Just One Night (Sex, Love & Stiletto 3)

“Sure,” Julie said. “It’s just wow. Who was he?”

Riley shrugged. “Dan Bacher. We’d been dating for several months and were sort of serious, although it’s not like I was dropping hints on engagement rings or anything. We broke up shortly after the incident.”

Julie put a hand over her mouth to cover a horrified laugh. “That’s what you call it? The incident?”

Riley was given a brief reprieve by the doorbell, and the process of getting the food containers situated and plates passed around gave her a chance to catch her breath. And collect her thoughts.

But by the time they’d

all resumed their spots around the coffee table, she was ready to tell them all of it. The whole sad, awkward story.

“Jake’s not, like, hiding in the bedroom, is he?” she asked Grace. “I don’t think I can quite handle a male audience for this.”

“Nope, he’s off at guys’ night. Whatever you want to tell us will end with the three of us.”

“And all of the Stiletto readers,” Emma said, deadpan.

Riley slowly chewed her pasta before speaking. “So you’re probably wondering why I never tried it again. After Dan, I mean.”

“A little,” Julie said, understating. “I mean it’s pretty common for the first time to be awkward, and hurt a little and all that. I mean … haven’t all of us written an article on that at some point?”

“It’s true,” Emma said. “My first was with a guy who was way older, and that should have made it less awkward, but he was all saggy in all the wrong spots—”

“Eew,” Grace said, cutting her off. “But yeah, mine was bad too. It was with Greg—”

“That asshat,” Riley muttered, as she did whenever the name of Grace’s ex came up.

“—and it was totally a fumbling, can’t-get-the-condom-wrapper-open, not-enough-lubrication disaster.”

“Yeah, that’s about how my situation went,” Riley confirmed.

“You were amateurs. Give yourself a break.”

“I can give my twenty-year-old self a break,” Riley said. “But my twenty-eight-year-old self? No excuse.”

“Well, you must have your reasons for waiting,” Grace said gently.

“Not any good reasons!” Riley said, her voice coming out in a screech. She took a bite of pasta to calm herself.

“The real problem is why I slept with Dan in the first place. See, Christmas break of my sophomore year, Dan’s parents were off in Australia visiting his sister, who was studying abroad, so he came home with me.”

“You did it at your parents’ house? How has that not been a story topic yet?”

“Actually it has,” Riley said, thinking back to a short piece she’d done a couple of years earlier. “I just didn’t base it on personal experience. Hell, as you guys now know, none of it’s based on my sexual experiences … But anyway, no, we didn’t do it until we got back to campus after break.”

“Okay …,” Grace said, winding her fork into a careful twirl of noodles. “So what was the catalyst? You don’t exactly sound smitten with this poor guy.”

“Oh, I was smitten all right,” Riley muttered. “Just not with Dan.”

Julie put the pieces together almost immediately. “Sam was there. At your parents’ house at Christmas.”

“Sam was there,” she said, meeting her friends’ eyes. “So was his new wife.”

“Sam was married?” Grace said. “How did I not know that?”

“Because it was over in a hot minute. Just a spontaneous oopsie that ended in a dramafree divorce. But that Christmas break when I went home with my first serious boyfriend, half convinced that it would force Sam to see me as a grown-up, he was very much married.”

“Oh, Ri,” Julie said, setting her plate aside. “That’s why you slept with Dan?”