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“Refill?” she asked me, gesturing at my glass, which was almost empty.
I shook my head. “I’m good. I’m almost tipsy anyway, just enough that I can still walk it off. Any more and I’ll doze off in a cab and wake up in some sheik’s harem.”
Janice shuddered. “There are romance novels where stuff like that happens and they live happily ever after.”
“Well, they’re fantasies,” I explained, feeling the need to defend the genre I loved.
“Speaking of fantasies,” Candace said, “what about that hunk from the other day at the office?”
“What hunk?” I said blankly, even though I knew exactly who she meant. I’d been trying not to think about Jason. As soon as he crossed my mind, my whole body heated as I remembered his fingers deftly stroking me to climax on a moonlit night on the patio of his parents’ house. My body missed him desperately. It felt like I was permanently horny and strung out, and I needed him to finish what he’d begun that night.
“Come on,” Candace coaxed. “A guy who looked like that and you’re saying you don’t remember him? Don’t make me bust out my kung fu.”
“Oh God!” I burst out laughing. Candace could be hilarious when she chose to be. “I think you mean Jason,” I said with a light shrug as I explained to Janice. “I told her, he’s just my roommate’s brother. He gave me a ride to her exhibition and that was all.”
That was far from the truth, though. I had fucked him, and now I was as obsessed with him as a junkie in need of a fix.
“That guy was sexy,” Candace said, drawing out the word. “So, I hope you made that ride last a long time.”
I rolled my eyes, and Candace gave me an unrepentant look before moving on to talk to another one of the guests. The performances were over, and now people were just drinking and socializing over muted music from a couple of speakers.
“So, this Jason guy”—Janice gave me a look— “he was really that hot?”
I took a deep breath and nodded. He was hot—hotter than I could describe.
“And…you slept with him.”
“Is it so obvious?”
She smiled. “I watch people, you know, so maybe I’m more perceptive than most. Your whole demeanor changed when Candy mentioned him.”
“It was just a one-time thing,” I said, feeling strangely hollow talking about him, hollow and fragile. “It wasn’t serious.”
“Or it wasn’t supposed to be.” She considered me for a long moment. “Those types always get awkward.”
I was quiet. Awkward didn’t even come close to it.
“Anyway, I’m not going to let you mope.” she straightened up and waved at someone in the crowd, and he came over. He was a cute guy, a little taller than me, with short black hair and liquid brown eyes. There was something familiar about his face, but I couldn’t quite place it.
“Hey Zane,” Janice said. “Have you met Daphne?”
Recognition lit in his eyes as he looked at me. “Actually yes,” he said, a slow smile spreading across his face. “I have.”
I racked my brain, trying to remember exactly where we’d met.
“Halloween party,” he reminded me, “two years ago, or three. You were the sexiest nurse I’d ever seen.”
“Oh.” I flushed, remembering that party and the guy I’d danced with, kissed, and then taken home. It felt like a lifetime ago, like I’d been another person. “I remember now.”
“I’m going to get another drink,” Janice said, conveniently leaving us alone together, or as alone as we could be in a room full of people.
“What a coincidence? Right?” Zane was smiling. “I thought I was never going to see you again. I sent messages, but you never replied.”
“I didn’t…” I stopped. I had nothing to say. In those days, I’d never given a thought to the people I left in my wake as I took what I wanted from them and gave nothing in return. I’d been living to be alone, and it’d never occurred to me that I bruised people along the way. “We had a great time together,” I said.
“Yeah.” He blew out a whistle. “And it wasn’t me, it was you.”
I laughed. “It definitely was.”
