Two Truths & a Lime (The Love Game #3) - Elizabeth Hayley Page 0,91
we were all present and accounted for, I went behind the bar and grabbed a bottle of lager before settling onto a stool beside Sophia.
“Sorry I’m late” came a voice from behind me. I turned toward the steps to see Ransom walking toward us.
“Did you invite him?” I whispered to Sophia, not because I cared per se—though I didn’t really know the guy, so having him hang out in my bar after hours made me cringe a little—but because I didn’t think Sophia had his number.
She shook her head. “Brody must have.”
“Yo, bro. Glad you could make it,” Brody said as he stood so he could do a bro-hug, back slap thing with Ransom.
“Absolutely. Thanks for inviting me.”
Ransom was wearing fairly normal clothes, jeans and a T-shirt, but there was something…glowy about him.
Taylor must’ve noticed it too. “Are you wearing body glitter?”
Ransom looked down at himself quickly, smoothing a hand down his shirt. “Oh, uh, yeah, actually.”
“Why?” she asked, her voice harder than I was used to hearing it, and I wondered why she seemed to have a dislike of Ransom. He seemed pretty affable to me.
“I was at a bachelorette party before coming here.”
Taylor gave him a pinched look and turned away.
“Dude, you left a bachelorette party to come here?” Carter asked. “Why?”
“Uh, well, because Brody called. And he sounded kinda down, so…” He shrugged instead of finishing his sentence.
“You left a party full of chicks to come hang out with me because I sounded sad?” Brody asked. “That’s the sweetest and dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“What can I say? I’m pretty sweet and dumb.” He said it with a smile, but there was something else behind the surface. Like the words were a front for deeper feelings or something.
Not wanting the guy’s words to hang in the air too long, I turned to him. “What can I get you to drink?”
“Oh, uh, bottle of whatever beer you have back there is fine. I’m not picky.”
I started to stand, but Xander beat me to it.
“I’ll get it,” he said.
Ransom slid onto a stool on the other side of Taylor, who instantly pushed a hand through her hair on his side so that it obscured part of her face.
Interesting.
Xander slid a bottle of Corona in front of Ransom, who thanked him, before finding his seat again.
We were sitting around one of the curved ends of the bar so we were practically in a semicircle, giving each of us a fairly good view of everyone else. I took them all in and thought how this was quite an unlikely group of people, but I was thankful to have them.
No one seemed inclined to bring up the reason we were all here, though, almost as if the wedding was like the Candyman—if we mentioned it, there was no pretending it didn’t exist.
Oddly, it was Brody who broke the silence.
“Well, all I have to say is this is the worst bachelor party I could’ve imagined.”
We all laughed, the tension broken.
Aamee patted his hand. “It’ll be okay. It’s one day. We’ll get through it.”
Brody gave her a small smile and put his hand on top of hers before looking down at the beer in front of him.
“It’s not just one day, though, is it? The lie will have to continue until Vee has to leave. And then I’ll have to lie again and say we couldn’t make it work, which is another failure in my column. Not to mention that once I say that, I have to live with it. At least for a while.”
We all regarded him solemnly. He’d gotten himself into this, but I still wished there were a way for us to get him out.
“You could come clean,” I offered.
He sighed. “I dunno. I feel like we’re in too deep now. My mom invited my whole family to a wedding, for fuck’s sake. How do I stand up there and tell them I made the whole thing up because I wanted my dad’s support?”
“What if you said Vee had an emergency and had to go back to New York?” Carter suggested.
“That doesn’t really get us out of the lie, just the wedding,” Brody answered.
“Your parents sound like good people from what you’ve told me,” Ransom said. “They’d probably come around if you were straight with them.”
I don’t know why it surprised me that Ransom clearly knew what was going on—Brody had adopted him as one of his new BFFs, after all—but he still felt like an outsider to me.