To say I’d been thinking of her every day for the last eight years would be a lie. To say I’d gone those eight years without ever once thinking of her would be an even bigger fib.
But I sure as hell didn’t expect to run into her one fine Sunday morning in the park. I wasn’t prepared. I wasn’t ready. And my first thought was to catch up and explain that I hadn’t ditched her to have a kid. Closing the distance would have been easy. I can run like the wind. I can put one foot in front of the other and hoof it. But I had my favorite person with me, and no way was I going to drag Carly in a chase after a girl I once loved like the sun.
Still, I tried.
I grabbed Carly’s hand and yelled. “Delaney!”
She didn’t even turn around, and soon she was a speck rounding the bend.
I suppose, in retrospect, the last words out of my mouth when I dumped her shouldn’t have been, “It’s too hard to juggle classes and you.”
Her Prologue
I’m cursed.
There’s no other explanation for this thing that happens to me every time I get close.
I’m not talking about horseshoes close, either.
I mean every single time I take the rabbit out for a ride.
The bunny makes it clear it needs a certain stallion to get over the hump.
Do bunnies even like horses?
I don’t know, but it pisses me off that my traitorous body seems to need one man, and one man only, to fly off the cliff.
I don’t ask for this kind of sexual haunting. Hell, I don’t even believe in ghosts. But the ghost of boyfriends past has been inhabiting my fantasies for years. I try like hell to rely on Henry Cavill, Chris Hemsworth, or Michael Fassbender. I mean, really. Michael Fassbender. And we all know what he’s packing.
But nope.
My brain won’t bend to his Fass.
I’ve learned to stop fighting it. I just go with it when my ex pops into my solo flights. I grit my teeth and bear it, and let him join Bunny to take me to the magic land. Then I turn off the pink toy, tuck it into the drawer, and drift asleep, satisfied, but also not.
That’s been my life for the last year and a half. The biggest and littlest Os come with double-A assistance. So Bunny and I have gotten a lot closer. Sometimes, we make it a double.
And in the mornings, I pretend I didn’t get off to Tyler Fucking Nichols.
That man.
That cocky jerk who broke my heart.
But even if he inhabits my naughty imagination, I do take some solace in knowing I’m over Tyler. I’m so over the way he ended things eight years ago. I’ve moved on, thank you very much. This is purely a physical possession, nothing more. Hell, it’s not really a surprise that my mind wanders to his particular talents, given the way he owned my body when we were younger. But I sure do wish he’d stop crashing my BYOB— that’s bring your own batteries—parties.
One Sunday morning, I stumbled upon the key to exorcising him.
Here’s how it all went down.
I popped out of bed, washed my face, brushed my teeth, pulled my hair into a ponytail, and tugged on my running shorts.
A little later, I met up with my good friends Penny and Nicole at the entrance to Central Park, and we began our training run for a 10K race we’re doing in a few weeks. I figured it would be just another morning jog, followed by a plate of two eggs, any style, with a strong mug of green tea at my favorite sidewalk café, The Charming Breakfast Spot.
Instead, I saw him.
Juggling.
Of all things, the man was juggling.
The spitting image of irony.
At the edge of the grass by the running path, he spun five objects in an oblong blur with the most adorable little brown-haired girl by his side. Who looked just like him.
And in the blink of an eye, I seethed.
I ached.
As I ran, I broiled. I went from zero to sixty miles per hour of hurt in mere seconds. All I could think was the bastard had found a way to juggle in the end. I couldn’t believe he’d moved on so easily after me. And he didn’t just rebound to another girlfriend. He leveled all the way up to fatherhood.
The worst part? The absolutely, completely, horrifically unfair part? He was still so goddamn handsome, with that chestnut hair I wanted to run my hands through, that square jawline I could have touched all night, those lips made for kissing me everywhere.
In last night’s unbidden appearance in my mind, he sure as hell had. He’d been my first in that department; he was still the best.
At that, and at everything.
Look, any woman who says she doesn’t rate her lovers is a liar. She might not have a whiteboard with a numbered list or a diary with rankings. But we all know who rocked our world and claimed our bodies.
He was the one for me. Top of the list. End of the line.
But no more.
Tonight, I’d kick him out of my head, no matter what it took.
“Look,” I hissed to my girls. “It’s Tyler ‘the Juggler’ Nichols.”
Penny’s amber eyes went round as moons as her mouth fell open. She jerked her head to Tyler. “Holy smokes, he is hot,” she whispered, as she ran with her little Chihuahua trotting beside her.
I could have tripped her for that. But I loved her too much, and her little dog, too.
“He’s not hot,” I muttered, as I breathed hard from our pace.
But Tyler Nichols was indeed a specimen, just like he’d been when we were in college. From the day we met in an advanced poli-sci seminar, the man hooked me, he lined me, he sinkered me. He was my best friend, my boyfriend, my most fearsome competitor, my greatest ally, and my first love.