Thirty-five and Single

“It’s okay. I shouldn’t have. I don’t know why—”

He turns me to face him. “Shit, you think I don’t? I’ve been throwing hints that I’ve wanted to go out with you for months, and you’ve shut me down. I don’t want you to regret it—”

“The only thing I regret right now is you not kissing me.”

I wake hours later to the sound of a drum beating. Immediately, I use my hand as if it could stop the pain radiating in my head. Only, the drum beating comes again. I realize then that someone is pounding on my door. I ease out of bed, grateful the room is completely dark. After a year of living here, I’m able to navigate the darkness to get my robe from the hook to cover my nakedness as I normally sleep that way.

Slowly, I ease open my bedroom door to avoid any potential loud noises, having lived through my share of hangovers. But the more I walk, I feel an ache between my legs.

A flash of a man’s head buried between my thighs stops me in my tracks. The jolt of heat created by the memory causes me to tighten my legs together to tamp down the sudden lust building there.

One more insistent knock reminds me of my destination. Is that Joel on the other side? How can I face him? The crushing weight of what I’d done in a drunken stupor makes me want to run and hide under my pillows instead of facing the reality of my inappropriate, inebriated behavior in the wee hours of the morning.

Another flash memory of his hard body over mine pounding between my legs almost draws me down to my knees. The image is so fresh I can almost feel his skin against mine.

A fist bangs on the door, and I push all those thoughts back. I can do this. I’m a big girl. I can face the man I fucked like an adult.

I open the door quickly and in grand fashion. Joel’s name is perched on my tongue like a cuckoo in a clock a second before the hour. But I’m the one who’s cuckoo, because there is no way my ex is standing there with a big smile on his face.

“Corey,” I manage to say. “What are you doing here?”

Brushing by me, he ignores that I haven’t invited him in. As I turn, I face him and try not to think about how good he smells or how good he looks. Those things haven’t changed.

Taller than me by at least a head, he stares at me with such intensity, I wrap my arms around myself to stop from walking into his inviting embrace.

“Happy Birthday, Liv.”

Looking just slightly older than the high school quarterback who took my virginity, it’s hard to be mad he’s invaded my personal space.

“You haven’t answered my question. Why are you here? How did you even find me?”

The day I found him screwing some girl in our bed when I was supposed to be out of town with my sister, I hadn’t confronted him. I’d quietly walked out and gotten a hotel room where I’d cried my eyes out for hours. The next day, when I knew he’d gone to work, I went home and packed my things. Then, like any sensible woman, I went to the bank and withdrew half of everything, including our savings, and drove to my sister’s. My car is still parked there. I’d left him a message on his cell when he hadn’t answered, then I’d turned off my phone. It’s still in the car, dead as a doornail, I suspect. In the days that followed, I’d found a place in the city and gotten a new phone and created a new life. Though I remotely check my voicemail from my dead phone from time to time.

“Your address was on the legal papers.” I close my eyes. I’d forgotten that. “I just thought we could celebrate your birthday with an early dinner for old times’ sake.”

When I open my eyes, prepared to tell Corey to leave, a man emerges from my bedroom with a shirt in his hands.

Evidently having seen my shock, Corey half-turns to catch my sexy neighbor in the act of putting on his shirt.

“Who is he?” Corey asks in a half-whisper, his disbelief clear.

Joel doesn’t answer. He only has eyes for me, making a beeline in my direction. My jaw hangs open. I hadn’t wanted to believe I’d had sex with him. Standing in front of me, he’s definitely not a fantasy I conjured up in my head.

“Happy Birthday, Olivia,” Joel murmurs.

His warm hands slightly part my robe so that he can glide his fingers over my hips and to my ass, before he drops a sensual kiss on my lips.

Clearly, my brain is offline when I fervently kiss him back despite Corey standing there as a spectator.