Page 1 of Forever His This Christmas

Chapter 1

“There is no way I’m going home this year,” Lisa said as she slipped onto the stool beside Jackie, continuing the conversation they started over text while she was heading to the bar. “There’s absolutely no way possible for me to go there and not do something stupid.”

“Don’t tell me this is about Colin,” Jackie said motioning for a refill from the bartender having gotten there before her.

“No, you know I love spending the holidays in nice, warm, sunny California over the freezing snowcapped mountains of Colorado, especially with the rest of my family and that town. Besides, if I go home with all of their urgings, Colin will think I’m here for him. That there’s no way that I can be happy without him after all this time staying away.”

“Okay, but what can he really do about it?” Jackie asked as she downed her drink. “Other than just telling you that he was right there’s nothing he can really do to you?”

“Nothing I know but if he keeps I up, I’ll probably lose my cool. Then I’ll do something stupid like telling him sarcastically he was right, but he won’t buy I don’t really mean it, was being flippant about it. Or else let my temper do the one thing that will really get me in trouble—hit him.”

“Now that I’d like to see,” Jackie laughed with a grin.

“Come home with me and you’re likely to,” Lisa grumbled with a huff as Jackie smiled at her brightly, perhaps a bit drunk already making Lisa lift a brow her way curiously.

“That’s it…you just have to take someone home with you.”

“Yeah, that’s not going to happen,” Lisa countered. Not in this lifetime or next was she taking anyone home with her to meet her crazy family. “It’s not like there’s a line of guys just begging to come home with me.”

“There would be if you’d stop running them all off. I swear three-fourths of this bar is interested in you but you’re oblivious to it.”

“I’m not looking for someone to sleep with; I don’t need a man in my life, Jackie.”

“Then why are you so worried about going home?” her friend returned staring her down.

“Because it’s not just the Colin crap out there that annoys me,” she admitted to her best friend in the city. “My mother thinks I’m never going to get married or be the proper little daughter she raised me to be, so if I took a man home, she’d be expecting a wedding announcement pronto and become her. I don’t want to be her. I moved almost two thousand miles away to make sure I didn’t become her. I refuse to let them think they were right.”

“Okay, so you think that by staying away you’ll be able to convince them that they’re not. Won’t that make them think you’re simply hiding from them?” Jackie asked and she shrugged, not caring if they thought that about her at all. Being a coward was one of the nicer things her brothers would likely imagine of her.

“Better than going home alone and not having anything or anyone to scream at because of it…maybe I should just pretend to be gay, that’d certainly shut them up,” she added over the rim of her glass as she motioned for the bartender to bring another.She’d had a long day, and she needed some added courage to get through the phone call back to her mother.

“Come on you’re not a runner, and I highly doubt your ex whom you had very public encounters with would buy that you’ve suddenly turned to women,” Jackie countered.

“I was seventeen. What seventeen-year-old doesn’t go at it with their boyfriends under the bleachers at a football game?” she said taking the drink from the bartender.

“Oh, I don’t know maybe the kind that was the head cheerleader who was supposed to be at the top of the pyramid.”

“I made it…I just was a bit sweaty,” she mused at the knowing look from her friend.

“Yeah, well, maybe you should be asking yourself why you’ve suddenly decided to run off every man in sight. They’re all over you yet you blow them off.”

“No, I don’t, I run them off,” she argued with a grin Jackie knew well.

“Well alright I’ll give you that one because seriously how long has it been since you blew a guy or had someone blow your mind?”

“Probably that football game,” she admitted before nearly swallowing her tongue at just how close to the truth that was. No one needed to know the last time she had sex was over a decade ago. Her friend would definitely have questions about that. Questions she wasn’t about to answer truthfully because it’d cause even more problems—a lot more she didn’t need, especially right now with her mother breathing down her neck wanting her to come home. “Most men are just looking for a cheap thrill and I’m not that seventeen-year-old anymore. I used to be the girl who had to have a boyfriend, now I’m simply me and I like it that way.”

“Well, what about mind blowing sex huh? Don’t you miss it?”

“Who says a few batteries don’t make it mind blowing?” she argued pulling a laugh from Jackie.

“Because there are some things only a man can do and if you’ve forgotten that then you’re really in trouble because I can’t help you. Look around us Lisa, there’s an entire bar praying you turn and look their way. Give someone a shot because who knows…maybe the man of your dreams is right around the corner,” Jackie suggested as her boyfriend reached them.

“Go…keep her occupied Dan. I don’t need another person lecturing me about finding a man. I do just fine on my own,” she said pushing them out towards the dance floor. She watched their happiness of being together until she couldn’t take it anymore and turned back towards the bar to finish her drink.

She motioned for another knowing she should cut herself off at two as she had for the most part the last seven years, but it was Friday night, and she didn’t have to work the next day. After everything she’d put up with at work this week not to mention her mother’s phone calls, she might as well have a bit of fun.

A couple guys slid over beside her, and she ignored them wishing she’d moved to another spot when each took a stool on either side of her. Great just what she needed, more meatheads who thought she should fall all over them.

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