No Weddings (7 page)

All of a sudden, one of the five members of our security team blurred by, sprinting through the crowd, using his big hands to safely move unsuspecting patrons out of his way. I scanned ahead and saw his target. A group of rowdy college-aged guys had their hands on Mandy. She struggled to break free, but the stronger men overpowered her, tossing her around like their personal plaything.

It took every ounce of willpower I had to remain behind the bar. Any occurrence like that always did. With a clenched jaw and my hands gripped around the steel rail below the counter, I watched as Trey expertly diffused the situation.

Our security teams had been trained by the best in the industry. Trey knew the key was to calmly address the belligerent customers and remind them of the consequences, or
deliver
them, depending on the circumstances. Sometimes they listened. Sometimes their egos got ahead of their common sense.

A punch was thrown. Trey grabbed Mandy, shoved her to safety behind his back, and took the punch but turned slightly, allowing the blow to glance off his cheekbone. Then he locked both hands around the guy’s wrist while it still shot through the air and twisted his arm around.

Trey leaned his face into the guy’s ear, no doubt listing out the next requirements of his continued ability to breathe. The cavalry arrived seconds later, each covering a rowdy friend, subduing them before a full fight broke out. Only customers within a ten-foot radius were aware of the skirmish, just the way we liked to keep it. Dance music still thumped, drinks still flowed, and everyone still had a great time. Well, everyone except for those four idiots who were now being escorted out the door.

We’d established rules for the hiring of our security too. Level heads and experience in handling people with a minimal amount of force were a must, but they each had another valuable talent: excellent memories. Two of them had near-photographic retention. All knew not to ever rely on that talent, however. Identifications were documented, names and descriptions of crowd disrupters added to the list. If you ever got kicked out? You never got back in.

Respect. Simple. Not everyone understood the concept. You either had it, or you didn’t. We had plenty of other customers to protect and refused to allow rude assholes to affect their good time.

Over the next hours, I lost myself in pouring drinks, making small talk to those occupying the ten stools at the bar, and observing the crowd at large like I always did. The night finally ended at 2:00 a.m., and I cut out right on time, more tired than usual.

Rubbing the back of my neck as I made my way to my bike, I remembered why I was so tired. I’d gotten up early. Even earlier the day before.

And the reason why I got up early on both days? Hannah.

Fuck. There goes my Zen.

S
unday night, play-by-play action flashed brightly on the big screen across my living room, but I didn’t care. I dropped my forearm over my eyes to block out the light and did my best to ignore the noise.

Carmen made her presence known for the umpteenth time, sidling her ass between my body and the edge of the couch, carving a space for herself in inches that hadn’t been left for her. Irritated, I growled and scooted back, giving her enough room to sit where she hadn’t been invited, propping my body at an angle on my hip, wedging my ass into the crack of the couch.

She claimed my bicep as a pillow, and I lost my arm (and the last quarter of the beer, in the now-useless hand attached to it).

At the soft sound of clinking glass getting louder, I shot my free arm up from my eyes, knowing my roommate Mason brought in refills. “Mase, beer me.”

A cold wet bottle filled my palm seconds later, and I leaned my head up, bringing the rim to my lips to take several swallows. I shifted the bottle’s neck between my fingers and dropped my arm over my eyes again, blocking out the rest of the world as best I could without moving off the couch.

“What’s got him so broody?” A sweet voice rose above a blaring insurance commercial, belonging to Stacy, a girl Ben had started seeing.

A snort came from Ben. “That’s not broody. He’s grumpy.”

Right he was. I didn’t brood.

“What are you now, the three dwarfs?” Laura, Mase’s girlfriend, added the snarky comment two seconds before her squeal pierced the room.

I cracked open an eye, tilting my head to see right as she tried to dodge Mason, who was already airborne in a lunge. He nailed her, and she rolled helplessly before he pinned her to the rug. “You know there’s nothing dwarf about me.” He growled into her neck. “Do you need a repeat demonstration during halftime?”

Ben shouted at the TV, “Aw, come on!”

Sighing, I tuned out the racket. I wasn’t in the mood. Hannah had defined me as a player. A more accurate definition would be a man who’d been fractured—and was attempting to cope. And yet, mind-numbing sex with Carmen, my version of therapy, hadn’t pulled me out of the shitty day I’d had. Although God and Carmen both knew I’d valiantly tried.

My only other distraction was the football game, but it sucked ass in the first quarter, which only heated my temper further.

The cascade started earlier when the noon deadline passed. No contract had been faxed. My email box sat empty. No missed calls or voicemail. When I rode my bike over to Hannah’s store, the lights were out, the shop locked up tight. My half dozen calls and two voicemails had gone unanswered.

Had Hannah and I crossed that fine line between business and personal? Barely. More like the line got blurred. But then we’d forced it into clear business focus. Or so I’d thought.

In hindsight, Hannah had always been the Ice Queen, even if the persona was only a mask. Why had I expected anything different? The fact that I had and got blindsided meant I’d been played. And lost.

And I didn’t like losing.

Kristen expected me to deliver her a team player. They all had. And even though I’d moved the deadline up a day, it had become crystal clear that instead of spending tomorrow doing intensive research for a school paper due that afternoon, I would be scrambling to find a last-minute replacement for Invitation Only’s baker.

Nothing I could do about it on a Sunday night, though. I blew out another lungful of stagnant air, downed the rest of my beer before dropping it against the cushions, and sank deeper into the couch, hoping to numb out with sleep.

Sometime later, Carmen moved off my arm and I fell forward. I stretched out onto my stomach, claiming the rest of the couch in a face-plant.

“I wouldn’t do that, Carmen,” Ben said, his voice low.

The warning in his tone made me crack open my eyes, but Carmen had propped up against the couch, and I couldn’t see anything beyond her wavy red hair.

“Shut it. He has full access to my pants. It’s a given.” Carmen’s feisty retort made no sense.

“Your funeral,” Ben replied, louder.

Alarm bells rang inside my head, starting to penetrate the grogginess of my brain.

“
What the fuck?
” Carmen’s screech sliced through the haze.

I shoved against the couch, pushing upright. “What the fuck’s goin’ on?”

My snarl silenced the room, game announcers giving play-by-plays the only sound amid the tension. Carmen made a show of standing and turning to face me. She held my opened wallet in one hand and a yellow, three-inch sticky note square in the other.

“Your room. Now.” Her brows furrowed over sparking blue eyes.

“No.” My irritation escalated. She knew what frame of mind I was in, and yet she still poked a waking bear.

“You don’t want to do this out here.” Her feistiness flared into rare form.

My lips curled into a sneer. “Yes, I do.”

“Fine. Want to tell me what this is?” She held up the slip of paper, like she’d found incriminating evidence.

“You know what it is.” She’d always known. All my girls did. That was the deal. If they wanted some of me, they agreed to be one of a handful of girls who I had a good time with. No commitments. No attachments. Only fun. To play, they had to understand and subscribe to the rules.

“There are nine names with numbers on this list.” She held the thing high in the air, then flipped it over with a flick of her wrist for the silent jury of four in the room to see.

I didn’t glance up at her stolen prize. I glared at her as I held her eyes. “Eight.”

She tossed the thing at me. It hit my chest and fell into my lap. “Nine. I counted. Twice.”

“There
were
nine.” My voice remained calm, lowered. “Now there are eight.”

With a heavy blink, recognition wiped the smug look off her face. In an instant, tears welled in her eyes. “You don’t mean that.”

“I do. Now, get out. You should’ve heeded Ben’s warning.”

Trust didn’t come easy to me. Not one of those nine knew the depths of betrayal I’d survived. The list existed for a reason. When I needed reliable therapy, they provided. Every one of them knew the score, and all had agreed to it. In fact, they didn’t make the cut in the first place unless they’d expressed a need for the same, unprompted by me.

But when things changed, smart people rolled with the punches. Women, the more sensitive of our species, let their emotions overrule their brains. There was enough blame to go around though; maybe I’d been asleep at the wheel and hadn’t noticed subtle changes, possessive warning signs.

Enraged, Carmen tore my shirt off her body and threw it across the living room, growling in frustration. Naked from the waist up, she made a bouncing spectacle of herself as she ran off. I heard several thuds, imagining objects being tossed around in my bedroom while she found her scattered pieces of clothing.

My gaze fell to the list in my lap. I picked it up, examining it. Four on one side, five on the other. Nine reliable (and quite spectacular) fuck buddies who’d agreed to a good time with no strings attached. Now there were eight.

A flash of movement blurred by, followed by the slam of our front door.

As pictures rattled on the walls of our entry hall, I stood. “Yeah, I’m done. Hope I didn’t ruin game night.” Walking out of the room, I sighed.

Mase called out from behind me, “Nah, man. It’s all good.”

On a detour through the kitchen, I grabbed two more bottles and headed back to my room. My mind felt smothered. I slowly closed my door, unable to feel anything more than tired, the anger somehow dissipating out of me.

Chugging down half of one bottle, I placed the other on my nightstand. I held the list between two fingers and swiped my cell phone off my desk before falling back onto the bed.

Apathy hadn’t created the list. Indifference hadn’t been at play then—self-preservation had. Superficial pleasure helped bury the pain. Had the rules of the game changed? Maybe. Perhaps enough time had passed for me to reassess what the fuck I’d been doing with my life.

For a couple of years, I’d been going through the motions, but I hadn’t been living. Hadn’t wanted to. Stay busy enough and reality doesn’t look as dark. Focus on all the shiny so you don’t see the grime underneath.

In a sudden cleansing moment, I needed to find out where the rest of the girls stood. I wasn’t ready to ditch the list altogether, but I didn’t want a repeat of tonight’s unnecessary drama. If the girls wanted physical release when the occasion warranted, we were still on the same page, or rather, they were still on the yellow sticky note. Otherwise, a culling of the list would begin.

Decided, I clicked the control button on my phone. Nothing happened. I furrowed my brow as I held the power button down to reboot. I vaguely remembered hitting random buttons hours earlier, trying to mute texts chirping in from Ben while Carmen and I were finding our mutual release.

When the phone flared back to life, I entered my passcode and stared at the apps. Yeah, I saw the irony right there in my hand; I could’ve hidden those girls behind a locked screen in my phone.

Maybe on paper, the list had served as a booby trap for the untrustworthy girl. Carmen certainly failed that test. Or maybe, on a subconscious level, I’d wanted to sabotage my happy, shallow escape.

Before I gave more ammunition to my self-deprecation, my focus got stuck on my phone app. A number three appeared in the red alert circle. When I touched the app, it showed two missed calls from a number I didn’t recognize and one voicemail, none of which had been there when I’d last checked hours ago.

Unthinking, I clicked on the voicemail.

“Hello, Cade. I read your agreements. The terms aren’t equitable to both parties. Expect a counter offer. It will be delivered by 5:00 p.m. tomorrow, per the deadline
still in writing
in your contract.”

After the second replay of Hannah’s message, I grinned. The Ice Queen was back, but the ball was still in play.

And the list?

Long forgotten.