“It’s mostly me,” he says, dazzling me with one of those smiles I fell in love with.
I smile and slip my arms around his neck. “It was mostly you.”
He chuckles then kisses me again. “Being here without you last night made me miss you.”
Ouch.
Ouch.
Ouch.
I was doing things last night that had nothing to do with you, Ryan, and if you knew about them you would be yelling at me and probably calling me all kinds of names. What am I supposed to do with all these feelings? I have loved you for so long.
Instead of saying what is spinning in my head I murmur, “You sure you don’t need more guy-time in your life? Sounds like that’s what might have happened.”
He shrugs. “I need more fun. That’s what I need.” Sliding his hands down to my ass, he smirks. “Ready for make-up sex?”
No fucking way.
“Oh honey, I’m tired. Can we do that another time?”
The playfulness fades as he nods, trying to hide his hurt. “Sure. I’m moving pretty fast after saying I wanted a break. I get it.”
Sucking on my lips, I pull away. He follows me into our bedroom where I begin to unpack. A text from my phone sounds.
Oh no.
I glance to where my purse is hiding somewhere in the sunflower nightmare.
Ryan goes to get it – normally a very natural thing to do because we don’t hide anything from each other. Not that I ever see his phone because it’s always close to him. Mine? I leave it where I drop it.
But tonight is very different from every night for the past two plus years. I gave my number to Jaxson.
As Ryan reads the text I can’t breathe.
His eyes slowly rise to meet mine as a deep frown cuts into his forehead.
My mouth gets instantly stuffed with a million saliva-sucking cotton balls.
Ryan starts back, eyes locked on me, frown deepening. He holds up the phone. “Your mom thinks I’m a jerk?” He hands it to me.
He may be a jerk, but he’ll stick by you.
I swallow. “She’s probably still drunk.”
Shoving his hands in his pockets he watches as I keep unpacking.
“She’ll grow to like you, Ryan. You weren’t exactly the ideal houseguest.”
Chuckling, “True,” he heads to watch TV, smacking the top of the doorframe on his way out. “I can be a jerk sometimes. But she was no princess! Jesus, what are we gonna do with all these flowers?”
How about throwing them out the window before I wake up?
Would that raise any alarm bells?
Nah…not at all.
Rachel
“I can’t believe I was wrong!” Sylvia mutters, smoothing the black cloth napkin over her lap as the waiter walks away with our lunch order. “I really thought he was going to propose!”
She’s usually right on the nose when it comes to affairs of the heart.
Sylvia predicted Ryan would ask me out the night two-and-a-half years ago when she and I enjoyed a few stiff martinis at Lois bar in the East Village before this handsome, dark-haired man strolled in wearing an expensive suit and a confident swagger like he owned the place.
She also predicted he’d suggest we move in together after the softball tournament between his law firm and their rivals.
And she predicted her own boyfriend would turn out to be gay.
All came true.
And of course now he’s her ex-boyfriend.
“Not only were you wrong, he said he wanted a break.”
Fingering her mass of curly, black hair, Sylvia’s brown eyes go wide. “What?!!!”
Reaching for my water, I squeeze the freshly cut lemon into it, muttering, “Yep.” As I take a sip, I spill the damn thing down my front, lemon bobbing onto the ground at our feet. “Shit!”
“Here!” Sylvia hands me her napkin, rising up to help.
“I’m fine.”
“You don’t look fine.” She sits back down as I press the napkin into my wet blouse. “And don’t think I didn’t notice you guys were really stiff at the movies the other night, too.”
“The break only lasted a night, Syl. We’re back to normal I guess.”
“What happened in Atlanta?”
What happened an hour north of Atlanta is what I really want to talk about, but I’m afraid she’ll judge me for falling into Jaxson’s arms so quickly after Ryan left.
“He didn’t like my family. The feeling was mutual. I brought up marriage.”
“You didn’t!”
“I did. And then he said he wanted a break. Even flew back early. Gave my parents this bullshit excuse. But by the time I returned home, which was the very next night by the way, he took it back.” Bunching the damp napkin up I set it on the table and look around for a waiter, muttering, “Got me a bunch of flowers. Said he was sorry.”
“Awwww,” Sylvia smiles with a gushy, romantic look on her face. “What kind?”
“Doesn’t matter.” I grab her water since mine is gone and down a big gulp, so big I have to gasp for air after.
I’m really having a hard time with this conversation.
Jaxson hasn’t called me.
And every day I stare at my phone wondering why not.
I’ve been trying to click back into Ryan but as the days pass that connection hasn’t strengthened.
I feel like I’m a different woman now and the old me is a stranger. Like I’m walking in another person’s shoes. Sleeping in bed with a man who is a stranger.
Something happened to me and I have no idea what to do about it.
“I know. It’s so hot out,” Sylvia says, explaining away my thirst. “I’ve been drinking like a dolphin.”
Dying for a change in subject I ask, “How was the retreat? I didn’t get a chance to talk to you on our double date.”
“I know, Rhett kept me all to himself. Isn’t he beautiful?”
“His name is Harry.”
“He looks like Rhett Butler, though. Don’t you think?” Off my smile, she winks. “Belize was gorgeous! We had seven days of mediation, raw foods, probiotics, and yoga. If it weren’t for the no-see-ems, it would have been perfect.”
“What the hell is a no-see-em?”
She makes a face and leans in. “Little bugs so small you can’t see ‘em. No see ‘em.” Off my laugh, she loudly complains, “Oh no, that’s what they’re called, and they’re serious business! Invisible, flying creatures that bite you. Joy had a reaction to them. Remember her? Red welts all over her arms and legs. Her neck looked like she’d grown a goiter!” Through our laughter, Sylvia insists, “Oh, but the yoga, Rach! It was amazing. Just like Peru, remember that?”
“I’ll never forget,” I murmur as vivid memories play out the most relaxing week I’ve ever had. “They stopped yoga to enjoy the sunrise and sunset every day, then resumed class with us all in that state of awe.”
“No phones allowed, except for pictures on the first day—”
“—Just to get it out of our systems!”
“Loved that,” Sylvia smiles.
“But it wasn’t raw-foods-only there. I don’t think I would have enjoyed it as much if it were. Healthy eating I can do. Crazy eating? Um…no.”
“You’d be surprised!” Off my cocked eyebrow, she confesses, “I brought snacks with me. I cheated.”
Cheated.
There’s that word.
Suddenly I need more water.
The waiter drops crackers with a bottle of garlic-infused olive oil at our table. Sylvia says, “Thank you.”
As he goes to walk away I grab his arm. “Can you bring us more water?”
He nods and grabs my empty glass, heading off.
Sylvia is completely unaware of my inner turmoil. I’m lucky in her, to have a friend I feel safe with is priceless. But cheating is taboo. That’s a stance I’ve always held. There is no grey area. Only black and white. And yet here I am in my one-day-break, having slept in another man’s arms…and much
, much more.
I want to tell her.
I need to tell her.
I’m fucking dying for help on this. But what if she judges me for it, or blows up like my mom did?
I can’t lose Sylvia.
As she goes to grab a cracker I decide I have to keep this to myself. She glances to me and pauses. “You okay, Rachel?”
Before I know what I’m doing I blurt out, “I slept with someone the night we were on the break.”
She throws the cracker back into the basket. “Holy shit! You what? Who??”
The story pours out of me. She soaks up every tiny detail, asking things like, “He punched Ryan?!” and “Ryan said he doesn’t want kids?!” and “FOUR TIMES??!!”
“Five if you count the morning,” I groan, laying my head in my hands.
“Holy shit, Rachel.”
“I know.” After I tell her what my mom advised about not divulging my transgressions to Ryan, I beg my best friend for the truth. “Should I tell him?”
“Hell no!” she mutters, leaning back to call the waiter. “Excuse me! We need some wine over here.” She leans in to ask me, “Honey, how do you feel about this? How come you didn’t call me the moment it happened? You must be killing yourself! He hasn’t called at all?”
I’m staring at her. “You don’t hate me?”
She blinks. “What?! No! I don’t hate you! Now answer the question.”
“What was the question?”
She leans in. “How the hell have you been surviving?”
“I’ve been trying keep my mind off it by writing about the trip for the blog –”
“WHAT?!”
“—Not that part! About the farmers market, Atlanta, the restaurant we went to with my parents on Friday. Keeping the personal out of it.”
Sylvia shakes her head and reaches over the table to touch my hand, her voice becoming very gentle. “Rachel, you can’t leave out the personal in your editorials. That’s what makes them so compelling! The drama, the nuances. That’s what makes your writing great!”
“Thank you, but I think there’s too much drama this time.”
We order a couple glasses of Pinot Grigio from the overworked waiter at the same time a husky food runner sets our pastas down. Both men vanish while Sylvia and I stare at each other, dying for privacy.
“I never thought of myself as a cheater,” I whisper.
She immediately counters, “No. Uh uh. He said he wanted a fucking break! No marriage. No kids. He flat out told you he didn’t want what you did! And then he set you free and went crying back here.” Off my resistant look, she leans in and firmly tells me, “You were a free woman. And not only free, but everything you thought was coming got stripped away from you. Of course you lost your shit!”
Tilting my head I mutter, “Come on. Isn’t that a cop out?”
“Nope! Hell no!” Her head wags. “Honey, what were you supposed to do, beg him? You’re not desperate, Rachel Sawyer, and Ryan should be kissing your ass right now. Especially in this city when there’s too much competition and every man is looking for the next best thing, you have to listen when they tell you they’re out! Or you’ll find yourself cheated on.”
“You make me feel so much better.”
“Girl, the struggle is real.” She goes to toast me, “You did what you had to do!”
But I hold my glass close to my chest, not willing to high-five with a drink. “If you love someone you don’t go sleep with another man the first night you have a chance.”
Sylvia drinks from her glass and thinks about this. “If that’s how you feel — and I hear you — then why did you do it?”
Sighing, I confess, “Jaxson. He’s always had this pull over me. I do what he wants me to.”
Sylvia makes a noise. “No, honey. You do it because you want to.”
I set my wine on the table to pick up my fork. My hand is shaking. She notices it. Off her raised eyebrows I whisper the thing that has been paining me the most. “It feels like I’m stuck in someone else’s life.”
“Look at your fucking hand, Rachel.”
My phone rings and I literally jump in my seat, reaching to answer it, shoulders slumping when I see Ryan’s name.
Staring at it, I set the cell on the table, unaware she was watching me.
Stabbing slippery penne with her fork, Sylvia mutters, “Mmhmm.”
Jaxson
At the dimly lit, upscale restaurant Marcel, I’m hunched over the square-shaped bar listening to Jason and Justin argue about who gets the last french fry. Reaching into the metal basket I grab it and pop it into my mouth.
“Hey!” Jason shouts.
Justin laughs, “Now you know how it feels. Fucker.”
That name was aimed at me.
I stare ahead.
“Okay,” Justin begins. “You’re normally not the most verbose man I’ve ever met, but tonight you’re making mutes jealous of your prowess.”
Shooting a half-smile his way, I mumble, “Prowess? Nice.”
The bartender asks if we want another round. My twin brothers start to turn him down but I usurp their haste with a firm and loud, “Yes.”
“He has a voice when he wants to use it,” Jason says, as he leans forward to see me better. His eyes catch something he wasn’t expecting and under his breath he warns us, “Cora, twelve o’clock.”
We face forward and act like we don’t know she’s gliding through the crowd toward us.
“Jaxson Cocker,” her molasses voice calls out, “Never expected to see you in Atlanta on a Saturday night. No carrots to pull out of the weeds at this hour?”
Cocking an eyebrow to my right, I level her with a look that disintegrates her lofty air into ground-dust. Shifting her weight on five-inch heels, she adjusts the spaghetti strap on her black cocktail dress. It’s perfect for this speak-easy vibe, and she wears it well. But then again looks were never her problem.
Justin quips, “Did you want something shoved up your –”
Jason hits him, cutting off the rest.
“Such a gentleman you are, Justin. Add some alcohol and that politician-charm just slips right back into the gutter it sprouted from, huh?”
Jason, who at first tried to protect her, cuts her down. “Did you see it down there when you were painting on that dress, Cora?” No one can talk that way to Justin and not have Jason cutting them to shreds. Except us other brothers, of course.
Her pretty brown eyes narrow and she slowly shakes her head like, tsk tsk, before focusing back on me. “You never called me.”
“Nope,” I exhale. “I didn’t.”
“Two months.”
“I know how long we were together. Trying to forget it.”
The bartender puts our drinks down and Cora uses that opportunity to lean on the bar. “Are you going to buy me a drink?”
I can feel the scoffs of my brothers beside me. And how they freeze when I tell the bartender, “Get her whatever she wants.”
Victorious fire lights her eyes and she purrs, “Bombay Sapphire martini, please, Tom. Thank you.”
“You got it, Cora.” He leaves to grab the bottle from the glass shelves centered behind him.
I rise from my leather barstool and offer it to her, ignoring the subtle squirming of the twins to my left.
“Thank you,” she smiles, eyeing me suspiciously. “Listen, about that land of yours.”
Crossing my arms I cock an eyebrow at her. Who knew the girliest girl at our elementary, middle and high school had a brain on her. She’s grown into a commercial real estate broker and I don’t like the way she’s looking at me now, all business.
“What about it?”
“You’re not using even half of it. Your cows only need a couple acres per beast for dairy production and your two horses are running free.”
“My chickens like the space,” I dryly tell her. “Hank’s a desperado.”
She tilts her head, smile betraying amusement. “Come on now.”
“I�
�m not giving up my land.”
“Selling is not giving up,” she shoots back with a pretty smile.
It’s occurred to me she’d be a welcome distraction to the obsessive almost dialing of Rachel’s number I’ve been battling since she went back to New York three weeks ago.
Justin snorts to my left and I cut a quick glance to find him predictably wishing she would go away. “Jaxson loves every bit of that soil. You know he likes space. Remember?”
I smile at his protective dig. She does the opposite, giving him a look that would wilt a lesser man. He just grins at her, pearly whites glinting I dare you to try a witty comeback. Bring it on.
She drops it and returns to me, still all business, an attractive contrast in that sexy dress.
“Jaxson, I’m serious. I have a buyer who’d love to turn that beautiful land of yours into something even better.”
Calmly I throw back, “Nothing’s more beautiful than wide open pastures and oak trees older than America. Just because you were bored there doesn’t mean anything.”
She thanks Tom for the martini he’s delicately placed on a white napkin before her. Taking a sip with all the grace of a lady, her eyes tell me she’s not going to give up on the potential commission, but she would be willing to put it off for oh, say…a night.
Cora and I dated for a drop in time a year ago because she was familiar and I knew I wouldn’t get attached. I like to be alone.
She can’t boast that ability.
She wanted exclusivity immediately.
Not something I was ever going to give her. My body, sure, I’d give her that. Because it was in exchange for hers, and a man has needs.
She’s not the type of woman a man like me can spend a lifetime with. For so many reasons I don’t even have to list them to myself.
It was never even an option.
If she were more self-aware she’d have known never to demand it. Not only was I not looking for a girlfriend, my lifestyle would never have made her happy anyway. Justin’s lifestyle maybe. Or Jason’s with all his parties and concerts and Hip-Hop celebrity friends. But she set her sights on me. That was her mistake.
The woman takes two hours to get ready for fuck’s sake. What the hell?
But…like I said…I need the distraction tonight.
Cocky Cowboy: A Second Chance Romance (Cocker Brothers of Atlanta Book 3) Page 7