Page 38 of Hammered (Dad Bod Contracting 1)
“Shut up and have another drink,” I say, pouring more margarita into her glass, hoping it’ll distract her from the truth in her guess.
“How about I have another drink and don’t shut up?” she says, taking a long gulp. “I’m onto it, aren’t I? Is he hot? A brick would be hotter than that ugly blobfish of an ex of yours, so it can’t be hard to find someone hotter than him. He’s gotta be pretty hot if you’re not willing to talk to your best friend of twenty-five years about him.”
Doesn’t she just wish she knew Jesse? She’d stop talking to me for a month just so she wouldn’t be tempted to steal him from me, if I let her meet him.
Which is why I’m not telling her about him, and why she won’t ever meet him. At least not until things are more solidified.
Wait. Solidified? Things aren’t going to be solidified. There’s nothing there but attraction. I’m sex-starved and horny, and he’s a willing target for my desperation. That’s all it is.
Audra is watching me like a hawk. “You’re thinking about him right now, aren’t you? I can tell. You’re trying to talk yourself out of whatever it is, because you’re scared and your divorce was just finalized, and you think there has to be some kind of waiting period before you move on, emotionally and physically. Which is bullshit. The best way to move on is to live your best life. And that involves letting yourself have something you want, just because you want it. Not everything has to mean something.”
I sigh. “Audra, you’re lecturing me based on your own guesswork. I’m neither confirming nor denying anything.”
She shrugs. “I know I’m right, and I’m lecturing you based on that.”
I pinch the bridge of my nose. “Audra Roslyn Donovan. I said I’m not ready to talk about it yet. Can you just…please…give it a rest?”
She sticks her lower lip out in a faux-pout. “I just want you to be happy, and you haven’t been happy for a very, very, very long time.”
“I know.”
“I only act like this because I love you,” she says.
“I know. And also because you can’t handle not knowing every last detail about everyone and everything.”
“This is true.” She eyes me. “But when you do tell me, I’m going to freak out, right?”
“Audra.”
“Fine.” She wakes her phone to glance at the time: 9:55pm. “Shit. I should go. I have a meeting halfway across the damn state at seven tomorrow morning, so I should get to bed.”
“Yeah, I’ve got an early shift tomorrow too.”
It’s my turn to pay the bill, and then we hug it out at our cars.
“Don’t wait too long to tell me,” Audra says, letting me go. “You know how I get.”
“I know, I know.”
“Whatever it is, go for it.”
“What if I’m considering hard drugs and unprotected sex with homeless men?”’
Audra cackles. “You’re way too straitlaced to even have protected sex with a man you do know, and the one time you tried pot in college you freaked the fuck out and swore off everything harder than wine and margaritas.”
“Maybe getting divorced has brought out my wild side.”
She doesn’t cackle, this time. “I’d say it’s about time, in that case. You’re smart, and you’re careful, both of which are good things, but sometimes, babe, we need to be dumb and reckless.” She boops my nose with her forefinger. “Even at forty.”
“Especially at forty.”
“Truth. I’m going now,” she says, getting into her car, a beautiful white, convertible, two-year-old Mercedes E-Class, which I’m not at all jealous of. “Be bad, Imogen. You’ve more than earned it.”
I laugh. “I’ll try, but I’ll never be as slutty as you.”
“You could be, with practice and training! Squad goals!” she shouts out her open window.
I laugh even harder. “Two people can’t be a squad, Audra!”
“Semantics! Be bad!”
I drive home on mental autopilot, considering Audra’s advice. Generally speaking, I try to do the opposite of whatever she advises me. She’s a cut-and-dried commitment-phobe—her dating life is somewhere between serial monogamy and hookup artistry. She rarely sees the same guy more than a few months, never lets them get to know the deep-down, really-real her. My relationship and subsequent divorce from Nicholas only served to confirm her bias against commitment, and I very seriously worry she’ll never let herself feel anything deeper than casual affection. The why of it all, for Audra, is a very long story and one best left untold, but suffice to say she’s got her reasons.
But it doesn’t stop me from worrying. Just like she worries about me, for the diametric opposite reason.
What if, in this one instance, she’s right? What if I should just be bad this one time?
Take what I want and consequences be damned?
I don’t know if I’m capable of that, which is the root problem.
