Sunny frowned when she lifted her beer bottle and realized it was empty. Putting it down, her frown deepened when she saw another one, full and cold, sitting in front of her. “Where did this come from?” she asked the table at large as she put down the empty and picked up the full bottle.
“I bought it for you,” the woman on her right said. “It’s the least I can do for all the pleasure you have given me since I found your books. I cannot tell you how many times I have reread them, and every time I laugh, and I cry, and I fall in love with the heroes all over again.”
Sunny’s cheeks burned though she could not tell if it was the alcohol or the compliments as the other women sitting around the table added their words of appreciation.
“Thank you,” she said, her shyness getting the best of her.
“No, thank you,” the lady across from her countered before going on to say, “And I’m buying the next round.”
“Oh, but…” Sunny trailed off.
Instead of arguing she decided to just go with it. After all, all she had to do was make her way to the lobby elevator and then down the hall to her room. And if she got too bad, maybe she could talk Geo into helping her to her room. If he wasn’t too busy collecting phone numbers and room keys.
So she drank three more beers during the first two performances. And the longer she sat and thought about Geo dancing in front of all these women, the more a resigned sadness that he could never be hers grew inside her. Lifting her beer, she wondered if this was her fourth of fifth. She questioned, but did not really think too hard about the answer.
As she drank, she was able to ignore the action at the other end of the room, for the most part. By the time the second dancer finished doing lap dances at the end of his performance, Sunny’s fingers and toes were feeling tingly, and her lips had gone numb. These were sure signs that she was well on her way to being drunk. Her bladder was also screaming that she needed to make a trip to the little girls’ room to start recycling all that she had drunk.
Thinking of recycling beer had her giggling as she pushed to her feet. She nodded to the two ladies still sitting with her. They had not moved closer to the stage and appeared shocked by the outrageous antics of both the dancers and the audience. Though Geo was up next, her bladder would be ignored no longer.
She stumbled on her way out of the room, tripping and hitting the wall opposite the doorway. “Excuse me,” she said with another giggle before turning and stumbling to the restroom.
A few minutes later, her body back in synch, Sunny started back to the ballroom. She stopped at the doorway, and watched for a moment. Geo was on stage, strutting around, looking every inch the cowboy he was dressed to be. With the vocal encouragement of the crowd, he stopped in the center of the stage, grinned, and yanked his snap-front shirt open. With the shirt flapping open and closed as he danced across the stage, he shrugged it off, and tossed it toward the DJ’s booth, showing off the powerful muscles of his back, chest, and shoulders to the women who now circled the stage.
A dark emotion she could not name welled up like black oil. She began to blink back tears she could not rationally justify. Geo was up there, smiling and flirting, appearing so happy to be the center of attention it hurt her to watch. He was beautiful, the embodiment of the term sexy male, and so self-assured it radiated from him like light from a candle. She on the other hand, was short, and curvy, with all the self-confidence of a virgin at a hooker convention.
Whirling, she headed away from the ballroom, needing to be as far away from Geo, and the room full of hooting, hollering women, as she could get. She only made it a handful of steps before someone called her name. Never one to ignore people no matter how bad she was feeling, Sunny stopped and wiped her cheeks. She did not turn around because she could not stop crying.
Damn eyes.
Damn soft heart for feeling hurt when Geo was just doing his job.
Damn Geo for being so hot and sexy that women were grabbing him before he had finished his routine.
It did not surprise her when Gigi stepped in front of her.
“Are you having a good time?” she asked before looking into Sunny’s face and seeing her tears. “Oh my God, are you all right?”
Sunny forced a smile even as the tears continued to leak from her eyes and race down her cheeks. She sniffed and tried to laugh at herself, though the sound emerged rather waterlogged. “I’m having a great time. Not sure why I’m crying but I’m fine. I’m just going to go be alone and try to get myself back under control.”
Gigi studied her for a long minute, and Sunny fought to maintain the eye-to-eye study even though she knew she was lying. She was not okay, but she would never admit it to Geo’s sister. She did not want to get Geo in trouble because she was on emotional overload.
“Please don’t tell Geo,” she begged.