by Violet Duke
“That’s her best friend,” answered Sienna.
“Who’s also one of her exes,” added Lia.
“One of the exes that provided you with ohs?” asked Donovan, returning them back to their original conversation.
Xoey felt her cheeks burn up instantly.
“I’d say that’s a yes.”
Bennett shook his head in annoyance. “So only three of your exes made you have the big oh? You’ve dated some selfish bastards.”
“And they seem to be getting worse and worse lately,” she lamented. “Like I’m somehow navigating myself even further away from my Mr. Right.”
“Maybe that’s because you keep looking for something different from your exes,” commented Lia, with a meaningful glance at Sienna.
“Shouldn’t I be?” Xoey frowned. “It makes sense to look for something different from my past relationships doesn’t it?”
“Not necessarily.”
Another exchanged look passed between her friends before Sienna nodded, in what looked like a successful interception of a silent hand-off. “Maybe the reason why you keep finding Mr. Wrong is because you need to be looking at your exes instead of away from them.”
“You should analyze those three relationships,” volunteered Jackson. “Like a scouting sheet.”
Vaguely, Xoey remembered him saying he did something like that for a living earlier in the night.
“Wait, no. That’s not what we meant,” began Sienna.
“No, you guys are right, it’s a fantastic idea!” exclaimed Xoey, seeing the possibilities with tequila-fueled energy. “Connection, chemistry—that’s what’s real. Not some fairytale fantasy. A real and true oh couldn’t be faked.”
She lit up when pure, drunkenly brilliant inspiration hit. “I should stop looking for this mythical soulmate, and start looking for an oh-mate!”
Lia and Sienna looked positively speechless.
She didn’t blame them. The idea was as awesome as single-serving fondue pots.
“So,” she continued, grabbing a pen from the pocket of a passing waitress and a cocktail napkin to scribble on. “Logically, I just need to find a man who’s like all three of you.”
Sienna grimaced. “Honey, I don’t think anyone as drunk as you should be using ‘logically’ in a sentence.” Curiosity seemed to trump her reservations, however. “What’re you writing?”
“A shopping list,” declared Xoey triumphantly as she eyed each man and jotted down several descriptions that best fit them.
Donovan was easy—he was the very definition of a controlling, exacting dom. While at least ten times more intense, he was definitely similar to Jax, the brooding bartender from Scottsdale she’d played a lot kinky reindeer games with a few winters ago.
Milo, the paramedic from Tempe she’d dated for almost a year was practically Bennett’s doppelganger—playful and confident. A big flirt with a big heart, committed to his job and friends, but tied down by no woman. In that sense, they’d been a perfect fit. Hence the year they’d spent together. Toward the end, it might’ve been because they were so similar that they eventually just fizzled out. Before that point, however, they’d had all kinds of fun, explosive sex. While Jax had given her mind-altering, reality-shifting ohs—usually just a single shattering one per night—Milo had been the ambassador of multiple ohs, having her coming all over the place at all hours of the day.
And then there was Isaac.
Jackson was undoubtedly the most like Isaac, which meant he, in effect, had the biggest part of her list. As she jotted down his many amazing traits, she chose not to notice how lopsided her list had suddenly become.
Her ohs with Isaac had been…deep. That was the only way to describe it. Deep, and complex. With hidden layers she’d yet to fully unwrap.
Just like Isaac.
She scribbled a few more random thoughts that probably wouldn’t have leaked in had she not had that last shot of tequila. Still, the list looked good.
Re-capping the pen, she looked up at her friends and made her request, “Ladies, I’d like your help in finding me a Mr. Right based on this ‘man-quation’ that I’ve just developed.”
“Your what?” came the echoed reply from Lia and Sienna.
Xoey took several photos of her list and texted one to both women, along with the absent Dani and Quinn. “This is a list of all the qualities of the three exes that have given me ohs. It’s simple, when you add them up, they equal what has to be the perfect guy for me.” She nodded, loving the idea more and more. “Sienna, you’re a genius.”
“Yeah, I don’t really want credit for this.”
“Don’t be modest. We’re making dating history here.” With a big relieved sigh, she laid her head against Jackson’s chest and closed her eyes, mumbling, “The fate of my finding Mr. Right is in your hands, ladies. Good luck. Godspeed.”
Just like that, a wave of exhaustion washed over her. It felt like it’d been months since she’d last slept. And though Jackson was jostling her head quite a bit with all his chuckling—weird, she couldn’t remember anyone saying anything funny—he was still mighty comfortable.
A sleepy haze fell over her rapidly while her friends, new and old, continued to talk in soft floating bubbles around her that made less and less sense as she drifted off.
“Um…that sort of backfired on us a little bit,” murmured Lia quietly.
“You think?” Sienna was back to sounding like Grumpy dwarf. “Let’s flip a coin. Loser has to tell him.”
Idly, Xoey wondered who they were talking about.
But she was fast asleep dreaming about cute little dwarfs playing tic-tac-toe on bar coasters before she could ask them.
CHAPTER FIVE
“XOEY DID WHAT?” thundered Isaac.
He brought the phone away from his ear and whacked it against his forehead in frustration. Of all the crazy ideas Xoey had come up with in the past, this one was aiming for top honors. The woman was going to be the death of him.
Keeping his voice level, he started bombarding Sienna with questions.
The answers were way worse than he thought.
He had no idea who these three 6-foot tall former All-American football playing Disney dwarfs were, and he didn’t want to begin to imagine why Xoey had named one of them ‘dommy,’ but all in all, the whole description of last night’s drunken events was making him freefall down a bizarre rabbit hole.
“And you four girls helped her come up with this plan?”
“Nooo, not even a little bit,” came Sienna’s reply. “That was all her. Well, her and a lot of tequila. It was just me and Lia there last night, and we were completely ill-equipped for this level of girlfriending. I haven’t even had a chance to talk to Dani or Quinn about the whole man-quation thing.”
Man-quation. A collective list of what Xoey was deeming to be perfect man traits based on the fact that these were the only three exes that she’d had a ‘connection’ with—aka the only three that had managed to give her orgasms.
Jesus, how much had she had to drink last night?
“Was she drinking on an empty stomach?” He’d never known her to get this drunk before.
“No, actually. Jackson was feeding her pretzels. That’s Doc dwarf by the way, who I’m pretty sure she said was the dwarf most like you.”
This conversation was getting him nowhere. All it was doing was inspiring an ulcer.
“Thanks for the heads-up, Sienna. I’ll go make sure she’s okay. Odds are, she probably won’t remember any of this.”
“Um.”
He tried his best to keep his bark-like grunt civil. “What now?”
“While I didn’t get a chance to talk to Dani yet, Lia did. And she said that Dani already has the perfect Mr. Right date lined up for Xoey for the night after next.”
“Already?”
“Well, it’s Dani.”
Point taken. Lordy, he should be thankful she’d only set up one date.
“Xo did sound like she had her
heart and hopes set on this, Isaac. So Dani, Quinn, Lexi, and I can’t just ignore it.”
No, he wouldn’t expect them to.
While it killed him to say it, he did anyway, “If you girls are going to do this, just…find someone worthy of her. If you can’t find someone amazing, don’t settle. She deserves someone really great.”
“Isaac—” An empathetic exhale filtered over the phone line.
The powerless sigh made him clear the emotions clogging up his throat. Get it together, McKnight. “I’m fine. I’m heading over to her place now to check on her. Thanks again for calling, Sienna. I appreciate it.”
* * * * *
ISAAC CLIMBED THE STEPS up to Xoey’s little apartment above the brewery, wondering what it was about this apartment that his friends liked so much.
Dani had lived there for years. Luke hadn’t been a fan. It had rattled him to think of Dani living there without neighbors in screaming distance.
In contrast, none of them had been worried at all during the short stint that Lia had lived there—well, not for her safety anyway, not with all her martial arts training.
Manslaughter charges for her beating a burglar senseless was another case, of course.
But that had been Lia.
Xoey was a different matter.
It’s not that he thought she couldn’t take care of herself. She could. He had no doubt she’d be able to skewer an unsuspecting intruder by the balls with her stilettos without flinching.
Didn’t stop him from worrying about her constantly though.
When Xoey had first decided to move into the little loft studio a few months ago, after Lia and Hudson had found their own place, Isaac had tried to talk her out of it, sighting all the concerns Luke had had for Dani.
The woman had an independent streak a mile wide, however, and failed to see any logic to his arguments.
So, he did the only thing he could do. He gave her a crash course in self-defense, and then spent the rest of the time worrying his brains out.
On the nights they didn’t chat on the phone or text before she went to bed, he found himself barely curbing the urge to drive over to check on her.
It was random and unquestionably irrational, but it was a constant in the saga that was his odd-couple friendship with Xoey.
Stemming largely from the fact that he still loved the hell out of her.
In fact, the only times he really slept with the sort of ease that he felt down to his marrow were on the nights he hung out at her place for DVD or DVR nights. Usually, she’d fall asleep against his shoulder before the movie or show was over. But sometimes, he’d be the first to go down.
And every single time he did, he’d wake up with his head in her lap, and her fingers gently combing through his hair, unconsciously petting him until it was all he could do not to purr.
…Only to have her stop the second she’d realize he was awake.
And yet, insanity-inspiring as it all was, he couldn’t imagine giving up any of these rights and responsibilities to some man-quation derived chump.
This was killing him.
“Xoey?” he called out quietly as he knocked on the door, not wanting to crash cymbals against her hung-over brain.
A quiet groan answered him before the deadbolt clicked open.
He pushed the heavy door open and saw her retreating tank-top and boxers-clad figure heading back to the ‘bedroom’ area behind the studio’s room partition, seconds before a soft whoomp sounded atop her queen-sized bed.
“Never drinking again,” she moaned, her raw, scratchy voice muffled by the pillow.
Sighing, he went over to drag her out of bed. “C’mon, up and at ‘em.”
She whimpered and flashed a big puppy dog look up at him as she tried to crawl back under the covers, but he stayed the course and carried her over to the couch.
But it was touch and go for a while there.
Those eyes of hers always slayed him.
They were so damn expressive. Rich, dark honey pools of pure femininity that would light up with pleasure when she saw him.
Even hung-over and blurry, that light had been there for him this morning. And it’d taken everything in him not to yank her into a kiss on the spot, to claim her as his and his alone.
Dammit, he was on edge this morning.
The idea of Xoey dating always knocked him in the solar plexus, but her searching for Mr. Right? It all made him feel dangerously unhinged.
After two ibuprofen, a few gulps of the famous Ocotillos miracle hangover cure he’d had her bartenders concoct for her, and eventually, several bites of food to soak up the alcohol, she finally lost that green tinge to her skin, which had been creating a lovely Christmas effect with her bloodshot eyes.
“Thanks for coming over, Isaac,” she said groggily as she settled back against the couch.
He lightly bumped his forehead against hers and dropped a soft kiss on the tip of her nose. “No big deal, sweetie. You’d do it for me. Did do it, in fact, as we both remember.”
Once.
The last and final time he’d gone drinking to the point of oblivion to dull the pain of his past.
He and Xoey had only been dating a few months at the time, and he’d withdrawn completely from her and everyone like he always did at that time of year.
So he could drink himself to the fantasy place he’d used to visit where memories and pain didn’t exist.
On the anniversary of his brother Cody’s death.
It used to be an annual thing that normally ended with his old friend Tessa—who’d similarly gone through the loss of a sibling—babysitting him until he was sober enough to ride Cody’s Harley-Davidson V-Rod back home.
Last year, however, the bartender at the One Eyed Snake, the biker bar at the edge of Cactus Creek that had been Isaac’s go-to bar for the past few anniversaries, had called up Xoey instead.
He should’ve expected it; the woman was friends with ever bartender within a fifty-mile radius.
Xoey had swooped in that night, folded him into the backseat of her hatchback, somehow sweet-talked a badass biker dude to follow her on Cody’s bike back to Isaac’s apartment, and then nursed him through the hangover from hell the next morning.
She’d waited until his head was good and pounding to read him the riot act the next day.
Up until that point, he’d only ever encountered sympathy, and of course, concern for his drinking sprees.
But never red-hot anger.
She’d dragged him to Cody’s gravesite and told him to man-up and set a good example for his brother.
To show Cody that he loved and missed him enough to not drink to the point of forgetting what day it was.
To spend some time there telling him all the great things he was doing at the gym with kids that were around Cody’s age when he’d died.
To promise never to be so reckless with his own life again, so he’d be alive to keep coming back every year to spend that brotherly time together.
And when the anniversary of Cody’s death came around earlier this year, he’d done just that, with Xoey at his side, even though they were no longer dating.
Cody would have loved Xoey.
“Oh hey, before I forget,” she murmured, rolling off the couch to a graceful flop on the carpet before pulling out a box from under the coffee table. “I have Cody’s birthday gift.”
She remembered.
When Xoey had found out that Cody’s birthday was only a few short months after the anniversary of his death, she’d nearly tackled Isaac in his apartment the morning of and demanded to know what his plans were for the night.
After he managed to convince her that he wasn’t going to do anything self-destructive, she told him that she wanted to have a small birthday party for Cody that weekend. It had been an oddball, slightly morbid idea that Xoey had run by his friend Tessa first.
Tessa had loved it.
Not surprising, really, seeing as how the two seemed to be cut from the same clot
h in a lot of different ways. Moreover, when Xoey discovered that Tessa’s sister Willow was born in the same month as Cody, she’d decided to do a joint party.
Tessa brought her husband Brian, her stepdaughter Skylar, and their infant twins.
Isaac brought his parents, who Xoey had already gone and invited, of course.
And Xoey…well, Xoey brought a twelve-pack of seasonal Ocotillos beer and cake.
At all of their puzzled looks, she explained that since Cody had never gotten a chance to celebrate his twenty-first birthday, Xoey had scrounged up the biggest variety she could from the brewpub’s limited bottled inventory. So Cody could get to try a bunch of different brews.
Throughout the entire night, two 8x10 photos of Cody and Willow had sat beside each other, right next to the most elaborate birthday cake Isaac had ever seen.
It was funny that while Isaac and Tessa had been in a grief support group together years ago, and had stayed friends all this time, they’d never actually seen photos of their respective departed siblings until that party.
Seeing the two smiling photos together with the big cake and the case of beer had made something wide and deep crack in Isaac’s chest.
Tessa’s too, from what he could see.
Because that night, their siblings looked…happy.
Like they’d just made a new lifelong friend.
And for the first time in a long while, a new birthday memory.
There had been a number of tears shed over the beauty of it all by the end of the evening by Tessa and his parents. And an infinite number of smiles.
As for Isaac, he simply found himself falling even more in love with the woman who planned the entire special night for not just Cody and Willow, but for all of them.
So yes, of course she’d remembered.
“I’ve been putting aside a bottle of every special edition and seasonal beer we’ve brewed all year.” She beamed. “With our normal brews on tap, that’s twenty-four bottles in all.”
Knowing that Ocotillos officially manufactured less than half that amount every year made that deep, wide crack in his chest grow.
He brushed a kiss across her cheek. “Thank you.”
