I tried changing the subject. “Where’s our server? I’m starving.”
A tall drink of water with straight black hair sauntered past our table, immediately bringing up an image of my ex, Nicola “Nikki” DeSoto. Nikki was a half-Dutch, half-Spanish model-slash-actress with bee stung lips and a smile that hardened my cock in mere seconds. She was also bat-shit crazy and had ruined all future relationships for me. I’d never been so sprung for a girl before I met her. I’d have moved heaven and earth, crossed oceans, and climbed mountains for her. She’d made me feel like a million bucks. I was fully convinced that I was going to marry her someday.
And then I found out she was nothing but a fucking liar. Addicted to sex and fame, she’d been sleeping her way to the top for the entirety of our relationship, all in the name of getting ahead. Never mind that she was lying in my arms at night and whispering in my ear about all the ways she loved me. She’d painted a beautiful portrait of the life we were going to live.
Together.
Forever.
She promised.
It turned out all of it was a lie. It’d been years, and I still couldn’t figure out how something that felt so real could actually be nothing more than a desert mirage.
And then my mom died. The only woman who’d ever truly loved me decided her life wasn’t worth living anymore and took it upon herself to end her suffering. She’d battled depression before, even moving to the sunniest parts of the country to get hefty doses of Vitamin D, as if that were all she needed. But even doped up on Zoloft and sunshine, it wasn’t enough to dull the pain. All the colors in the world weren’t sufficient to cover up the gray in her life. If you asked me, though, she died of a broken heart. She never really got over my dad leaving her.
In the end, she left me a multi-million dollar life insurance policy, as if that would make up for it.
“What’s her name?” my aunt asked. “That girl you were talking to.”
“Addison,” I said. My eyes searched the room for our server. I didn’t want to talk about the piece of ass I was trying to bang as if she were some nice girl I was courting.
“What does she do for a living?”
“I don’t know.”
“But she’s your friend. You don’t know?”
“She’s a new friend.”
My aunt was relentless. Then again, she didn’t have any kids and I didn’t have a mother anymore. I supposed everyone needed someone like her in their lives. She made no bones about disliking the fact that I was a multi-millionaire in his twenties living in one of the most exciting cities in the world. She was quite certain that someone would swindle away my hard-earned cash or that I’d meet a gold digger who’d clean me out.
I supposed she didn’t know me as well as she thought she did. If she did, she’d know that would never happen in a million years.
“What is she like?” Aunt Laura pried.
“I’m still figuring her out,” I said. “Anyway, how’s work?”
“Oh, same old,” she said with an eye roll as she proceeded to ramble on about her maniacal boss and the latest with her archrival, Kathy. As she went off on a tangent, I focused my gaze on the blonde beauty sitting across the room. “Wilder. Wilder, are you listening? Did you hear what I said? Your dad is getting married again. Why didn’t you tell me?”
I jerked my attention back toward my aunt. “Must have slipped my mind.”
“When will it end? He’s becoming a joke to the family,” she huffed. My dad was her younger brother, and they got along like oil and water. She kept tabs on him from afar, though, which I was certain meant she still cared about him. “Just met some woman in Kentucky. I hear they might run off to Vegas and do one of those God-awful drive-thru weddings.”
“That’s Vince for you,” I laughed. He’d called me a couple weeks before to share the news, and I feigned excitement for him. But it was his fifth wife in fifteen years. It got old a couple wives ago. At this point, he was just making a mockery out of the whole marriage thing.
“What’s her name?” my aunt asked. “Tammy Sue? Tammy Rae?”
“Tammy Lynn,” I said. “As I recall.”
“Where’s he living now? Kentucky? How’d he end up there?”
“He says the real estate market’s good there.” I shrugged and grabbed a slice of warm focaccia bread from the basket between us. I’d spent my summers working in his real estate office and learning a thing or two about the business, which was how I knew exactly what to do with the millions of dollars I’d inherited from my mother when she passed. I threw it all into real estate investments.
The rest was history.
I drummed my fingers on the marble counter of my kitchen island. Seven o’clock on Friday and not a peep from Wilder all day. I expected something. Anything but radio silence.
I’d kept my night clear on the off chance I decided to take him up on his offer.
Oh, he was good. He knew exactly what he was doing.
I undocked myself from the island and paced my apartment. My thoughts raced, changing direction with each step. My career-oriented mind and my sexually-depraved body were at odds, and a war was being waged.
I closed my eyes as I tried to remember what he felt like inside me. How good it felt to have pure, uncomplicated sex with a man and walk away feeling satisfied. I was in independent woman. There was no shame in going out and getting laid like a man would. I just had to make sure my heart knew the difference.