OUR SONG ENDED and we made our way back to the table, both a little depressed that our time together was over.
“Hey, Michelle!”
I didn’t bother turning around. I knew it was Sarah and Nicole again.
“The party is dying down around here, and we were thinking of going to grab some coffee, or a martini.” She giggled. “Anyway, would you want to join us?”
“Oh, thanks, you guys. That’s so sweet of you, but I can’t tonight,” Michelle answered.
All I could think about while she turned down their offer was the look on her face when she’d talked about how much she missed hanging with her friends.
“Wait.” I turned in my seat to face her. “Why not?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I have the sitter and kids at home.”
“The kids are sleeping, and I can pay the sitter. You should go.”
She leaned in close. “You don’t have to do that.”
“I know I don’t have to. I want to. Seriously… I’ll go relieve Desi, and you go out for a bit with these two.” I turned to Sarah and Nicole. “Can one of you give her a ride home?”
Sarah nodded. “Absolutely.”
I shook my head slowly. “You have no reason not to go. You said yourself you missed them.”
“Oh, please, Michelle?” Nicole begged. “Just for a little while? I swear we won’t stay out late.”
Michelle’s eyes grew hopeful as they bounced back and forth between me and the girls. “Okay. Let’s do it.”
Sarah and Nicole shrieked in excitement at an ear-piercing level as Michelle bent down close to me. “You sure this is okay with you?”
“Yes.” I laughed and nodded. “Go. Have fun. Keep your dress pulled down, please.”
I drove myself back to Michelle’s house, replaying that dance over and over in my head.
Could we make it work?
Could we both let go just enough to make it possible without letting go completely?
When her head had been on my chest and her arms were around me, I felt like anything was possible. That sounded so stupid and cliché, but it was true. Michelle made me feel invincible.
Once I was back at Michelle’s, I gave Desi a hundred-dollar bill and sent her on her way. I took my suit jacket off, hung it on the back of a kitchen chair, and unbuttoned my pants to let my full belly loose. I grabbed the baby monitor from the kitchen and lay down on the couch in the living room, flipping to SportsCenter on the TV.
It was weird being in that room without Michelle there. As I sat there, in the quiet house with SportsCenter muted, my mind started to wander. It was in that very room less than a year ago that Big Mike had told me he could see me married with kids. He’d told me he thought it would soften my cement heart. How fucking ironic that it was his wife I was falling for and his kids I was helping parent? My eyes shifted around the room. Pictures of Mike and Michelle’s wedding still hung on the wall. A bookcase in the corner was filled with framed pictures of their family.
The four of them at the hospital after Maura was born.
Mike and Matthew in the front yard, riding bikes.
Mike, Michelle, and Matthew at Walt Disney World.
Mike grinning with his hand on Michelle’s pregnant stomach.
Mike and Michelle kissing.
My chest started to hurt like I’d been punched square in the sternum. For a second, I thought maybe I was having a heart attack. Then I realized I wasn’t that lucky.
The living room started closing in around me as I paced the house, on the verge of a panic attack. What the fuck was I thinking hanging out there all the time? Why had I let myself get so close to Matthew and Maura? Why the fuck had I let myself fall for Michelle as hard and fast as I had? Why did I let myself fall for her at all?
Because of Big Mike, you dumb son of a bitch. You promised Big Mike you’d take care of his family, but instead you stole it.
I SPENT THE next two hours sitting at the kitchen table with my head in my hands trying to figure out what I was going to say to Michelle when she got home. I didn’t want to walk out of Matthew’s life, not at all, but I couldn’t keep coming to the house to see him. Maybe she’d let me take him once a week or something. The bigger question swirling around in my head was how long was it going to take for me to recover from this? I’d never felt like this about anyone before, and I’d certainly never lost anyone in this way. Could you ever recover from something like that?
The sound of a key jiggling in the door made my heart sink.
This is gonna suck.
I stood up and walked to the kitchen doorway, and I could tell immediately that Michelle had drank too much.
“Hey,” she whispered loudly.
“Hey.” My body stiffened as she walked right up to me and wrapped her arms around my waist. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fantastic,” she slurred a little. “I had such a fun time with those girls.”
“Where’d you guys go?”
“I don’t know. Some bar.” Letting go of my waist, she wobbled over to the fridge and grabbed a bottle of orange juice. She took a big drink and then stared at the bottle. “We should cook with this.”
I tried not to laugh at her, but drunk Michelle was super fucking cute.
“Anyway, are the kids still sleeping?”
“Yep, not a peep out of them.” I walked over and sat on the kitchen chair, wondering if it was the best time to talk to her.
“Good.” She trailed her finger along the counter as she slowly walked over to me. “I’ve been thinking about that dance all night. It’s driving me crazy, actually.”
“Yeah, about that—”
“Shhh.” She put a finger over my lips. “Don’t say anything now. I don’t want to talk. I just want to finish what we started.”
Before I could react, she was sitting on my knee and her lips were on mine. She might have been drunk, but she still knew how to kiss. Her lips slowly moved up and down, back and forth against my own. The tip of her tongue darted out of her mouth and into mine as she ran her hands through my hair, roughly pulling me tighter against her. Something inside of me told me to stop, but a bigger something screamed at me to keep going. I hiked her dress up and cupped her ass, lifting her so she was straddling me, all the while praying that the kitchen chair didn’t give out. I sat up straight and ran my hands up her back and around the nape of her neck, pulling her hair gently so I could get to her neck. Tugging the strap of her dress off her shoulder, I kissed and sucked along her collarbone.
She moaned, grinding her hips against me. “Let’s go in the living room.”
I ignored her, kissing my way from one side of her chest to the other.
“Viper, did you hear me?” she repeated through her panting. “Let’s go to the living room.”
I’d been avoiding that room all night. No way was I going to have sex with Michelle in there. No fucking way was I going to have sex with her at all.
“Wait a minute.” I pulled back. “We can’t do this.”
“Yes, we can.” She kissed me again, letting her hand wander over my pants. “Just this one night, remember? You said one song, but why can’t we expand it to one night?
I caught her hand before she shoved it inside my boxers. “We can’t.” I gently lifted her off of me and stood up, rubbing my temples with my hands as I paced the kitchen, trying to figure out what to do.
“What’s going on with you?” she snapped, glaring at me as she pulled her skirt down. “For as long as I’ve known you, you’ve fucked anything that walks, and now here I am, throwing myself at you, and you’re telling me no?”
“I’m sorry. Listen,”—I started panicking again—“I don’t think we should be doing this right now. It’s not right.”
“Why isn’t it right?”
“Because of Mike—” I started to explain.
“Oh, I’m so sick of you hiding behind Mike.” She marched over to me. “I think you aren’t attracted to me at all and you just use Mike as your fucking excuse to keep me at arm’s length.”
I’d never heard anything so insane in my entire life.
“What are you talking about? Not attracted to you?” I grabbed her hand and put it on my hard cock. “Does that feel like I’m not attracted to you?”
“Big deal!” She yanked her hand back. “Guys get hard whenever the wind blows. Matthew gets little boners all the time. Don’t be so proud of yourself.” She sniffed and turned away from me.
“Listen, Michelle…” I gently put my hand on her shoulder. “I just don’t want to take that step tonight, because once we do, that’s it. There’s no going back and pretending it didn’t happen.”
She took another step away from me, out of my reach. “Get out,” she mumbled quietly.
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “What?”
She spun to face me as tears poured down her cheeks. “You heard me. I said get out. Get the fuck out of my house.”
“Okay, please calm down,” I begged. “You’ve had too much to drink and this night just went to shit really quickly. Can we just take a step back and breathe, please?”
“You breathe. You take a fucking step back. In fact, take a lot of steps back—all the way out of my house, and forget you ever came here in the first place.”
Arguing with her when she was drunk was just making things worse. The situation needed to be diffused, and the only way I could do that was to leave. I buttoned my pants and grabbed my jacket off of the kitchen chair, trying hard to ignore the sinking feeling that sat heavy in my stomach as I walked out of the kitchen. I couldn’t leave without trying to reason with her one more time. “Can we please just sit down, have some coffee, and talk about this?”
She was standing by the island with her arms wrapped around herself, staring down at the ground.
“Michelle?”
Her head lifted toward me; her eyes were cold and distant. “Good-bye, Viper.”