Page 33 of Sugar & Shadows
She waved me off. “Yes Gabriel, I’m a model of efficiency. Your point?”
“Just saying you weren’t exactly a wild child.”
“Sorry I was too busy studying and planning for my bright future to attend keggers with you and your hockey bros in the Fitzgeralds’ field.”
I smirked. “Remember the time you reminded Mrs. Thomas to assign homework?”
She sipped her beer, unfazed. “I wanted to learn.”
“And you narced on Matt Willis junior year for copying your work.”
“He cheated,” she huffed.
“Exactly,” I said. “You’re not exactly a badass, Monroe. You’re just as squeaky clean as I am.”
She recoiled as if I’d struck her. Her nostrils flaring.
“Everything okay over here?” Lucky asked, throwing a rag over her shoulder.
“No,” Sabrina snapped.
“We’re debating morality,” I explained.
The woman looked between the two of us, her lip curled up on one side. “You two married?”
“No,” we said in unison.
“Recently divorced?”
“No.”
“Having an affair?”
“Abso-fucking-lutely not,” Sabrina said.
Lucky shrugged. “Could have fooled me. And my bartender intuition is rarely wrong.” She walked away.
“I hate her,” Sabrina said into her beer.
Leaning forward, I smiled, far more entertained than I should be by her attitude. “Because she flirted with me?”
She rolled her eyes.
“It’s okay, Monroe,” I said. “You’re allowed to be jealous.”
The corner of her mouth quirked, the tiniest crack in her armor. But she quickly got it under her control, turning the expression into a frown. Okay, that was more like it.
After another beer, I stood and straightened my jacket. “Okay, time to go.” I wasn’t drunk, but I was pleasantly warm, so with any luck, I could easily fall asleep in the motel room. Hopefully we’d wake up to cleared roads and get home early.
“You good?” I asked.
She’d had the whiskey and two beers, but she seemed sober.
“I’m fine,” she said. “I can operate heavy machinery. I once went vodka shot for vodka shot with an ex-KGB officer.”
“You’ve lived a strange life,” I mused.
“And you’ve lived a boring one,” she hit back.
