by Anna Rezes
“You know it’s even sadder drinking alone when you’re drinking directly from the bottle,” she said.
I nodded, knowing just how pathetic I was, and yet here she was helping to lessen the pain. “What was your first impression of me?” I asked.
She tilted her head. “You want the honest answer?”
I nodded and took another drink.
It took her a moment to pull her words together, but finally, she said, “I thought you were hot, but I also thought you were probably a tool—a wannabe hipster in your pastel clothes and backpack. I thought . . .” she stopped herself, shaking her head.
“Go on, say it.”
“You were holding one of these.” She held up her bottle. “I hated how confident you looked holding your rosé. I concluded you were only that confident because you had a girl up here waiting for you.”
“Wow, you thought all of that?”
“I have a lot of thoughts,” she replied, relaxing back into the bed with her legs crossed in front of her. “What was your first impression of me?”
I winced. I should’ve seen that question coming, but I was too busy thinking about her.
“That good, huh?” she said sarcastically.
I rubbed at the stubble on my chin while I tried to come up with something. I gazed over at her while I thought up a lie.
She smiled at me, and those fucking dimples made an appearance. “No bullshit,” she said as if seeing my thoughts. “That’s what we’re doing, right? The honest truth, even if it’s ugly. That’s what I’ll give you, but only if you reciprocate.”
I blew out a breath and told her the truth. “I thought you would be a good rebound.”
Her eyebrows went up in surprise. “You thought I’d be a good lay.”
I grimaced, saying, “I’m gonna sound like a cocky asshole.”
“Honest, ugly truth,” she reminded me.
“I get hit on a lot. I never acted on any of those offers because I was with Addison. So, when I saw you in your skimpy cutoff shorts and tight tank, I thought you might be one of those girls who would be interested.”
She laughed. “You thought I was a slut.”
“I don’t anymore,” I blurted.
“I’m not offended. Those shorts are too short, but they’re comfy, and I was driving all day. Oh my God, were you hitting on me in the elevator?”
“I was putting out feelers. I’m usually funny, but everything I said just seemed to piss you off.”
She sighed. “I was a bitch to you. It’s my defense mechanism, and I wanted to push you away because I was attracted to you. I also thought you were here to meet up with your mistress for a midweek hookup.”
“You thought so highly of me,” I said, trying not to focus on the part where she said she was attracted to me.
“I told you my head isn’t in a good place. I tend to expect the worst of people because then it won’t hurt so much when they let me down.”
It took everything in me not to get up and wrap her in a hug. I knew I couldn’t trust myself not to kiss her, and that’s not what we were doing here. I needed something to make her less attractive. “Tell me an honest, ugly truth.”
“I turned my TV up and slept with earplugs because I was so afraid of hearing sex noises from you and the mistress I thought you were sleeping with.”
I laughed because her truth did nothing to lessen her appeal. If anything, it made her more attractive.
Her phone started ringing, and she looked down at it like she wasn’t sure if she should answer. A groove appeared between her eyebrows as she bit her lip. She glanced at me, saying, “I just need to see what she wants.” She stood up as she answered.
She walked away from me, giving me a great view of her exposed back. God, that dress. She had a small tattoo of a bird below her right shoulder blade. I wanted to kiss it. Preferably while I had her bent over the bed and I was buried deep inside of her. I readjusted myself, trying to hide the part of me that was too excited. This was torture. I needed something to cool me down, like a cold shower or a bucket of ice.
Willa spun around suddenly, her eyes wide and accusing. She glared at me while she listened to whoever was on the phone. She lifted her bottle and chugged the rest of her drink before setting it too harshly on the desk. “Okay,” she said, “thanks, Jodi.”
She hung up, and the silence stretched for a moment. “You’re getting married this weekend!”
A bucket of ice water would have been kinder. How the hell did she find out?
Willa
I wanted him to deny it so I could throw the proof in his face, and how messed up was that? As soon as Jodi received the photo of his license, she started looking into him. You didn’t exactly have to be a detective to find things out about people these days. Thank you, social media.
My phone dinged, and I looked down at the photo Jodi sent me. I let out a short laugh because his fiancée wasn’t just beautiful. She was stunning. She was long and willowy with blonde hair and blue eyes. She had flawless fair skin and reeked of wealth. She was everything I wasn’t, and Oliver was smiling in the photo. Of course, he was smiling! He held Miss America in his arms.
I didn’t notice him move until he was standing over my shoulder. He looked down at the phone in my palm. His hand cradled mine while he moved closer to inspect the photo. I looked up, watching his expression morph into something resembling despair. His jaw tensed as he attempted to hold it together. My anger vanished as a tear landed on my exposed shoulder. I gave him the phone, so I could spin around to face him. He was so much taller than me. I craned my neck to look at him while my hand went to his jaw, my thumb wiping away another tear.
“Tell me,” I requested softy.
He threw my phone onto the bed and wiped his face, looking to the ceiling. “I’m fucking pathetic.”
“You’re human,” I said. “We’re all pathetic.”
He laughed a little, and then he wrapped his arms around me, pulling me against him. His head came down on top of mine, and I discovered how much I loved hugs from Oliver. My arms reciprocated, and after a moment, his fingers traced a line up my back, stopping right over my tattoo.
I stepped back out of his arms. “I don’t want to be your rebound,” I said.
He shook his head. “I don’t either.”
I felt rejected, even though he was repeating my words. But I only said it because I can’t do meaningless sex, especially not with him. I was already developing feelings for him even as I begged myself not to. I must have given myself away because he went on to explain, “You aren’t the rebound type. You’re the kind of woman some lucky bastard marries and has lots of babies with.”
His words cut me open, and I shook my head, avoiding his eyes. “No, I’m not.”
He tilted my chin up, saying, “You are. He just didn’t know what he had.”
“He knew,” I said, pain lancing my heart.
“Then he’s an idiot.”
“I’m not ready to talk about me yet,” I pleaded with him.
My phone chimed, and I realized Jodi was probably freaking out that he had killed me for learning his secret. I crawled onto his bed to retrieve the phone and sent a quick text. When I turned around, he was sitting down next to me. His back was against the headboard with his legs out in front of him. I mimicked him, sitting with a little gap between us.
I grabbed the bottle in his hand, noticing it was nearly empty, and searched for the alcohol content. I handed it back to him, laughing. “We may as well be drinking grape juice. For a moment, I worried that my tolerance had stepped up.”
I climbed off the bed to grab two bottles from the fridge. I uncorked them both, handing one to Oliver before sitting beside him. I could have gone back to the other bed, but it didn’t feel right. I enjoyed being close to him.
Oliver held his new bottle out, swirling it. “Addison doesn’t actually like wine, but her friends do, so she found a juice that passed for wine so she would fit in.”
; I look down at my drink. “So, this is Addison’s Pink Moscato we’re drinking?”
“It is. We were getting married at her grandparent’s farm, so we bought all our alcohol ahead of time. The day I picked up the Pink Moscato was the same day she confessed to cheating on me. I forgot the cases were still in the back of my truck when I took off. Of course, it couldn’t have been the bourbon. It had to be the Pink fucking Moscato.”
I held up my bottle to his, saying, “Here’s to Pink fucking Moscato.”
He laughed, his eyes sparkling with mirth as he tapped his bottle to mine. I was glad I could do that for him—make him smile on one of the worst days of his life.
“You know,” I said, “if it were the bourbon in your truck, you and I wouldn’t have met because you don’t need a corkscrew to open bourbon. You probably would’ve been passed out in this room all by yourself.”
He doesn’t laugh this time, and when I look over at him, his head is resting against the headboard with his face tilted toward me. He reaches out, his thumb caressing my lower lip. Before he leans in to kiss me and I do something stupid like kiss him back, I ask, “She told you she was cheating on you the week you were supposed to get married?”
He dropped his hand, looking defeated. “Exactly a week. She told me Saturday. We’re supposed to get married this coming Saturday. She said the guilt was eating at her. She said she loved me and still wanted to get married, but she couldn’t go into it without telling me. She said things just went too far. She said it only happened a handful of times over the years and that it will never happen again.”
I scoff. “Oh, well, if it’s only a handful of times then I guess it’s okay to be unfaithful.”
He’s shaking his head. “Honestly, I love her enough that I think I would’ve let it go, but . . .”
He said, love her. Not he used to love her. He still loved her. I reminded myself not to let him kiss me. He was not allowed to kiss me when he still loved her.
I realized he wasn’t talking and tried to remember what he said last. When I remembered, I asked, “You would’ve let it go, but what?”
“It’s so fucking cliché,” he muttered.
“Ahh,” I said, the alcohol loosening my tongue. “Did she fuck your best friend or your brother?”
“I don’t have a brother.”
I grimaced. I wanted to be wrong. I can’t imagine if I caught Evan with Jodi. It would have destroyed me.
He scoffed. “And it’s not like he’s only my buddy from work. Travis has been my best friend since we were three and our parents made our playdates. He may as well have been my brother. He was in every way that mattered.
“And Addie and I have been together since we were seventeen. She always said we were High school sweethearts till the end of time. Eleven years is a long time. Sometimes I was tempted by other girls, but I never acted. Travis encouraged me to have one-night stands all the time in college. He said I just needed to get it out of my system, and now I wonder if it’s because he felt guilty. She wouldn’t tell me when it started between them, but she said they hadn’t been together since we got engaged.”
“Your best friend and your girl. That’s cold. Did you confront him after she told you?”
He took a long swig before confessing. “There are some things you can’t take back, you know. I didn’t want to do something or say something I couldn’t take back. You always hear how people catch their significant other cheating and feel this murderous rage. I didn’t feel that. I felt humiliated and hurt. And more than anything I want to know why. Why would they do this? It happens once, it’s an accident, but it kept happening, Willa. Why? What did he have that I didn’t? And was it that important to him that he’d risk our friendship? Was it just sex, or was it more? What if he’s in love with her? Or worse, what if she’s in love with him?”
“Don’t you think you’re giving them too much credit? In my experience, men like beautiful unavailable women because they’re forbidden. What’s more forbidden than your best friend’s girlfriend?”
He swung his gaze to me. “You have a very low opinion of people.”
“How do you not?” I argued. “People do shitty things to each other all the time.”
“I don’t.”
I rolled my eyes. “You may not realize you do, but I’m sure you do.”
“No, I don’t.”
I leaned against him, feeling the alcohol loosening my reservations. “Oliver, nobody is perfect. Not even you.”
There was humor in his voice. “Is that grape juice kicking in?”
I closed my eyes and nodded against him.
He nudged me with his shoulder, and I lifted up as he jumped off the bed. “We need music,” he announced as he practically bounced on his heels.
“What?” I asked, wondering where all his sudden energy came from.
“Come on. I’m putting you to sleep with my depressing stories. I didn’t ask you here so you could listen to me cry all night. Do you have music on your phone?”
I’m already crawling to the edge of the bed to join him. “Where’s your phone?”
“I left it in my truck, so I wouldn’t be tempted to call her.”
I pulled up my music and handed the phone to him. He scrolled through my music, judging me, I’m sure.
“Workout mix. What’s this?”
“Eh…” I responded before the hardcore rap blared from the speaker.
He threw his head back, laughing.
I ripped my phone from his hands and played my pop station. If he wanted to dance, then we would dance. I went old school with Spice Girls because when I was young, Jodi and I created a whole dance routine to the song Wannabe. I was suddenly dying to show him. Okay, so I was definitely a little drunk.
“Oliver, I’m gonna need you to step back off the dance floor while I show you how true professionals do it.” I shooed him out of the small space and back toward the bed as “Wannabe” came on.
He sat back with his eyes glued to me. I handed him my drink and began my dance routine. We were maybe seven-years-old when we choreographed this dance, so unless we were child prodigies, the dance was really as bad as I thought it was. I looked to Oliver, who was barely containing his laughter.
“You want the honest, ugly truth?” I asked him.
“Always,” he responded.
“I’m not a good dancer and my friend and I are not child prodigies.” I swing my hips and nearly toppled over.
In a flash, his hands were on me. It was an overreaction, but I was not going to push him away. Instead, I rested my hands on his shoulders while his hands were on my back. He slid them down, placing them in the small of my back. He pulled me forward until I was against him, and then he started swaying. And that’s how we ended up slow dancing to “Wannabe.”
I rested my cheek against his chest so I wouldn’t be so tempted to lift up and kiss him because even if I was a little drunk; I remembered he still loved Addison.
His mouth came to my ear to whisper, “Better not get with my friends.”
I tilted my head up, my lips a breath from his. “Who said I wanted to be your lover?”
His nose touched mine, and my eyes fell closed expectantly because my body is a traitor. But he didn’t kiss me. The prickly scruff on his jaw rubbed against my cheek, and his mouth was back at my ear. “Your body told me. And the truth is I really fucking want to kiss you.”
The song ended, but we kept swaying, holding one another because the moment we let go, our instincts would take over. Our desires were stronger than our logic.
I reached deep down, remembering the look on Evan’s face when I walked in on him and Estelle in our bed together. For the rest of my life, I will remember the look he gave me because I expected to find panic or fear, but what I saw was relief. Relief that he didn’t have to hide anymore. Relief that he could move on with his life and be done with me. His relief is what hurt the most.
I pushed away from Oliver, spinning away from him to take a few
steps before I said, “You love Addison. She hurt you, but you’re still in love with her, and I won’t be the other woman.”
I turned to face him from across the room. He wasn’t looking at me. His hands were on his hips, and his head hung forward while his muscled chest rose and fell with each breath he took. I watched him for a while before asking, “Should I leave?”
He looked up at me then, panic in his big blue eyes. That was the panic I was looking for from Evan. Oliver didn’t look relieved that I was giving him an out. He swallowed. “Do you want to leave?” he asked.
“No, but I’m afraid we’ll do something we both regret.”
He looked serious as he said, “I just have one more song I want us to dance to, and if you still want to leave after that, I won’t stop you.”
I opened my mouth to speak, hesitant because I didn’t know if I could do this, but Oliver didn’t wait for my response. The song started playing, and my eyes shot to him, a slow smile creeping across my face until I was smiling like a lunatic. “I know I don’t have this on my playlist!”
“Well, now, you do,” he said, beaming at me from across the room as the accordion music played. He stepped forward reaching his hand out for me, asking, “May I have this dance?”
I rolled my eyes and took his hand, saying, “You continue to surprise me, Oliver.”
Then we danced the hell out of the Chicken Dance.
Oliver
My whole life people had called me Oli, and I loved that she refused to shorten my name. We hooked arms and swung around in circles as the Chicken Dance demanded. I watched her thick hair flow out behind her in dark waves. I laughed because she looked overjoyed, and it filled me with this euphoric sensation. We were good together. I might not know her past, but I couldn’t imagine anything she could tell me to make me dislike her. I wished we had met at a different time, under different circumstances because neither of us were in a good place. I knew enough to know that was a poor way to start a new relationship, and I wasn’t interested in a rebound. I wanted her.
