Page 6 of Change of Course

Right away, I’m reunited with my squad girls, and it’s so good to see all of them. I catch up with everybody: tell them I’m divorced and back in town, admire Brittany’s pink bandage dress without rolling my eyes, tell Anna she looks great pregnant, tell the girls Court’s hot single-dad boyfriend is crazy about her, congratulate Jessica on her three adorable kids, and tell Nicki I’m not surprised that she’s doing so well with her home-decor boutique. Then I mingle, greeting the former athletes, from football through baseball and women’s basketball, all the sports I cheered for.

Jesse’s handsome husband is named Brett, and he’s short and dramatic and adorable, and while we chat, Jesse looks on like he knows he’s lucky to have found Brett, and now and then Brett looks at Jesse the same way.

It gives me a little pang of envy. I want that.

It’s what I thought I was getting when I married Mike. It’s what I always wanted.

I go get a Tom Collins from the bar, and eat few canapés. Brittany leads the squad girls in one of our old cheers, which should be fun but just seems silly. We’re too old for this.

I move on, and chat with the former geeks—who, let’s be honest, are in some ways more interesting than the formerly popular kids I used to hang out with. Lara’s teaching Russian literature (that’s a thing?) at a university in Chicago. Stan writes plays in New York City, and I mean plays that apparently get staged. He’s a success. Simon works for NASA. Frannie writes code for a household-name software company.

It’s while I’m talking to shy Anthony, who was a wrestler and now runs a nonprofit that rescues street kids, that I really start feeling like a fraud. Most Popular? Most Likely to Succeed? Bullshit. I’m just me…and I’m just a divorced real estate agent.

And then I see him across the room.

Jackson.

My mouth falls open. Because while I’d always found him hella sexy, part of that attraction was that he looked like he didn’t care about his appearance. Hair too long, a little tangled. Shirts rumpled. Canvas shoes he’d drawn on.

But now? OMG.

He was always tall, but a little gangly. Now he’s got solid muscles under that suit—and let me tell you, Jackson Moore in a suit is insanely fucking hot.

I hadn’t even thought he’d be here. I’d hoped he would, but more in the sense of “I hope I win the lottery” than “I hope it doesn’t rain.”

Seeing him now brings all the feels back to me. Jackson had been my first real lover, and sex with him had been magical. I’d felt like I had to break up with him, but it had hurt—so bad. Why couldn’t I have what I wanted? My brain knew I had to focus on school, I had to make something of myself, I had to make my parents proud…and I couldn’t make them proud if I was running around with this rebel who didn’t even apply to college even though he was incredibly smart.

That’s how I’d thought at the time.

And it was true that my dad had been proud of his “college girl” in a way he wouldn’t have been if I’d stayed home, obsessed with getting every minute alone with Jackson.

But now…now my heart sets up its old, anguished refrain of why can’t I have what I want? I want Jackson. I have to blink away the tears, and I miss the moment when he turns his head and sees me.

I don’t miss the way he starts walking toward me—with purpose and confidence, like he just knows that when he gets to me, I’ll fall right at his feet.

It takes him a good fifteen seconds to walk across the room, and he’s looking right at me the whole time, and my body goes on alert. Eyes wide, lips parted, rapid breathing, nipples pebbled under my dress, heat in my belly, wetness between my thighs, knees weak, the whole bit.

When he gets to me, he stops a foot away. He doesn’t touch me, just keeps staring into my eyes—and then he smiles.

It’s a good, happy, open smile, the kind he only showed to me when we were alone, and if I was vibrating with sexual tension before, it’s nothing to the heart-melting sensation I go through looking at that smile. “God, Cherry,” he says, still smiling, “you look damn good.”

My own face bursts into a smile, even while I’m trying to keep the tears back. “So do you, Jax.”

Chapter 4

JACKSON

My plane was delayed, so my plans to go drive around my old hometown looking at new public projects before my interview will have to wait. I only get to the RiverView Hotel—which I’ve never been inside before, because I didn’t have the bucks to just casually hang around its gilt-and-velvet lobby—after the event has already started.

After hauling my lone suitcase up to my room, I freshen up a little and check my look in the mirror. This is the best suit I own, black and sharply cut, and the dark gray dress shirt makes me look prosperous and a little dangerous. The vintage stainless-steel watch I picked up secondhand looks good with it.

I look nothing like the broke-ass rebel in holey jeans and ratty tee shirt I used to be. I can only hope my Cherry likes the look.

Downstairs, I head for the ballroom, and in the hall just outside it, I get slowed down by a clump of six or seven former Popular Kids, standing idly around with drinks in their hands, gossiping.

Okay, I get it that we’re here to catch up, and that means gossip. But fuck. Is there nothing more interesting to these people than themselves?

“Hey, you know, Cheri Angell’s back in town,” one tall former jock dude says to another one. “I hear she’s divorced.”

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