by Megan Green
Maddy looks up at me from where she’s sitting on the sofa, a glass of wine resting between her fingers. I found a dusty bottle of white stashed in the back of my pantry. I’m pretty sure it was a Christmas gift to Stephanie one of the years we were married.
At least it is going to good use now.
She smiles as I collapse on the couch beside her. “I was starting to wonder if I’d have to send in Search and Rescue. I saw Reese’s number on the list of emergency contacts on the fridge when I got up to pour myself another glass. I figured he might be able to get me in touch with the right people.” Her voice is light, her eyes glimmering as she giggles.
“Are you … drunk?” I ask, amusement heavy in my tone.
She opens her mouth in shock. “No,” she says, her mouth forming a perfect O on the last letter and staying that way. She giggles again. “Okay, maybe. But only a little bit,” she adds, holding up her fingers a few centimeters apart.
I look to the nearly empty wineglass. “You got buzzed off of two glasses of wine?”
She shrugs, the motion setting off yet another fit of giggles. “What can I say?” she says as she hiccups. “I’m still a lightweight.”
“I’d say.” I reach out and take the glass from her hand, draining its remnants in a single swallow.
“Hey, that was mine!”
“I think you’ve had enough,” I say with a wink, getting to my feet and heading to the kitchen. I grab the half-empty bottle of wine and another glass before rejoining her in the living room.
I pour half the remaining wine in my glass before giving the rest to Maddy.
Her eyes light up. “I thought I’d had enough,” she says, mocking my tone when I said the words.
“What can I say? I’m a sucker for a lush.”
She playfully swats my arm. “I am not a lush. I’ll have you know, I don’t even”—hiccup—“drink. Most of the time,” she adds with a sheepish smile.
I know what she’s saying is true. Maddy never really liked to drink much, not even back when we thought it was cool to sneak beers from our parents. The time at the old barn was one of the few times I ever saw her drunk. It was just as entertaining then as it is now.
Still, it’s too much fun, teasing her. “Uh-huh. That’s what they all say. You’ll stop tomorrow, right?”
“Mason!” she groans, giving me another lighthearted shove. “I do not have a drinking problem.”
“Whatever you say, Tipsy McGee,” I say, taking a sip of my wine.
She falls into me, sinking down into the sofa as her shoulder comes to rest against my arm. She lets out a content sigh. “I love this. It feels like old times.”
I lean forward and place my wineglass on the coffee table. “I’ve missed you, Mads,” I say as I shift myself down on the cushions until we’re eye-level.
“I’ve missed you too,” she admits, giving me a half-smile.
“What happened to us, Maddy? Why did you shut me out?”
Maddy’s face hardens, the flirtatious light leaving her eyes in an instant.
Guess she isn’t as drunk as I thought.
She sits up, her arms coming around her middle as she looks away from me. “I think I’d better go.”
I rush to stop her. “No, please, Maddy. I didn’t mean to ruin the evening. I was just hoping to finally understand why things had changed between us. But if you’d rather not talk about it, then we don’t have to.”
She pulls her lip between her teeth, giving me a sorrowful look. “It’s just so silly now that I think about it.”
I shake my head. “Nothing you could say would make me think less of you.”
She sucks in a deep breath, dropping her eyes back to the floor. “Remember that first day you approached me about the whole tutoring thing? In the library?”
I nod, confused as to what that has to do with something that happened months later.
“I told you I wouldn’t be like those girls in the movies. The dorks who fall for the popular kids, thinking they actually have a chance. Only to find out it was a cruel prank all along.”
“Yeah, I sort of remember that. But then you made me watch Never Been Kissed at our first movie night.”
I remember that night because I joked that she’d said these movies were stupid, that the women in them basically had no balls. She responded that despite how idiotic the heroine was for falling for Billy Prince, Josie Grossie was still one of the coolest chicks in ’90s movie history.
“Funny you should mention that movie …” she says, her eyes finally lifting to mine. “Because that’s sort of exactly what happened.”
“Sort of exactly? Isn’t that kind of like … I don’t know … an oxymoron?”
I’m trying to lighten the mood, get back the carefree feeling we had only minutes ago. But it’s no use.
“Sorry,” I say when I see the way her shoulders round, her arms hugging her middle even tighter. “I’ll shut up.”
She shoots me a grateful look. “I say sort of exactly because it felt exactly like that movie at the time. I felt like Josie, all dressed up in her metallic-pink dress, stepping out onto her front porch, only to be met by egg in her face.”
“Are you saying somebody threw an egg at you? One of my old friends?” I ask, seeing red.
They could be assholes to her back then; I knew that much. But it seemed like it’d settled down a little after they knew I’d befriended her. I’d made it very clear that she was off-limits.
Maddy shakes her head. “No. It was you who threw it.”
My brow furrows as I rack my brain for anything in my past that Maddy could be referring to. But I come up empty. “Sorry, Mads, but I have no clue what you’re talking about. I threw eggs at a few houses when I was an asshole preteen. But I know for a fact that you were never there.”
Maddy’s nose scrunches as she tries to think of what to say next. Her hand comes up to her brow again, telling me she’s uncomfortable with this whole conversation. Finally, she speaks, “It wasn’t an actual egg per se. It was more of a … metaphorical egg.”
Now, I’m even more confused. “A what?”
She sighs. “This isn’t coming out the way I meant it.”
“Then, please tell me how you meant it because I’m so lost right now.”
Maddy lifts her glass to her lips, draining the last little bit with a gulp. She sets it down and turns to face me, immediately launching into the details, as if she’s afraid she’s going to lose her courage. “You asked me to prom. I was so excited that I didn’t even stop to think about what I’d said to you that day you first came up to me. I was just thrilled that you actually wanted to go with me.”
As I was. I’d been so nervous to ask Maddy that day, afraid she’d tell me I was stupid—not only for wanting to go to prom, but also for thinking she’d want to go with her friend instead of a date. But I knew there was nobody else I’d rather celebrate that milestone with, nobody else I’d rather spend those few hours of teenage normalcy with than Maddy Woods.
“But then I got to school on Monday,” she says, bringing me out of the past and back here, to my living room. “Tiffani Swenson cornered me in the hallway. Told me everything you and your friends had planned. And I realized I had turned out to be the one thing I’d told myself I’d never be. A joke.”
My mouth falls open. “Wait, what? Tiffani told you what?”
“That you’d asked me as a joke. She said she felt bad that you all were going to embarrass me, and she wanted a clear conscience when she left for college. So, she was giving me a heads-up.”
“And what exactly did she tell you we were going to do?”
Maddy’s eyes glisten as the memory hits her full force. “She said you’d rigged it so that my name would be on the card for prom queen. And that when I got up onstage, next to you as king, you’d all put on cow masks and moo. She said there was even a sash. Instead of Prom Queen, it would say Best in Show.”
My brows lift. “Best in Show?”
&nb
sp; She nods. “Yeah, like first-placed cow or whatever.”
I shake my head. “No, I know what you mean. But … Maddy, how could you believe I would do something like that?”
She slowly shrugs her shoulders. “I don’t know. I looked over and saw you laughing with them right after she told me. And I guess… well, it never really made any sense as to why you wanted to be friends with me. You were this super-cool jock, and I was—”
“Amazing,” I say, stopping her dead in her tracks. “The only word I want to hear follow that statement is amazing. Because despite what you think, Maddy, you were the best thing about my senior year. You were the first real friend I’d ever had. The first person I could truly be myself around. I don’t know what we might’ve been laughing about that day, but I can assure you, it had nothing to do with you. I never believed any of that bullshit that people used to say about you. That you believed about yourself. I didn’t see anything but a remarkable girl.”
Maddy’s eyes are downcast as she asks, “Then, why, after all those years of being apart, did you call me the one thing you knew would hurt me the most?” Her voice breaks on the last word.
I cringe as I see the tears roll down her face.
I drop my head to my hands, regretting every second of the moment I realized the pretty new vet in town was none other than my old friend. I’d heard that name a million times since grade school. Fatty Maddy. My friends had thought they were so clever in the second grade when they came up with it, and it followed her all the way through high school. I knew it was rude, and I hated that they called her that, even before she and I became friends. But I didn’t really do anything about it because … well, because I was a coward. I was so concerned about keeping my friends and my status that I didn’t bother to consider anybody else’s feelings.
I’d been an arrogant little fuckwit. At least until I’d gotten to know Maddy and realized exactly how hurtful the name was.
I don’t have a good excuse as to why it spewed from my lips when I first saw her. Call it shock. Call it a slip of the tongue. Call it complete and utter stupidity.
Whatever it was, I can never take it back. But I will spend the rest of my life trying to prove to her it was a mistake.
A stupid, stupid mistake.
I scoot toward her and cradle her face with my hands, wiping away her tears with the pads of my thumbs. She doesn’t pull away, instead lifting her gaze to mine. She doesn’t breathe as I stare into her eyes, and I realize that my own breath has escaped me. Instead, we stay locked on each other, neither of us moving even the slightest bit as we speak so much with our eyes.
When my chest burns from the lack of oxygen, I finally inhale, breaking the spell between us.
“I’ll never be able to redo our reunion,” I say, giving voice to my thoughts. “I’ll never be able to take back that fraction of a second when my brain short-circuited and I hurt you. But know this, Madeline Woods. I never would have done those things to you in high school. I might have been an idiot—might still be an idiot,” I add.
Her lips curl ever so slightly at my self-deprecation. It’s the tiniest hint of a smile, but it feels like a million bucks.
“I might have been an idiot,” I say again. “But even back then, I knew a good thing when I saw it. And you, Maddy … you are the very best thing.”
Another tear squeezes out of her eye, rolling slowly down her cheek. I lift my thumb and intercept it before it gets too far, rubbing the wetness into her smooth skin.
“It was just so easy for me to believe it, Mason. I didn’t even question it at the time. Because I knew I didn’t belong with you. You deserved to be with somebody better.”
I vehemently shake my head, pulling her against me until our faces are only inches apart. “There is nobody better. There’s not a single person out there more suited for me than you. There’s nobody, Maddy. Nobody but you.”
Her breath hitches at my declaration, and she falls forward, her lips crashing against mine in a searing kiss. My hands slide back into her hair, gripping the silky strands as I tilt her head back, giving myself better access to her mouth.
She doesn’t protest, her body willing and pliant to every adjustment I make between us. I shift, leaning her back onto the couch as I lay my body across hers. I deepen the kiss, using my tongue to push past her lips and invade her mouth.
Maddy whimpers slightly at the intrusion, and I slightly pull back, not wanting to push her further than she’s ready for. But the second I try to move, her arms close around me, crushing my body back to hers as her tongue slides against mine.
She tastes like corn dogs and cheap wine, and I’ve never experienced anything so perfect. I get lost in her taste, in her scent, in the way her body molds so perfectly with my own.
I have no idea how long we lie on the couch, making out like teenagers in my living room. I think back to all the missed opportunities we could have had. If I had known Maddy would make me feel like this back then …
Maddy’s fingers trail to the waistband of my jeans, pulling me out of my thoughts and back to the present.
“Maddy, we don’t …” I start, but she captures my mouth to shut me up.
“Make love to me, Mason,” she says, her eyes round and full of lust and affection and something else I can’t quite put a name to.
My brows pull together. “Are you sure? I don’t want you to feel—”
“Mason,” she says, leveling me with a sultry stare.
“You’ve had a lot to drink …” I say.
She shakes her head. “Not that much.”
“But what if—”
Maddy unzips my jeans, her hand snaking into my boxers and gripping my length.
“But what if what?” she asks, a mischievous sparkle in her eye.
“I, uh … I forget,” I say, my eyes squeezing shut as she strokes me.
“I’ve thought about this for longer than I care to admit, Mason Cooper. How about you show me if you’re as good as my dreams think you are?”
With the heaviness of our conversation now forgotten, the smile on Maddy’s face and the glint in her eyes tell me all I need to know.
Maddy Woods wants me.
And fuck if I’m going to deny her what she wants.
I lower my mouth to hers, smiling against her lips. “Well then, let’s see if we can make those dreams come true.”
14
Maddy
“Dr. Maddy, watch!”
I lift my face from the book I’m reading, raising a hand to shield my eyes from the sun as they search out Hannah. She’s about ten yards away, her fingers held out in a fist in front of her.
“I’m watching!” I shout back, smiling as Hannah squares her shoulders.
She lifts her fist up higher, her eyes trained on the dog at her feet.
“Hope, sit!” she says loud enough that Mason and I can hear from where we’re sitting beneath a tree.
The May sun is unusually hot today, and we sought out the cooling shade of the tree within minutes of bringing Hannah and Hope to the neighborhood dog park. I’d finally declared her well enough that the risk of her being around other animals was low.
Hope cocks her head to the side but doesn’t move otherwise.
Hannah clears her throat and gives the command again, “Hope, sit!”
This time, the dog looks around for a second, her front paws lifting and replanting before she licks her chops and drops her butt to the ground.
“Yay!” Hannah screams, jumping into the air before falling to her knees next to Hope. She opens her palm, giving Hope the small piece of jerky she had hidden there. “Good girl, Hope. You’re such a good girl.”
I smile as I look up at Mason. He pulled me to him after we spread out the blanket, settling me between his legs so that my back was to his chest, his big arms coming around to grip my waist.
He’s grinning back at Hannah. “Good job, sweetie!” he shouts to her before turning and pressing a kiss to my temple. “I’ll never be
able to thank you enough for giving her that,” he says, jerking his chin toward Hannah and her dog.
Happiness swells in my chest. Not only at his words or his kiss, but also at the whole situation I’ve found myself in.
Seventy-two hours ago, I would’ve never guessed I’d be spending my Sunday here, in the arms of a man who was not only handsome as hell, but who also genuinely seemed to care about me, surrounded by the laughter of his adorable daughter and the happy barks of their rescue dog. But here I am.
“I think you underestimate the benefits I get from this,” I say, settling myself deeper into his chest.
I feel the damp heat from Mason’s shirt, the warmth of the day really not conducive to the way we’re sitting. But neither of us seems to mind the sticky sweat that clings between us. Not when me being in his arms feels so damn good.
“I’ll make sure you get the full benefit tonight after Hannah goes to sleep,” Mason murmurs against my ear, the feel of his breath sending a shiver through my body despite the blazing sun.
My face flushes, and my breath hitches in my chest at his promise.
Mason Cooper has proven to be an even better lover than any of my wildest teenage fantasies ever envisioned. The way he worshipped my body, taking care to kiss every inch of my skin, wringing every ounce of pleasure from my core until I was certain I had nothing left. Then only proving that he somehow knew my body even better than I did myself, finding new places to touch, new spots to caress, taking me to highs I hadn’t even known possible.
I’d never had such an attentive lover.
In the beginning, Jesse had tried to get me to climax every time we made love. But more often than not, he would grow frustrated, expecting me to be able to come on command and absolutely hating that I couldn’t comply. By the end of our relationship, he didn’t even bother anymore, climbing on top of me whenever the mood struck him, using my body for his release and then rolling over and going to sleep.
I didn’t think anything of it. Sex had never been all that important to me, and I figured it was just the natural progression all relationships took. We’d been together for three years, and everybody knew that after a certain amount of time, sex just wasn’t as important anymore.
