Page 66 of The Second Dance
“Where’s your queen?” Dusty asks, grinning at me.
“We drove separately.”
“Dude.” Dusty says, looking crestfallen.
I shrug. “They can put crowns on our heads, but that don’t make us a couple.”
In truth, I offered to pick her up, but she insisted on driving separately. She didn’t want to get ‘stranded’ with me. She was rather blunt about that.
“Ho-ly shit.” Skyler drawls, staring wide-eyed at the entrance.
The three of us turn just as the little vixen herself walks in.
Wearing the famous gold dress.
Dusty’s eyebrows fly up and he grabs Skyler’s arm, chuckling. “Damn. Baby grew up.”
I turn to glare at them, but they’re both dying.
I think everyone is dying.
Or at the very least, aging a few years.
She looked good in that dress ten years ago, but now…damnis the right word.
I have personally experienced those curves, but now they are gilded in gold. She’s making my heart race, making the blood travel south.
And judging by the ‘fuck you’ look on her face, she knows exactly what she looks like this time around.
She scans the auditorium, gaze connecting with mine. I feel the heat of that look from across the floor. It goes right through me.
I tear my gaze away.
How could one dress make my chest hurt this much?
Andy is my drug of choice.
She gets me high, and I crash every time.
You would think I would learn. That I would stay the hell away from her, but she is my own personal addiction.
I need to get my head on straight. Moving away from Skyler and Dusty, I head to the bar. Cody nods at me when I walk up. If everyone else is staring at Andy with shit-eating grins, Cody looks grim.
He and dad talk almost every day. I’m sure he knows about dad’s machinations.
And if both of us are a little cynical about love right now, you can hardly blame us.
He took the divorce even harder than I did. In retrospect, I think I saw it coming. Mom played the part of the good little wife pretty well. She doted on us boys, jumped when dad said jump. Caved to his whims. To ours. But she wasn’t happy. Looking back, that was pretty clear. But I spent more time with her than Cody did. I think he was caught completely off guard by the whole thing—sort of like the fairy tale came crashing down around his head.
If he knew that mom had already moved on with a new man, I think that’d be the last straw for him.
He slaps my arm. “You need a shot.”
“You got that right.”
Cody orders us shots, which we toss back immediately, chasing that with beer. We step back a bit from the crowd, letting people's gazes bounce right off us. If they’re not staring at Andy, they’re sneaking glances at me. Gauging my reaction.
No doubt, wondering why we’re on opposite sides of the dance floor.