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“You were sleeping when my phone started blowing up. I remember thinking how peaceful you looked, considering.” I raise an eyebrow and her cheeks redden. “Anyway, my younger twin brothers got into a shit-ton of legal trouble. My dad was admitted to the hospital. It was made clear, under no uncertain terms, I was needed at home.”
“Okay…” Jordan rests her chin on her palm, her eyebrows twitch.
“I meant everything I said in every moment we had.” I shift to face her, though I can still navigate. “The thing is, as much as we shared with each other that night, we didn't talk much about our families for some reason. In my case, it was and is an ongoing problem. Back then, it dominated my life. I’m not proud to admit this, but when I got the call, I felt like I had nothing to offer. I was a poor guy from a small town with a fucked-up family trying to make ends meet. It pissed me off. I was pissed at myself for not being worthy of someone like you. Pissed we wouldn’t ever have a chance…” I blow out a huge burst of air. “None of this matters though. I handled everything with the highest degree of immaturity. There's no excuse other than my insecurities got the best of me. But, as cliché as it might sound, I didn't want to leave you, Jordan. At the time, I didn't think there was a choice.”
As she listens, her semi-scowl morphs into what seems like understanding. “I had no idea. You left, and I thought… I thought it was something about me. When I thought about everything we'd done, I was… Embarrassed. Ashamed. I let my guard down and got burned.”
“God. I’m sorry. I fucked up. I shouldn't have ever left you. I've replayed it over and over and how I treated you is the biggest regret in my life.” I pat my heart, hoping she can see I’m sincere. “You have nothing to be ashamed of. Our night has stayed in my heart for all these years. What happened between us was once in a lifetime. Something I couldn’t ever forget or move on from.”
Jordan absorbs my words, contemplating. The boat glides smoothly over the water. For a moment, there’s a peaceful silence between us filled with unspoken thoughts.
“You were icy cold that morning. I felt like discarded trash.” She looks out over the water. “Your rejection stuck with me for years.”
Her words hit me hard. “It didn’t occur to me someone as special as you would even give me a second thought. Then again, with everything going on, I was too overwhelmed to see things through your eyes. Until recently, that is…”
“The things you said, Peter. I believed…” She blinks away tears and shakes her head to compose herself.
“I did too.” I can’t help myself; I stroke her cheek with my thumb. “Everything was real for me. I didn’t want to drag you into my mess. I thought I was protecting you.”
Her eyes glint with a mixture of frustration and sadness. “Protecting me? You left me alone and confused with a gallon of your come dripping out of me. I didn't know your last name or how to get in touch. We stupidly didn't use protection. What if I'd been pregnant? Or, you could have been riddled with disease. I trusted my gut, thinking we had something, and then… I was nothing to you but a Vegas whore. I was surprised you didn't toss a Benjamin on the nightstand.”
Her words eviscerate me. I have to suck in a breath because it feels like a million knives are stabbing me in the gut. I try to formulate any sort of response—apology, anything to take her hurt away. In this moment, I realize the depth of my fuck-up is infinitely deeper than I originally thought.
“There’s nothing I can say or do to ever take back what happened, Jordan. I’m ashamed of myself. You’re the last person I’d ever want to hurt.” I finally find my voice. “I bet you didn't know I tried to get in touch with you a few weeks later.”
“What?” She scrunches her nose, confused.
Recalling her kissing the man in front of her shop, I ball my hand into a fist. “I knew you opened up the shop.”
“That was two months later.” Jordan’s chin juts out defiantly.
The boat cuts smoothly through the water, the rhythmic sound of the waves against the hull filling the tense silence between us.
“You really found me again?” Jordan finally speaks. She holds the mug of hot chocolate with both hands and peers at me over the rim.
I sigh. “I did. It wasn't difficult. Your brother’s in LTZ. Your dad is frigid’ Jason Deveraux…” I glance over at her. “It wasn’t hard to keep up with you. I knew you were a tattoo artist and there was an article about you opening The Salty Siren. I decided to show up and apologize. See if we could go out or something.”
“You what?” Jordan shifts in her seat to face me. I can practically see the gears working from the movement of her eyebrows. She’s adorable. Wears her heart on her sleeve. It’s one of the things that drew me to her in Vegas. She’s…she’s…utterly authentic.
“You were out front; someone was painting the window while you watched. A tall guy came up behind you with a huge bouquet of flowers. You turned, threw your arms around him and kissed him like you meant it.” I scrub at my eyes because this memory is one I hate with a passion. “You'd moved on.”
“Of course I moved on because I had to. What was I supposed to do? Wait for the guy who fucking treated me like garbage?”
“No, of course not, but seeing you with that…guy. So soon after…” I try to shake the image out of my head. “I hated it. I also had no right to interfere. Plus, I didn’t know what to think. I couldn't bear the thought of someone who wasn’t me stealing your heart after what we shared that night.”
Jordan sets her cup in the holder and covers her eyes with her hands. “Fuck.”
“Oh, there's more. I was furious.” I decide to get it all out there. “To cope, I convinced myself I was the one who got played. You must have been a cheater, hooking up with me when you had a boyfriend at home. Yeah, anything to take the blame off me. I held a bitter grudge for quite a few years. Until I realized it was one thousand percent my fault. So, I started following you on Instagram and…look, the truth is I couldn't forget you. Or our night. Impossible.”
Kingston looms ahead and our conversation is cut short as I navigate the boat to the dock. Jordan’s a good assistant, and we’re tied up and locked down quickly. As we stroll side by side up the marina to the pizza place, we’re more or less at ease, all things considered.
At the door, before we enter the restaurant, Jordan stops me. “Are you saying, after all this time, you never wanted Vegas to be a one-night thing?”
“Of course I didn’t,” I admit. “What I felt for you—with you. It was different. It was real. I meant what I said in your shop. It was the greatest night of my life.”
She gazes up at me serenely. “It felt real to me too. Then again, we didn’t know each other at all. There was no foundation for you to trust me with the news of your family situation. A decade later, here we are.”
“Eating pizza?” I open the door with a grin.
