Page 35 of One More Time
‘I realized something last night,’ he said into the fine hairs at her temple. He inhaled as though with an objective, taking a long, deep draft of her.
She stuttered, ‘What?’
‘Twenty-eight years between kisses is really fucking slow. Mission accomplished.’
Nicky leaned forward, so close that the heat of his breath skated across Lucy’s lips and lit up every forgotten nerve between her head and her heart.
‘No,’ Lucy blurted.
She didn’t know where the instinct came from, but as soon as she uttered a refusal, Lucy felt the tension in her chest begin to unwind.
‘No?’ he repeated.
‘You were right,’ Lucy added.
‘No, I wasn’t,’ he droned.
‘You were.’
‘No, I waswrong.’
Nicky suddenly had a look of desperation about him. His brow crinkled. He shook his head. His cheeks went pink. And something about it made Lucy absolutely effervescent with delight. It tingled in her limbs, lively and potent, like a shot of tequila.
‘Slow is good,’ Lucy said.Fast is rash. Dumb. Dangerous. Always has been.
‘No, it’s not,’ he mewed.
‘But it is,’ she said firmly.
Nicky Broome’s slack-jawed despair – his dopey look of confusion and disappointment – hit Lucy like the drop in a stadium anthem. She was lighter than air. She wanted to stand up and cheer. Scream into the star-studded desert sky and float up there after it.
The grin that spread across her face couldn’t be helped because the feeling of Nicky Broome wanting her – even just a tiny fraction as much as she’d wanted him over the years – was like pure, distilled female power. She let it cascade over her. Sat in the euphoric buzz of it.
Lucy carefully placed her glass on the table. She leaned into Nicky’s heat and bussed him on the cheek with world’s most chaste peck.
Allowing herself one last glorious glance at Nicky Broome, she drank in his shock and frustration like gulps from a red Solo cup dipped in the fountain of youth.
As Lucy stood up and stepped away from Nicky Broome, she couldn’t escape the feeling that she’d begun the night as Lucy McManis, ho-hum college professor, and had somehow transformed into Lucy Rollins – nearly forgotten Badass Bitch.
‘Goodnight, Nicky,’ the Badass Bitch cooed.
Then, with zero fanfare and a whole lot of attitude, Lucy Rollins walked away.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
LUCY
‘I thought you were just gonna hit that and move on?’ Kim griped.
‘You’re such a poet,’ Lucy deadpanned.
Lucy and Kim sat jawing under the hairdryer chairs in the Lusso’s salon like a couple of old grannies in a sitcom. Lucy’s head was cocooned in a hive of plastic wrap. Kim was foiled like she was trying to pick up ham radio with her hair follicles.
Meanwhile, Chloe and the bridesmaid crew were fussed over by a gaggle of aestheticians. Being gleefully trimmed, glossed, highlighted, and generally gilded like the gorgeous young lilies they were.
Kim nudged, ‘Well?’
‘I was. I am. Probably,’ Lucy dithered. There had been a moment there, after she’d said no, that had felt a lot likerelief. ‘No’ was easy. Comfortable. Safe. Like a cozy sweater. ‘But the look on his face, Kim. I’m telling you; itwas priceless.’ Lucy tried to recreate it in her mind. Tried to channel the sensation of seeing Nicky-fucking-Broome want her like a drowning man wants oxygen. ‘I know it’s twisted, and probably the sign of a serious mental issue. A God complex or clinical narcissism or something, maybe? But rejecting him felt like … likewinning. The Super Bowl. Or an Oscar. If I could bottle that shit, I’d be a billionaire. And women would rule the earth.’
