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ONE
I’ve never done anything like this before. Me, a married woman with kids, sitting alone in a hotel bar drinking cheap, bubbly champagne from a fluted glass.
The last time I had champagne was at my wedding twelve years ago. I was younger then, able to stay up past midnight without looking like something death ran over. I had a better body then, too. No stretch marks. Tight stomach. Twenty pounds lighter. My boobs were fantastic, too, defying the laws of gravity. Certainly no need for the uncomfortable underwire pushup from Victoria’s Secret to make them look good.
But I digress.
I’ve never deliberately sat in a bar waiting for someone to notice me. A nice someone. Someone with dark, kind eyes that hold an edge of danger. Someone that lights that fire in my belly from just a look, the barest touch.
After popping out two kids and spending the last seven and a half years running endless errands and performing maid duties in exchange for a weekly romance novel stipend and the occasional functional haircut when time allows, I’ve missed that feeling. You know the one—excitement, flare, burning desire. I’m at the point in my life where I need to reclaim a part of myself. That part that needs to be reminded she’s still a woman. A woman with needs. With desires. With dreams and passions and a zest for life.
That’s why I’m here tonight. While my children play gin rummy and eat far too many sweets with my in-laws, I’m on a mission to rediscover the vibrant, sexy, confident woman I used to be.
Gone are the pajama pants and loose fitting tops. Gone are the haphazard buns and pasty, freckled skin. It’s all been replaced. My mask of carefully applied makeup, artfully designed hair done up in a modern Fifties-Era style, costume jewelry, and shaper wear under a body-hugging little black dress are all in place and ready to kill.
My wedding ring—a plain gold band—catches the light as I lift the glass to my lips. Bradley is a good man, a great husband, and an even better father. But we’ve lost that spark, the one that first drew us together back when we were barely adults, fresh out of high school.
He was in a band then. Super sexy with his long, shaggy hair and a deep, gravelly voice that turned my brain to mush and my insides into an inferno. We were electric together. Then life and responsibilities happened and...well...here I am.
It took a lot of pep talks to get me here. A lot of planning, too. This kind of thing doesn’t just happen on a whim. Not when you have a family to care for. But it’s been a long time coming, and even though I’m feeling the single glass of champagne, and I know I’m going to pay for the lack of sleep for days to come, it’s worth it. Tonight is as much for me as it is for Bradley. This is going to be the catalyst our marriage needs to jump-start it back in the right direction, to be rejuvenated.
Tonight, I’m free to be whoever the hell I want to be.
