Regrets Only (Sequel to The Marriage Pact)

by Pullen, M. J.

  “Right, of course. Sorry.”

  Yvette opened the door to return inside and then turned back, leaning close to Suzanne and whispering confidentially, “Just don’t tip him, okay? I’m sure that’s what you’re used to, but he would find that insulting.”

  Suzanne supposed she deserved that one. She nodded obediently, resisting the urge to respond, and followed Yvette back through the den and down the stairs to…Guy Heaven.

  Nearly as big as either of the other stories, the basement had a bar area, pool table, workout room, rehearsal space, and even a small recording studio. More couches and overstuffed chairs were scattered about, plus four or five flat-screen TVs. Sliding glass doors opened out to a shady concrete patio beneath part of the huge deck upstairs. On one half of the patio there was a large grill and two wooden picnic tables. On the other was a screened-in porch housing a ten-person hot tub, with a sliding window so that someone at the bar in the main room could hand drinks directly out to the soakers. No wonder Dylan came here as often as he could.

  Yvette led Suzanne around, poking her head into various rooms, but they did not find Dylan. The rest of the band were playing around in the rehearsal space, with a few girls Suzanne didn’t recognize looking on and giggling wildly as the guys changed the lyrics of popular songs to raunchy parodies. Three or four other guys were playing video games in the main living area, and Suzanne noticed that at least two of them had cups of spit-out dipped tobacco. Ugh. Disgusting.

  In the workout room, one of Dylan’s sisters was on the treadmill, yelling at someone on her Bluetooth headset. They found the other outside in the hot tub, with the guy Suzanne recognized as her date at the museum, and of course, Misty. All three were drinking the same kind of beer Dylan had brought out of the kitchen earlier, and there was a fourth bottle on the ledge near Misty.

  “Hi, Sherrie. Seen him?” Yvette asked. So Amber was the one in the workout room, Suzanne noted to herself.

  Sherrie shook her head just as the guy next to her dived elaborately between her floating breasts and nuzzled wildly. “Roger!” she squealed. “Stop, my bathing suit is coming off!” Although most people who faced this unfortunate situation would probably duck back into the water to hide themselves, Sherrie apparently thought the best remedy was to stand and hop away from Roger toward the side of the hot tub nearest the house, holding her useless bathing suit top in her hands as she did.

  Suzanne glanced and saw that the guys inside had paused the video game to watch this little production with wide grins. When Sherrie took refuge from Roger by wedging herself behind Misty, using the petite blonde’s enormous breasts as a shield from him, the guys inside forgot about their game entirely and began nudging one another and pointing.

  Maybe Yvette is right. Maybe I am too old for this.

  With an almost imperceptible eye roll, Yvette retreated from the porch and Suzanne followed. “Kids,” she muttered. “Well, at least I can show you your room, and we’ll come back for him.”

  That, however, turned out not to be necessary, because they were halfway down the stone path to the cottage when they ran smack into Dylan. Suzanne noted he was not in wet swim trunks, but still wearing the jeans and Ramones shirt she had seen him in earlier.

  “There you are,” he said to Suzanne. “I’ve been looking for you.”

  “We’ve been looking for you,” Yvette put in cheerily. “I gave Suzanne the tour, so she’s ready for whatever you need from her.”

  The three of them stood awkwardly on the path for a moment, until Dylan reached for Suzanne’s elbow. “Let’s go sit down.”

  Yvette moved to follow them toward the cottage, and Dylan stopped her. “Could you wait for us in the main house, please, Yvette? This is confidential.”

  She looked surprised, but said nothing and returned toward the sound of splashing and giggling in the hot tub. Dylan guided Suzanne down the path and she wondered whether he were going to take her into the cottage and show her the guest room himself. Against all reason, her heart pounded wildly at the thought of being alone with him in a remote cottage in the woods. Pull yourself together, Suze.

  But these ponderings were irrelevant, because Dylan stopped at a little clearing about two-thirds of the way to the cottage and sat on a large, flat piece of granite. He motioned for her to join him. “Okay, this is totally on the down low,” he said softly, “but there’s something I need to add to the wedding plans.”

  The wedding plans. Of course. You imbecile.

  “Kate asked me to sing,” he began. “But obviously I can’t do that.”

  “Why not?” Suzanne asked.

  “No way,” Dylan said, shaking his head. “Too emotional. I’ll cry like a little girl. It’ll sound awful. But I want to surprise her with something else.”

  “You two are really close, aren’t you?”

  He looked at her for a moment, surprised by the question. “Well, yeah. I mean, I love all my sisters, of course, but Kate…Kate is special to me. We’ve always been the closest of the siblings. She’s the best person I know. Definitely the best person in my hillbilly family.”

  Suzanne blushed. Even a joking reference to their first encounter still made her feel ashamed. She started to say something but he stopped her with a hand on the arm. “Relax, Scarlett. I’m just giving you shit. I think you can be done apologizing for that now.”

  He was grinning at her. “Anyway, the thing I need your help with is that I’ve arranged for Pat Green to be here and sing to Kate and Jeff as a surprise. Kate’s a huge fan, and he’s a friend of mine. Anyway, I can get him here and I have a place lined up for him to stay, but I need your help figuring out how to include him in the wedding without ruining the surprise.”

  She could see that he was trying to contain his excitement, like a little kid with a secret. It was endearing. Just then there was a feminine squeal from the house beyond, followed by a loud crash and the sound of breaking glass. “Idiots,” he muttered, getting up. “I’d better go see what that was. Thanks, Scarlett.”

  Suzanne decided settling in to the guesthouse was more appealing than watching whatever drama was happening up the hill unfold. She continued down the path and went in. The house was simple and quaint, particularly compared with the luxury resort above. Two bedrooms with spartan furniture flanked a tiny kitchen and a modest living area. Yvette’s room was the one closest to the house, easy to spot because of the crowded desk in the corner, overflowing with paper. Suzanne found her bag at the foot of the bed in the other room, which was cool and shaded by the surrounding pine trees. The quilt underneath was clean and soft, and she collapsed into it face-first, suddenly exhausted.

  She awoke in pitch black. It took a few moments to figure out where she was, with no moonlight coming through the window. Someone, presumably Yvette, had covered her with a blanket. Otherwise, she was exactly as she’d been in the afternoon, except ravenously hungry. She fumbled for her cell phone and saw that it was 1:30 a.m. How had she slept so long? Her recently-healed arm ached from being in the same position for several hours. She rubbed it absently and padded out to the tiny kitchen, trying to be as quiet as possible.

  She found nothing in the fridge except a few ancient condiments and Yvette’s weight loss shakes. Suzanne debated briefly whether she could simply go back to sleep hungry, and then exited the cottage as quietly as she could and made her way up to the main house. The lights were still on downstairs, and strains of rock music contrasted with the peaceful wilderness night. She could smell charcoal and cigar smoke.

  As she got close to the house, she could see the silhouette of a couple alone in the hot tub, locked in what had apparently gone beyond a simple embrace. As she passed the screened area, she heard soft moans from the water but didn’t dare look more closely to figure out who it was.

  The main room of the basement was complete disorder. Plastic cups were everywhere, along with greasy paper plates and wadded up napkins. Sherrie and Amber were singing inebriated karaoke while one of Dylan�
�s friends recorded them with his phone. That would be on YouTube by morning. A few of the girls who’d been admiring the band earlier were now cheering on the singing sisters, while a couple of others were passed out in various states of dishevel on the couches. Two of Dylan’s band mates were in the rehearsal room, playing guitar with surprising sobriety. She noticed one of them wore a gold wedding band, and wondered what it must be like to be married to one of these guys.

  No one seemed to notice her as she picked her way to the stairway and up to the den on the main floor. This was where the cigar smoke originated. Several large windows were open to the night air as Dylan and four other guys sat around a folding table in the middle of the den playing poker. Not wanting to disturb them, she crept around the back of the room to the kitchen. She had nearly made it when Dylan’s voice called out, “Miss Scarlett, in the kitchen, with a butcher knife.”

  She stopped and turned toward the poker table, putting on her best gracious smile. “Good evening, everyone.”

  “Good evening,” one of the guys echoed back at her, with exaggerated affectation. He made a ridiculous bow to the friend next to him with a flourish of his hand.

  The guy next to him joined in, laughing, “I trust this night finds you well, sir? Do you have any Grey Poupon?” For the hundredth time since she’d met Dylan Burke, Suzanne felt her cheeks get hot.

  “Don’t pay any attention to them, Miss Hamilton,” said a man Suzanne recognized as Dylan’s drummer. “They’re just being assholes because I’ve taken all their money tonight.”

  Suzanne smiled at him. Dylan, who had not looked up from his cards, said, “There’s a plate in the fridge for you. Hope you like chicken wings, because it’s either that or Pop Tarts.”

  She was so hungry, wings and Pop Tarts sounded heavenly. She realized she had skipped lunch on the drive up and slept through dinner. “Thanks,” she said.

  “Don’t thank me. Kate’s the one who made a plate for you. But if you like the wings, I grilled them myself.”

  “And if I don’t like them?”

  “Then Eddie made them.”

  “Hey,” Dylan’s drummer retorted, “don’t go blaming your culinary disasters on me. I’m a vegetarian.”

  Suzanne left the room to a chorus of the guys ribbing Eddie for being vegetarian, which was apparently the next best thing to wearing high heels and garters as far as they were concerned. She went to the kitchen and found a large plate with several chicken wings, potato salad, baked beans, and a roll, all set out neatly beneath plastic wrap. She saw the sticky note on top with “Suzanne” written in neat, feminine script. Suzanne sent a silent murmur of thanks up to the ceiling to Kate, who she hoped was sleeping comfortably.

  She popped the plate in the microwave for a few seconds and sat at the table to eat, losing herself in the simple joy of satisfying hunger. It was not long, however, before Dylan called to her. “Hey Scarlett, no need to be antisocial. I know this ain’t the country club you’re used to, but we don’t bite in here.”

  “Unless you want us to,” called the Grey Poupon guy. A loud thud was followed by, “Ow! Shit, Dylan, that hurt.”

  She picked up her plate, hesitated for a second, and then retrieved a beer from the fridge. When in Rome. She settled onto the chair she’d seen Kate in earlier in the day and finished her dinner, watching the five of them play. Eddie won the next hand, and spent several minutes taunting the others while Dylan went to the kitchen for more beer.

  The guy she’d heard the least from tossed his chips into the center of the table. “I’m out.”

  “Come on, Jeff,” someone said. “We won’t tell your wife if you stay another hand.”

  “Hey,” Jeff said. “She’s not my wife yet, and if I don’t get up there, she might change her mind about it. Then I’d be stuck married to you jerk-offs for the rest of my life.”

  He clapped Dylan on the shoulder. “’Night, brother.”

  Dylan gave him a nod. “We’ll look at the tour schedule at lunch tomorrow.”

  It struck Suzanne how enmeshed everyone’s work and personal lives had become in this world. Jeff was Dylan’s drinking buddy, promotions manager, and future brother-in-law all at once. The seriousness of running a business that sustained several families was entwined with the debauchery and abandon going on downstairs. It was little wonder so many musicians succumbed to this lifestyle.

  “What about you, Miss Scarlett? You play?” Suzanne looked up to see Grey Poupon gesturing to Jeff’s empty seat.

  “Oh, no, thank you. I’d rather just watch.”

  “What? They don’t play Texas Hold ’Em at the Junior League soirees?” Dylan’s crooked smile was baiting. He’d done his homework on her.

  “No, we ladies prefer the classic five-card stud. You know, while we’re drinking tea in the drawing room, talking about beauty magazines.” Her accent dripped with exaggerated condescension, and she batted her eyelashes for effect. The guys laughed in approval.

  “We can do that,” Eddie said, patting Jeff’s empty seat in invitation.

  Why not? Suzanne thought. What else am I going to do in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere?

  She won the first two hands easily, feigning beginners luck and shock at winning. By the third hand, however, the guys had figured out she knew what she was doing. For years as a little girl, she had hidden in the butler’s pantry of her parents’ large colonial home and watched her father play poker with lawyers from both sides of the aisle, judges, and even a senator or two. It had been a better education than all the charm classes her mother dragged her to put together.

  “Careful, boys,” Eddie said as they began the fourth round. “I think we have a shark on our hands.”

  “I’ll bet you have a professional poker player on that list of yours, eh, Scarlett?” Dylan said, sounding drunker than he had a few minutes before. He looked around seriously at the other men at the table. “See, what y’all don’t know about Suzanne is, she’s dated just about every kind of guy there is to date. She’s got a big list of ’em. Which one of them taught you poker, Scarlett?”

  Her chest tightened painfully, and she fought hard to bury the anger and hurt welling up inside. “Actually, I learned from my dad,” she said, working hard to modulate her voice. She kept her eyes on his. They were a soft green, if a little red around the edges at the moment. Some emotion was behind them, but what it was, she couldn’t tell.

  The other guys at the table were all looking down at their cards in intense concentration, not wanting to meet either Suzanne’s or Dylan’s gazes. After an uncomfortable minute of silence, Dylan looked down at his cards, and then dropped them face down on the table. “I fold,” he said.

  “Read ’em and weep,” Eddie responded, laying out a straight flush.

  Suzanne didn’t need to look at her cards. She knew she had a royal flush and could take the fourth hand and probably the game. “I’m out, too,” she said, tossing her cards in face down. She got up, stretched, and took her empty beer bottle toward the kitchen. “Thanks for letting me play, boys.”

  When she got back, Dylan had disappeared, presumably to the bedroom where Misty waited for him. The rest of them murmured and dispersed. Eddie must have had the privilege of one of the guest bedrooms, because he went upstairs. Suzanne followed the other two down to the basement. Quiet now, the three picked their way around sleeping bodies and party debris: the guys, to an air mattress that waited for them in what served as a community bedroom, and Suzanne out to the back patio to the cottage path.

  The hot tub lovers were gone now, and she wondered vaguely whether they had gone their separate ways or were curled up somewhere together. Given the scene inside, she was now officially grateful to Yvette for sticking her in the guesthouse.

  She was halfway down the path, using her cell phone for a flashlight, when something made her look over her shoulder. Most of the lights were out now, but there was a faint glow coming from the master bedroom. From this angle, she couldn’t t
ell much about the room except that it appeared to have a large poster bed, of which she could see a single ballast.

  Then she noticed him, an outline in the dark, leaning against the railing next to the open bedroom door. She waved nervously and Dylan returned it, not moving otherwise. She continued on, feeling his eyes on her until she had closed and locked the cottage door behind her. When she glanced out the window a moment later, the master bedroom light was off, and she could see no one in the inky black night.

  Chapter 16

  Suzanne was utterly surprised when she awoke again, this time having put on pajamas and climbed under the quilt, that only a few hours had passed since she returned to the cottage. Her phone had informed her it was 3:26 a.m. when she turned it off to go to sleep, and it was just after seven when she awoke. Oddly, she felt fine and was up and into her yoga pants almost immediately. Yvette must be a morning person, because she’d left a note in their tiny kitchen that she had gone into town and would return in the afternoon.

  With nothing to do or eat down at the cottage, Suzanne made her way back up the hill, hoping that Kate might also be up early and they could even finish their wedding work before noon. Suzanne was surprisingly eager to get home. Her life at home may not have been anything to be excited about, but the sense of disconnect from all reality up here at the Party Lodge was unsettling in its own way.

  In the morning light, the lowest level of the house made for a pathetic scene. Litter was everywhere, glass was shattered by the hot tub, and an empty plastic vodka bottle floated on the water. Although some people had clearly made it to bed during the night, accompanied or otherwise, others had simply slept where they’d fallen—bodies were strewn across the floor as well as the available furniture. She was surprised that no one had curled up on the pool table.

  One sad little couple had apparently passed out while attempting to make a last-ditch mistake together before the end of the night. The girl, who might have been twenty, lay on the couch with her blouse unbuttoned to reveal a lacy pink bra. The guy slept with his close-cropped head on her bare stomach, legs hanging off the end of the couch, and the little soldier who had failed to report for duty still dangling out of his open fly. Suzanne suppressed a giggle at this as she sneaked past them to the stairs.