Then he took a call and headed off, disappearing into an elevator and leaving me alone in the hall, wondering what the fuck I’d just gotten myself into.
5
EVIE
My no-motivation spell had definitely been broken, because on Monday morning, I woke up early for the first time in ages, showered, got dressed and then went straight to the restaurant to have a boozy gossip and catch-up sesh with Aly.
I’d definitely missed them since becoming a zombie post breakup, and I’d definitely missed co-managing with her at Stanton Family Market – recently honored “Best Lobster Roll in East Hampton.”
The place was basically Aly’s and my baby. Since buying the seafood wholesaler from her dad five years ago, we’d revamped the brand to include this adorable summer pop-up that I loved to pieces. Unfortunately, I’d quit my post as general manager there almost two months ago, in preparation for moving to the city with Mike.
He had claimed the move would be beneficial to us as a couple, and for the sake of my happiness, Aly had helped me justify it by saying that living in the city would give me a chance to be an ambassador for the Stanton Family brand. Since I did menu consultation for so many restaurants there, I could take the owners I worked with to our Stanton Family warehouse in Brooklyn, and better convince them to source their seafood exclusively from our company.
It was the perfect plan.
Until the breakup, of course. Because now Mike was gone and I was still living on Long Island and that made me feel stupid for even quitting the restaurant in the first place.
“The worst part is I can’t even come back to work here because I took all those consulting gigs in the city,” I griped as I sat in the back office with Aly, both of us sipping on the restaurant’s signature cocktail, the Hail Mary. It was a drink I had designed and was, as Aly called it, “a Bloody Mary on steroids” since it was garnished with not just the usual fixings, but also pickled asparagus, vodka-poached shrimp and a giant lobster claw.
“Are you just going to commute to the city every day for those meetings?” Aly frowned as she clicked about on the computer doing payroll.
“Yeah. That’s another thing that’ll kind of suck.”
“Seriously. Fuck Mike for that shit. That frickin’… douchenozzle of an unredeemable asshole,” Aly grumbled angrily as she worked.
I chewed my lip while saying nothing in reply.
I knew I was supposed to hate Mike. I mean he’d waited till the day we were supposed to move to Brooklyn together to tell me that he was dumping me. He knew I couldn’t afford to rent our new apartment alone, so dibs went to him, even though I’d spent months apartment hunting without his help.
That said, he did pay for my stay at a not-horrible hotel while I looked for my own place, because he knew I was having money troubles of late. But still. He dumped me in a fairly classless way, and I knew Aly was particularly mad because even before the breakup, Mike and I had been having problems. He’d begun picking weird fights here and there and stopped letting me show any affection. Our sex life had been nonexistent for more than a year before he left, so on paper, it didn’t really make sense that I was still pining to be near him.
But I personally knew what Mike still meant to me.
The reasons weren’t things I discussed in detail with anyone – not even Aly – but I knew them in my heart, and that was all that really mattered.
“Yeah… I know, he sucks, but anyway – topic change,” I declared, since I did have an actual order of business to tend to here. “As I told you before, I have a juicy story to tell you from the other night.”
“Yes, yes! Hit me.”
I wasted no time recounting everything I’d been dying to tell her for almost two days. I started with my voicemail to Mike and ended with the heat of the kiss Drew left on my neck. I also backed it up to include the detail of how he groaned when I squeezed his forearm, and how that deep, throaty, annoyingly sexy fucking sound had reawakened something inside me.
I said all that and when I finished, I dealt with five straight minutes of Aly literally shrieking in my face, squealing her ass off and kicking in her chair with a mixture of disbelief and delight.
“Oh my God, I can’t breathe – that’s amazing!” she gasped before getting swiftly angry. “Wait. You bitch! Why didn’t you tell me the night it happened?”
“I wonder why, Aly. Could it be because you arrived completely shithoused and I was afraid you’d go and cause a scene with Drew if I told you that he was mean to me?”
It was a genuine concern that night because shortly after leaving Drew and his annoying skilled tongue on the terrace, Aly had finally arrived at the party. The reason she was so late, apparently, was because she’d gotten wasted with the staff here before going home to Emmett. She hadn’t known about the surprise party, obviously, so she’d let the waitresses and kitchen guys talk her into doing an absurd amount of shots.
Emmett, bless his heart, had done his best to sober her up before hauling her into the city, but the effort was in vain. By the time they arrived at Boulevardier, Aly was still drunk and going to town so hard on a Philly cheesesteak that she didn’t even look up at the first “surprise!” We had to say it twice for her to gasp, drop her sandwich, then drop to her knees and mourn the loss of her sandwich.
“Okay, fair. I was a complete shitshow that night,” Aly relented with a sheepish giggle. “But clearly I got my punishment, because I’m so mad I didn’t get to witness that ridiculous sexual tension between you two!”
“It wasn’t – ” My attempt to deny the heat of that night was dead on arrival. “Ugh, who am I kidding. It was one of the hottest moments of my life,” I grumbled.
“And you sound so unhappy because…?”
“Because he was right and I was wrong, and I feel guilty for letting a complete stranger turn me on harder than I’ve been in recent or even distant memory,” I confessed. But then I held my finger up. “That said, I maintain that he caught me during a special circumstance. I haven’t been touched in a remotely sexual manner in more than a year, so my body was just particularly sensitive that night. But me and Mike in our prime? Like the days of our relationship when we weren’t fighting all the time? We could have sex hotter than that kiss any day. Guaranteed.”