“Anyone. The average male is five feet, nine inches, and that’s how tall I am.”
He leaned back slightly, studying my legs, then dragging his gaze back up over my cleavage and to my face. “Are you?”
“Don’t try to unnerve me,” I said lightly. “It won’t work.”
He ignored that. “So you’re body-shaming me.”
“No. You were”—I waved my hand at his general person—“manspreading. Taking up more space than the average person would. I’m not saying you’retooanything. I’m sure your body is very ... nice.”
“Very nice,” he repeated slowly.
As I said it, my eyes locked on the cut lines of his heavily muscled arms. It wasn’t just the muscles either—they were wrapped in ink, designs I couldn’t make out in the dim light of the bar. Who was Ikidding? This man was a fucking specimen.
“Perfectly fine, I’m sure.”
My voice came out strangled, and that’s when I realized his lips were edged up in a slight smirk.
“Perfectly fine,” he echoed. He pulled the beer up to his mouth and took a long drag, the thick line of his throat moving as he swallowed. What about that was so attractive? It was swallowing, for crying out loud. But he had a very manly throat, his Adam’s apple a prominent wedge of cartilage in the middle, and damn it if that wasn’t really nice too.
The bartender approached. “What can I get for you?”
I hadn’t been to a bar in about eighty-seven years, and my drink of choice at home was when I transitioned from coffee to Diet Coke in the afternoons, so there was nothing to be done but panic-order. Like when you’re at a nice restaurant and you get the chicken tenders because you’re overwhelmed by too many options.
“A lemon drop, please.”
His brows furrowed. “A lemon drop?”
“Do people not order those anymore?”
“Not usually, no.” He grinned, his eyes dipping briefly to my cleavage, then to my ring-free finger on my left hand. “Don’t get out much, I’m assuming.”
The bartender was cute. Very cute. And the guy next to me sat forward, taking up even more space, the outside of his arm coming dangerously close to my bra-free chest. “How about you make her the shot she asked for?”
Polite professionalism snapped into place at the quietly issued command. “Of course. One lemon drop, coming up.”
The bartender turned to make my order, and the guy next to me withdrew from my space, and I couldn’t help the scoff that escaped. “What was that?”
He took another drink of his beer. “Nothing. It’s not his job to give you shit about your order. It’s his job to make it.”
“I think you’re overreacting a bit.”
“Maybe,” he conceded, eyes still on the bartender as he twisted a bottle of vodka upside down, pouring with a flourish. “I have a tendency to do that on occasion.”
“The people pleaser and the hothead.” I sighed. “What a pair we make.”
He cut me a sideways look as the bartender slid the shot in my direction.
“Twenty-five dollars.”
My mouth fell open. “For ashot? That thing better do my laundry if it costs that much.”
The bartender didn’t miss a beat, his eyes lingering on mine before he answered. “Well, it’s made with—”
“Put it on my tab,” the man next to me said. “And go away.”
Instead of getting pissed, the bartender merely smirked. “You got it.”
My neck felt hot. “This is the strangest night of my life.”