Red Flags Go Faster (Alpha Part 1)

The following story is intended to be a one-shot story and eventually reach about a full novel-length. I have the entire story planned out already with room for the story to remain spontaneous, so I’m looking forward to exploring these characters slowly over the next few months. The conceit behind this story is ‘What if a girl seems too perfect?’ and ‘Is that a red or green flag?’ I’m also trying out a bit more of a stoic main character, though I’m not sure if I’m hitting that right or not. It’s tough to write!

Chapter 1

I took a sip of my beer, trying not to look back across the bar again at the girl I’d made eye contact with. The place was ‘upscale,’ according to Paul, but all that meant to me was that it felt kind of uncomfortable - the music was a little too loud and had almost no melody, the whole place was both too clean but also weirdly cheap when I picked at the plastic faux-wood decor, and none of the seats were comfortable at all. Plus the drinks were so overpriced they rivalled stadium pricing at a football game.

“My guy, that chick over at the bar is eyeing you up,” Curt said, leaning over and giving me a slap on the shoulder.

“No she isn’t,” I scoffed.

It had only been for a moment, but as soon as we’d made eye contact I knew I was in trouble. Not because of anything she really did. She just smiled. But I knew me pretty well, and I’d end up haunted all weekend by that smile. It had been just quirky enough, and just self-assured enough, to be an absolute killer.

“Rudy, go talk to her,” Jeanette said. “Maybe you can put that Plus One we gave you to use.”

I smirked and rolled my eyes at her and Curt. It was their wedding that I came up to the city for - we’d all grown up together, along with Bill, Brad and Bobby, the Triple B’s. The fact that Bill and Brad had both dated Bobby, aka Bobby-Jo whose primary claim to fame in our group was having the most-hick name of all of us, but were all still peas in a pod was some sort of miracle.

“You want me to pick up a girl in a bar like this on a Thursday night, and bring her to your wedding on Saturday?” I asked.

“I happen to like this bar,” Jeanette chuckled.

“Man, if it means you agree to wind down a bit, I’ll let her give a damn toast,” Curt said, giving me another clap on the shoulder. “Seriously, I love having you here but relax. I’d think you were stressed about giving the Best Man speech, but you got spared that by Ed.”

I smirked again and shook my head. Curt’s older brother Ed was a bit of a dickhead, but he was still Curt’s brother and there had been family pressure since Ed had made Curt his best man a couple years prior. I was just happy to be there for Curt and Jeany and didn’t give one flying fuck about not ‘getting’ to make the speech - I hated public speaking.

The Triple B’s came back from the bar with shots and our second round, blessedly interrupting the train of conversation as we focused on tequila and a toast for the coming nuptials. It took another five minutes before Paul, Jeanette’s younger brother, nodded in the direction behind me. “Don’t look now,” he said. “But she’s coming over.”

“Who’s coming over?” Bill asked but got shushed by Jeanette and Curtis.

“Hi.”

I turned, sitting at the end of our booth, and looked at the young woman as she flashed me that smile again. It was the kind of smile that could stop a heart dead in its goddamn tracks. She was a strawberry-blonde knockout with a cute, playful face and slender body that made me think of a farmgirl - thin but with the telltale sign of some muscles under her soft, feminine curves. She was wearing a little black dress that clung to her in all the right ways - unless you were her boyfriend and she was in public - and showed off both a dip of nice cleavage and long, slender legs that I thought would look better in cowboy boots.

The thing that got me though were her eyes and eyebrows. I’d never fallen for a girl’s eyebrows before, so I was thankful they were a package deal. Her eyes were such a light brown that even in the dark of the bar and the annoyingly flashy party lights I knew they were hazel, and her eyebrows were slightly arched and expressive in a way that said she could speak whole conversations in just the way she worked them.

“So, I was definitely going to come over here to flirt with you already,” she continued, not even waiting for me to say hello. “But now I need you to be my boyfriend for like ten minutes because there’s a creep over at the bar who isn’t leaving me alone.”

“I can do that for you,” I said, taking her hand and helping her up onto the little platform the booth was positioned on.

She flashed me that little million-dollar smile and didn’t just sit next to me at the end of the bench seat, she slid right onto my lap and kissed me before I even had a chance to react. No tongue, just a firm and full press of our lips that lasted a good five seconds. My arm slid around her, holding her hip lightly, and she raised a hand and put two fingers on my jaw, keeping me there for a moment longer before sliding her hand down to press against my chest.

It was a good fucking kiss, especially for having just met the girl. But that didn’t stop me from flashing my friends the middle finger with my other hand as my arm stretched across the back of the booth seat behind Curt - except I added a back-and-forth wiggle to it, giving them the signal.

When the kiss ended she pulled away just a little and we were both grinning as she looked into my eyes.

“My name’s Amanda, but you can call me Darlin’,” she said. She wore a pair of thin silver nose rings, one at her septum and the other her nostril, so dainty that I hadn’t even noticed them right away at any sort of distance.

“Rudy,” I said, and leaned forward and gave her an extra peck on the lips that made her smile even more.

“Taking advantage of the situation, Rudy?” she asked with a playful glint in her eye.

“Just letting my girlfriend know I missed her,” I said, giving her hip a soft squeeze.

“Well, I missed you too. Maybe my whole life,” she smirked. Then she rotated on my lap, getting her legs under the table and turning to my friends as she leaned in. “Sorry, I-”

“Hey!” Jeany said, standing up and leaning over Curt with a bright expression as she pulled Amber into a hug. “I’m Jeanette, you’re good with us,” she continued once her cheek was pressed to Amber’s and she was talking into her ear. She winked when she pulled away.

Curtis leaned in and gave her a kiss on the cheek. “Curtis,” he introduced himself.

Bobby-Jo hopped off her end of the booth and came around, giving the biggest performance yet as she gave an ‘I missed you, girl!’ squeal and hugged Amber from behind, making Amber laugh and glance at me in confusion. “I’m Bobby,” she introduced herself. “That’s Bill and Brad sitting next to me, don’t worry about getting them mixed up, they’ll answer to either one. The confused guys in the middle are Ed and Paul.”

“OK,” Amber said, grinning as she looked over her shoulder at Bobby and hugged her arms. When Bobby let go of her and went back to her seat, Amber looked back at me, still a little confused. “What have I walked into? Are you guys a cult or something?”

“No,” I chuckled. “Just experienced douche-dodgers.”

“Most of us went to college together,” Curtis explained. “Rudy here, when he was visiting, came up with a signal so that any of the girls in our group of friends could get one of us to be her stand-in boyfriend to back off a guy at a bar or a party.”

“He’s always been the thinker and the planner,” Jeanette grinned at me.

“It made sense at the time,” I sighed.

“So I picked literally the best group to make my escape with,” Amber laughed. “Damn. My luck is picking up, I guess.”

“What’s the creep at the bar look like?” I asked her quietly while moving some of her silky hair over her shoulder and behind her ear so I could speak quietly into it. 

She flashed me a look and looped her arm over my shoulder, leaning into me a little more. “Dark hair, dress shirt, maybe green? Sunglasses up on his head. He was down near the end where I was standing before, drinking cheap whiskey and I think he had a couple of friends nearby.”

I nodded and leaned in to give her a kiss on the cheek before casually stretching and looking over my shoulder in that direction. The other end of the bar was partially obscured, but I spotted the guy. He was talking to another guy, waving in our direction dismissively in a ‘Whatever, she wasn’t worth it anyway’ sort of way as he talked some bullshit to his buddy.

“Looks like he isn’t tunnel visioning,” I said.

“He hasn’t left though?” Amber asked, and I shook my head. “Guess I should stick around then, boyfriend.”

“Happy to help, girlfriend,” I chuckled, coming back from looking over my shoulder and meeting her gaze. God, I was in trouble.

“So, other than sitting around waiting to save damsels in distress, what’s a bunch of beautiful people like you doing in a place like that?” Amber asked as she turned back to the group.

“This is our last-minute Stag and Doe,” Jeanette said, hugging Curtis’s arm. “Impromptu, mostly. We’re getting married this weekend.”

“Oh my gosh!” Amber said, lighting up. “That’s so awesome, congratulations.”

The conversation, at least on our side of the table, was quickly dominated by Wedding talk as Amber asked all the right questions for Jeany to get to spill her guts about the exciting plans and mild drama that had developed over the last year and a half of planning. That had Curt and I pinned between them, but the rest of the table broke into their own conversations. I was mostly quiet, not that anyone was surprised by that, and enjoyed the genuine interest Amber showed Jeany, and even the light teasing she gave Curtis during the appropriate details.

About ten minutes later, Ed leaned in and interrupted a story about the wedding cake and how one of Jeany’s Aunts had tried to do something to their order at the bakery out of spite. That left Amber and I isolated on our end of the booth for a moment.

“I’m not cutting off any circulation, am I?” she asked me with a smile, her eyes meeting mine again as she looked at me. She’d been sitting on my lap the whole time, turned in towards the rest of the table, and my hand hadn’t left her hip.

“No, Darlin’,” I said. “I’m good with you right where you are.”

“Mmm, I didn’t realise how good that would sound,” she said with a little half-smirk. “Not much of a talker, are you?”

“Didn’t have much to say,” I shrugged, giving her hip a pat. “All these guys moved out of our hometown and up to the city, I still live back there. I come up when I can but I wasn’t exactly on the wedding planning committee.”

“So if you were closer you would have been in the thick of it with the mother-in-laws?” Amber chuckled.

“Oh, definitely,” I smirked. “I have many deeply held opinions of what makes a good summer wedding colour palette.”

She snorted softly, giving me a close-lipped smile, and quirked an eyebrow. “The fact that you know what a ‘summer wedding colour palette’ would be says more than you think.”

“I might not be talkin’, but I’m listening,” I said.

“I’m sure you are,” she said, her eyes tracing circles over my face as she took me in. “If all your friends came up to the city, what are you still doing in your hometown?”

“I wasn’t the kind of guy who goes to college,” I said. “I’ve got my own business down there.”

“What kind of business?” Amber asked, then reached down and grabbed my hand from her hip, lifting it up and feeling my palm with her fingers. “Mm, firm and calloused, but not gnarly. You do real work.”

“Heavy machinery,” I said. “Excavation, scraping, earth moving. That sort of thing.”

“So when you’re doing the real work you’re locked up in a little glass box on a big vehicle that could level a house?” she asked. She was still feeling my hand with her fingers, almost giving it a massage.

“Something like that,” I said.

“What’s the thrum like from an engine that big?” she asked.

“First few times I spent an entire work shift in one, I couldn’t sleep after ‘cause I felt like my bones were still vibrating,” I said. “Now? I barely feel it.”

“Do you ever-”

“Anyways,” Jeany interrupted, turning back from talking with Ed. “So my Aunt literally put on a wig and went to the bakery pretending to be my Mom
”

As she continued, and Amber gave her full attention to my friend, the girl in my lap lowered my hand and brought it back down to her hip, flattening her hand over mine until I was holding her like before. Then she pushed my hand lower, just a little, to cup the outer curve of her ass and held it there.

It took effort, and clenching my jaw for a long moment, to not get turned on by that.

The wedding planning stories either got derailed or petered out, I wasn’t entirely sure which, but soon Ed and Paul became the centres of attention as the Triple B’s encouraged them to tell embarrassing stories about their siblings. Ed was the better storyteller, though they hadn’t really been that close since Ed was five years older so most of the stories were from when they were kids. Paul’s stories, being only a year younger than us, were more varied since he’d been around a lot more, but he wasn’t as much of a storyteller. Still, both of them had us all laughing as Curtis and Jeanette tried to argue or defend themselves from the silly stories.

After one story that left Jeanette spinning off into a story about Paul to get back at him, Amber turned and looked at me without saying anything, her smile sweet and utterly content. It was a punch in the heart.

“You’re thinking it’s time to split,” I guessed.

“No,” she said, her eyebrows raising in surprise. “What made you think that?”

“Really?” I asked, equally surprised. “I figured your friends would be waiting for you somewhere around here. The way you were looking at me made me think it was bittersweet.”

“Gosh, I don’t know who fucked with you Rudy, but that wasn’t a bittersweet look,” she said quietly. “That was just me thinking how attractive I think you are. And I’m supposed to be here with coworkers, but one didn’t show up, one fucked off with her boyfriend like ten minutes after getting here, and the last one is a predatory lesbian and picked up a straight chick at the bar and took her to the restroom, so she’s gone for the night. I got ditched and was gonna leave before I saw you across the room.”

I opened my mouth, multiple questions coming to mind and all of them getting stuck in my throat because I wasn’t sure how to accept the double compliment. All I could do was click my mouth shut, give her a little half-smile and shake my head. That made her grin and chuckle, and she leaned in and kissed me with another of those closed-lip kisses.

“Woo!” Bobby cheered, echoed quickly by Brad and Bill when they saw us kissing.

“Get a room,” Jeanette teased.

“You got a sister around her somewhere?” Ed asked with a laugh.

That made Amber snort a little into the kiss and she pulled away, one hand lightly on my cheek still where she’d been holding me in the kiss as she turned to Ed. “Not for an old geezer like you,” she grinned.

“I’m only 31,” Ed guffawed. “The Half-Plus-Seven rule says I can date a twenty-two-year-old.”

That got groans out of Bobby-Jo and Jeanette, who immediately set to work trying to explain to Ed how a 9-year age gap relationship would not work for him. His argument back was that he was married so it didn’t matter anyway, which only gave them more ammunition for how weird a comment it was.

Amber turned back to me and gave me a short peck, like I’d given her earlier, and then winked at me. “Guess it’s a good thing I don’t have any sisters at all,” she chuckled.

“No sibs?” I asked.

She shook her head. “You?”

“I did. She passed a few years ago,” I said.

Amber’s eyes softened for a moment, looking me over again. “Older?” she guessed, and I nodded. “She loved you, I can tell,” she said softly. “She did a good job being an older sister.” Then she leaned in and gave me another peck, a little more tender this time.

“That might be the best thing anyone’s ever said to me, Darlin’,” I said.

“I’ll keep ‘em coming if you keep calling me Darlin’,” she said with a little smile.

“Alright, we’re all out of drinks,” Curtis declared to the table, interrupting the Age Gap argument that had continued to develop. “Change of venue!”

Jeanette leaned around Curtis, looking at Amber. “You’re invited if you want to come with us,” she said. “We’re heading to Yokels for line dancing.”

Amber brightened again, coming out of the unexpected moment. “Love it, I’m totally down,” she said. Then laughed as she looked down at her dress. “I’m not exactly in my Country Girl outfit, but I’ll make do.” She rotated in my lap, and I had to wonder if she pressed her ass a little more against me than necessary, and stood to let me up as we were all piling out of the booth. As we headed out of the bar, squeezing between other groups and through the mild crowd that was packing the place, I offered her my arm and she looked up at me with a smile and a double raise of her eyebrows as she held onto my elbow. She was almost a full foot shorter than me even in her heels and yet seemed larger than life.

We piled out of the bar and onto the sidewalk into the warm summer evening, the sun just barely set and still heating the horizon, and Ubers were quickly ordered up. Amber was still holding my arm lightly as she chatted with Jeanette and Bobby-Jo, bantering lightly, and I noticed Curtis edging around my other side where Amber couldn’t see.

“Dude,” he mouthed with a grin.

“Fuck off,” I mouthed back, rolling my eyes.

Ed, seeing this, got in on the action. “Duuuude,” he mouthed, giving a couple of small air thrusts to make it even dirtier. My eye roll at that was even harder.

My height ended up having me sit in the front seat of the first Uber that showed up, all three of the ladies getting into the back seat of the sedan. The rest of the guys were following in a bigger van that showed up a couple of minutes later. Being in the front seat, I was cut out of the conversation as Jeanette and Bobby both started to rattle off questions to Amber, getting to know her. I just sat and watched the route on the Uber driver’s phone, making sure we weren’t getting screwed over by him taking some detours or something, and listened.

She was twenty-four, a year younger than our core friend group. She did a two-year associate's degree in business administration, lived on the south side of the city near the river, and was thrilled to have gotten adopted by our group for the evening after her coworkers left her high, dry and hit on by a creep at the bar. And when Bobby asked when her last relationship was, Amber laughed and teased the back of my neck through the headrest gap in my seat as she said, “Well, I think it’s about a half-hour old or so now.” Then explained she hadn’t had a boyfriend for a little over a year, and that she’d taken it more seriously than her ex apparently had. 

When we got to the Local Yokel, the only Country bar in the city that was always a country bar and not just running ‘country night,’ I helped each of the ladies out of the car. Jeanette gave me a meaningful look as she took my hand to stand up out of the car, then came Amber who gave me her slightly crooked, heartstopper smile, and then Bobby-Jo who shot a look at Amber’s ass and mouthed ‘Dayum!’ to me with a grin.

We only had to wait outside for a minute before the other Uber showed up, and then we were piling into the bar. The Triple B’s headed directly for the bar, and I got distracted for a second by Curtis getting me to weigh in on a dumb argument between him, Ed and Paul about something that had happened in a Marvel movie recently. I hadn’t watched any of them since the one where the robot guy had picked up a city and they had to Re-avenge him or whatever.

By the time we got over the tipsy ‘Dude, you have to watch them all! We should do a marathon!’ - all of which I’d heard before from them - I was turning around and found Amber coming towards us with a half dozen beers clutched in both hands.

“Boys,” she said with a confident grin. “First round’s on me.”

The guys were thrilled and accepted the beers, and I took the second last one and held eye contact with her as we both took our first sips.

“Thank you,” I said, leaning in to be heard. The bar didn’t have a live band for the night but they had the speakers cranked up and there was a line dancing lesson going on over on the dance floor for folks who were new to the idea of coordinated stomping and spinning. The place wasn’t as garish as the last bar; it had the right amount of party lights to make it festive without blinding me with flashing lights and colours, the floor was a solid wood that got cleaned regularly but had just the right amount of grime that is wasn’t slippery but also not sticky from spilt beer, and the music had actual words and even some heart behind it. “You didn’t have to, I was planning on making sure you didn’t have to shell out like that.”

She hadn’t lost her grin as she tilted her chin up, stepping a little closer to me as she looked up into my eyes. “I guess it’s a good thing I like to spoil my boyfriend, then,” she laughed and winked, continuing the joke from earlier. Then she took a swig of her beer in a decidedly unladylike way and grabbed my hand. “Tell me something about my boyfriend-for-the-night, Rudy,” she continued, putting on a melodramatic breathiness as she slid a hand onto my waist and threaded her thumb into one of my belt loops. “I feel like we’ve been together our entire lives but I only know the bare-ass basics.”

“What do you want to know, Darlin’?” I asked back, brushing some of her bangs back out of her face so I could see both her eyes clearly. “I’m really not that complicated.”

“You aren’t, are you?” she mused. “In the best way, probably. At least I’ve got a feeling that’s true.” She pursed her lips for a moment in thought, then raised an eyebrow. “Dogs or cats?”

“I grew up with both,” I said with a little smirk of my own, “But the hours I work, and livin’ alone right now, isn’t fair to a dog. I’ve got a big fat cat named Chunk for now.”

“Did you name him Chunk before or after he got fat?” Amber laughed.

“He came with the name, and he was round as a beachball when I got him,” I said, shaking my head at the memory. “He belonged to my old neighbour - guy went to jail a couple of years ago for having shit luck while making stupid decisions. Didn’t have any family in the state so he got the cops to ask me to take the cat. I’ve had ginger fucker on a diet for two years and he’s still living up to his name. I swear that cat knows how to open the fridge and make himself a sandwich when I’m not home.”

Amber snorted, leaning into me and pressing her forehead to my chest as she laughed, then pulled back a little and tossed her hair flirtatiously as she looked up at me with that grin again. “Should my takeaway from this story be that you like ginger pussy then?” she asked playfully.

I groaned, unable to keep from smiling. “God, you are trouble,” I said, shaking my head.

“It’s my unofficial middle name,” she grinned. Then she looked around and saw that my friends had mostly congregated over at a pair of standing tables near the dance floor. The place was starting to fill up more as the ‘official’ line dancing hour was approaching so we were lucky we’d gotten a prime spot like that. “Come on,” Amber said, letting go of my belt loop and grabbing my hand. “Let’s get back to the others. Your friends are fun. And I give you my permission to look at my ass while you’re following me.” She winked and then turned, pulling me along by my hand.

I sighed and shook my head again. Trouble with a capital T. And that little black dress was clinging just so to what looked like a fantastic ass.

We rejoined the group and integrated in quickly, and for a while, I wasn’t even in the same conversation as Amber. That didn’t mean she wasn’t on my mind, or the topic of conversation, though. While my friends, Ed and Paul took turns chatting her up, I was getting interrogated. What did I think of her? Had I really never met her before? Jeanette had come up with this idea that we’d actually met on an online dating app and wanted a better ‘meet cute’ story so we’d manufactured the whole thing - I proved to her I wasn’t on any dating apps, which just got her slapping my arm and telling me I was a fifty-year-old in the twenty-five-year-old’s body. Apparently, I had to get on at least one since I’d been single too long.

I didn’t point out that not being on an app had led to a girl like Amber falling into my lap.

“Dude, Rudy,” Ed said at one point, leaning in close enough that I could smell the booze on his breath. “That chick is so down. If you aren’t gonna jump on that, give someone the signal to move in ‘cause I will literally die if I can’t live vicariously through you tonight.” I had to roll my eyes at that - his wife and their two toddlers were at home and it felt a little classless that he was so amped up about someone getting some sex.

“I feel like I’ve seen her somewhere,” Paul muttered at one point, looking over at Amber. “I just can’t figure out where.”

“In your dreams, bud,” Curtis chuckled, nudging his soon-to-be brother-in-law. “Floating around like a fuckin’ angel.”

An MC, a middle-aged woman who was working behind the bar most of the night, cut in on a mic in between songs and had the dancefloor clear before she announced that Line Dancing night was officially open - and if you weren’t at least stomping your feet in time then you didn’t have to go home, you just couldn’t stay here.

“Let me guess,” Amber said as there was a rush to the floor from half our group. She slid up next to me, running a hand up my back. “My strong, stoic boyfriend-for-the-night isn’t much of a dancer?”

I sighed, draining the rest of my beer and setting it on the table. “That depends,” I said.

“Oh, do I need to bribe you to get on the dance floor with me?” Amber asked with a teasing raise of one eyebrow.

“No, Darlin’,” I said with a shake of my head. “No bribery, blackmail or coercion required. I just need to know if you can keep time because I don’t feel like getting thrown out of here. This is the only bar in the whole city I actually like.”

She laughed, kicking off her heels and setting them up on our table. That dropped her another good two or three inches and all I could think of was how easy it would be to pick her up over my shoulder. “Well, do you trust me?” she asked, backing away from me, grabbing my hands to pull me with her to the dance floor.

“About as far as I could through you, Darlin’,” I said. “And I think that’d be pretty far.”

She scrunched up her nose and bit her lower lip like she thought the idea of me tossing her around was about as hot as I did. Then we hit the dance floor and Bobby and Curtis made room for us to join the line.

I wasn’t anything special at line dancing - I could do the basic steps, follow some changes and have fun. Jeanette was the ‘fancy’ dancer of our group of friends, and Bill was the only guy who could keep up with her when they were given the space. Curtis didn’t get bothered when the two of them got going since he had two left feet and could barely manage the basic grapevine steps without falling over.

Amber might not have been on the level of Jeanette, and she definitely looked out of place in her clingy little black dress and bare feet, but she could keep up. More importantly, she was laughing and grinning and having just as much fun as the rest of my friends on the dance floor. Whenever there was a break in the line dancing she would turn to me, giving me another flash of her quirky smile as she would reach out for my hand so I could give her a spin or pull her close for a moment. We stuck on the dance floor for a good half dozen songs in a row, longer than anyone in our group other than Jeanette and Bill, before I signalled to Amber asking if she wanted a drink as a Big and Rich song was ending. She nodded and then burst out laughing as I grabbed her hand, spun her again as I pulled her close, and then scooped her up in my arms and carried her off the dance floor to our tables. Ed didn’t dance at all and had been holding down the fort, the others having grabbed drinks while taking a song off.

“You’re good!” he said to Amber as she scooped her shoes off the table and slipped them on before I set her down. “And you make Rudy look like he knows what he’s doing.”

“I didn’t see you out there,” she said with a knowing smirk. “Takin’ shots from the cheap seats isn’t a good look, Ed.”

“Oof,” he said, acting like he’d been stabbed in the heart.

We headed to the bar and I let her signal the bartender and she ordered a couple of beers, but I put my hand over hers as she tried to pay again and handed over cash to the guy. She turned to me, giving me a look and rolling her eyes, and I gave her a look back as I grabbed her by the waist with both hands and lifted her onto the barstool behind her. That made her chuckle and she shook her head.

“I told you I like treating my guy,” she said. “And you and your friends are making this entire night more than worth it.”

“Well, you should know that guys like treating their girls,” I pointed out. “Probably more than being treated, though the attempt is definitely appreciated.”

She laughed again, shaking her head at what was obviously a memory and not at me in particular. “You might think that’s true, Rudy, but I think you’d be wrong,” she said, leaning in and taking a sip of her beer before looking at me.

“I don’t know what guys you’ve been hanging around, Darlin’,” I said, leaning a little closer as well. “But if they’re relying on you to treat them, they aren’t doing their jobs.”

She gave me that smile again, looking into my eyes.

“Hey, buddy,” the bartender said as he was crossing behind the bar in front of us and saw the way we were looking at each other. “If you’re not gonna kiss her, I’ll hop this bar and do it myself.”

“Fuck off,” I said with a smirk, glancing at him, and then leaned in and kissed Amber. I couldn’t hear it but I could feel her hum happily, and this time I let things go a little further, teasing my tongue against her lips only to be surprised when she didn’t tease me back. At least not like that. Instead, she sucked my lower lip between hers and bit me softly. When we pulled apart she was giggling and giving me a stare that made a whole lot of promises.

“God damn, Darlin’,” I said with a heavy exhale, shaking my head incredulously. “I’m not gonna try and say I’ve never made a new friend with a woman in a bar, but this is
 something else. Not my usual style.”

“It’s a good thing that we’re already dating then, isn’t it?” she pointed out, smiling knowingly. “And to be clear, I don’t usually do this either. Flirt a little, let a guy buy me a drink if I think he’s cute, sure. Maybe a little kiss or two to figure out if there’s actual chemistry or not. I don’t hop into Ubers and go with a guy and his friends to a second location, though. You’re something special.”

I blew out a breath and took a swig off my bottle, shaking my head. I didn’t want to ask it, because I partially didn’t want to know the answer or have this whole thing blow up in my face, but I also needed to know. “Ever had an ex tell you that you’re crazy?” I asked.

She snorted and grinned, bubbling over into a laugh. “Once,” she said. “Back in high school after I broke up with him. Ballsy question, though.”

“Had to ask,” I said apologetically.

“And why is that?” she asked.

“If you blew up just at the idea or the word, I’d know you were the kind of trouble I’m not looking for,” I said. “And I’d rather deal with that earlier than later.”

“Fair question then,” Amber said, back to that smirking smile. “I’ve known some crazy bitches. Anyone ever tell you that you’re an abusive piece of shit?”

“Only an employee who showed up meth’d out of his mind so I had to fire him,” I said.

“Good reason to fire a guy,” she said.

“Finish that beer, Darlin’,” I said. “I want to talk you back out on that dance floor.”

She grinned and tilted her beer up, taking another long draw as I matched her.

We spent almost two hours at the Yokel, dancing and drinking. Jeanette and Bill got spotted in the crowd by the MC lady and recognised from past visits to the bar and were given some space to do a bit of their Country Swing to the cheers of the crowd. One couple tried to imitate them and the lady almost fell on her head when she slipped while getting lifted over his head.

Around 11pm Bobby-Jo came and grabbed Bill, Jeanette, Amber and I from the dance floor to regroup with the others at the table.

“Strip club time!” Bobby declared, slapping her palms excitedly on the table. “Let’s gooo.”

I’d totally forgotten that Ed and the Triple B’s had been planning that. Jeanette had already had her Bachelorette the previous month and the girls had done a weekend trip up to the Okanagan Valley in Canada for wine tastings and skiing, while Curtis’s bachelor party had been a trip to the Florida Keys for fishing, and then up into Florida proper for wild hog hunting. Neither trip featured strippers or any other ‘wild’ events, much to the dismay of the Triple Bs, Ed and one of Jeanette’s other bridesmaids Staci, a girl she’d been roommates with in college. None of us were prudes or Jesus-freaks, and we’d been to a strip club or two before as a group (excluding Ed, whose wife was generally against the idea but was ‘allowing it’ for the night), so the Triple Bs had declared tonight to be a ‘rager.’

That all, of course, was going to be hard to explain to this fantastic woman who had attached herself to us for the evening.

“Which club are you guys planning on going to?” Amber asked, almost immediately blocking my need to even start explaining.

“Scuttlebutts,” Bill said. “They have great wings.”

That got a snort out of several of us.

“OK, hear me out - I’ve got a connection at Tripper’s Landing Strip,” Amber said. “I promise it’ll be way better than Scuttlebutts.”

“Fuck it, let’s go to the Landing Strip then,” Bobby said, circling a finger in the air and pointing towards the front door to the bar. “We’re movin’ out!”

Amber turned to me, giving me a slightly abashed look for the first time that was fucking cute. “I promise, I’m really not crazy,” she chuckled.

“I promise I won’t start thinkin’ it until you give me a reason to,” I said. “But
 ‘connections?’”

“I know a couple of girls who work there,” she explained. “And have partied with them and the DJ. So I’ve been there a few times. Why? Would it be a problem if I were a stripper and it was my night off?”

I shook my head. She could be a stripper with her body. “Darlin’, I can’t help but think you’d be the highest-earning stripper this side of the Mississippi if that’s what you do for work,” I said. “And I wouldn’t hold it against you, but I’m not sure I could keep bein’ your boyfriend if you were hidin’ something like that from me.”

“Fair,” she grinned. “Relationships are built on trust, after all.”

“Trust, work and making good choices,” I said.

“So, do you still trust me?” she asked. We were following in the wake of the others towards the door and I realised that my answer had changed from before. 

This night was getting weirder and wilder, and despite everyone else telling me that Amber was hot for me, or asking me what I thought of her, I’d still been holding back. This night would end. I’d be busy with the wedding for the rest of the weekend, and then I’d head back home on Sunday night and go back to my regular life, and whatever this thing was between us would be another kernel of What If. The first time I’d made eye contact with her I’d known that I’d be thinking of her a week from now, of that girl in the bar. A month later? Probably not. Now she wasn’t just a girl from across the bar. Now she was this real, tangible, sexy woman that I was learning more about, and starting to get, and who seemed to get me. Now I wasn’t going to be able to stop thinking about her after a week, and I was OK with that. I had to be because I wanted more of her. I was being drawn to that smile, and those eyes, and her laugh at the same time I felt like she was being drawn to me.

I was willing to go down this rabbit hole with her, even if she spelt trouble with a capital T just like she said.

“More and more every minute,” I said, and it must have been the right thing because she paused our progress, looking up at me with those hazel eyes of hers.

“Fuck, you’re sexy,” she said. Then she kissed the tips of two of her fingers and raised them to press on my lips. “Now come on, I gotta make a call or two before we Uber over.”

Chapter 2

“Dude, she’s a stripper,” Brad said. “Come on, she’s gotta be. She has connections at a strip club?”

“She’s hot enough to be one,” Ed agreed.

I blew out a breath, shaking my head and not engaging with the guys. Amber had ridden with Bobby-Jo and Jeanette again, but Jeany had pulled Curt with them into their car so I was stuck with the boys. That wasn’t something I would usually feel any sort of way about, but if I was only going to get one evening with this woman I wanted to maximise my time with her.

“I swear I’ve seen her before,” Paul said from the back seat of the Escalade that had come to pick us up. He was squeezed back there with Bill, while Ed and I were in the middle bucket seats and Brad was leaning back to talk to us from the front passenger seat while the Uber driver tried to ignore us.

“Have you been going to strip clubs?” Bill asked Paul.

“No, not since the last time you guys took me,” Paul said.

“So are you gonna fuck her, Rudy?” Ed asked me, drumming his hands against his armrest.

“Jesus Christ, I don’t know,” I grunted, shaking my head at him. “How about you guys keep your game faces on and leave where my dick is headed out of your thoughts.”

“Oh, come on, buddy,” Bill said, grabbing my shoulders from behind me and working them. “It’s been way too long since you got laid. You need to get back on that bicycle and start ridin’ it, shake off that rust.”

“Again with thinkin’ way too much about where my dick is or was,” I grunted.

That got the guys laughing, and they changed the subject for the rest of the ride until the driver pulled us up in front of the strip club. Tripper’s Landing Strip looked like it might have been a Mexican restaurant in its previous life, the outside of the building done up in a sort of hacienda type of architecture except that the interior sported a taller, plain brickwork that must have been an add-on to raise the ceilings. The front door of the place had a red carpet rolled out and two golden lights beaming down on it, trying to make it look fancier than it was, and a bouncer was on hand wearing all black and holding a clipboard.

We got out of the Uber and I thanked the driver, sending him on his way just as the other car arrived. The girls and Curtis piled out and Amber made a beeline for me, scooping her arm around mine and leading me, and the rest of the group, towards the door.

“Hey, Frank,” she said as we approached the bouncer.

“Amber,” Frank said. He was tall and built like a bull with broad shoulders and the kind of arms that looked like they belonged on an action figure instead of a real person. “Jackie said you were bringing a group, but I don’t know if she knew you meant this many people.”

“It’ll be fine,” Amber said. “Probably.”

He sighed and shook his head, then eyed the rest of us. “I need you two,” he said, gesturing to Paul and Bobby-Jo. “The rest of you are fine.”

Once the IDs were produced and checked, he let us in and we lined up to pay our cover fees. Amber tried to pay for me and I caught her, making her laugh as I took her card from her and held it over her head as I handed the guy working the entrance cash. Once we were through I handed her back her card.

“You know this means I’m going to buy you a lapdance now, right?” she asked with a smirk. We were just inside the entrance and the entire place was lit up with purple lighting, casting a weird glow across us, along with the accompanying party lights and thumping music. If the exterior of the place looked like a stereotyped Mexican restaurant, the inside looked like it could have been built out of a warehouse full of antiques - all the couches looked like they were from the early 1900s at best, the booths were either plush velvet or hardwood that might have been lifted out of a speakeasy, and the bar had two guys behind it wearing bowties. The incongruity of the decor and lighting was strange - adding in the woman who was currently spinning, half nude, on a pole on the main stage and two more on side stages wiggling away for the forty or so people in the place made it feel surreal.

“I’m not exactly a lapdance kind of guy, Darlin’,” I said, moving out of the way so Curtis and Jeanette could follow me in. They headed for the bar, planning to get started on that two-drink minimum.

“Well, are you a boobs or ass guy?” she asked.

I snorted softly and shook my head. “I know a trap when I hear it,” I said.

“Smart and sexy,” Amber laughed. Then she grabbed my hand. “Come on.” She led me towards the bar, and we were soon joined by the rest of the group as we got our orders, along with two of the strippers who were slowly wandering around looking for clients who wanted private dances. I immediately started thinking of them as ‘Schoolgirl’ and ‘Orange Bikini’ based on what they were wearing and never got their names. Ed was immediately flustered, flirting with Schoolgirl, while Jeanette was chatting up Orange Bikini - who had massive fake tits. Knowing Jeany, she’d buy Curt a lapdance from that lady since Jeany wasn’t nearly so well endowed and liked to give him a taste of the other side on the rare occasion we were at a strip club.

“Cheers,” Amber said, handing me a beer and then clinking hers with mine. We only had time to take a sip before her eyebrows raised and she was looking past me. “Hold on,” she said, squeezing my arm quickly and handing me her beer. She slipped past me and stepped away from the bar, crashing into a giggling hug with a tall blonde woman - and she was tall even without the platform shoes she was wearing, so she practically loomed over Amber as they hugged and laughed together. She also happened to be topless except for a couple of pasties covering her nipples and half her moderate breasts, and the lingerie panties sitting low on her hips weren’t adding that much more coverage.

They spoke quickly, and then Amber took her hand and led her to me. “Rudy, this is my friend Fawn. Fawn, this is my boyfriend Rudy.”

Fawn was offering me her hand in a sort of lady-like way until she hesitated hearing Amber call me her boyfriend. “What?” she asked, her voice tinged mildly with some sort of Eastern European accent. “Really?”

“For the night,” Amber chuckled and clarified. “It’s a long story, I’ll tell you later.”

Fawn rolled her eyes and shook her head in a way that told me that, other than the initial shock, this sort of thing wasn’t that surprising from Amber. “Charmed,” she said as I shook her hand.

“Nice to meet you,” I agreed, doing my damndest to focus on her eyes and not her bare chest, or her tight bare stomach. Or her mound pressing against the thin cover of the panties. Or her long, bare legs.

There was a lot of bare skin going on.

Amber ordered shots for us, along with Jeanette and Curtis, and I started to lose sense of time. I noticed the Triple Bs all getting lap dances at one point, each of them sitting on a big couch as strippers wriggled on top of them. Ed bought a dance for Paul, and Paul bought one for him despite his weak protests. Jeany bought Ed a three-song dance back in the champagne room, looking pleased with herself when he came back out looking happily shell-shocked.

Then Amber bought Jeany a lapdance from Fawn, whispering to her friend that Jeanette was the bride-to-be of the party. The leggy blonde put on a show, leading Jeanette to a chair and getting most of our group to come over and watch, though Amber and I stayed back near the bar. We weren’t exactly unoccupied though, and had a clear view as Jeanette got worked over. Amber was sitting up on a barstool and I was leaning on the bar next to her when I almost jumped out of my pants as she ran her hand down my thigh. Her grin at that reaction was impish, and she leaned over and kissed me, feeding me her lithe little tongue as we made out for a minute.

When she pulled away she had a gleam in her eye. “What do you think of Fawn?” she asked.

“I think she’s a lovely gal,” I said diplomatically.

“Do you want a lapdance from her?”

“I think I know exactly who I want a lapdance from, and it’s not her,” I said. “But I also think the lady I’m considering isn’t up for sale like that.”

Amber’s grin could have broken her face. “I don’t think so either, but she appreciates the thought,” she said. “The good news is that I’ve got someone else to give you a lapdance.”

When she had manoeuvred it, I couldn’t say, but she gestured over my shoulder and I turned and found a cute, black-haired girl sauntering up to us. Her hair was long, down to her ass, and she was a tight little package with small tits and an athletic body. She was pretty, and the way she looked at me was predatory in an ‘I’m going to swallow you whole’ way.

She said her name but I missed it, mostly because Amber had squeezed my crotch teasingly right before pushing me towards her with a hand on the small of my back. The dark-haired girl grabbed my hand and started leading me towards the champagne room, and I realised that she was wearing even less than Fawn had been - same pasties, but just a thong. I glanced over my shoulder and was almost relieved when I saw Amber was following me.

The dance was a whirlwind. The dark-haired stripper might not have had the big assets of some of the other ladies in the club, but she knew how to move. By the end of the first song in the dark, private room, while I kept my hands gripping the velvet cushions of the couch, she had me hard as a rock in my pants just from the teasing dance moves and glimpses of nipple or pussy as she peeled pastie or thong aside for little moments.

At the end of the song I motioned for her to lean close, and she did and grinned and nodded at my request.

Amber, who was sitting on a couch about five feet away on the other side of the dark room, shot us a curious look then her eyes went wide and she laughed as the stripper dropped to her knees and started crawling like a cat towards her as the opening of the next song started. She had a small, cute ass that waved sinuously as it moved away from me.

It was almost as hot watching Amber get danced on as it had been getting the lap dance myself. And this time the stripper slowly lost what little she had covering her. The first pastie to come off was playfully stuck to Amber’s forehead, bearing a puffy little tan areola and nipple. The second one was put over Amber’s lips, cutting off her laughter.

The thong got shot my way, expertly landing right on top of my head.

She came back to me for the third song and was all over me. The dance was erotic and seemed to last a lifetime and a moment at the same time. The stripper was lithe and teasing and knew just what she was doing as she went from mostly-visual teasing by dancing around me to dancing on me, grinding herself against my cock through my pants, and running her fingers through my hair roughly to pull my head the way she wanted. Tempting me with her lips coming close enough to feel her breath on mine, but not kissing me.

When the song ended I groaned, leaning away from her as she grinned and laughed, rubbing her hands on my cheeks for a moment before picking up her thong from where I’d set it beside me on the couch and quickly putting it on.

“Have fun, ‘boyfriend?’” Amber asked as she fell onto the couch next to me.

“Wow,” I said to her, then turned to the stripper. “Wow.”

“High praise,” the stripper laughed. Then she looked at Amber while applying new pasties to her little tits that she’d pulled from
 I wasn’t sure where. “He was a good boy.”

“I didn’t doubt he would be, but that’s good to know,” Amber grinned. “Can I?”

The stripper smirked and nodded. “One song,” she said, then started heading for the door out of the private room.

“One song?” I asked, having a feeling I knew where this was going and knowing what lines I was or wasn’t willing to cross.

Amber smiled at me, rubbing a hand on my chest through my shirt. “Good boys get rewarded,” she said. Then she pivoted and threw her leg over me, straddling my lap as she kissed me. The song had already started, but all I heard was the thump of my heart in my ears. She broke the kiss to bring her lips to my ear. “I’m not a stripper, but I’m friends with strippers so I’ve learned some moves,” she said quietly. “But right now I just want to feel your hands on me and kiss you like I fuckin’ want to be kissed. You can touch me, Rudy, for one song.”

Our lips locked, and I growled softly as I slid my hands up from the outside of her thighs to her waist, then back to her ass over her dress.

Fuck, that was a great ass. Squishy and firm at the same time. She moaned into my kiss as I mauled her butt, and then we were really kissing and I lost track of what I was doing completely. The alcohol, the too-loud thumping music, the dark room. How fucking horny I was. It all added up to me losing my sense of self as we let our hands explore while our lips merged us into one being for the space of a three-minute stripping song.

Later, I would wish I at least knew what song it had been, but neither of us could remember.

When it ended she pulled away from my lips with a gasp. She’d been grinding her hips against me and I leaned in, kissing her bare chest at the base of her throat as she laughed in sheer pleasure. “Fuck, Rudy,” she groaned. “Fuck. We have to get out of here.”

For a second I thought she meant the club, but then I realised she meant the champagne room. I grunted and stood up, lifting her with me, my hands still on her ass as she clung to me - she kissed me again as I turned and she slowly lowered her legs to stand on the couch, and then let me help her step down to the floor.

“Hold on,” I said, running my fingers through her hair and getting it straightened out. She chuckled and reached up, running her thumbs over my lips where I might have had some of her soft pink lipstick on me.

“Better?” she asked once I brushed her hair back.

“Probably not as good as if you had a mirror, but I think you’re cute and don’t look like you just sucked the soul out of a man,” I said.

“Is that what I did?” she smirked. “I thought it was pretty damn good.”

“I might be hollow on the inside now, but damn right it was, Darlin’,” I said.

She grabbed my hand and led me out and back into the main room of the strip club. Jeanette and Curtis noticed us exiting the champagne room - missing a stripper - and I saw them glance at each other. Amber let go of my hand once we reached the group, winking at me as she headed for the bar where both Fawn and the dark-haired stripper seemed to be waiting for her.

“Hey,” Curtis said as he and his fiancee cornered me alone.

I blew out a breath in response, eyeing them both suspiciously.

“You need to make your move on her, Rudy,” Jeanette said. “Take her back to the hotel. Or go to her place. The chemistry between you two is ridiculous.”

“And don’t argue,” Curtis said, waylaying what I was about to say. “‘Oh, I’m not that kind of guy,’ ‘I’m happy with my life the way it is,’ ‘I don’t need to get set up on a date even though everyone who cares about me can see I’m lonely.’ Go have hot hookup sex with her! Get freaky. Or don’t, be all stoic and bang her in missionary all night like a robot. I don’t care. But fucking do something.”

“And before you ask - yes, we are totally set for wedding stuff,” Jeanette added. “We can get back to the hotel just fine tonight with the group, and there’s nothing that you need to do tomorrow other than show up to the rehearsal dinner.”

“And golfing tomorrow,” Curtis said quickly.

“And you guys golfing tomorrow,” Jeanette nodded.

I looked between them. They were my two best friends - it had been Curtis first, and Jeanette had been my best gal pal but not a ‘best friend’ until after high school, but now they were solidly in that top spot together. If, God forbid, something happened and they broke up I wasn’t sure how I would handle the whole thing. And here they were, telling me to have sex with a girl I’d just met hours before, on the eve of the eve or their wedding.

“You two realise how ridiculous it is that I’m hooking up with someone two nights before your wedding, right?” I asked.

Jeanette smirked and gave me a punch on the arm. “Go get her, Rudy. She’s hot, she’s fun and she’s interested. You deserve that.”

“Don’t we all?” Curtis mused, and when Jeanette turned to him with a confused look he said. “I meant you, babe. You’re hot, fun and interested.”

Jeanette snorted and rolled her eyes, then looked back at me. “Figure it out, Rudes.” Then she grabbed her fiance’s hand and dragged him towards the group, quite possibly intent on wrangling them up to head back to the hotel so that she and Curtis could disappear into their room.

I sighed, shaking my head. The booze was making me second-guess myself, but I knew what I wanted. I was pretty sure I knew what Amber wanted, too. Especially after making out with her like that. And there really wasn’t anything stopping me - all the prep for the wedding was done, I had no duties until the day-of, and I was single and on vacation.

Why shouldn’t I explore
 whatever this chemistry was.

“Hey,” Amber said, coming up behind me and hugging me from the side, looking up at me with that crooked, heart-stopping smile and those hazel eyes that made my heart skip a beat. “I’m ready to go,” she continued. “Want to
 come to my place?”

I nodded, just a little, and pursed my lips. “Your place?” I asked.

“Unless you feel like driving all the way back to yours,” she said. “But I think I’m a little bit closer.”

“I’ve got a hotel room at the wedding venue,” I said, nodding towards the others.

It was her turn to raise an eyebrow and purse her lips. “Hotel sex?” she chuckled. “That sounds hot, but might make me feel more like an escort than a girlfriend if it’s our first time. Come to my place. I’ll make breakfast in the morning.”

“So now I’m staying over, too?” I asked quietly. My hand had been on her back naturally, and I rubbed gently as we kept eye contact.

“Believe me, Rudy,” she said with a confident look in her eyes. “After a night like this, and how we’re going to cap it off, you aren’t going to want to drag your ass back to that hotel. So I’ll be making you breakfast.”

“That,” I said, turning so I was hugging her face-on instead of side-to-side. “Sounds fucking amazing, Darlin’.”

“Then I just have one question for you. French toast or pancakes?”