartment, so I just told it to go ahead and do the system update, and for some reason, it’s resending every text from the past year. Including the night I drunk texted Dillon.” She winced, the pain in