Page 24 of The Bartender Special

Jack picked up the chip and threw it back.

“And for the hundredth time, you could have blamed it on Lucy, but no. I got the shaft.”

Dixon laughed but only because he knew that they both knew that hadn’t been an option.

“No way in hell was I going to go after Lucy. She might be my little sister, but that was before we had growth spurts. That girl had stilts for legs even then. She would have squashed us.”

There was no point pretending not to find that funny.

Lucy lived and worked with her Marine boyfriend in Washington. Dixon, on paper, might have seemed like the more intimidating one, but that never was the case when Lucy was in the room with someone.

She wasn’t just tall, she was fire barely contained.

A good drinker, a better cusser, and the loudest supporter of whatever dumb, good, or bad plan her brother and cousin had cooked up. Just like Santana, minus the height.

Jack relented.

“Fine. I'll tell Santana,” he said. “But no one else. Not even your dad. The less people who know we're faking it, the better.”

Dixon seemed to think it over. He nodded.

“All right,” he said. “But, just remember, if you're going to pull this off, you need to focus on Benny and not your ex during this HGTV episode of a lunch. That means pay attention to him. You know, arm around his shoulder. Hand-holding. Chair pulling out, or letting him pull the chair out for you? I don’t know. Tell jokes, laugh at his. Compliment his outfit. That kind of thing.”

Jack snorted.

“Wait a minute. Are you telling me how to flirt?”

Dixon held up his hands in defense.

“I'm telling you that you're voluntarily walking into a very awkward situation, so you better make it count. Does Benny even know about you and Felicity, by the way?”

Jack paused again. This time he tried to shrug it off.

“The dating pool is only so deep around here. Everyone in Arbor Bay knows about us.”

“That's not what I asked,” Dixon pointed out.

If Jack was being honest with himself, he didn’t think Benny had any idea his Guy’s new girl was Jack’s ex. That conversation, if so, would definitely make him all cherry red. Jack might not have known Benny that well, but he had noticed how easily flustered he could become.

It was cute.

Dixon tilted his head to the side and laughed into the silence that had grown.

“Oh boy if this isn’t all going to go so south.”

* * *

There was another car in the driveway when Jack pulled up to Benny's home half an hour later. Benny, however, was nowhere to be seen.

Jack took a moment to contemplate laying on the horn but decided it probably wouldn’t be very Guy-like of him. But that didn’t mean he was ready to sweep Benny off of his feet in front of whoever was inside the house now.

He would have rather eaten the plastic chip bag than admit it to Dixon, but Jack was starting to feel a bit of nerves seep in at the thought of going to the Robertson Estate. He didn’t mind the idea of eating snails, but he hadn’t seen Felicity in over a year. Her marketing job had her bouncing from state to state when they were dating and fighting for time together had been hard then. After they split, it had been easy to stay in their respective separate lanes.

But that didn’t mean Jack hadn’t thought of the eventuality of running into hers again one random day in town.

He’d also never admit it to Dixon, but Jack had spent a little too much time role-playing in the shower what he’d say to Felicity when he ran into her again.

How's it going?