Page 28 of One Night With You

I glared at my cousin. Lex, AKA Lexington Montgomery was the son of my Uncle Beckett and Aunt Eliza. He’d been adopted into the family a couple of months after I was born, and we were the same age. We’d grown up together in the ways that cousins tended to, though we didn’t attend the same schools since I was in Boulder for most of my childhood, andthen down in Denver when we’d moved down for my dad’s art. Lexington had lived up in Fort Collins his entire life, but the thing with Colorado was that even though we lived in different cities, it all felt the same. Driving an hour up north to Fort Collins wasn’t anything, we would do it weekly if not more. The I-25 corridor was great for that, and getting to Boulder was a snap. That’s why even though all of my cousins had been spread out over the suburbs of Denver and each of the major cities surrounding it, we all were thick as thieves and close as ever.

It wasn’t like when we visited Lex’s cousins down in Texas where everything was spread out to the point that driving to another city would take four to eleven hours. No, we were lucky that way. Hence why people would joke that the Montgomerys were taking over the world. We happened to have a higher percentage of people in this state than one would think.

“When did you ever see a Montgomery in a polo shirt?” I asked, annoyed.

“Hey, huge football players and celebrities go golfing all the time. They wear polos. We all can’t be Adam Sandler in a T-shirt and large athletic shorts.”

I snorted, shaking my head at Lex. “Maybe I should go dressed as Adam Sandler.”

“Or you could just put on a polo and some khakis and pretend like you know what you’re doing.”

I flipped the other man off and walked in a towel toward my closet. I had khakis and a polo for instances like this, or for events where I needed to blend in with the clientele. But it wasn’t usually my favorite thing. Give me jeans, gray sweatpants, and a Henley? I was fine.

“How much ink do you think is going to be on our course today?” I asked with a laugh.

“Enough that we’ll scare the locals. I’m going to really enjoy it. Especially when Crew comes around with all his piercings.”

The Montgomerys and friends were headed to the golf course today, and I wasn’t quite sure why I had agreed to it. But they wanted to go, so we were going to figure out how to be adults. Apparently. We needed activities to do as friends and family that didn’t involve throwing axes or playing video games apparently. At least, that’s what my mother had said jokingly over dinner one day, and now here we were.

Lex continued to talk behind me, as I found a polo shirt that I didn’t mind wearing, this one charcoal gray. I would just have to wear some form of cream or white pants, I thought I had some at least. I still didn’t know why we were going golfing, but I was just going to roll with it.

Plus doing something out of the ordinary seemed to be what I was good at recently.

Considering that I had slept with Claire.

And it hadn’t been just one time. It had been numerous times over the night. We hadn’t slept at all, except for a few dozing naps with each other, and there was no going back. I could still feel the softness of her skin underneath my fingertips—could still feel her clamping around me as she came.

Then there was the way that the side of her mouth quirked up into a smile, while the other side would scrunch just slightly so it looked like she always had something on her mind, a little mischievous.

There was seriously something wrong with me. Because I felt as if I had studied every inch of her, multiple times, and I was still getting to know her, finding new aspects that drew me in.

And here I was, waxing poetic nonsense and shit as if I knew what I was doing. This was not like me. But hell, nothing I had done with Claire was like me.

The morning after, we had woken up from our catnap, packed our things up, checked out the house, and then said our goodbyes. It had been awkward, and yet, not as awkward as it could have been. As it should have been.

We had both said we would see each other soon, and I had tucked her hair behind her ear, and she smiled up at me. And then we’d parted ways.

We hadn’t discussed anything. About what wewould do when we saw each other next or what we would say. For all I knew she was telling Phoebe and all the Montgomery girls exactly what happened. And here I was, not telling anybody, because I had no idea what I was thinking, or what was going to happen next.

Total mature shit.

I got dressed, ignoring the way that Lexington rolled his eyes when I just dropped towel in front of him. If the man didn’t want to see my ass, he could have just left the room. I pulled on boxer briefs, and then white khaki-feeling golf pants, and then shoved on the polo.

“Look at you, all fancy now. You’re going to get grass stains on those pants.”

“Are you saying I’m going to trip and fall?” I grabbed my bag and gestured toward Lex. “Let’s go. I still can’t believe that only a couple of days after a fucking snowstorm we’re going golfing, but here’s Colorado weather for you.”

“We don’t look a gifted sunny day in the eyes. That’s the whole thankfulness of living in this weird state.”

“I don’t think any of what you said was part of the actual metaphor or simile. I’m just saying.”

“Actually I think it’s just an idiom. Like a cultural thing. We probably should have taken more English classes.”

I laughed. “Well I don’t need no English. I just sit there and grunt and look fierce.”

“And I just hit a hammer against a nail and really hope the house doesn’t fall down.”

Lexington, along with a few other cousins, had joined up with Montgomery Inc, but Inc, not Ink. They had eventually broken off into a subsidiary, called Montgomery Inc Too. They still were under the major family umbrella like all of us were, but instead of working on all the same projects with their parents and uncles and aunts, much like the tattoo shops, they had branched off into their own.

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