Page 38 of Thank you, Next

“Would you stop it? You are acting like some sort of wise guy, and I’m not going to let you menace that man. You can’t punch people, and you know this.”

Will started scanning the room above Alex’s head, likely looking for Ace. “Why not? He put you on the spot, and I just want to have a few words.”

“Listen, Fredo. Let’s get out of here and we can talk about what happened last week.”

That got Will’s attention. He looked down at her. And then he looked down at her body suggestively. More suggestively than he’d ever looked at her. She felt the heat under her skin from her hairline to her toes. That low tug in her belly was making her languid... and stupid. They had to leave. She didn’t need to interview Ace. She didn’t need to talk to him. He wasn’t a nice man, and it was a good thing he’d ghosted her. Even if he’d been telling the truth onstage and his wife did hate her guts, Alex hoped he was nicer to the woman he’d married than the character he played onstage would suggest.

“The only way we can leave before I have a few words with that asshole is if you give me more of what happened last week.”

She was going to tell him that she’d give him a lot more. She wanted more than a few furtive grabs under clothing. She wanted him sprawled out on a bed. Naked. She wanted his fingers and cock inside her, his mouth doing more than glancing over her skin. There was nothing that she didn’t want to do with him. Nothing off-limits.

But that would probably take more intimacy and communication than a quick chat. She might be direct to a fault, but this whole odyssey told her that intimacy was a problem for her. He might be able to commit, but he couldn’t talk about his feelings worth a damn.

They were quite the pair.

They didn’t get a chance to even have a quick chat, though. Because Ace found them. And from the look of his gait as he approached them, he’d found a bottle of whiskey before he found them.

When he reached them, Ace grabbed her arm and moved her closer to him. The playful, flirtatious version of Will that she’d been working with moments earlier disappeared, and the taciturn, stubborn bastard she knew better than the calculation to determine community property took his place. Because it wouldn’t be fair for Will to knock out a drunk person, she feigned friendliness.

“I didn’t realize when I came to the show that you would expect audience participation.”

Ace just looked at her blankly before turning to Will. “I know you.”

“I doubt you know your ABCs at the moment, and we’ve never met. So I’m not sure how that can be true.” Will’s face was impassive, but he kept looking at where Ace was touching her. It didn’t frustrate her like it normally would. She knew that Will just wanted to keep her safe at the moment. He didn’t think that she was weak or needed saving. He just would never be the type to intervene, because he hated bullies.

“I know where I know him from,” Ace said, pointing his drink at Alex. “You made me go to his wedding.”

“Oh yeah, you did meet that one time.” Alex wanted to end this conversation immediately. She didn’t want to think about Will’s wedding. She’d been so distraught after the ceremony that she’d made Ace do car bombs before the reception. There had been very few times in her life when she’d been puking drunk, but that had been one of them. Ace had complained the whole time. He hadn’t even fetched her crackers or Gatorade the next morning.

And he’d ghosted her not long after that, so maybe her behavior at the wedding had been the turnoff. She could empathize with that.

“You were so in love with this guy.” Ace pointed at Will, but both she and Will froze. Ace didn’t notice. “You got shit-faced, and then I had to bounce.”

Alex wanted to make what Ace had said go away. “I mean, people commonly get drunk at weddings. Open bars.”

“You made me buy you six shots before the reception.” Oh shit! He was like Drunkstradamus now? Except, instead of telling the future, he had perfect recall while drunk. Maybe she should ask him to investigate some unsolved murders for her before he sobered up.

She could feel Will staring at her. The last thing she wanted him to know was how sad she’d been watching him get married to someone else. The last thing she wanted him to think was that she’d been in love with him since she was fifteen years old.

And that was what he had to know and think right now. It was the logical conclusion.

Even with the knowledge that Alex had been a wreck for him ten years after he’d rejected her, he recovered more quickly than Alex did. He stepped between her and Ace until the other man had to let go of her arm and gently turned Alex toward the door.

Over his shoulder, he said, “Great show, buddy. Lay off the sauce, though. More booze isn’t going to help the pencil-dick situation.”

Both of them had taken a car over, so they both took out their phones to summon a ride share. She just stared blankly at the interface, not wanting to talk to Will about what Ace had said. She was mortified. If it was possible, she wanted to sink into the concrete on the sidewalk more than she’d wanted to be snapped out of existence in the courtyard.

She had to face the music when Will grabbed her phone and tucked it into her purse. He took one finger and tipped her chin up until she met his gaze. “That guy”—he pointed at the front of the club—“was never ever good enough for you.”

Alex searched for words for a long moment, sure he could see her inner turmoil all over her face. But for once, it was convenient that he was a man of few words and all action, because he didn’t say anything else until the car showed up.

And when they got in the car, he didn’t ask her if it was okay that the car pointed toward her place and only her place. He assumed that she’d recover her ability to speak at some point and would need to talk to him. And she was sure that if she asked him to leave when they got to her place, he would.

But she didn’t want him to leave. Not when he pulled her to the middle seat in the back and grabbed her thigh on the ride home. Not when he said, “Makes sense that you would be that mean and bitter if the best thing you could come up with to joke about was the piece of spaghetti you had for junk. He should have just joked about his stupid-looking pants.”

Alex huffed in laughter, and the silence wasn’t as loaded after that. The driver didn’t talk either and the car was totally quiet except for the sounds of a podcast about a gruesome murder in the background.

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