Tempt the Ex (Tempt 2.5)

Chapter 1

John

“What the fuck are you doing?” I hear yelled from behind me as Austin, one of my college roommates, turns on the lights in the living room where I sit in the dark. My eyes squint to get used to the light.

“Are you sitting in the dark by yourself?” he asks me with a confused look on his face. He comes into the room and takes in the way I’m just sitting on the couch, slouched down with my shoulders slumped and looking defeated.

“She broke up with me,” I finally whisper. My gaze never leaves the television even though it isn’t even on.

Noah, my other roommate, opens the front door, yelling, “Honey, I’m home,” as he comes into the living room and throws himself down on the other couch across the room.

Noah and Austin have been best friends since they were in diapers, or so I was told. When they decided to go to college together, it was only normal for them to buy a house. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking. College kids owning a house? But they have trust funds and stuff. So they bought this three-bedroom little house right off campus.

Lucky for me, they had a vacant third bedroom. Austin and I hit it off right away in economics class. After a couple of weeks, I was mentioning how horrible living in a dorm was, and boom, my problems were solved when he offered me their empty room. Of course, he had to check with Noah, but when we sat down, we all got along, so it was a no-brainer. So now for the past year or so, the three of us have lived in this house.

“Who pissed in his cornflakes?” Noah asks Austin as he points at me.

“Dani broke up with him.” Austin fills him in as he walks into the room.

“What?” He sits up. “Why?” he asks me and then turns to Austin, who shrugs his shoulders.

“She said I was a distraction.” I repeat the words she said just an hour ago, feeling my heart break all over again. Noah pulls out his phone and starts typing something on it.

“What are you doing?” Austin asks him as Noah’s thumbs go crazy across his phone.

“I’m going to order him a couple of escorts.” He looks back and forth between us. “Classy, of course,” he says, smiling while I glare at him. “You get kicked off the horse, you bounce your ass right back on another horse.”

He wiggles his eyebrows at me while Austin walks over to him and rips the phone from his hand. “What was that for?”

“I don’t want another girl,” I tell him, throwing my hands up. “I want Dani.”

“Well, she doesn’t want you,” Noah says. “Nothing says I’m over you like plowing through another vagina.” He looks at Austin for backup. “Am I not right?”

“Be sensitive,” Austin says as he gives the phone back to him, then looks at me. “Dude, but seriously, you guys were together what five months, six tops?”

“Seven and a half … but she’s the one,” I say as I look down at a picture of us kissing on my own phone that we took just last week.

“Holy shit, it’s worse than we thought.” Noah looks at Austin. “She put a vagina voodoo on his dick.” Then he looks at me. “Does your dick get hard when you watch porn without her?”

I shake my head. “I stopped watching porn,” I say. Noah gasps, his hand flying to his mouth. “I mean, we had sex daily, sometimes twice, so I really didn’t need it.”

“What the fuck are you talking about? You always need porn.” Noah gets up and runs to the kitchen in the back of the house, and Austin and I follow him. He walks around the room, opening then slamming the drawers. “Remember that chick I dated, the hippie?” he asks us while Austin and I just watch him ransack the small kitchen. “What was her name? Daffodil, Essence …” He snaps his fingers as he stares at the wall, trying to guess her name. “Ocean, Rain …” He stops snapping, looking at both of us like he just got the winning Powerball numbers. “Storm. That’s it. Well, she brought me some sage once to get rid of bad mojo or whatever, and she saged the house.”

“What?” I ask as I look at Austin.

He asks the question I’m thinking. “You made her sage the house? How do you know it was sage?” Austin asks while he puts his hands on his hips, waiting for Noah to answer.

“I have no fucking clue, but whatever she did made my dick hard as a rock, and I ended up fucking her on the table. I couldn’t help myself,” he says, proud of himself, and I sit up straight now.

“Eww.” Austin grimaces. “We eat on that fucking table. There are rules, Noah, like no banging unless it’s in your room or the shower.”