Page 15 of The Quit List
I wave a spring roll at her. “Some bartender who helped me get rid of Keith.”
“A bartender named Jaxon?” Audrey’s tone is almost wicked.
“Ye-es.”
“A bartender named Jaxon who kicked your date out of a restaurant and gave you dating advice.”
“Jax was just helping me out.”
At least, I think that’s what he was doing…
“I’ll bet he was.” Aubrey's gray-green eyes are glittering maniacally as she sits on the couch next to me. Too close.
I shove a spring roll in my mouth so I can’t respond.
She inches even closer, getting all up in my face. “And what did this Jax look like?”
I point at my mouth, indicating that I can’t respond. She folds her arms. “I, quite literally, have all night.”
For a moment, I consider lying to get her off my back, but there’s no way I can keep this from her.
I swallow. “He was… good-looking.”
“How good-looking?”
“Like, a normal amount.”
“How good-looking, Holly? Don’t think I missed that smile all over your face a minute ago.”
I sigh. “Okay, fine. He was, like, crazy hot. In a mountain man kinda way.”
“Ooh, like a lumberjack?”
“He looked like he would be very skilled at cutting wood,” I confirm.
“And flinging you over his shoulder while running to save you from a rogue bear?” Aubrey clasps her hands in glee.
Correct.
I hold up a hand before my best friend’s freight train of enthusiasm can leave the station. “First off, aren’t all bears rogue? Secondly, he’s a bartender who basically flat-out confirmed that he’s a player looking to have fun. Definitely not a dating prospect for me.”
In fact, when I peered back inside while I waited an eternity for my Lyft, I could see him behind the bar, flirting up a storm with the pretty blond waitress.
“What, you don’t like to have fun?”
I see Aubrey’s bobbing eyebrows and smirking mouth and gleaming eyes, and I decide to blow right past it. “What I don’t like is the thought of going on any more time-wasting dates with people who aren’t ready to get married. I wasted enough of my time with Dylan. I need to find a man who wants to settle down with me. Not someone who still goes on spring break.”
“Maybe he’ll take you to the mountains for Bears Gone Wild, Montana edition. Have his way with you in a hammock.”
“AUBREY!” I throw a spring roll at her and miss. She picks it off the floor, dusts it off, and pops it in her mouth with a devious grin. Before she can speak any more nonsense, I say, “Stop trying to live vicariously through your old and weathered single friend.”
“I’m just kidding.”
“I know,” I reply, softening slightly. Her heart is in the right place, even when her foot is in her mouth.
Aubrey sighs. “So, tell me. What did mountain-man-Jax say about reading people?”
“He basically said that I suck at figuring out what men actually want, despite what they may say in their dating profiles.”