Page 17 of Smartasses
“Wait, are y’all leaving already?” she asked, noticing that only the crumbs were left on everyone’s plates, and their coffee mugs were all empty.
“We’ve been here long enough for firsts and seconds,” Grace said, shooting them a knowing grin. “Looks like it’s just the two of you.”
And they left. After all that calling and everything else, they took one look at her in her obviously just-been-fucked glory and walked away, leaving her alone with Carter. They really were the best friends ever—that was if she could figure out what to do now because the guilt eating away at her stomach lining for making that Insta post made acting like this was anything close to a normal situation impossible.
As soon as Aubrey’s friends left, everything turned weird, and Carter couldn’t figure out why. She barely made eye contact and had left enough space for several of her friends to sit between them if they came back. Something had gone wrong between getting to the dining room and her friends leaving. What? He had no fucking clue.
So as he took another bite of his omelet, he fell back on one of the exercises he’d learned in acting class. Scanning the room, he spotted a woman in a neon T-shirt carrying what had to be a Bloody Mary winding her way across the dining room.
“See the lady in the lime-green shirt?” He nodded his chin toward the woman. “You might think it’s a bit early for a drink, but that’s not an ordinary Bloody Mary. It’s filled with a topical poison, and she’s about to spill it on the guy with the pineapple shirt. He won’t realize he’s going to die until it’s too late.”
“What are you tal—” Aubrey stopped mid bite, her eyes going wide, and then her mouth curved into a huge smile as she focused her attention on the man in the fruit shirt. “I see. But what neon shirt doesn’t realize is that the old lady isn’t pineapple man’s mother. She’s his bodyguard.”
He kept his face turned toward the woman in neon but was really watching Aubrey out of his peripheral. “She’s obviously with the badass grannies motorcycle gang.”
Aubrey nodded, her posture relaxing as she got into the game. “They are fearsome.”
“Granny and pineapple man are on the lam.” He scooted over on the bench seat of the semi-circular booth until they were hip to hip. “They offed neon shirt’s sugar daddy after a round of underground cockroach racing.”
She snagged a slice of bacon from his plate and used it to point at the woman in the neon shirt as she stood in line at the waffle station behind pineapple man. “So it’s revenge.”
“Nope, a double-cross.” He grabbed his bacon back and bit it in half, giving her the remainder. “They were supposed to wait until he’d made neon shirt his sole beneficiary. They jumped the gun. Now they’re all out ten million dollars.”
Aubrey shook her head and let out a tsk-tsk. “Sometimes, murder doesn’t pay.”
“That’s definitely the title of the true crime book written about it—Sometimes, Murder Doesn’t Pay.”
She ate the bacon. “Which, of course, becomes an international best seller inspiring its own secret cosplay groups of people who reenact that fateful day when pineapple man was poisoned.”
“So the question is...” He pivoted in his seat, dropping his voice to a dramatic whisper. “What if we somehow entered a time warp, and these are not the actual participants but the cosplay version?”
She threw back her head and let out a laugh. “Oh, that was a great twist. I’d buy a ticket to that movie.”
Carter sank back against the seat, his arm stretched out along the back of the booth behind her, close enough that he wound the end of her soft blond hair around his fingers. Aubrey leaned into his side, her hand dropping to his thigh not nearly as high on it as he would have preferred, but this was the ship’s main dining room, and drawing attention for getting a public hand job probably wasn’t the best idea. Of course, being around Aubrey made all sorts of bad ideas sound good. She had that effect on him.
“You got plans for later?” Because he definitely had plans for her, and all of them involved getting naked.
She looked up at him with that same ornery twinkle in her eyes she’d had when he’d caught her rooting around Grace’s suitcase for her pants. “Are you up for having your ass handed to you in shuffleboard?”
Little known fact. He brought a foosball table with him to every movie set and held a tournament open to crew and actors alike for a championship. It had come down to him and the cinematographer on the last Admiral location. He’d won after quadruple overtime. Competitive? A total dork? Fuck yes. He’d never played shuffleboard a day in his life, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t win.
“You don’t think I can hang?”
Aubrey lifted an eyebrow with nothing but challenge in her as she slid out of the booth and stared back at him, one hip cocked out in defiance. “I am the Hog Wild shuffleboard champion for three years running.”
“Oh, we’ve got a badass here, huh?” He followed her out of the booth. “Thinking of joining the granny gang when you’re older?”
“Joining?” She snorted. “I’m going to run it.”
And three games of shuffleboard later, he was pretty sure she’d run the gang like she ran his ass on the painted deck. He hadn’t just lost. He’d been destroyed. Now, deep into the fifth game, he wasn’t playing to win anymore. He was using his ineptitude as an excuse to be close to Aubrey.
Was it pathetic of him to have sweet-talked her into teaching him how to play so that she’d stand behind him and wrap her arms around him to teach him proper form? Most definitely. He was okay with that.
“How did you learn to do this?” He took a step back so he could get the amazing full view of her in those shorts as she lined up her shot.
Creeper? Him? When it came to Aubrey, it seemed so.
“There’s not exactly a whole lot to do in Salvation.” She did this shimmy thing with her hips and slid her puck forward with just enough speed to bang into his and knock it off the board. “It was either go play shuffleboard at Hog Wild, our local honky-tonk, or traipse out into the woods to help Ruby Sue with her moonshine operation. I went with the one that wouldn’t end with me in jail.”
