The Not So Bad Boy: Give up EVERYTHING for a bad-boy charm?

by Raquel Belle

“Very true. Okay, mom, I have to go put clothes on and get ready. I’ll text you once we know the details of our flight, okay?” Hayley said.

  “Sure thing, honey. Oh, I’m so happy for you. This is exactly what I was hoping would happen! That James really does sound like such a nice man.”

  Hayley looked over her shoulder at where James was cuddled behind her and smiled. “He really is, Mom.”

  Hayley hung up, put the phone back on the bedside table where she’d plugged it in the night before and turned back to James. She slid her arms around him and tangled her legs in his, bringing their bodies back to a natural cuddling position she was quickly coming to love.

  “So that was my mom,” she said nonchalantly from where she had buried her head in his chest hair.

  “I gathered,” he said, running his hands down her hair and onto her back, where he began to draw little squiggles with his index finger that tickled her slightly.

  “And in addition to a lot of mildly to very embarrassing stuff, she said that Chicago is now allowing flights out to Minnesota, which means we should be able to catch an afternoon flight to Minneapolis and be there by this evening.”

  “That’s great,” he said, hugging her close. “You won’t have to miss out on Easter, and I have the exciting task of trying not to be completely awkward when I meet your mother despite the fact that she has surmised that we both know each other in the Biblical sense.”

  Hayley snorted with laughter. “She’ll love you. She loves you already. I may have spent the last four months gushing about you to her so she already thinks you’re great.”

  James looked down at her with a raised eyebrow. “Oh really, you gushed about me?”

  “Maybe…” she said, as she once again buried her face in his chest.

  “Well, good, because I gushed about you, too. Only to Billy, really, but at one point he did tell me that I was only allowed to talk about you if I actually asked you out. He said he was getting sick of me being stuck in a fantasy world, and that I should actually do something about my massive crush on you.”

  “Ha, well, Kerry said pretty much the same thing to me, so you’re not alone. I can’t wait to tell her you’re officially my boyfriend,” Hayley said, then paused. She leaned up and looked at James nervously. “That is… you are my boyfriend, right? I mean, I know we haven’t really had the relationship talk, but I figured after everything that happened last night, everything we said, that…”

  James cut her off with a kiss that stilled the rapid beating of her heart and slowed the exhales that had started to come more rapidly from her chest. After she was suitably calmed, he said, “Yes, I’m your boyfriend. Or I will be if you’ll have me. And I’d really, really like you to be my girlfriend.”

  She smiled up at him. “I’d like that.”

  “Cool! So we’re in a relationship! And it only took us four months of daily flirting, texting, rat catching, a great kiss, and a terrible bout of pneumonia to get here!”

  She giggled. “Exactly.”

  ***

  “So what now?” James asked from where he was lying with his head on Hayley’s stomach on the hotel bed. They’d had round three of sex, this time discussing beforehand whether they should use condoms, something Hayley was a little shocked she’d forgotten to discuss before they had penetrative sex in the shower. Then again, she’d never felt so aroused, so in the moment with someone before, so it made sense.

  “I’m so sorry I didn’t use one during shower sex earlier this morning,” he had told her, and he truly looked contrite and a little guilty when he said it. She didn’t fault him—she’d completely forgotten about prophylactics as soon as James had touched her. She also had an IUD, so potential pregnancy wasn’t an issue, at least. But STD’s were.

  “Are you clean?” she’d asked him, and James had profusely nodded. It turned out that he hadn’t had sex with anyone since his last girlfriend, and he’d gone for an STD test immediately after breaking up with her. Hayley had done the same thing after Eric, so they were free to have as much unprotected sex as they could handle, no fiddling with pesky condom wrappers necessary.

  But now, after three rounds of glorious unprotected lovemaking, it was time to get up and get on with their day. They had a flight to catch, a family to meet, and a holiday to celebrate.

  “Well, let’s both shower—separately, otherwise we’re never going to leave this room,” she said. James frowned at that suggestion but gestured for Hayley to continue. “And then let’s pack all our stuff and head back to the airport. I think there’s a shuttle that can get us there fairly easily. I did some reading earlier while you were in the bathroom and apparently we can rebook our tickets for free, so we just need to go back to the American Airlines counter and explain where we’re going, and they should be able to get everything sorted out for us. And then we can grab some food while we wait to board. Sound good?” Hayley asked.

  James nodded and growled a little because as Hayley was talking, she’d been slowly scratching his head. She realized early in the evening before that James was actually a very tactile person. He loved being touched, scratched, massaged. The exact opposite of Eric, who hated contact other than sex or light, no-genitals-touching cuddling. The one time Hayley had tried to give him a back massage, he’d batted her hand away, telling her it felt weird when someone touched him like that. But Hayley needed to stop comparing James to her ex-boyfriends. He was nothing like them. He was his own unique, kind person, someone who was never going to hurt her or cheat on her or make her feel bad about herself. As she looked down at him, his hands tracing soft lines on her thighs, the curls of his hair tickling her stomach, she realized that he was exactly what she’d been looking for all along. A little bit edgy and a lot sweet. The perfect man.

  James gradually sat up and turned to her. “Sounds great. Mind if I shower first? You’ve gotten me quite dirty, Miss Wright.”

  She smiled. “Only because you asked for it, Mr. Sumners. And yeah, go ahead and shower first. I want to check on a few things.”

  He stood up and walked to the bathroom, but he turned at the door and looked back at her. “Does ‘check on a few things’ really mean ‘tell Kerry I slept with James and now we’re a couple’? Because I’m totally okay with you telling her. If I had my druthers, we’d be shouting our coupledom from the rooftops, but I think the snow might dull the shouting too much.”

  “Yes, that’s exactly what I mean.”

  He smiled at her and shut the bathroom door. She rolled over and took her phone off its charging cord and began composing a message to Kerry and Sam that ended up consisting mostly of all-caps, eggplant and peach emojis and exclamation points. It exactly mirrored what was going on in her heart right at that moment: pure excitement and a little filth.

  ***

  An hour later, James and Hayley were both showered, dressed, and ready to go. As they walked toward the door, Hayley looked back at the hotel room and smiled. It wasn’t the nicest place she’d ever stayed in—now that she looked closer, the wallpaper was peeling in spots, the couch was ripped at the bottom, and the nightstands where they’d placed their phones were a bit dusty, but last night, with James in her arms and the lights turned down low, it could have been a suite at the Ritz, and that’s exactly how she decided she wanted to remember it.

  They walked down the hotel hallway hand in hand, Hayley’s suitcase trailing behind her and James’ backpack slung over one shoulder. It was still fairly early in the morning, only nine-thirty, so the floor was quiet as they made their way to the elevator.

  The hotel lobby was much busier, milling with business people checking in and fellow stranded passengers checking out. As they made their way to the check-in desk, Hayley wondered if anyone else around them had been on her and James’ floor, and had heard them making love. A perverse part of her hoped so.

  “How may I help you?” a young blonde woman asked Hayley as she approached the counter.

  “Oh, um, my boyfriend and I would lik
e to check out.” The word boyfriend in relation to James made her mouth feel all tingly. Hayley caught James giving her a surprised look out of the corner of her eye, but there was no way she was going anywhere that day without telling as many people as possible that this man, this beautiful, amazing man, was hers.

  “Of course. And how would you like to pay today? Shall I split the bill or will one of you be covering it in its entirety?” the woman asking, looking at James. Hayley hated her a little bit for that—who said she couldn’t cover their hotel bill herself? But patriarchy reared its ugly head even in the most unlikely places.

  James cut in before Hayley could say anything biting to the woman. “We’ll be splitting it, thank you.”

  They both swiped their cards and pocketed their receipts. The woman told them how to get to the airport shuttle, confirming Hayley’s assumption that it was close by. In fact, it was only just outside the hotel, which meant in no time at all they were back at the airport.

  Though O’Hare and its surrounding airport hotels had done a good job of shoveling the snow and plowing the roads surrounding it, it was clear that what Hayley suspected had been an overreaction to a bit of frozen precipitation had, in fact, been a fairly substantial snowfall. At least two feet of snow was piled on the ground, though sadly much of it was grey and dirty from being shoved to the side of the road by plows. Hayley hoped there was still some pristine snow left at her parents’ house when they arrived.

  One of her favorite things to do as a kid was stand outside, a cup of hot cocoa in hand, and just marvel at the perfect, blank slate the world became when it snowed. Her parents’ neighborhood was quiet, with each house on a good three acres of land, so there was little noise to be heard from nearby houses. She hoped she could share her tradition with James.

  As they walked into the airport, James whispered “oh no” under his breath. Hayley wasn’t sure why, until she saw the line at the American Airlines desk.

  “Jesus, there must be two hundred people lined up! And that’s with every desk open!” Hayley groaned. She’d hoped they could rebook their flight fairly quickly. All that sex and talking had made her ravenous, and she hadn’t had anything to eat since the popcorn the night before.

  “Well, guess we better get in line. Worst comes to worst we can take turns hunting for snacks, right?” James said. Hayley’s stomach answered for her with a loud, pronounced gurgle.

  But the line did move somewhat quickly, and just thirty minutes later they were in front of Bill, a very nice older man who helped them rebook their flight and even ensured they got seats next to each other.

  Next was security, which went off without a hitch. Hayley had become an expert at packing her liquids over the years and organized her bag so her iPad was always easy to fish out and throw on the tray. She never stopped being pleased when she saw the tray with her things pop out on the belt mere seconds after she’d shoved it through. It was a ridiculous thing to take pleasure in, but she did just the same.

  James walked up behind her as she was re-lacing her boots. “So, food?” he asked, and Hayley wanted to kiss him for approximately the eightieth time since the night before.

  “God, yes.”

  He put his arm around her and took her suitcase, which was nice of him, because in Hayley’s weakened state, she was fairly certain she would’ve left it by the table where she was repacking things. She needed coffee. And a donut. And also maybe a bagel, a fruit salad, and some hash browns with hot sauce.

  “So is one of your few flaws that you become completely incapacitated when hungry? Because if we’re going to be together, I’m going to need to know if I have to stash food in my bag whenever we go on long trips.”

  She was so busy salivating at the McDonald’s sign that she didn’t even hear him. She just walked away from him and toward the bright, shining golden arches and the smell of heavily processed, fried goodness.

  “I’ll take that as a ‘yes,’” James muttered to himself as he followed her.

  ***

  Hayley had to keep in a moan of delight when she took the first bite of her Egg McMuffin. “God, I forgot how good things these are,” she mumbled through a full mouth. James snorted as he took a bite of his fruit parfait. She had been shocked when he’d ordered such a measly-sized breakfast, but unlike her, lots of sex didn’t apparently rev. his appetite so much that he wanted to eat the earth. Weirdo.

  They spent a few minutes eating in companionable silence, James occasionally stealing a bite of her hot sauce-covered hash browns and both of them taking long sips from their disposable coffee cups.

  “So,” he said when he’d scraped the bottom of his plastic cup for any strawberry yogurt hiding in the crevices. “Is this our first date?”

  “Huh?” she asked as she looked up from where she was about to bite into the last golden hash brown.

  “Is this a date? Because we’re together, at a table by ourselves in an establishment that serves food. To most people and definitely all writers of romantic comedy, this would qualify as a date.”

  She looked around them. “Huh. Yeah, I guess it is. Our first date, in a McDonald’s. And we spent our first night together in an airport hotel. Classy.”

  “Makes for a great story, doesn’t it?” he said, a smile spreading on his face.

  And while it was true that Hayley would never in a million years have picked the capitalist haven of McDonald’s as a spot for her first date with James, it was oddly perfect. No frills, no distractions. Just the two of them, some deliciously greasy food and good, cheap coffee.

  “It does,” she said, and then she set down her hash brown, leaned in, and kissed James softly on the lips. He hummed in appreciation.

  “And not to ruin our date, but what are we going to do when we get back to school? Do we tell everyone or keep it on the down-low until I’m about to leave in June?” James asked.

  Hayley had thought this over while they waited in line to rebook their tickets, and while at first she’d been a bit nervous at the idea of announcing their relationship to their colleagues and, most importantly, Dan, she knew it was the right thing to do. If they were both serious about each other, and it sure seemed like they were, then it was really the only course of action to take.

  “I think we should tell everyone. I mean, this isn’t just a fling, right? I’m serious about you. I want this to work between us long term, which means telling all the teachers and Dan and Lucy.”

  James leaned over the table and placed his hand on top of hers. “I’m serious about you, Hayley. I want this to be a long-term thing. We’ll tell everyone when we get back.”

  “The real question,” she said, squeezing his hand, “is whether we tell the kids.”

  James laughed. “They probably knew way before we did. Five-year-olds are surprisingly astute.”

  She giggled, then leaned over and kissed him again. She didn’t care if anyone around them was watching. She was just so happy to finally have him, and she wasn’t letting him go any time soon. “I love you,” she whispered in his ear. James answered back, and together they gathered their bags and headed to Gate 3A, where their flight to Minnesota had just started boarding. They walked away holding hands, their heads resting against each other, the picture of a perfect couple in love. After all, it was about damn time.

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  Thank you so much for reading The Not So Bad Boy! I really hope you enjoyed it. I’d love it if you could take a few minutes to leave me a review on Amazon - (good or bad…just your thoughts) I do enjoy seeing what my readers think about my stories!

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  “The Princess And Th
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  Jessa Ames is the perfect student and she’s on track to become the ultimate Librarian…that is until her selfish roommate leaves her in the lurch halfway through the semester of her senior year in college.

  She needs someone to share expenses with and she needs it fast!

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  About the Author

  Raquel Belle was born in a quiet town somewhere in the Midwest, to a mom who’s still a homemaker and a dad who’s still a small business owner. She’s a middle child! (Oh no!) They had a picket fence, a Labrador, a Retriever and a Poodle. The dogs were named after Italian gangsters from the movies. She loved writing short stories and her first boyfriend was in the Chess club.

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