Vanilla or chocolate? I dither between the two flavors in the freezer cabinet in front of me until my mind drifts back to that first night with Ace. Yeah, I think I know which one I need to go for. I pick the vanilla tub out of the cabinet and drop it into the basket.

And that’s when I look up, and see him.

I freeze for a moment, feeling as though my feet have been rooted to the spot. It takes me a moment to regain composure. James. Has it really been that long since I last saw him? Long enough that it feels as though my entire body had seized up at the sight of him, just standing there in front of me in the supermarket aisle. What is he doing down this end of town, anyway? I’m staying with Ace, but I can’t imagine someone like James can afford to live in a neighborhood as nice as the one Ace just moved to.

He looks up and sees me, and he immediately flushes bright red. As well he might, given the way he treated me the last time we saw each other. He stands there for a moment, just looking at me, and then makes his way towards me. I can’t believe it. I want to turn around and walk away from him, but I have to admit, I’m interested to hear what on earth he has to say for himself.

He pauses in front of me and looks me up and down. I’m pissed that he thinks he can just stand there and ogle me, but I feel a little ping of triumph at the way his eyebrows shoot up as he takes in my new look. I’m just in a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, nothing fancy at all, but I’ve lost a good fifteen pounds since we last saw each other.

Dating a gym owner with a predilection for athletic, energetic sex has its upsides, I guess. I still have all my curves, and while Ace made it clear that he would have been happy with me looking exactly the way I did the day he met me, it feels good to be a little tighter and tauter around the middle.

“Hey,” I greet, raising my eyebrows and forcing him to direct his attention from my breasts back to my face. He raises his gaze and blinks at me.

“Yeah, hello,” he nods. “I…uh, you look really good…I mean real good”

“Thanks,” I reply, deliberately taking another tub of Vanilla ice cream and dropping it into my basket. It hits the tub already in there and rolls around a bit. James’s eyes widen. Yes, James, two tubs of full fat real ice cream. In a perfect world, I would have just turned away and left him right there and then. Because that would be the perfect revenge, but he continues talking, and I’ve been brought up properly. It’s not polite to walk away when someone is still talking to you.

“Uh, so how are things going?” he asks, and I think I see a twinkle of hope in his eyes. I must have imagined it. It cannot be…

“Yeah, I’m doing great,” I nod, tossing my hair over one shoulder. I had it cut the week before, and actually styled so it wasn’t just a crazy mess that I pulled back into a ponytail every morning.

“Yeah, you look great.” Again that predatory look. Wow! Unbelievable.

“What about you?” I ask, noting the slight paunch in his belly and the stubble smattered across his face. He looks as though he’s been through the wringer. I struggle to give much of a damn. “You still with that…er…girl?” See, how much I’ve grown and matured. I could so easily have used the right word: slut.

“Uh…” he trails off, sliding his eyes away from mine. “Actually, no. We…we split up a couple of months ago.”

That didn’t last long. Much as I would have enjoyed pointing that out to him, I want to keep the high ground here.

“Oh, I’m sorry to hear that,” I lie through my teeth. I’m sure he can tell that I’m bullshitting him, that I’m actually revelling in the fact that he probably got dumped for being such a cheating piece of shit by the latest girl he snared into his web, but I don’t care. I had no reason to put on a front around him, or even pretend that I had anything other than contempt for him.

“I was…I’ve been thinking about you a lot, actually,” he mumbles, and I raise my eyebrows. He wouldn’t try to…put the moves on me, would he? That would be ridiculous. Surely, he knew that after you dumped a woman by calling her fat and announcing that you’d been cheating on her, like a stinking dog, you don’t get a second chance. Even if I hadn’t been head over heels for Ace, I would have turned him down flat. How little self-respect did he think I had?

“Oh yeah?” I glance around, wondering where Ace is. I could use him on my arm right now, to remind James that he didn’t get to come crawling back and expect me to swoon all over him again. That time is well past.

“Yeah, Dawn…” he trails off once more, struggling to find the words.

I don’t help him along.

“I think I made a mistake,” he admits finally, and I expect to feel something. Vindication, maybe, excitement that he’s admitted my point after all this time. But I feel nothing. Just flatness. I barely even raise my eyebrows at him.

“I was wondering, if you’re still up for it…”

I am too paralysed with second-hand embarrassment for him to stop him.

“If you might like to come on a date with me? We could give things a brand new start, try again…I’ve changed so much and…so have you.” He gestures up and down my body. “We were good together.”

He wants to come crawling back to me now I’ve lost some of that weight he hated so much and yet did everything in his power to make sure I did not lose. Well, I lost two hundred pounds of dead weight when he left me, and I’m not about to let that pile back on.

Before I can reply, I feel an arm slide around my waist, and inhale the scent of Ace’s new expensive aftershave. The gym has really taken off in the last few months, since we met, and he’s been treating himself (not to mention me) to all kinds of luxuries as a result – a new apartment, fancy new clothes, trips out to the kind of restaurants that I could only drool over in the food section of the Sunday paper before I met him. Sometimes, it’s like living in a fairy tale – except he’s far from some chaste prince waking me with only a kiss. Between the legs, yeah, maybe.

“Hey.” Ace greets me with a soft peck on the cheek, and I can tell that he’s staking his territory too.

James stares at us blankly, at Ace’s hand resting easily around my waist. It takes him a good few moments of staring dumbly before he seems to realize what’s going on between the two of us.

“James, this is my boyfriend, Ace,” I introduce. “Ace, this is James. I think I mentioned him to you once or twice?”

“Yeah, I think he came up,” Ace gives James a withering once-over.

James shifts from foot to foot. He looks uncomfortable. I wonder if he’s internally comparing himself to Ace, if he’s feeling inadequate in his presence. If he wonders how someone like him could ever want to date a woman like me. It had taken me awhile to understand that. Even now, I sometimes find myself looking at Ace, at his amazing body, and his growing success, his strong ambition, his sense of humour, and his sweet side, and wonder what in the hell he’s doing with me.

But he’s tried so hard, every time I doubt myself, to remind me that he’s with me because he wants to be. Because I effortlessly fill a hole in his life that no one else has ever managed, no matter how hard they tried. That’s what he tells me, and I know him by now. He is far from a bullshitter. And he definitely doesn’t waste his time on anything that doesn’t interest him.

If he didn’t feel the way he does about me, he wouldn’t bother filling my head with untruths. James, over the two years we were together, did all but convince me that no guy would ever actually want to be with me. They would just be settling for someone they weren’t totally happy with. Ace is helping me unlearn that lie. It’s taking a while but I’m getting there.

“Uh, good to meet you,” James mumbles, looking at the floor.

I glance over at Ace. He is looking down into our basket at the ice cream, and I see that it has the same effect on him. It reminds him of our first, crazy night together.

“Oh, good choice,” he bumps his hip against mine and leans in to kiss me once more. It’s a longer kiss than the last one, letting me know that as soon as he gets me home he’s going to strip me bare and taste every inch of me from top to bottom, just like he did that first night.

When he pulls away, I can’t help but grin as I meet his eyes once more. I know that James is standing right there, and sure, it’s a little satisfying for me to see the shock in his face, to see the way he’s looking at the two of us as if what he is witnessing is not possible. But the real truth: the vindication of seeing him so pissed off is nothing compared to how good it feels to be with someone who values and adores me, and doesn’t give a shit what anybody else thinks about us.

“We should get going,” Ace suggests, glancing in James’ direction.

“Yeah, we should,” I agree, already feeling a little tingle in my stomach at the thought of him getting me home and using the ice cream the way I’d intended. I turn to James. “See you later, James.”

James looks shell-shocked as we walk off, and I commit that expression to memory. It’s satisfying as hell, I have to admit. I stroll away with a big-ass grin on my face and Ace’s arm still around my waist. Sometimes the sweetest revenge is when you have to do nothing.

“So, that’s the asshole ex?” Ace comments as soon as we walk off.

I shush him, but giggle. “Hey, he might hear us!”

Ace shrugs. “I hope he does. He is a fucking waste-of-space. I swear if I’d had to hang out there for one second more I wouldn’t have been able to restrain myself from chewing that asshole out.”

“Come on, let’s pay and get home,” I giggle.

He grins widely as we approach the counter. “Sure you don’t want me to go back and give that guy a piece of my mind?” he teases.

I shake my head. “Not worth it, trust me. I just want to get back to your place and…er…eat ice cream.”

“Our place,” he repeats for the dozenth time.

I grin and shake my head. “I’m sorry, I keep on forgetting,” He’s right. It’s been more than a month since I’d officially moved into his crazy-beautiful two-bedroom apartment on the East side, and it keeps slipping my mind that I actually live there now too.

“Hmm…I’ll have to find a way to punish you,” he says mock sternly.

I glance around in shock to make sure that no-one else heard him. I can’t believe he’d come out with something like that in the middle of the supermarket!

“Don’t worry, no-one heard me,” he assures me. “And even if they did, I don’t care.”

“Maybe I do,” I scold, but I don’t really have it in me to be properly mad. There’s something so giddy about knowing that no matter how many times he’s had me, he still wants me this badly.

We bag our groceries and take the couple of blocks walk back to his place, hand in hand. I see a few people checking us out as we go by, and I preen a little internally. I feel hot now, in a way I never did before. I believe, most of the time, deep down inside myself, that I actually am attractive, that I actually am worth all this fuss that he makes over me. I can’t believe how much damage James caused. I wish every woman in this world would find an Ace to show them how beautiful they really are.