Southern Heartbreaker

by Jessica Peterson

  Then Eva is turning toward me, and we’re suddenly very close. Her breasts brush against my chest, but she doesn’t stop moving. She’s smiling, biting her bottom lip. Furrowing her brow while she mouths the lyrics. Dancing with the same confident rhythm she had when we first met.

  Eyes on mine the whole time. Egging me on.

  Keep up if you can, they tell me. She grabs me by the tie and loosens the knot.

  “Don’t write a check you can’t cash,” I tease.

  In reply, Eva turns around and grinds her ass into my groin. Clutching my tie over her shoulder.

  “Jesus Christ,” I groan.

  It must be loud enough for her to hear me, because she shoots me a look over her shoulder. “Too much?”

  Draining the rest of my beer, I set it on a nearby ledge and then I put my hands on her hips. Give her a rough yank toward me, guiding the sweet roll of her ass as I begin to move, too.

  “Never,” I say in her ear. “I can keep up.”

  “Show me.”

  The whiskey and the beer and the freedom hit me all at once. I’m wearing a suit, my hair carefully parted and combed in responsible-corporate-citizen style. Tattoos mostly covered up. Phone on vibrate in my pocket just in case my sitter calls.

  On the outside, I’m about as square as they come.

  But I go to town anyway. I make a conscious decision not to think about emails, or how Bryce is running out of socks which means it’s time for laundry, or my super early Saturday morning wakeup call in the form of my daughter calling my name from down the hall.

  I make the decision not to think at all. I just go with the beat, losing myself to the feel of Eva’s body moving against mine. The boom of the music.

  The beat of my heart inside my chest.

  Eva screams—literally screams, jumping into the air—when LL Cool J’s “Doin’ It” comes on. I laugh. She turns around and loops her arms around my neck. Eyes on mine, she starts to really move, curling her hips in tight arcs. Side to side, back to front.

  The way she’d move those hips while on top of me, riding my dick. Rolling and swaying. Slower, then faster. Palms flat on my chest, tits bouncing in time to her movements.

  I bite down on my bottom lip with such violence I taste blood.

  And even then, I can’t help but smile. Her energy and abandon is infectious. She opens her mouth and dips low, dips to the side. I dip to the other side, swaying my ass. We keep going like this, switching sides, dipping with our arms out to the side. She laughs and I laugh and it feels so good to move like this, to have fun like this, that I can see myself getting addicted to it.

  This is the opposite of going through the motions. Of checking line items off my to-do list.

  This is good, unclean fun, and I haven’t had nearly enough of it in my life lately. The two of us always took our studies seriously. We worked hard. But we played hard, too. It was a good balance.

  Somewhere along the way, the work part of my life chipped away at the play until there was virtually none of it left.

  Tonight, I’m reclaiming it.

  My body is throbbing. Eva’s all over me, her hands on my sides, her fingers gliding into the hair at the nape of my neck when “I Wanna Sex You Up” comes on next.

  I take her lead. I keep my hands—just barely—above her ass. Caressing her hips. My thumbs moving up either side of her spine when she turns her back to me.

  When I was younger, I was moved by music like this. I was moved by all kinds of art. It made me feel.

  I felt everything then.

  Like I’m feeling everything right now. It’s not necessarily the music moving me, although that’s certainly not hurting. It’s Eva. The playful way she dances and touches and moves. The way she throws her head back to sing the lyrics when “This is How We Do It” comes on.

  How she abandons herself completely to the moment.

  “You’re fucking ridiculous, you know that?” I shout at her.

  Biting her lip, she smiles with her eyes and nods.

  And then, without warning, she hooks her finger over the top button of my shirt.

  She unbuttons it. Unbuttons the next button, too. Her fingertips grazing my skin. Making me sweat as she loosens my tie a little more.

  Yeahhhh, I’m gonna be fully hard in five seconds if—

  “Let your ridiculous out, too, Ford. I know it’s underneath this suit somewhere,” she says, leaning in and looking up. Tilting her head as if she’s about to come in for a kiss. God fuck yes now.

  I let her unbutton one more button. I roll up my sleeves, one at a time, revealing several of my tattoos. I run a hand through my hair. It’s damp with sweat.

  I put my other hand on her hip. Meet her eyes.

  My heart is pounding.

  Moving my hand lower, one inch at a time, I watch her eyes, waiting for her to tell me to stop. But she doesn’t. She presses her body more firmly against mine. Asking for more.

  Desire, already simmering inside my skin, ignites. A match set to a mile long swath of gasoline.

  I palm her ass. It’s soft, sweet, muscular, too. Firm. Fills my hand in such a satisfying way I want to scream.

  Pressing her against me—holding her, keeping her right where I want her—we dance. One song then another and another.

  The DJ whips out what appears to be an electronic clarinet, adding a nice little harmony to Petey Pablo. It’s like watching Kenny G. perform on drugs.

  Eva looks at me and I look back and we both burst out laughing. Something inside me clicks into place.

  We don’t stop dancing.

  Somewhere in the back of my mind, I know it’s getting late. Disappointment grips me a little tighter after each song ends. I need to check the time.

  I need to get going, sooner rather than later.

  I do not want this night to end. Almost feels like a religious experience, if Jesus were down with ass groping and early 2000s Snoop Dogg (how the hell did I forget classics like “Drop It Like It’s Hot” and “Gin and Juice” existed?).

  I have no clue what the hell is going on between Eva and I. Our chemistry is clearly still there. So is our easy, immediate connection, our shared passion for authenticity. Taking risks.

  Without even knowing it, I’d lost touch with this part of myself. The tattooed lover of Ludacris and late nights out.

  A handful of hours with Eva, and she’s reconnected us. The guy in the suit and the guy who talks bravery over beer.

  How the hell can I not want this woman?

  Chapter Seven

  Eva

  By the time we stumble outside at half past eleven, Ford’s shirt is transparent with sweat. It clings to his body in the most delicious, most indecent way imaginable.

  He’s filled out since college. Thicker in all the right places—biceps that strain against the fabric of that shirt, sculpted chest. Torso that’s somehow brawny and lean, all at once.

  He may be a venture capitalist. But he’s got the body of an actor training to play a Marvel superhero, his suit jacket draped casually over one enormous, muscled forearm.

  I still don’t know if accepting his invitation for a drink, and then another and another, was the right call. But I do know I am having a really, really great time.

  I do know he seems to sincerely, deeply regret the way he treated me back in college. Never in a million years would I have guessed he’d be so forthcoming ten years later. And so curious and kind about my career. My cookbooks.

  This Ford—the exhausted single dad—is funny and authentic and vulnerable in a way the guy who broke up with me wasn’t.

  This Ford is hot as fuck.

  I stare as he tugs his rumpled shirttails out of his pants and plucks at the fabric, trying to get some air circulating. The muscles in his forearm ripple as he moves, making the tattooed marlin there—an ode to Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea—jump.

  “What?” he asks when he catches me ogling him, one side of his mouth curling into a knowing smirk. His eyes
flick to my mouth.

  My lips tingle.

  My ears are still ringing from how loud the music was inside. His voice sounds distant. A little fuzzy.

  “You run a company. You’re a single parent. How the hell do you stay in such great shape?”

  “5 a.m. workouts. It’s the one thing I try to do for myself on a daily basis. Helps me stay sane.”

  “And hot. It helps you stay really hot. I hate to use this term because, well—it is what it is. But Ford, you are a total DILF.”

  He laughs, and the space around my heart lights up at the sound. I know I need to end this—this date thing before I do something I regret, but I’m having too much fun. I needed a night out more than I realized.

  “What’s wrong with ‘dad I’d like to fuck?’ I certainly don’t mind it,” he says.

  “So you’ve been called a DILF before, then.”

  “Never by someone who’s ground their ass into my crotch first. That usually happens after they tell me I’m a dad they’d like to bang.”

  My turn to laugh. “Hey, you were the one who called me a badass. And badasses don’t play by the rules.”

  “Just like Tom Cruise in every movie he’s ever been in.” He lowers his voice. “He’s a cocky fighter pilot who scares innocent women in bars with a cappella. She’s a cookbook author who knows her meat and takes no shit.”

  I look. He looks back.

  He makes zero effort to hide the desire I see there.

  My God, there is something so…so steady and so real about the way this man wants. My skin pulses with prickly warmth, like it’s soaking up sunshine. Energy.

  Belief. When we first started dating, Ford believed in me. Even when I was an idiot sophomore who lived in off-brand terry cloth tracksuits (thanks, J.Lo) while torturing myself over whether or not I could get a job with an English degree.

  It’s clear he believes in me now. Do I trust that? Or is he more liable to pull the rug out from under me again, the way he did on graduation day?

  “I had a really great time tonight,” he says. He takes a step forward, his shoes catching on the flinty pavement.

  He’s close enough to lean in for a kiss.

  Do. Don’t.

  Instead, he reaches for my ponytail—on my way out of the bar, I put my hair up with an elastic I had in my bag—and loops the end around his finger. Gives it a tiny but firm tug.

  It’s enough to send bolts of heat crashing through me, making my pussy throb.

  “I’ll be honest,” he continues. “I want to ask you to come home with me right now more than…Jesus, more than I’ve wanted anything in a long fucking time, Eva. But I’m a gentleman, for one thing.”

  “Heartbreaker, you mean,” I manage, despite the fact that my body just went up in flames at his admission that he wants to take me home.

  He grimaces. “Told you I was an idiot. But I’m a gentleman now, and I’m also a parent. I admit I’m a little overprotective when it comes to Bryce. I have an unofficial policy of not bringing women around until…until I don’t know what. But I haven’t brought anyone home yet.”

  “No need to explain,” I say. “I get it. I think it’s cool you’re so careful. You’re clearly a great dad, Ford.”

  He arches a brow, the light from the neon Jacob’s sign catching on his jawline. “You think so?”

  I smile, feeling all kinds of tangled up inside at all this vulnerability. I love it. Brave is a good look on him.

  “I know so. Anything you do, you give it your all. I guarantee you try to be the very best DILF you can.”

  He laughs again. “Thanks. I appreciate that. I’ve been feeling a lot of guilt now that I’m working full time again. I constantly question myself. My decisions. Am I spending enough time with Bryce? Am I a bad dad for, I don’t know, letting her have this much screen time, or having someone else make her lunch? I’m all that she’s got. My parents help out a lot, and Hannah—our nanny—is really wonderful. But I’m her parent. Her only parent. At the end of the day, it’s my responsibility to keep her safe. My responsibility to give her every opportunity for happiness that I can.”

  “Ford.” I put a hand on his arm. His Adam’s apple bobs as he swallows, eyes alive with pain and hope and that want. “That sounds really, really difficult.”

  “It is.” He lets out a breath. “Which is why tonight was awesome. I really needed this, Eva. I can’t remember the last time I went out and just…you know, let loose and had fun. I’d like to do it again. So while I won’t take you home tonight, even though it kills me not to”—he drops his hand from my hair and digs his phone out of his pocket—“I will take your number. Please.”

  My heart swells with feeling, and I can’t tell if it’s good or bad.

  Good, because this gorgeous, generous, hot DILF in a suit wants to see me again?

  Bad, because I don’t know if I can trust him, and even if I do, I know this will just end in disappointment for us both?

  Best case scenario, we have a great time and maybe have great sex.

  Worst case, I get my heart broken all over again. Or I break his. As much as he hurt me, I’d never intentionally return that favor.

  My rational mind tells me I’m being silly. That I’m thinking too far ahead. Assuming too much. Ford is asking for my number, not my hand in marriage.

  Then again, I don’t want to lead him on when I know anything we started—anything we did—isn’t going anywhere. It’s starting to become obvious that he’s turned out to be a good guy.

  A guy who is worlds more mature and open-minded than the one who broke up with me a decade ago.

  A guy who can dance.

  Who, in a few short hours, made me feel like I was capable of tackling anything. My cookbook. Mt. Everest.

  Him.

  I want to tackle him.

  His eyes are on my mouth again.

  Maybe that’s all this is. Lust.

  I can do lust. It doesn’t require trust. Doesn’t require a commitment.

  My number tumbles out of my mouth in a rush. The whole time, my mind is shrieking whaaaaat are you dooooinggg?

  I should go. But I can’t move. I stand there, waiting.

  Ford tucks his phone back into his pocket. His eyes meet mine.

  “Just texted you so that when I call, you’ll recognize the number,” he says.

  I scoff. “Don’t write checks you can’t cash.”

  “Oh, I’m gonna cash that one, Eva. Believe me.”

  I do.

  I should tell him not to call. I should tell him to erase my number and find someone else to have Friday night fun with.

  Instead, I wait.

  A gigantic black SUV pulls up to the curb, hazards flashing. Looks like some kind of limousine service.

  Ford tilts his head. “My Uber. Gotta get home to the sitter. Can we drop you off along the way?”

  The venture capitalist in him is coming out—no regular old Uber X for him. He’s gotta get the black car service that’s five times pricier.

  “Nah. I live about three blocks from here. I’ll just walk.”

  “You sure?”

  “I’m sure. Don’t want to hold you up any more than I already have. You gotta get back.”

  Still, the stuff inside my chest tightens in disappointment. I bat the sensation away, reminding myself that this is exactly why I don’t date guys who have kids. They’re tied down by schedules. Sitters. Stomach bugs, the flu, foot and finger disease or whatever that gross sickness is called.

  Again, I’m not judging. I know plenty of people who genuinely love being parents and are fulfilled by their roles as mom and dad. I just know that that path isn’t for me. It requires you to give up too much of yourself. And I’ve seen firsthand the consequences of that kind of sacrifice.

  “I’m glad you came out tonight, Ford.”

  “Me too.” He searches my eyes. “Are you going to pick up when I call? I’m getting the feeling you might ghost me.”

  “Ghost you? After y
ou slayed those Ludacris lyrics? That’d be hard. Really hard. Then again, doing hard things is kind of my M.O., so…”

  He grins wolfishly. “That’s what she said.”

  I laugh, the deep kind that grips your belly and doesn’t let go.

  Ford holds out his arms, making the fabric of his shirt stretch even more tightly over his chest. “I’d offer you a hug, but I’ve got all kinds of swampiness going on right now. Swamp ass. Swamp crotch. Is swamp shirt a thing? It should be a thing.”

  Grinning, I wave him away. “Go relieve your sitter. I’ll see you around.”

  “Good night, Eva.”

  “Night, Ford.”

  He turns toward the car, and I turn toward home. I’m buzzing. With light and energy, the kind you feel after you know you really hit it off with someone.

  Also with disappointment. It won’t go away. So much happened between the moment Ford backed into me at the bar at Henley’s and right now. The conversation, the confessions. The grinding.

  I’d be a masochist to want more. And yet I do. The night feels incomplete somehow. Which is both ridiculously romantic and enormously frustrating, all at once.

  “Wait—wait, Eva—”

  My stomach dips at the sound of Ford’s voice. Fingers, strong but gentle, wrap around my elbow, and then he’s giving my arm a gentle tug. I spin around to face him, my arms going halfway up in surprise. Pulse skittering inside my skin.

  “Wait.” His eyes meet mine. My stomach dips again at the question I see in his.

  My lips part.

  I really shouldn’t. But I’m lonely. Turned on.

  Curious.

  I roll up onto my toes, giving him my answer. My forearms fall onto his shoulders.

  He wastes no time. He glides a hand onto my face and tilts his head, bending his neck as he leans in.

  My eyes flutter shut at the same moment he presses his lips to mine. They’re soft and warm. So freaking soft.

  The smell of his skin fills my head. Aftershave, cut with a hint of what almost smells like juniper. Woodsy. Musky.