“You know it. When you get a girl like Jemma, you do everything you can to hold onto her. Trust me.” He gets a text on his phone, eyes me for a second, then speedily replies. I'm about to question him when we're interrupted.

“Hey guys,” Christen greets as he and Fábia join us in the booth. Tonight it's the original gang, just like old times. Not going to admit it to these fuckers, but I kind of miss the others.

Fábia smirks. She's always smirking about something. “Oh good, the annoying kids aren't hanging around tonight.”

“Be nice,” Christen chides playfully, because you can never take anything Fábia says seriously. That girl likes to be a bitch just for the sake of being a bitch. “Besides, you like 'em all really.”

She rolls her eyes at him, but she doesn't deny it. Aside from Blair, who seems to have had a worse upbringing than most of us, Jemma and her friends were never the kind of people we'd thought we'd end up being friends with. They're more the kind of people we'd have sat back and made fun of. Truth is, they've all grown on us.

“Anyway,” I lift an eyebrow at Fábia. “don't think we don't know what's been going on between you and Dahlia.”

Christen almost spits out his drink. “You and Dahlia? I didn't know you swing that way.”

She shrugs. “It's the twenty first century, Christen. I can swing whichever damn way I want.”

The next thirty minutes is filled with Christen trying to persuade her to share the details, and me and Reid laughing our asses off when she reaches forwards and twists his nipples so hard he screeches like a little bitch.

“HEY YOU!” We all turn in surprise at the sound of the loud, angry voice and I almost fall out of my seat when I see Ibbie storming towards us across the room. She's got just about every male eye in the bar on her, and not just because she looks so out of place here in that little floral dress. No, she's got every male eye on her because she looks fucking glorious when she's all furious and revved up like she is right now. Even I can appreciate that, and all that anger is focused right on me. I resist the urge to stand up and start yelling at all those sleaze bags to get their eyes off my woman.

I check my watch, realizing that she must have come here right after her show tonight. My stomach flips just at the sight of her. I've damn near obsessed about her these last few days; obsessed over the feel of her body, the taste of her lips, that startled look in her eyes when I finally came clean about wanting to be with her. I've been tearing myself apart, half of me desperate to skip the month I promised her and just go do my best to win her, and the other half regretting being so forward with her. I've been acting chicken shit about the whole situation, I'm not gonna lie.

She comes to a stop before me and I stand automatically, opening my mouth to shoot off something shitty like I've grown accustomed to but finding that I've lost my voice. I thought I had a month to figure this shit out, to figure out what I was going to say to her!

“Hey, Ibbie,” Reid calls, giving her a little wave.

Ibbie smiles back at him, but her expression morphs into a snarl when she turns back to me.

“Miss me already?” I drawl when I finally remember how to talk. “How'd you find me?”

“Reid told me.”

He shrugs when I turn to him. “Sorry,” he says, obviously not sorry.

“I can't even. . . Ugh!” Ibbie pokes my chest hard, not caring that we're in a bar full of people and our friends are watching on in amusement. “What the frigging hell is your deal, you big. . .you big. . .jerk?! You can't just say all those things to me and then not say anything at all! Who even does that? You do that. This is such a you thing to do. I'll bet this is just an elaborate scheme to mess with me, right? That's your deal, you're messing with me.”

My heart yells at me to tell her my deal is that I'm crazily, uncontrollably in love with her, but my brain points out that it's probably a little too soon for those kind of declarations. She's not ready to hear me say that. So instead I give her a small smile, deciding that if she doesn't care about airing this out in front of everyone then neither do I. “I like you, Ibbie,” I admit. “This isn't a game.”

This time when those two pink dots that I love so much appear on her cheeks, it's not because I've pissed her off. “Yeah, well I got that when you stuck your tongue in my mouth the other night.”

Fábia, Christen and Reid all visibly perk up, watching our interaction with shit eating smirks on their faces. I hadn't told anyone about what had happened.

I said I didn't care, but I start to become uncomfortable under the scrutiny of our audience. Stepping closer to Ibbie, I lower my voice and ask, “Can we maybe do this somewhere else?”

“A million percent nope.” I should have known she'd be difficult.

Letting out a long, hard done to sigh, I decide to just man up and get this out there. “I don't just mean that I like you physically. I mean that I fucking like you. All of you.”

She starts poking my chest again. It hurts, but it's so damned adorable that it's impossible to keep the grin off my face. This only serves to enrage her further. “You're so frigging ignorant, that's what you are. You're frignorant! How can you say that?! How can you say that you like me when all you've ever done is hate me?”

I shrug, masking my desperation with amusement. “Well obviously I'm just not great at showing it.”

“You're not even funny, Walt. Stop trying to be.” The finger assault stops and she takes a step back from me, pouting. If she wasn't so serious right now, I'd kiss that pout right off her face. “How can I even believe you really like me when you've been so horrible to me? You've called me names, harassed me with texts, pulled stupid pranks on me-”

“So have you,” I point out.

“-and you've never even been to my show, not once.”

“Actually I've seen it like, five times,” I admit, and then I really do get embarrassed when she looks at me like I've gone bat shit crazy.

“No you didn't. When? I never saw you.”

“I sat at the back.” God, I'm a pussy.

“Wow.” She raises her eyebrows, looking almost impressed for a moment. “You must really like Pride & Prejudice.”

I roll my eyes at that. “I like YOU, idiot.”

“This is getting really boring,” Fábia complains. “I thought there was gonna be more fighting or somethin'. Scratch his eyes out, Ibbie. It'll be funny.”

“Fábia, leave 'em alone,” Reid complains, though it's a halfhearted effort. The girl's never going to learn to play nice.

I glare at my friends, because they're really not fucking helping. It occurs to me that none of this is coming as a surprise to them, the kiss aside, like the fact that I'm mad about Ibbie isn't news to them at all. I guess I haven't been as good at hiding my feelings as I'd thought. From everyone except Ibbie, that is.

“Why didn't you just say so?” Ibbie demands, ignoring Fábia. She's still clinging onto that last little shred of anger, but it seems to have faded some now. “How do you expect me to just know when all you ever do is act like a butt head?”

Overwhelmed by the need to touch her, I reach out to grab her hand. She doesn't pull away. “Can we please just go somewhere private to talk now?”

She glances over at the others watching us, then down at our clasped hands in surprise. When she looks back up at me with those big, blue eyes, I can no longer find any trace of anger in them. “Okay.”

+++

WITH AN UNSPOKEN agreement, we make our way back to Ibbie's apartment in Hell's Kitchen. In fact, we don't speak at all the entire journey home. Not walking down the street, not on the subway, not in the elevator in her building. We do hold hands though. . .the entire time. That gives me more hope than anything ever has.