Jessica Meigs - The Becoming Read Free Page B

me wait until after the game is over before you start trying to hook me up with random bar chicks.”
    Jack snorted. “Hell yeah, I’ve got to hook you up! God knows you can’t manage to get the pretty girls on your own,” he joked.
    “If we weren’t in the bar right now, I’d so kick your ass,” Gray muttered. He jabbed his cigarette out in the ash tray with more ferocity than necessary and finished off his beer.
    “But you can’t, because then Smitty would call the cops and your brother would want to know why you were in Smitty’s in the first place when you should have been at home and why he was bailing you out of jail. He’d probably get all paternal on you, and I’d never get to hang out with you again.” Jack sank another ball and looked up at him. “What’s with him, anyway? He acts like you’re twelve or something.”
    Gray shrugged and grabbed his empty bottle, setting his pool cue on the edge of the table. “I don’t want to talk about my brother,” he replied. Especially since he’d have my head if he knew I was here, he added mentally. “And don’t talk about him that way. That’s between me and him.” He nodded toward the bar. “I’m going to get another drink.”
    Gray didn’t wait for Jack’s reply. Circling the table, he tossed his empty bottle into the trash can as he passed it and headed to the bar. He stopped a few feet away from the girl Jack had pointed out, the girl who’d been staring at him. The girl who’d given him such a rush of feeling the second he’d laid eyes on her that he’d felt the compulsion to sit down in a daze. He flagged down the bartender—the esteemed Smitty himself—and asked, “Can I get another beer, please?” He glanced at the girl out of the corner of his eye and added, “Make that two beers.” Once he had the two chilled bottles in hand, he slid onto the stool beside the girl, cracked the top off one of the bottles, and set it gently on the counter in front of her. “Hey, April. Long time no see.”
    The girl looked up at him, and a wide smile spread across her pretty face. The sight of it sent a pang of melancholy through him. “I was hoping you’d take the hint and come over here,” she admitted.
    Gray hadn’t seen April Linder in almost five years, not since before they’d graduated high school and gone their separate ways. Thinking about that still made him a little sad; two years was a lot of time for a teenager to spend with one girl. He returned April’s smile and added, “You’re looking great. What have you been doing?”
    April shrugged and tucked her hair behind her ear in a familiar gesture. She scooped up the beer he’d put in front of her and sipped from the bottle. “Oh, not a whole lot. Just moved back home.” She scrunched up her nose, and Gray noticed the freckles speckling her cheeks and the bridge of her nose. “College sucks, by the way. Don’t even bother with it.”
    “I take it things didn’t go well for you in Seattle?” Gray asked.
    “Oh God no.” April grimaced. “I spent the whole time being miserable and getting ridiculed for my accent.”
    “Assholes,” Gray said simply.
    “Tell me about it.” April downed another sip of beer. Gray could feel her eyes running over him during the pause that fell between them, almost as if she were physically running her hands over his skin. “You’re not looking all that bad yourself. Not as skinny as the last time I saw you. More…muscular, I think.”
    Gray shrugged nonchalantly and gulped from his bottle. “I guess that’s what happens when you haul car parts around all day. Well, that and the occasional visit to the gym.”
    “Still doing body work?”
    “Naw, got laid off from that garage,” he admitted. “Been working as a regular mechanic for about a year now. Nothing major. Helps out with the whole food thing.” He fell silent, turning his bottle in slow circles on the bar. He wasn’t sure what to say to April. It’d been years since