One Night With His Ex

The music changed to a slow song—“Night Changes” by One Direction—one of her favorite songs. Mauricio watched as most of her friends left the dance floor, Hadley following behind them. Without thinking, he put his beer down and walked to the dance floor.

“Do you want to dance?” he asked. “I realize I’m not your first choice but I know you love this song. And I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for what?” she asked.

“How I behaved. We never really talked about it.”

“I don’t want to talk tonight,” she said.

“Then how about a dance?” he said.

She hesitated then put her hand in his. “One dance.”

“That’s all.”

He pulled her into his arms and she put her hands on his waist. He told himself this was just another part of moving on but his body didn’t agree.

Hadley hadn’t had the best week. Her mom was an exacting perfectionist when it came to any event she was planning but the added element of it being her sister’s wedding had pushed her to extremes. Hadley felt safe saying there wasn’t enough tequila in Texas—maybe even the entire South—to take the edge off her nerves. But dancing with her girlfriends was helping until she saw...him.

Mauricio.

Of course, she’d noticed him when she came in. It was impossible not to when he was with his brothers. They drew the eye of every woman in the bar. Seen together, they made you wonder what kind of deal with the devil Elena Velasquez had made to get four such good-looking boys. They were the kind of eye candy that made this part of Texas famous.

Mauricio smelled good too.

She shook her head. “How’ve you been?”

She wanted this to feel normal. Surely, the thing with Jackson under the willow tree had been a fluke. There was no way that she still wanted Mo. Not after everything he’d done. She wanted something nice and steady like Helena and Malcolm had. But she’d always felt this heat around Mo. He made her restless like heat lightning on a summer’s night. Just ready to go off without any provocation.

“Good. Busy,” he said. “You?”

His voice was a low rumble but easy for her to hear despite the music. She’d always liked the way he sounded. She put her head on his shoulder for a second and closed her eyes, pretended that this wasn’t the bad idea she knew it was, and then made herself stand up straight and step away from him.

“Good, Mo. Really, good,” she lied, but then “fake it till you make it” had been her mom’s mantra for her and her sister growing up so she figured that was okay. The song ended and she started to leave the dance floor. “Thanks for the dance.”

She walked away without looking back and forced herself to put on a smile as she climbed onto the high bar stool at the table where her friends were.

“Girl, what are you thinking?” Josie asked.

“That I did it. I danced with him, played it cool and nothing happened,” she said.

Zuri shook her head. “You’re full of it, but we’re good friends so we’ll let you get away with it. Another round of shots to celebrate you keeping your cool.”

Hadley drank another round with her friends and ordered nachos as they talked about the men in the bar. Manu Barrett, the former NFL defensive end who now coached football at the local high school, came over with a tray of shots for Josie. Her friend was the art teacher at the high school and Manu had been asking Josie out for the last month or so, but he was a player. Josie and Manu hit the dance floor, and Zuri and Hadley just watched their friend for a minute.

“She’s smitten,” Hadley said.

“Who’s smitten? Remind me again why we came to the Bull Pit tonight?” Helena asked as she slid onto a bar stool next to Zuri and reached over to take one of the shots that Manu had brought.

“Josie is smitten and we are here because you set Mom on me. It’s been a long-ass week,” Hadley said.

“And, girl, you’ve been working too hard,” Zuri said to Helena. “You need a night out. Where is your other half?”

“He’s in Houston to close a deal. He won’t be back until tomorrow, which is why I suggested book club,” Helena said.

“This is better than book club because we don’t all have to discuss something that we’ve only read the back cover of,” Hadley said with a laugh.

“True. But the book I recommended is getting really good buzz over at the Paperback Reader. Teddi expressly recommended it because she thought we’d all love it,” Helena said. “It’s about an undercover prince.”

As a CPA, Hadley’s sister did the accounting for a lot of the bespoke small businesses in Cole’s Hill. Teddi had been the bookworm in Helena’s class in high school, so no one had been surprised when she’d opened a bookstore after college.

“I’m going to read it next week,” Hadley said. She needed something to take her mind off Mauricio and a prince in disguise sounded right up her alley.

“So you and Mo?”

“There is no me and Mo, Hel,” Hadley said.

“It didn’t look that way when you were dancing,” Zuri said.

Hadley shook her head. “You know the worst part about breaking up?”

“No, tell us,” Zuri said wriggling her eyebrows at Hadley. “You’re the expert.”

Her friend had clearly had too much tequila, she thought as she shook her head. “I was just going to say that all the feelings don’t just disappear. I mean anger should burn away all the other stuff...”

“What brought this on?” Helena asked. “Is it because things didn’t work out with Jackson?”

“You let Jackson go?” Zuri asked. “I’m out of town for a few days and I missed everything. When did this happen? You two looked pretty cozy at the engagement party.”

“Ugh. We were but then we decided we’d be better off as friends,” Hadley said. Maybe she’d had too much tequila. She should never have brought this up.

“Friends... He friend-zoned you? Dude better check himself. It’s not like we don’t all remember he used to be a total nerd.”

“No, it was the other way around,” Hadley protested.

“He’s hot now,” Helena said, signaling the waiter and ordering another plate of nachos and margaritas for the four of them.

“He is,” Zuri said. “I wouldn’t kick him out of my bed.”

“No one would,” Helena added. “Except for Had.”

“I didn’t do that. Here comes Josie,” she said. Thank God. She was tired of discussing how she let Jackson slip away and she definitely didn’t want to talk about Mauricio, who was over by the pool table laughing with his brothers. She couldn’t help watching him as he lined up a shot. Of course, he had to wear those skintight Levi’s tonight, making matters worse.

“I think we know why it didn’t work with Jackson,” Zuri said.

“What?” she asked, turning back to her friends, her sister and Manu, who were all watching her stare at Mo and his brothers.

“Y’all are crazy. So, Manu, are you joining us?”

Everyone turned their attention to Manu and Josie, and Hadley forced herself to focus on the nachos and margarita, but a part of her was listening for Mauricio’s laugh. Which was the last thing she needed to be doing right now. She was moving on...except now that she’d danced with him, she wasn’t sure she had.

Helena smiled and laughed with her friends, and for the first time since she discovered the money missing from the wedding account felt like herself again. Her mom had told her that marriage was a million little compromises. But Helena had never really been someone who could just let things go. She was a control freak when it came to money, though she didn’t know why. Their family had always had more than enough when she and Hadley were growing up.

But she’d never been someone who could waste money just because she had it and that’s what this thing with Mal felt like.

“You are looking way too serious,” Hadley said, handing her a shot of tequila. The nachos were long gone. Josie was on the dance floor pressed against Manu, and Zuri had decided to see if she could tempt one of the astronaut trainees from NASA into having a bit of fun.

That left the Everton sisters, who were sitting at the table like two spinsters.

“Can’t help it,” she said, doing the shot and then turning the glass upside down on the tabletop.

“Don’t worry, I’m handling Mom,” Had said.

Helena smiled and nodded at her sister. She was the eldest and she had always taken her job as the big sister seriously. She wasn’t about to cry on Hadley’s shoulder because she didn’t know where Malcolm was tonight or where that money had gone. She was going to keep it together, keep her smile in place and fix whatever was going on with Mal privately.

“Thanks for that,” Helena said.

“Be right back. Want another shot?” Hadley asked.

“Water would be better,” she said.

Hadley nodded and danced her way to the bar as Mauricio came over to the table. “Hey, Helena, I wanted to let you know that I haven’t been able to get anything out of Malcolm. He’s shut me down every time I tried to bring up finances.”

She sighed. It figured. “Thanks for trying. Do you know where he is tonight?”

Mauricio tipped his head to the side and shook it. “No. I thought he was here with you.”

“No. He texted me earlier to say he was busy,” Helena said. “Do you think he’s having an affair?”

Mo put his arm around her shoulders. “I can’t believe he would do that. He loves you and whatever this is, it’s not that.”

It was somehow easier to talk to Mauricio than her sister because she knew that he wouldn’t talk to anyone in her family about what was going on.

“She’s taken,” Hadley said, coming up and putting a large glass of water in front of Helena.

“I’m trying to reassure your sister that I’m not going to screw up things for her wedding,” Mauricio said.

She didn’t know what had happened, but it was obvious to Helena that there was still a spark between these two, no matter how hard they tried to move on from each other. Thinking that she was casting a pall over the evening with her Malcolm worries, she nudged Mo toward her sister. “You are going to have to dance together at the reception. Better practice.”

Mauricio gave her a hard look, which surprised her. He seemed so easygoing when it came to her sister but it was clear that he wasn’t as cool as he pretended to be.

“Sure. Why not?” Hadley said.

Mauricio took Hadley’s hand and led her to the dance floor. She could handle herself despite what their mother thought. Helena sipped her water and turned her attention to her phone. She clicked on the friend finder app but didn’t see Malcolm’s icon. She was starting to worry that he was having second thoughts about getting married.

She sighed and kept refreshing the app to try to make him appear, but he was still unavailable. Waiting had never really been one of her strong suits so she finally texted him.

Where the hell are you?

She saw that the message was delivered and kept staring at the screen as if that was going to make him respond to her. But nothing.

What was going on with Malcolm? They’d always been on the same page with their relationship. She’d counted herself lucky that she’d fallen in love with a man who wanted the same things out of life that she did, but now she didn’t know if she’d been fooling herself.

That’s what Hadley had said about Mauricio when they’d broken up last year, that she’d fooled herself into believing he was a different man than he really was. As Helena shoved her phone into her handbag and looked up at her sister, dancing way too close to the man she’d said she was over, she realized that they all did that. Hadley was just like her, fooling herself into believing she was in control of her emotions when in reality they were all prisoners to them.

Her phone pinged and she scrambled to get it out of her purse. It was Malcolm. Finally! His phone had died and he was at home waiting for her.

Four

The Bull Pit crowd had thinned out, but Hadley and Mo still alternated between doing shots and dancing. As the night wore on, she couldn’t remember why she’d been so mad at him.

When the DJ announced last call and then played Eric Church’s sensual song “Like a Wrecking Ball,” it seemed natural to press herself against him, her hands on his lean hips, her head on his shoulder as he held her and they swayed along to the music. She looked up at him and he was watching her.

He lowered his head but she ducked away from him.

“Not feeling it?”

“Yes and no,” she said.

“Should we talk about this?”

“Yes,” she said. “I know we were on a break, I mean, I get that. But why text me how much you wish I was there with you and then hook up with Marnie?”

He shook his head and stepped back. She had thought she’d dealt with everything that happened but when he’d almost kissed her, she had wanted to cry. For most of her adult life she’d believed Mo would be her man for the rest of her life and then...well, he’d hurt her more deeply than she wanted to admit.

“I don’t know. I wanted you. Just you. But you weren’t here and I wasn’t sure you were ever coming back and I hated that feeling of wanting you and feeling...”

Vulnerable, she thought. But that didn’t excuse him or take away what he’d done.

“I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt you like that. I honestly wasn’t thinking about anything,” he said, leaning even closer. She felt his lips brush over hers and closed her eyes. She knew that she should walk away. Sure, she’d regret this in the morning but tonight there was nowhere else she’d rather be. She’d been alone for way too long and she was horny.

For him.

This could be that farewell hookup they’d never had because of the way things had ended. Maybe then she could move on with a nice guy like Jackson or someone else.

He cupped her butt and lifted her more fully against him so his groin nestled into the notch at the top of her thighs. She parted her legs slightly, rocking against him.

He lifted his head, and she noticed his lips were wet from kissing her and his eyes were heavy-lidded. She felt the ridge of his erection against her so she knew he was as turned on as she was.

“Uh...that wasn’t what I intended to do,” he said, stepping back. She did the same.

“Me neither, but honestly, Mo, I think we both need it,” she said. “Ever since Sunday when you put your hand on my shoulder, I’ve felt it.”

“Me too,” he said.

That was all she needed to hear. She took his hand and stopped by the deserted table where she’d left her handbag and then led him out of the Bull Pit. The night air was cool and fresh as they stepped outside. She tipped her head back and looked up at the big Texas sky dotted with a few stars and a half moon.

She heard him sigh and looked over at him.

He had his hands on his hips and his head was tipped back. The way his legs were parted, she knew he still had a hard-on, and when he glanced over at her, she saw... Well, she thought she saw him hesitate.

“Changing your mind now?” he asked.

“Are you?” she returned.

“Not a damned bit but I don’t want this to be something I forced on you,” he said.

She turned and closed the small distance between them, rubbing her hand over the ridge of his erection and putting her other one on the back of his neck as she went up on tiptoe and kissed him hard and deep.

“I’m exactly where I want to be tonight,” she said.

He lifted her off her feet, into his arms. “That’s all I wanted to hear.”

She put her arm around his shoulder as he carried her toward the parking lot but she stopped him. “We can’t drive.”

“Uber?” she suggested.

“The only driver out this late will be someone we know,” he said.

“That’s true,” she said. “So...”

He stopped and set her on her feet. “The Grand Hotel is only a five-minute walk.”

“Perfect,” she said. “It’s a nice night for a walk.”

“Is it?”

“I think so,” she said, slipping her hand into his. She’d missed this. The way his big hand completely enfolded hers. She wasn’t going to remind herself of all the reasons why she shouldn’t be enjoying this. For tonight she wanted some good memories of Mo instead of the painful ones from the recent past, including their breakup and then Mauricio fighting with her date at the Bull Pit last fall.

“I thought you had book club on Friday night,” he said as they walked to the hotel.

“Is there a question there?”

“Just wondering why you were at the Bull Pit instead of at Helena’s place,” he said as they headed down historic Main Street with its wide sidewalks to accommodate the pedestrian tourist traffic.

“We all needed a night out,” she said. “You know Helena delegated the wedding flowers and interior design to me so I have to liaise with Mom on it.”

“I didn’t know that,” he said. “She seemed pretty determined to do it herself.”

“She was. She had to ask our parents to pay for some of it—” Hadley clamped her hand over her mouth. “Please forget I said that.”

“It’s okay, I knew about the problem. I’ve been trying to talk to Mal and figure out what is going on for her.”

“You have?”

“Yes,” he said, stopping to look at her with an arched eyebrow. “You sound surprised.”

She was. “It just doesn’t seem like your sort of thing.”

“Why not?”

“There’s nothing in it for you,” she said.

“Fair enough. But there is something in it for me,” he added as he started walking again. He’d dropped her hand but they were still walking side by side.

“What?”

“Your happiness,” he admitted. “It’s in my power to help your sister out and to figure out what’s going on with Mal, and I know how much you love her so in a way I’m doing it for you.”

“Why would you do that?”

“To make up for being an ass, Hadley. We both know I handled things like the hothead I am, and I regret it now,” he said.

They were in front of the Grand Hotel now and he stopped to turn to face her. “Have you changed your mind?”

She shook her head. Not in the least. This right here was the man she had fallen for. It wasn’t often that Mauricio felt comfortable showing this side of himself, but she was happy he had tonight.

“I still want you,” she said. “What about you?”

“I think I’d have to be dead not to want you,” he admitted.

It was so quiet in the hotel bathroom except for “God Bless Texas” buzzing in her head, which was one of the songs she’d danced to earlier with Mo. He was being very cautious with her, which she appreciated. More than once he’d asked her if she was sure about this. But honestly, she wasn’t sure about anything except that she wanted him and didn’t want to think beyond tonight. Unlike stud muffin out there, she hadn’t slept with anyone since they’d broken up a little over eighteen months ago, and though she’d never describe herself as sex crazed, she missed it. She leaned in to look at her face in the mirror.

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