Page 5 of Not a Friend (Crescent Light #1)

“I was looking for you!” Gemma shouted into my ear as she crushed me in an embrace. “We went back to the table, and you were gone.”

“You found me! This is Nate, by the way,” I said, gesturing to him.

Nate and Grant were giving each other the stereotypical bro-ish high-five-slash-handshake thing all men magically knew how to do as if they took a class on it the second they all turned fifteen.

When Nate smiled at Gemma, I searched his face for that look.

The one that said she was clearly the better option out of the two of us.

The realization that she was the hot one and he was stuck with the backup friend.

But he only gave her a polite smile and a quick handshake before formally introducing me to Grant.

At least, as formal as you can get in the middle of a packed dance floor.

Gemma reached across our foursome and pulled me closer by the hands.

“I’m sorry I lost you earlier,” she said directly into my ear, her lip gloss sticking to my hair. “Are you good? ”

I nodded. “Yeah, I’m actually having a lot of fun. Are you?”

Her baby blue eyes lit up, and a wide smile spread across her face like honey over toast. She then told me as much as she possibly could about Grant within fifteen seconds.

About how nice and funny he was, how he and Nate were both second-year grad students, and (arguably the most important bit) she was planning on going home with him.

“I can stay if you want me to.” She eyed Nate skeptically before looking back at me with raised eyebrows. If I wasn’t comfortable or said I didn’t want her to go, I knew she would stay in a heartbeat.

But I couldn’t contain my slow grin or the blush on my cheeks.

“That’s what I thought,” she said, smacking me on the ass before dancing back to where the guys nodded along to the music.

Within minutes, Gemma and Grant left the club hand in hand, but not before Gemma shared her phone location with me.

I shared mine back, just in case.

When I turned to Nate, he had one hand in his pocket, and the other extended, reaching for me.

“Then there were two.” He laughed.

“I think I need another drink.” More like a distraction from the blaring fact that I felt naked without the safety blanket of Gemma nearby, but hey.

We made our way out of the crowd and to the bar, but not before retrieving the jacket I’d left on my barstool. Nate kept his fingers lightly pressed against the small of my back as we squeezed between tables and groups of drunken dancers.

“You never did tell me what you were drinking earlier,” he pointed out as we found a spot to lean against the crowded bar. Colorful string lights hung above our heads, casting his face in red and green, highlighting a shallow dimple on his right cheek. I resisted the urge to poke a finger into it.

“Vodka soda,” I told him, “with a lime. I don’t always drink it, but tonight it sounded good.”

He flagged the bartender down and ordered drinks for both of us.

“So, what do you usually drink then?” He crossed his arms over the top of the bar and leaned closer to me.

I hummed, inching closer until my arm grazed his. “It just depends on my mood, I guess.”

Away from the center of the music, his voice, his laugh, was clearer than before and just as soothing. The electricity of flirtation bubbled within me, saturated with apprehension and the fear I was going to ruin the night by saying something stupid.

“So, what kind of mood calls for vodka?” he teased.

“Vodka, soda, lime ,” I corrected, “calls for a very different mood than just vodka, Nate.”

The bartender returned and placed two identical vodka sodas in front of us, lime wedges poking out of the ice.

“My apologies,” he mocked, sliding one glass in front of me and taking the other. “Please elaborate, Oli.”

I squeezed the lime into my drink and took a long sip, reveling in the sound of him using my nickname. “I guess tonight I was partly in the mood to celebrate and partly in the mood to say ‘fuck it.’” I shrugged, taking another drink.

“Celebrating the end of the semester or something else?” He cocked his head to the side, causing a strand of his dark hair fall over his forehead .

“The end of the semester, of course, like everyone else here.” I gestured to the still-packed club. “Gemma decided we both needed a night out since the last few weeks were particularly hellish.”

He dropped his lime into his drink. “Makes sense. And what about the ‘fuck it’ part?”

I paused at that, debating my answer. To be perfectly honest, the ‘fuck it’ part was the liquid courage Gemma convinced me I needed to break my damn dry spell.

The only issue was I never thought it would actually work.

But so far, the mental image of how the night might progress with Nate was becoming clearer and clearer, and I was getting more and more nervous.

Don’t clam up now, Oli.

“The ‘fuck it’ part… is just for me.”

He nodded like he understood, even though there was literally no way he did.

Hell, I didn’t even fully understand it.

There was no way to verbalize my need to just…

let go. To stop holding myself to such a ridiculously high standard all the time, stop trying to be perfect, stop feeling like I didn’t work as hard as everyone else, stop taking myself so seriously.

It was exhausting. I needed to let go, give myself a break, do something purely for me.

“What about you?” I changed the subject. “Do you have a go-to drink? I see you copied my order this round.”

He smiled into his vodka soda. “I’m impartial. I’ll drink pretty much anything. Except tequila.”

“Why not tequila?” I nudged his arm with my elbow. “Who hurt you?”

“Oh, god.” He laughed as if remembering a bad memory. “It just never ends well. ”

A rowdy group of guys all dressed as Santa crowded the bar, making elbow room scarce. To conserve space, Nate put his arm around me and pulled me in close as if he’d done it a million times before.

We talked for the better part of the next hour, with me half-tucked within the circle of his arms, his face so close to mine to hear me that if I were to look up at him, we would be nose to nose.

When we finished our drinks, we ordered a round of water.

We talked until the crowd thinned out, and after a while, he asked the question that made my heart jump to my throat.

“Do you want to go back to my place?”