Read Online Roomies (A Standalone Novel) (New York City Bad Boy Romance) by Claire Adams - Free Book Online

a feeling your dry spell is about to
experience unseasonable precipitation.”
    She holds her hand above
her head for a high five, but I can’t reward her for that comment. “You know I
love you,” I tell her, “but can we not do the double-entendre thing. We’ve
talked about this and decided that neither one of us is any good at it.”
    “Oh fine,” she says,
lowering her hand. It goes back up when she announces, “Girl, you gonna get laid!”
    I laugh and do my best to
give her a high five that doesn’t completely embarrass both of us, but that’s
really not why I’m here.
    “Don’t get me wrong,” I
tell her, “from what I remember of it, sex is pretty nice, but I’m really not
looking for something like that right now.”
    She nods awkwardly.
“Yeah, I guess you’re—”
    “Oh, who am I kidding?
I’m an apple tree that needs to be plucked.”
    “I thought we just
agreed—”
    “I know, I know. We
really are terrible at that, aren’t we?”
    “You said it.”
    Annabeth finishes up her
cigarette and we walk into Club Allen, the worst-named bar in New York and the
only place in this world that Annabeth would rather be than Bali. Come to think
of it, I’m not sure that’s she’s ever been to Bali, but I do remember her
talking a lot about it.
    Huh.
    We’re twenty feet from
the bar when I spot the group that Annabeth was talking about. It has to be
them. They’re the only ones who look like escaped convicts.
    Annabeth bounces over to
them and gives them all hugs. I’m pretty sure she said they just met, but
whatever. She’s rather friendly that way.
    She points to me,
obviously telling them something, but it’s too loud for me to hear what she’s
saying, so I walk closer to the group.
    “…I mean a long time,” she says. “Leila, we were
just talking about you! Come have a seat. Rick, here, is going to buy you a
drink. What do you want?”
    Drunk in the middle of
the day: is this my life now?
    “I guess I don’t have to
go back to work today. I’ll have a tequila sunrise,” I answer, eliciting a
cheer for some reason.
    The one that must be
Rick—my clever deduction is due to the fact that he’s the one leaning over the
bar, ordering my drink—has dark, shoulder-length hair and there’s a tribal
armband only partially hidden under his shirtsleeve.
    He’s really not my type.
I’m more into the clean-cut gentleman, but now that I think of it, the only
“clean-cut gentleman” I ever dated was Chad.
    What the hell? I’ll see
if there’s something to this Rick guy other than the tattoos and the somewhat
unsettling look that he’s giving me as he hands over my drink.
    Boy, he is really staring
me down.
    All right, maybe Rick’s
not the guy, but I do feel like letting loose and maybe doing something stupid.
    “So, what do you guys
do?” I ask, scanning each of the four men in turn, looking for anyone who
doesn’t look like they’d kill me in my sleep.
    “Finance,” they all
answer at once.
    That explains it.
    “We’re in finance, too,”
Annabeth says.
    “No we’re not,” I rebut.
The tone catches the guys off guard. “I mean, we’re in brokerage, but that’s
hardly the…” I trail off, realizing just how full of crap I am. If Annabeth and
I aren’t in finance, what are we?
    Annabeth just smiles and
touches my arm.
    “Will you guys excuse us
for a minute?”
    Four men with blank faces
nod, startlingly in unison.
    We get about ten feet
away from the bar when Annabeth turns on her heel and asks, “What’s your deal?
Those guys are totally into us.”
    “I don’t know,” I hedge.
“I guess they’re just not my type.”
    “Yeah?” she asks. “What is your type, then?”
    I shrug.
    “I think I know what the
problem is.”
    “Yeah?”
    If she has any ideas, I’m
more than open to hear them.
    “You’re scared,” she
says. “It’s been so long since you’ve gotten yourself some strange that you
don’t know what to do when it’s sitting right in front