“Then prepare to be impressed!” she bragged, feeling her face inexplicably heat up at his words.
“You talk a big game, but can you really deliver?”
“You will have to wait and see,” she told him with a sassy flip of her hair.
*****
“You don’t disappoint,” Zane told Melody a while later, once trivia had ended.
“Oh?”
“You really are very, very bad,” he told her with a devilish grin.
“You have no idea,” Melody purred in a seductive – and slightly slurred – voice. Then she immediately wished she could take it back. Since she couldn’t, she instead opted to laugh and announce, “I am really drunk. I am like, really, really drunk. I so wasn’t planning to drink that much tonight!”
“You and me both,” Zane replied as they both stood up. “You want to share a cab?”
She made a face. “It’s a nice night out. I think I’ll just walk. My parents’ place isn’t that far.”
“I’ll walk with you,” Zane offered.
“Hey you two, wait up!” one of the bartenders called as they made their way to the door. “You forgot your trivia prize!” He jogged over and handed Melody an envelope. “Congratulations, you two really sucked tonight.”
“Did you hear that?” Melody giggled as she and Zane stepped outside. “I suck!”
“But do you swallow?”
Melody burst out laughing at that, mostly because she was incredibly drunk. “Wouldn’t you like to know,” she shot back, not missing a beat. Then she let out a hiccup. “Oh God, I drank way too much. Why did you let me drink so much?”
“Are your parents going to ground you for coming home drunk?” he teased.
“Ugh,” she groaned. “I know you’re only playing around but yeah, welcome to my life. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I love my parents because they’re, like...my parents, right? But here I am twenty-eight years old and my mother still tells me to take a jacket when I leave the house and take my vitamins every morning. I seriously need to get out of there!”
“I hear you,” Zane replied. “I had to stay with my parents for a while when I was recovering from the accident. I was grateful they helped me out, of course, but damn, was I glad to get my independence back.”
“This will sound weird, but can you not walk me right to my door?” Melody asked sheepishly.
“Because they’ll see me and start asking all kinds of uncomfortable questions?” he guessed.
“Yep,” she nodded.
He chuckled. “All this sneaking around kind of feels like high school all over again.”
“Speaking of high school, why didn’t we ever hang out?” Melody asked him. “We must have gone to some of the same parties, right? We must have had some mutual friends or something?”
“Yes and no,” he replied. “My sister was always mortified to have her big brother hanging around, so I kept my distance from most everyone in her grade. It kept her from making my life a living hell,” he chuckled. “But you and I definitely did go to some of the same parties. I remember you.”
“You do?” Melody asked, surprised.
“Yes. You kicked Troy Kerr in the balls one time when we were partying down at the river. I distinctly remember that,” he said with a grimace. “When a guy witnesses something as painful as that, it’s kind of hard to forget!”
“Oh yeah, I did do that. He was being a big creep. He grabbed my ass,” Melody recalled.
“Well in that case I would have kicked him in the balls, too,” Zane said. “What an asshole.”
“This might sound strange, but I’m kind of sad you and I didn’t know each other ten or twelve years ago,” Melody confessed. “I feel like we would have been friends or...something.”
“Can’t we be friends now?”
“Yes.”
“Do you remember a Halloween party at Dawn Weiss’s place?” Zane asked suddenly. “It was my senior year, so I guess you would have been what, a freshman?”
“I do remember that,” Melody told him, smiling at the memory. “It was my first real high school party and I was so excited! And it was such a fun time. No one wanted to go home! I think pretty much everyone stayed at the party until the sun came up.”
“Do you remember the haunted house?”
“Oh my God, yes!” Melody exclaimed. “It was so scary! The entire basement was full of amazing decorations and there were people hiding down there waiting to jump out and scare you as you as you made your way through the dark! Of course, by the end of the night it had just become another place to make out...typical high school party,” she laughed.
“What about the guy in the devil mask?” Zane asked softly. “Do you remember him?”
Melody stopped in her tracks and looked at him questioningly. “How did you know about that?”
She remembered the unexpected kiss she’d shared in the darkened basement with the guy whose identity had been obscured. It had been her first real kiss, or at least the first one with tongue. A tall, broad shouldered guy had emerged from the shadows. At first she’d been startled and then, once she’d realized it was just some guy wearing a mask, she’d started laughing. He’d held out his arms as if to apologize for scaring her, and she’d hugged him. Then he’d kissed her.
“Wait. That was you?” Melody demanded, putting two and two together.
“It was.”
“I...had no idea it was you,” Melody confessed. “I assumed it was Chris Lowe because we’d kind of been flirting a bit in English class. I remember being really confused when I saw him in class after that and he acted like nothing had happened. I got mad at him in that melodramatic way only teenagers can and that was the end of our flirting!”
“Sorry for ruining the thing you had with Chris Lowe.”
“Ha, no worries,” Melody replied, still looking at him. “That was really you?” she asked again.
“It was.”
“I want to see for myself.”
Brazenly, Melody took a step forward and stood up on her toes. With liquid courage pumping through her veins, she stood up on her toes and pressed her lips to Zane’s, recreating the brief moment in time they had shared all those years earlier.
“So?” Zane asked when the kiss ended. “Do you believe me now?”
“I...I’m not sure,” Melody told him, flustered by how good it had felt to be up close and personal with Zane. In her most throaty, sultry, seductive voice, she purred, “I think maybe I need to do it again to be sure.”
She tried to kiss him again but he took a step back, dodging Melody’s attempt.
Dazed, Melody blinked and then looked up at Zane in confusion. He looked pale, like he’d seen a ghost. Actually, no, that wasn’t it at all. The expression on his face, Melody realized, was that of a man whose heart had been ripped out and stomped on.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, taken aback.
“You’re drunk,” he told her, clearing his throat and averting his eyes.
“So?”
“So we shouldn’t.”
“We shouldn’t kiss because I’m drunk?” Melody asked, completely baffled.
If he was trying to be chivalrous and avoid taking advantage of an inebriated woman, he was overdoing it. He was way overdoing it. In fact, at this point the wasted, sloppy young guy who had painfully hit on her back at the wedding reception had more game than Zane. What the hell?
“No, we shouldn’t kiss because it’s a bad idea,” Zane said, offering no further explanation.
Utterly confused and more than a little embarrassed to have her advances rejected, Melody cleared her throat awkwardly. “You don’t have to walk me home,” she told him, offering him an out. “Have a good night, and thanks for the drinks.”
“Wait.”
“What?”
Her question seemed to catch him off guard, as though he hadn’t had an actual reason to call out to her, but simply hadn’t wanted to see her go. He stood there silently for a moment, his brow f
urrowed as though he was thinking. Then, finally, he asked, “What’s our prize?”
“Huh?”
“Our prize,” he said again. “The one we got for losing at trivia? The bartender gave you an envelope as we were leaving...”
“Oh, right.” More than anything, Melody just wanted to get away from Zane, go curl up in bed and try to sleep off his rejection. She felt so dumb for trying to kiss him when he clearly didn’t want her to. How humiliating!
The night had started out so promising, but had ended on a very sour note indeed. Melody searched her purse for the envelope but came up empty handed. “I don’t know what I did with it,” she admitted apologetically.
“Is that it?” Zane asked, pointing to Melody’s chest.
She looked down and saw the envelope sticking out of the top of her button up shirt. Apparently she had thought it was a good idea to cram it into her bra. Ah yes, the good old tit purse...very classy! But at this point, Melody realized, it didn’t really matter. Zane had already rejected her.
“Here you go,” she told him, pulling the envelope free and handing it to him. “Goodnight.”
“Wait!”
Growing irritated, Melody turned back around and looked at Zane. “What?”
“Don’t you want to see what the prize is?” he asked as he opened the envelope.
“Not really,” she replied defiantly, yet she made no move to walk away.
“We got two passes to the petting zoo down at the river,” he told her, holding them up.
“Oh. Well I’m sure you’ll put the passes to good use.”
Zane stared at her. “What, are you seriously telling me you don’t like the petting zoo?” he asked, seemingly having recovered from whatever strange sentiment had come over him following the failed second kiss.
Melody shrugged. “Who doesn’t like the petting zoo?”
“Atta girl,” he told her. “I’ll meet you outside the bar tomorrow, say around one o’clock?”
Melody raised an eyebrow. “I don’t understand you,” she told him, crossing her arms.
“What part about me meeting you tomorrow is confusing?” Zane asked with amusement.
“No, I don’t mean that.”
Melody decided to call Zane out on what had happened rather than sheepishly attempt to sweep it under the rug. But then at the last second she chickened out, too mortified to call attention to the fact that she had completely misread his signals, as evidenced by his embarrassing refusal to kiss her a second time. Had the first kiss really been that bad? Because she thought it had been pretty great...
“So uh, what do you mean?” he asked.
Shaking her head dismissively, Melody told him, “I’m busy tomorrow.”
“Doing what?”
She stared at him wide eyed, the question unexpected. “Stuff!” she replied indignantly.
“What sort of stuff?” he pressed, his eyes twinkling. She could definitely see a glimmer of the annoying older boy who had terrorized her and her friends at sleepovers back in the day. It was infuriating...and yet also kind of endearing.
“It’s none of your business,” Melody snapped.
He burst out laughing at that. “You’re right,” he agreed as she glared daggers at him. “It isn’t. But here’s the deal. I want to go to the petting zoo. I mean, who doesn’t love baby goats? They’re cute and I want to pet them.”
“Then go to the petting zoo.”
“I can’t go alone.”
“Why can’t you?”
“Macho Idiot Law – which yes, is totally a thing – dictates I can’t go to the petting zoo unless I am in the company of a woman or small child,” he informed her matter-of-factly. Then he looked at Melody expectantly.
“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” she told him.
“It kind of is,” he agreed, unfazed. “Come on, you’re not going to make me beg, are you?”
“I already told you, I’m busy tomorrow.”
“All day?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“You can’t find even half an hour to let me buy you an ice cream and wander around the riverside with me?” he coaxed. “Come on, I’ll get you as many scoops as you want! And after that, there will be cute little baby animals to pet. Some of them might even be fuzzy.”
“Oh God, if I say yes will you stop embarrassing yourself?”
“Yes. Please say yes,” he begged, giving her puppy dog eyes. “This is humiliating.”
“Okay fine. Yes, I’ll go to the petting zoo with you tomorrow. Goodnight.”
“Goodnight,” she heard him say as she walked away. She didn’t look back because she wouldn’t let herself. She didn’t want to give Zane that satisfaction. But she could feel him looking at her, watching as she walked away. It made her tingle all over.
Chapter 04
The following day, Melody headed down to the bar in the early afternoon. She was wearing a yellow sundress with a sweetheart neckline and a pair of strappy sandals. Her hair was tied back in a side ponytail, loosely braided, and though her makeup was minimal she’d spent a hell of a long time making it look barely there!
She wasn’t sure why she had taken such care to dress nicely. Zane clearly wasn’t interested in her, so what was the point of trying to impress him? Maybe, Melody reasoned, it wasn’t about that. Maybe it was about making herself feel pretty so she could face him with her head held high despite his rejection.
Melody stood outside the bar for a few minutes watching for Zane. She expected to see him walking down the street but he was nowhere in sight. Crossing her arms, she leaned against the building and wondered if she’d been stood up.
Then a deep masculine voice said, “Hi Melody,” from behind her.
She jumped and spun around.
Zane was standing in the doorway of the bar, a bottle of beer in his hand. His hair was hanging across his forehead sexily and when he smiled at her, it showed not only on his lips but also in his eyes. He was gorgeous. Even though she hated to admit it, she melted a little inside at the mere sight of him.
“Hi!” she exclaimed, perhaps a bit too enthusiastically, as she tried to calm herself down. Gesturing to his beer, she commented, “I didn’t know it was going to be a drunken walk down by the river.”
“Yeah, neither did I,” he mumbled, tossing the beer bottle into a nearby garbage can. “Sorry,” he said as he walked over. “If it makes any difference I’m not drunk – just slightly buzzed. Are you ready to go?”
“Let’s do it.”
The river wasn’t far, so Melody left her car parked outside the bar and they walked.
She liked the way it felt when they would accidentally get too close and Zane’s arm would brush against hers. In fact, she started deliberately moving over so that it would keep happening. It seemed Zane wasn’t interested in her but after all his mixed messages, who knew?
All Melody knew was it felt good to be close to him. It must have been a pheromone thing.
But maybe she wasn’t as subtle as she’d thought because pretty soon, he turned to her, chuckling. “I thought I was the only one who had been drinking today,” he told her with a teasing, playful wink.
“What do you mean?”
“You do know you seem to be incapable of walking in a straight line today, don’t you?”
“You’re crazy,” she shot back, feeling her face redden. Thankfully, they were almost at their destination, so she took the opportunity to change the subject. “River Park is always so beautiful this time of year!”
The petting zoo was set up down by the river every year, a longstanding tradition. Most of the animals came from nearby farms where they were kept during the winter months. But in the summertime, the goats, sheep and llama seemed perfectly content to hang out in the pens that had been constructed for them at the edge of the park.
“What kind of ice cream do you want?” Zane asked as the ice cream truck that was a permanent fixture in the park during the summer months came int
o sight.
“Um, caramel pecan, if they have it. Oh wait no, raspberry cheesecake please!” Unable to make up her mind, Melody instructed, “Surprise me.” Then, as Zane walked over to the truck to wait dutifully in line amidst hyperactive children and their weary parents, she made her way down to the riverbank to enjoy the pretty view across the water.
When Zane returned to her side a minute later, she was busy watching a young family as they threw breadcrumbs to the geese that frequented the park. In fact, Melody didn’t even see him until he was right beside her.
“Here you go,” he said.
Melody turned around to accept her ice cream cone and then blurted out, “You can’t be serious!”
Zane held two ice cream cones in his hand and was offering them both to her. One was raspberry cheesecake and the other was caramel pecan. But they weren’t ordinary ice cream cones. No, these ones were each piled six scoops high. They looked absurd, like leaning towers that were going to fall over at any moment.
“You told me to surprise you and you look surprised,” Zane grinned. “Mission accomplished.”
“But –”
Zane cut her off by pushing one of the ice cream cones into her face, forcing her to taste the creamy raspberry cheesecake. It was delicious. Melody quit protesting and took the cone from him, savoring the treat.
He watched her with interest, his blue eyes crinkling at the corners as he smiled.
“Why aren’t you eating?” she asked, wiping the melted gooiness off her chin with her hand.
“They’re both for you.”
“What? No! You’re going to have to help me eat them,” Melody informed him.
“You look like you’re doing just fine yourself.”
“Watch it,” she joked, elbowing him in the side. Then, taking a page out of his playbook, Melody crammed the caramel pecan ice cream cone right into Zane’s face. Except her aim wasn’t quite as good as his, so she ended up making quite a mess as well as dropping the cone.
“Oops. Peace offering?” she asked in a small voice, holding out the remaining cone to him.
“You are in so much trouble,” he growled as ice cream dripped down his chin onto his t-shirt. He took a menacing step forward, reaching out for her.
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