She froze. I’d mentioned him when I wasn’t supposed to. It was our unspoken rule. We didn’t say his name or what he would have been doing. We didn’t talk about how we both missed him so much it was like a knife digging into both of our sides. We didn’t talk about how I’d come home and he hadn’t.
“Sometimes, I really hate you,” she said, getting up and moving to the dance floor where she took Hannah from Dani’s hands, claiming her shield, putting the baby between her, her feelings, and the rest of the world. She took the baby to the dessert bar and left Dani in the hands of the rich, famous, country-rock star, Brady O’Neil. Before today, I’d liked his songs. Now, I’d never be able to listen to them again without seeing her with him.
Perhaps that was for the best. Get her out of my system in a way having sex with her had not. I was damn sure never going to repeat the mistake we’d both made. I knew a hell of a lot about resistance. About rejecting your body’s natural instincts. I knew how to withstand physical and mental torture. She wasn’t mine. She’d never be mine.
But then again, you know what they say about never… They say, don’t say it at all.
Dani
VULNERABLE
“If I show you all my demons
And we dive into the deep end
Would we crash and burn like every time before?”
Performed by Selena Gomez
Written by Bellion / Johnson / Gomez / Johnson
I was sweating in a veryobnoxiousway. Even my grandmother, who believed women should sweat to show the men in their lives that they could do even more than the men could do, would have wrinkled her nose at me.
The humidity that had been hanging around as summer bled into fall had not relented for Mac and Georgie’s wedding, which seemed somehow blasphemous. The humidity and the fact that I’d been dancing my ass off with one Brady O’Neil were the reasons I was a gooey mess. The only comfort I had was that the chart-topping, swoon-worthy country singer was also a sweat-lathered mess.
We were two of the few single people at the wedding. There were a handful of Mac’s Navy buddies. A handful of our cousins. And the two people I couldn’t be around right now. Well, really, the one. But he was always with Tristan, and I couldn’t do it tonight.
I’d apologized. I’d let that weight off of my conscience and then departed again before my body decided it wanted a repeat performance of last weekend. It was my fault I was in this predicament to begin with. I’d been the one to suggest the game. I’d been the one to dare him. I’d also been more drunk than I’d been since college. But it wasn’t an excuse. I’d dared him on purpose. I’d wanted to feel something. Anything. Anything but the sterile beat of my own heart that had been with me for over a year now.
Damn Russell. Damn Nash. Damn Senator Fenway. Damn men.
I was determined not to be that person. I wasn’t going to be bitter or drowned in sorrow, and I certainly wasn’t going to pine away after a man who wanted someone else, regardless of the reasons for it. I just hadn’t understood it until he’d all but shoved me out of the house.
I swallowed half of a water bottle just as Georgie found me. She looked gorgeous, her slim, white dress sparkling in the twinkle lights. The gems spread over it with a heavy hand could have been gaudy, but on Georgie, they just looked perfect. She could easily have been a model, like her mother, but instead, she was trying to change the world by working with our lawyer friend on immigration reform.
“Thank you again for getting my mom here,” Georgie said as she hugged me. She was radiating happiness and joy.
“Thank the douche at the State Department who couldn’t keep his dick in his pants,” I said with a shrug.
“The unfaithful of D.C. Does it ever end?” she asked, sighing.
“Not unless you get out, like me.”
“We haven’t gotten to talk much lately. You okay?”
Somehow, it had been Georgie and not any of my family members who’d seen my weak moments in the last year. She’d been the one to suggest I see a therapist about it all, and I had. I still had work to do, but I knew I was going to be okay with time.
“I’m good. Better now that I’m not in D.C.,” I said, meaning it.
“Anything on the burner for jobs?” she asked.
I scoffed. “Not you, too.”
She grimaced. “We all know that you coming to a full stop isn’t going to last for long. It isn’t your style.”
She was right. I’d been bored in the week I’d been home before I’d gone to Tristan’s. I’d been bored at Tristan’s. And if it hadn’t been for the wedding this week, I would have been bored this week.
“Any guy on your horizon?” Georgie asked.
