Free Come Back To Me by Melissa Foster

didn’t care if it undermined his masculinity—nor was she perturbed at his annoyed tone of voice when he answered, “Yeah, sure. Bailey’s Pub, eight o’clock?”
    He could not say no to Alice when it might concern Tess.
     
    Alice strolled into the pub ten minutes early. Though she stared straight ahead, the hostess seemingly her only focus, she was not oblivious to the lascivious, hopeful stares emanating from the men at the bar. As disinterested as she appeared on the outside, inside she was scoping, planning. It wasn’t their lifted eyebrows or the way they tried too hard to look cool that roused her or enticed her curiosity. Conquering men, being in control of which one, how long, and what she’d let them do, had become a finely-tuned art. Men had such weak minds. It almost disgusted her how easily they could be had. She stood tall and proud, and followed the waitress to a nearby table where she would wait for Kevin and let the horny hoverers stew. She ordered a drink, knowing that if she didn’t, eventually one of the bar oglers would order one for her, and she’d just as soon skip that playful game tonight. She had Tess on her mind and wasn’t in the mood for fake flirting. Cat and mouse games bored her. She’d make her choice, introduce herself with the sole purpose of getting her chosen stud into bed, use him, and cast him off, as she’d done hundreds of times before.
    Kevin breezed into the pub, stopped at the bar, then sat across the small round table from Alice. “I ordered you a piña colada from the bar,” he smiled. “You look great.” Alice’s cocoa brown silk sleeveless shirt set off her eyes perfectly.
    “Down boy,” she laughed.
    “No worries there,” Kevin smirked.
    His not interested look came across loud and clear. “Anyway,” she sighed, “How are you?”
    “Great.”
    Alice caught the hesitation in his response. “Not great, huh?” she asked
    Kevin shook his head. His hair had grown since Alice had last seen him, falling below his eyes and hiding them perfectly.
    “Beau?” she asked gently.
    He nodded, clasped his hands together, rested his chin on them, and looked up at Alice through his wavy bangs. He breathed in through his nose.
    “It’s been harder than I thought it would be.”
    While Alice had felt Beau’s loss as a devastating loss for her friend, she now realized that she hadn’t felt it personally. For the first time, she questioned her own lack of emotion. She fiddled with a napkin. A strand of insufficiency wheedled its way through her thoughts. 
    “It must be hard to lose your best friend,” she said.
    Kevin pinched the bridge of his nose between his thumb and forefinger and closed his eyes. When he reopened them, his mood had changed dramatically.
    “Yeah, well, what are you going to do, right?” he announced with feigned bravado. He looked around the pub and noticed the glances toward Alice from a neighboring table of men. He chuckled inwardly. “So, what’s up?”
    Alice took the hint and refrained from inquiring any further about the emptiness Beau had left in Kevin’s life. The change of subjects suited her just fine.
    “Tess,” she said, and half-smiled, “I’m worried about her.”
    “I haven’t seen her in a while,” he confessed. “It just got to be too hard.”
    “Because seeing her reminded you of Beau?” Alice asked.
    He shook his head. “Because Tess wouldn’t let him go.”
    “That’s kind of why I’m here,” she confessed. “I think she’s really in denial.”
    “Denial?” he laughed. “She’s in no-way-in-hell-is-my-husband-dead land, not denial. She’ll have no part of any conversation about Beau being gone.” He gulped down his beer and waved to the waitress, pointing to his empty bottle. “I tried. I spent time with her, even cut her grass a couple of times, but it was just…too hard. She really believes that he’s alive.”
    Alice wasn’t surprised by his statements. Her own observations had her