Page 36 of Rematch
“Jesus fucking Christ, Romeo.”
This time, there was no missing the dirty looks the old women shot their direction. Victor acknowledged them with a single nod of the head, which Preston knew was as close as they were going to get to an apology.
Victor leaned closer to the table, his voice only slightly quieter when he said, “You’ve been crying in your fucking beer over that girl since last year.”
Preston scoffed. “I haven’t been crying in my beer,” he lied. Because he had been doing that.
“Have you slept with anyone else since Chelsea?”
Victor already knew the answer, so Preston treated it as a rhetorical question. After all, the fact every single one of his teammates not only knew Chelsea’s name but that he hadn’t been able to get her out of his mind, date anyone, sleep with anyone else, or freaking move on from the greatest one-night stand in history, was a testament to how much he’d talked about her in the past year.
“Dude. You were obsessed enough that you went looking for her.”
He had. Or at least, he’d done as much as he could, though Preston wouldn’t say he’d launched a full-scale search. In truth, all he’d known to do was call Elio and Gianna to see if they remembered a Chelsea, who’d come to the Ugly Christmas Sweater party with an Allyson.
Neither of them did. Gianna had a list of people who’d bought tickets, but she didn’t have a clue whose tickets Chelsea and Allyson had used—since they’d gotten them from a friend of friend—so his one and only lead had been a dead end.
He’d kicked himself for not insisting she let him drive her home, because at least then he would have had an address to work with. Instead, he’d had nothing except her first name, Chelsea, and the undying belief that she was his soul mate. The soul mate he’d let slip through his fingers.
If he’d known the morning she left that he would still feel like this twelve months later, he would have continued to demand her last name and phone number, and he wouldn’t have taken no for an answer.
“Don’t you think you owe it to yourself to talk to her and find out if she’s as fucking crazy about you as you are her?”
Preston wanted to do that, but the same fear he experienced when he’d seen her on the street with that guy returned. “What if she doesn’t?”
“Then you move the fuck on. Find a puck bunny and fuck her.” Victor acted like that was the obvious solution, but for Preston, it wasn’t. Not at all.
“Don’t you ever wish for more, Vic?”
Victor, unlike him, seemed to be enjoying an extended bachelorhood, riding the single train all the way into his thirties.
He considered his question. “You mean like a relationship?”
Preston nodded.
Victor grimaced. “You know what your problem is, Romeo? You view relationships as some sort of golden goose when, in reality, they’re hard fucking work and not all they’re cracked up to be.”
It was a well-known fact that Victor had had his heart thoroughly broken a long time ago, though it happened before his time with the Stingrays, so no one knew much about the elusive mystery woman. It was also well-known that he’d been a jaded, down-on-love fucker ever since.
“Obviously, you haven’t been paying attention to Blake and Coulton lately. Those guys reek of happiness and hot sex.”
Victor rolled his eyes. “Honeymoon phase. Both of them.”
“Maybe so,” Preston said, “but I want what they have.” And he wanted it with Chelsea.
“No maybe about it,” Victor countered.
Two of their teammates, Blake Wright and Coulton Moore, had fallen head over ass in love. Blake with his next-door neighbor and best friend, Erika, while Coulton had found his lady love, bartender Ainsley, in a run-down tavern in Cherry Hill, of all places. While Victor had a point that the relationships were brand-new, Preston was certain both men had found exactly what they were looking for. And what he was pretty damn sure he would have found with Chelsea, if they’d had more than one damn night.
“There’s nothing stopping you from finding a girl except you, Jacobson. If it’s Chelsea, then great. If it’s not, then it’s time to get your head out of your fucking ass and start looking.”
Leave it to Victor to tell the hard truths.
Because his friend was right. The only one holding him back from finding what Blake and Coulton had was himself.
The problem was, he’d spent this entire year comparing every woman he met to Chelsea. Every single one of them had come up lacking…big-time.
“You’re right,” he admitted. “Fate’s giving me a chance to settle the Chelsea thing once and for all. I shouldn’t have walked away without talking to her. If she’s single, then I’m going to ask her out. If she’s not, then…I’m moving on.”
