Page 10 of I Saw You First

“Friend of yours?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “So… are you a big HollowPoint fan?”

“The biggest,” I reply. I have to shout for him to hear me over the music. “I’m Abbey.”

“Abby like Abigail?”

I shake my head. “Abbey like Abbey Road. The Beatles album.”

I swear his eyes light up at this and he leans in close. “The best Beatles album.”

“Are you a Beatles fan?”

He grins. “The biggest.”

Gorgeous and a Beatles fan. Yes. This day is finally looking up. And it’s official—I’m going to marry this man. I don’t think a single one of my previous love interests could name any Beatles album. Even worse, my college boyfriend Tucker’s favorite musician was Garth Brooks. I’m not a country fan, so that fact alone should have warned me that Tucker and I weren’t going to make it.

“Do you come here a lot?” I ask and nearly roll my eyes at myself. It’s been a long time since I’ve tried to flirt with someone. Clearly, my skills have not improved.

He huffs out a laugh. “Yeah. You?” At my nod, he continues. “I’m surprised I’ve never seen you before.”

“Oh, I’ve been here. Were you at the Five Buck Cluck show when Dan⁠—”

“—Fell off the stage and some random guy helped him back up and then finished the guitar solo for him?” He grins.

I grin, too. I can’t seem to stop smiling around this guy. “Unforgettable night.”

“I don’t know,” he says. “This one’s turning out to be pretty unforgettable, too.”

It sure is. I lean in, close, and his scent washes over me: crisp, woodsy, clean. He puts a hand around my waist and… whoa. Did he feel it, too? That… that swizzle? Swizzle. It’s the only word I can think of to describe it, like the fizz of a bath bomb or a sparkler against the dark of the night sky that burns all the way down and singes your fingers.

“Oh,” I breathe out. I have to know his name. I have to know him.

But before I can ask, a tall white guy with a sandy brown buzz cut comes up behind us and cut taps him on the shoulder. “Hey, Jaws, we gotta go. Baby’s sick.”

My future husband—Jaws, apparently—frowns and releases me from his hold and the swizzle dissipates.

“She okay?” he asks.

“She’s running a high temp and Adriana wants to take her to the ER. Let’s go.”

Jaws moves to follow his friend but turns back as though he’s only now remembering I’m still here. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m⁠—”

But I’ll never know what he was about to say because his friend tugs him through the crowd. That delicious feeling inside of me deflates. We were so close to something. I could feel it.

But now he’s gone.

And that’s the icing on the cake of this shitty day.

Much later, after I’ve taken a shower to wash off the last of the spilled cocktail, I lie in bed, dressed only in a pair of underwear and an oversized HollowPoint T-shirt, our lovable yet evil cat Moses stretched out across my feet. The monster in the sand pit of my stomach was calm at the club but now, in the quiet of my bedroom, has stirred, awakening with it the memory of Ryan’s fingers pressing into my skin, the leering look on his face, an echo of his words: You either come back over here and show me what else you can do with that smart mouth of yours, or you’re done. I imagine the scene as a photograph that I fold in half, and in half again, again and again until it’s a tiny square like the check in the ashtray, and I tuck that square into the farthest corner of my mind and slam the door shut.

Tomorrow, I’ll move forward.

Tonight, I commit to memory what I know about Jaws. Beatles fan. Twins cap. The Dark Side of the Moon prism. The smirk and the half-smile and that swizzle.

Jaws was the best part of my day.

I close my eyes and beg the monster to stop clawing at my insides. Eventually, it does. Eventually, the image of Jaws—half-bathed in blue light—fades, and I fall asleep.