to know.” Katrina sipped her iced tea. “Are you going to be texting with your nemesis all night? Because it’s leaving me staring at my roast beef with no one to talk to.”
Oh, please. That was rich. “You’re on your phone all day. You can’t go five minutes without sending a kissy emoji to Drew. It’s an addiction we all share.” It was a smartphone thing. She couldn’t help it. But Trina was right. They were hanging out together so she vowed to send one last message and put the phone away for a few hours. “But I concede your point. One last text.”
“That’s fair. And I promise not to send any kissy texts to Drew for the next two hours.” Katrina bit her sandwich and chewed. “Best thing about him working, besides the fact that I get to hang out with you? I can eat grilled onions on my patty melt and don’t have to worry about dragon breath. It will have time to recede, like an onion tide, before he’s off work.”
So not the Trina of a few months ago. It seemed the honeymoon phase of their relationship was over and her best friend was feeling quite content with her man. Sam wanted to laugh, but resisted the urge.
“The wine will overtake it,” she reassured Katrina. “Best thing about being single is I don’t have to worry about that ever. Or waxing.” There were other benefits as well, like total freedom and time to reflect on who she was and what she wanted. The suck-ass part? She was lonely. She could admit it. Yes, she missed sex but she also missed just touching someone. An affectionate hand on her back, the right to touch a man’s chest. She missed those little things, and at almost twenty-five she wasn’t really interested in going out to a club and hooking up with some random guy.
That didn’t prevent her from drooling over Liam’s bare chest, though. Look, but don’t touch. Nothing wrong with that. Staring at his picture again, she composed her final text before dropping her phone back into her purse.
I’m an advocate of taking the edge off.
It was a little flirty. But she couldn’t help it. It seemed so harmless.
But it nearly killed her to ignore her phone for the next ninety minutes as agreed upon.
When she and Katrina were done eating and had walked to the bar where Drew worked, she gave in to her compulsion and checked her phone when Trina went to the restroom.
I’m not sure what you mean.
Oh, he knew exactly what she meant. But he was trying to keep it professional. Damn it. He texted again.
Since I’m done with my run, I’ll talk to you tomorrow. Thanks.
He clearly didn’t need or want a flirt buddy the way she apparently did.
Roger.
Samantha saluted her phone. It felt necessary.
She looked at the shirtless picture of Liam again and resisted the urge to send another text, poking further. Instead, she just saved the picture to her camera roll so she could look at it frequently and repeatedly.
And this was her Friday night.
Wow. She really needed to get a life.
* * *
“I’m uncomfortable with all of this.” Liam tipped back his glass and took down a third of his Guinness. “Taking this ad out was a fucking mistake.”
“You’re getting drunk,” Travis told him with an amused look. “Your accent is so thick right now I need an interpreter to understand you.”
“Fuck you.” That’s how he felt. Fuck you. Just fuck the fuck out of all of it. “Maybe I’m drunk, but that doesn’t change the fact that I never should have listened to you. I should have just signed up for a decathlon, not put a bloody ad out on Craigslist. I’m not comfortable texting someone I’ve never met, but pushing this guy to meet me feels like I’m asking for a date.” It was all just not him. He couldn’t do it. “I’m going to fire him.”
“You just hired him like five minutes ago.” Travis shook his head and reached for his own beer.
They were in a pub they frequented around the corner from their apartment. It was unusual for Liam to have more than one or two beers but on last count, he’d gotten up to four tonight. He couldn’t shake the vibe of being put off by texting with someone who could be a convicted felon or a con artist looking to steal his identity or something. “I want to ask him to send me a picture of himself, but that sounds like flirting, doesn’t it?”
Travis nodded. “Yes. Yes, it does.” A day trader, Travis was still wearing his work clothes, and with his expensive taste in business wear and his dark good looks, every woman in the bar was checking him out. Liam had a feeling his buddy was going to go home with a few phone numbers whereas he was just going to go home with a massive bar tab.
“So what do I do?”
“Nothing. Just let him give you shit about slacking off on your workouts. That’s all he’s supposed to do, right? He’s a nonperson. Just an app with free will.”
Travis had a point, but it didn’t sit well with Liam. “That’s not how I am. I just can’t be impersonal with a person.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket and put it on the bar top. The pub was dark and murky, atmospherically intending to emulate dives back in the UK and Ireland, but it felt too upscale to really remind Liam of Kinsale. Maybe Dublin. But definitely not like home.
Are you in shape?
Okay, that sounded even worse than asking for a picture. God, he was bloody bad at all this nonsense.
I only run if someone is chasing me.
Liam looked at Travis. He looked at his phone. “I’m in this far, I might as well make a complete and total ass out of myself.”
“What are you going to do?” Travis adjusted his tie. “Please don’t embarrass yourself. That will embarrass me.”
But Liam figured he had nothing to lose. If the whole reason behind a nemesis was to prove he was manly, then fuck it. What did he care what some random stranger thought? Balls. He was reclaiming his.
Let me see what you look like.
That might not be a good idea.
It doesn’t matter. I just want to put a face to the guy giving me a hard time. No big deal.
It shouldn’t matter, but it did. But something was off and Liam wanted to know what the hell it was.
Okay.
A picture of a woman popped up in the text box. A very cute woman with dark brown curly hair and glasses. She looked like a librarian or a writer. A kindergarten teacher. A cupcake baker.
“What the fuck?” He turned the phone to Travis. “This is Sam, apparently.”
“Sam is a girl.”
“It would seem so.” Liam was gobsmacked. But...not surprised. In retrospect, Sam sounded female. Feminine. Flirty. All the f words. “No wonder I was feeling squirrelly. I knew something was off.”
“She’s cute. Doesn’t look like a ballbuster, but she is cute. If that’s who she really is.”
Liam frowned, taking his phone back and studying the picture again. She was cute. Midtwenties. Adorable smile with dimples. She was wearing a floral sweater that his mum might fancy, though he’d never found himself gazing at his mother’s chest. With Sam, yep, he looked, noticing there was a perfect tight pull across a lovely set of breasts. She was nerdy and sexy all at the same time. “You think she or he lifted a random picture? This is why I don’t like this stuff. I have no idea who I’m actually contacting. It’s weird.”
I thought you were a guy, he texted.
Nope. Sam is for Samantha.
How do I know it’s really you?
If it was really her, what was he going to do? “Man, I don’t think I can do this if this