by Brenda Novak
1
“You look miserable.”
Ellie Fisher forced a smile for her oldest friend. “What? No, I’m not miserable at all!” She had to shout above the music pulsing through the air and reverberating off the walls and ceiling. She’d never understood why, in a place designed for singles to meet and become acquainted, the music had to be so loud. A hundred and twenty decibels made it almost impossible to have a conversation and had to be damaging their hearing, but she didn’t say so. She knew how Amy, her friend since early childhood, and Amy’s friend Leslie, whom she’d just met tonight, would react. Besides, after the emotional trauma she’d been through the past week, she wouldn’t feel much better anywhere else. “I’m having a great time!”
Amy pursed her lips to suggest she wasn’t convinced. “Sure you are.”
After being inseparable in grade school, she and Amy had grown apart in middle school and taken much different paths. Amy had been the stereotypical cheerleader—popular, outgoing and fun—and had opted for cosmetology school instead of college. She now worked at an expensive hair boutique in Brickell, an urban neighborhood of downtown Miami. Ellie hadn’t had nearly the same amount of attention, especially from boys, but until recently she hadn’t cared too much about that. She’d always preferred her studies to parties, had graduated valedictorian and been accepted into Yale, which was where she’d done both her undergraduate as well as postgraduate work. Since leaving school she’d been determined to overcome the immunology challenges associated with finding a cure for diabetes at one of the foremost research facilities in the world, which just happened to be here in Miami, where she’d been born. But despite their many differences—and the fact that they didn’t see much of each other while Ellie was away at college—thanks to that early bond, she and Amy would always be friends. Ellie had never been more grateful for her than in the past week, since Amy was the one who’d been there for her when her world had fallen apart.
“It’s true,” Ellie insisted, glancing from Amy to Leslie as if to say, “Here we are, sitting around a tiny table in one of South Beach’s most popular nightclubs. What’s not to love?”
Amy rolled her eyes. “I know you too well to believe that. But I’m not letting you cut out early, so don’t start glancing at the time on your phone. I’ve invited a couple of friends to come meet you, remember?”
Ellie remembered, but Amy hadn’t mentioned any names. Ellie got the impression it was because she didn’t know which friends would show up—that she’d simply gone through her male clients and other contacts and invited anyone who might be available and willing to come to the club and show Ellie a good time. “I wasn’t checking the time,” Ellie said.
Amy scowled. “I saw you!”
“I was checking to see if my parents have texted me!” she argued. “They should’ve arrived in Paris by now.” Ellie wished she had gone with them, but by the time her life had imploded, they’d already had their travel plans in place, and it’d been too late to get a plane ticket. They were going to be teaching in France for the next year, though. Once she finished the clinical trials she was working on, she hoped to fly over and meet up with them. Now that she wouldn’t be going on her honeymoon, she had enough vacation days to stay for three weeks. Surely helping her parents settle into their flat and take up their responsibilities in Paris would provide a better distraction. Hanging out with Amy didn’t seem to be helping anything.
“Your parents will be fine,” Amy said. “You need to loosen up, have a few drinks and start dancing. Forget about everything, including that bastard Don and the man he cheated on you with.”
Ellie didn’t think she could get drunk enough to forget about Don. Three days ago, she’d caught him in bed with Leonardo Stubner, part of the administration staff where they all worked. She’d have to face them both—as she had Wednesday, Thursday and today—when she returned to the Diabetes Research Institute on Monday. And that wasn’t the worst of it. Since her “shocking discovery,” he’d gone ahead and come out of the closet, even declared his love for Leo, adding another level of humiliation to what she was suffering by making it all public. Half of their coworkers felt so sorry for the pressure he’d been under to hide his sexuality that they were praising him for having the courage to finally make the big reveal. The other half, those who were critical of his deception, didn’t dare speak out for fear someone would accuse them of being unsympathetic. One way or the other, almost everyone she knew was talking about her and her situation and forming an opinion on it.
After hearing what Amy had just said, Leslie leaned forward, at last showing a spark of interest in Ellie. “Your fiancé cheated on you with another man?”
Ellie squirmed beneath Leslie’s horrified regard. When Amy had mentioned they were taking Ellie out to get her mind off a broken engagement, Leslie had barely reacted. But the circumstances of her failed relationship changed things, made Ellie that much more pathetic. When Ellie had caught her fiancé with his “best friend,” whom he’d known since college—Don was the one who’d gotten Leo hired at the DRI—she’d also come face-to-face with the realization that all the “golfing” trips the two had taken since she and Don started dating hadn’t been as innocent as she’d been led to believe.
The one man who’d told her he wanted to spend forever with her hadn’t really been attracted to her in the first place. He’d merely been using her as a cover so that he wouldn’t become estranged from his ultrareligious parents.
That hurt more than her lost dream of starting a family.
But the fact that she was ill at ease in a nightclub wasn’t Don’s fault. She’d never felt comfortable in large groups, didn’t consider herself particularly adept at the kind of social interaction they required. She’d been too devoted to getting her PhD in biomedical engineering, and following that up with a postdoctoral fellowship at the DRI, where she’d met Don, a fellow scientist, to have much time for clubbing.
She shouldn’t have let Amy drag her here, she decided as she gazed around. But maybe one of Amy’s friends would show up, and maybe he’d somehow be able to make her feel less like a loser or distract her from the pain. Nothing else had worked thus far, so she forced herself to hold out hope. If she didn’t make some effort to recover and move on, even if it only resulted in a very short rebound relationship the first time, she’d die an old maid one day. That had never seemed more of a possibility than now. Her thirtieth birthday loomed ahead, but instead of planning her wedding, as she’d anticipated, she’d be doing all she could to tolerate continuing her research while bumping into her ex-fiancé and his lover on a daily basis.
A man from across the room started toward them. With his sandy-colored hair swept up off his forehead using some fixative, he was attractive in a frat-boy way—ultrapreppy—which was a look she admired.
“Mind if I join you?” he asked.
Frat Boy immediately singled out Amy—not that Ellie could blame him. Dressed in a short, tight-fitting black dress, six-inch stilettos and smoky makeup with bright red lipstick, Amy oozed sex appeal. So did Leslie, for that matter. Thanks to Amy’s insistence, even Ellie had had a complete makeover and was dressed in a similar fashion, except her dress was white and dipped low in the back instead of the front—the only concession Amy would allow her natural modesty. Amy had done her best to prime the hook, but Ellie didn’t feel she made very tantalizing bait.
You need to get laid, that’s what you need, her friend would say when she tried to balk about wearing the skimpy lingerie she had on under her dress or complained about the height of the heels Amy had pressed on her. If someone did ask her to dance, she’d probably turn an ankle, which was hardly conducive to hooking up later. Then her first Brazilian would for sure have not been worth the shocking pain.
Amy looked Frat Boy up and down in a seductive manner before widening her smile. “Sure. It’ll save me the trouble of having to come searching for you when I’m ready to leave.”
He obviously liked that response. Ellie had to admit it was smooth. She almost brought up the Notes app on her phone so she could jot it down—except she was fairly certain that line wouldn’t come off so suave if she ever attempted to use it. Flirting sounded silly coming from her. She loved sarcasm, had always traded put-downs with her father, but she doubted that talent would impress other men.
With some effort, thanks to the pressing throng of people that filled the club, the man located a chair and dragged it over before introducing himself as Manny. He made small talk for a few minutes. Then he waved over his friend, a shorter, more muscular version of himself, who’d been getting drinks at the bar.
Manny explained that they were both commercial real estate agents with Howard, Hasselhoff & McMann, a local firm, and introduced his friend as Nick. Nick focused on Leslie, since Manny already had dibs on Amy, making Ellie the third wheel she would expect to be in such a situation. She tried to contribute to the conversation but found herself peeking at her phone when Amy wasn’t looking. Not only was she uncomfortable, she was bored. But if she tried to get a taxi, Amy would merely remind her of the “friends” who were coming to meet her.
As the two couples got up to dance, leaving Ellie alone at the table, she let go of a long sigh and flagged down a waitress. “Bring me three shots,” she said.
Maybe if she forced herself to get drunk, the rest of the night would pass in a merciful blur. The alcohol wasn’t good for her liver. She couldn’t help acknowledging that. But as far as she was concerned, it was absolutely vital for her poor, aching heart.
* * *
Hudson King loved women, probably even more than most other men did, but he didn’t trust them. He’d gotten his name from the intersection of Hudson and King, two streets in Los Angeles’s exclusive Bel Air community, where he’d been abandoned and hidden in a privacy hedge when he was only hours old, so he figured he’d come by that lack of trust honestly. If he couldn’t rely on his own mother to nurture and protect him when he was completely helpless, well...that didn’t start him off on the most secure path. Even once he’d been found, hungry, cold and near death, screaming at the top of his lungs, his life hadn’t improved for quite some time.
Of course, he’d been such an angry and unruly youth he was undoubtedly to blame for some of the hurdles he’d faced growing up. He’d made things more difficult than they had to be. He’d had more than one foster family make that clear—right before sending him back to the orphanage.
Fortunately, his foster days were behind him. He’d buried most of the anger that’d caused him to act out, too. Or maybe he just controlled it these days. Some claimed he played football with a chip on his shoulder—that his upbringing contributed to the toughness and determination he displayed on the field—and that could easily be true. Sometimes it felt as if he did have a demon driving him out there, egging him on, making him push himself as far as possible. Perhaps he was trying to prove that he did matter, that he was important, that he had something to contribute. He’d had more than one sports commentator make the suggestion, but whether those sports commentators had any idea what they were talking about, Hudson couldn’t say. He refused to see a psychologist, didn’t see the point. No one could change the past.
Either way, once he was sent to high school at New Horizons Boys Ranch in Silver Springs, California, where it became apparent that he could throw a football, his fortunes had finally changed. Now, as quarterback of the Los Angeles Devils, he’d been named first team All-American twice and MVP once, had a Super Bowl ring on his finger and everything else a man could want—a successful career, more money than he could spend and more attention than he knew what to do with.
Not that he enjoyed the attention. He considered fame more of a drawback. As far as he was concerned, being in the spotlight proved to some of the families who’d decided he was too hard to handle that he might’ve been worth the effort. But it made his little problem with women that much worse. How could he trust the fairer sex when they had so much incentive to target and mislead him? Getting involved with the wrong girl could result in false accusations of rape or physical abuse, lies about his personal life or other unwelcome publicity, even an intentional effort to get pregnant in hopes of achieving a big payout. He’d seen that sort of thing happen too many times with other professional athletes, which was why he typically avoided the party scene. He wasn’t stupid enough to fall into that trap.
So as he sat back and accepted his second drink at Envy in South Beach, he had to ask himself why he’d let his new sports agent, Teague Upton, talk him into coming to a club. He supposed it was the fact that Teague’s younger brother, Craig, was with them, making it two votes in favor to his one opposed. He could’ve nixed the outing even still. These days, he pretty much got his way whenever he demanded it. But since his former agent had retired, Hudson had only recently signed with Teague, and Teague lived in Miami, was proud of the city and eager to show him around. Not only that, but the game Hudson had flown in to play didn’t take place until Sunday, so boredom had something to do with it. Loneliness was a factor, too—not that he’d ever admit that. He was the guy perceived as having it all. Why destroy such a pleasant illusion? Being that guy was certainly an improvement over the unwanted burden he’d been as a child.
Besides, the owner of Envy had been very accommodating. Because Hudson didn’t want to be signing autographs all night, the club owner had made arrangements with Teague to let them in through the back and had provided them with a private booth in the far corner, where it was so dark it’d be tough to recognize anyone. From his vantage point, Hudson couldn’t see the entire dance floor—and only a small part of the pulsing, lit bar—but he could observe most of what was happening, at least in the immediate vicinity, and that beat hanging out alone in his hotel room, even if the skimpy dresses and curvy bodies of the women created a certain amount of sexual frustration he had little hope of satisfying...
“Hudson, did you hear me?”
Hudson lowered the hurricane drink he’d ordered so that he could respond to Teague’s younger brother. Teague himself had already found a woman to his liking and was hanging out with her closer to the bar. “Yeah?”
“What do you make of that little hottie?” Craig jerked his head toward a buxom blonde gyrating against some skinny, well-dressed dude.
“Not bad,” Hudson admitted. But he wasn’t all that impressed by the blonde. He was far more intrigued by the woman he’d been surreptitiously watching since he arrived. Slender, with her black hair swept up and away from her oval face, she wasn’t as pretty as some of the other women he’d seen tonight, but she wasn’t nearly as plastic, either. She seemed oddly wholesome, given the setting. The poise with which she held herself told him she deserved more attention than she was receiving. At times, she even looked a little bewildered, as if she didn’t understand all the frenetic activity around her, let alone thrived on it. She’d just ordered three shots and downed them all—without anyone looking on or clapping to encourage her, which wasn’t how most party girls did it. Then, while her friends were still off dancing, she’d gotten rid of the evidence and ordered something that looked like a peach margarita.
“Man, I’d like to get me some of that,” Craig was saying about the blonde.
“Go talk to her.” Hudson hoped to be left alone, so he could study the mystery woman at the table nearby without interruption or distraction.
“Can I tell her I’m with you?” Craig laughed as he spoke, so Hudson knew he was joking, but he made his position clear anyway.
“No. Don’t tell anyone I’m here. That would mean I’d have to leave, and I’m enjoying myself at the moment.”
“You are? You didn’t even want to come.”
“I’m glad I did.”
“You’re not doing anything except having a drink...”
At least he was having a drink around other people, so he could have some fun vicariously. “That’s good enough,” he said. “For now.”
“Man, you could change that so easily. All you’d have to do is crook your little finger and you’d have any woman in here.”
Probably not any woman, but more than his fair share. That was part of the problem. Hudson never knew if the women he met were interested in him—or his celebrity. “Fame isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.”
Craig’s expression indicated he was far from convinced. “Are you kidding me, man? I’d give anything to be you. I’d have a different model in my bed every night.”
Hudson didn’t live that way. He hadn’t slept with anyone since his girlfriend broke up with him nearly two years ago. He hadn’t planned on remaining celibate for such an extended period; he just hadn’t found anyone to replace Melody. Not only did he prefer to avoid certain risks—like getting scammed—he didn’t believe it was ethical to set someone up for disappointment. People like him, who struggled to fall in love, should come with a warning label. That was the reason he and Melody had broken up after seven years. She’d come to the conclusion that he’d never be willing to hand over his heart—could never trust enough to let go of it—and she wasn’t interested in anything less. She wanted to marry, settle down and have a family.
He respected her for cutting him off, had realized since that she was right. He’d only stuck with her as long as he did because she was comfortable and safe, not because he felt any great passion.
Still, it was difficult not to call her, especially when he needed the comfort, softness and sexual release a woman could provide. Only his desire to protect her from getting hurt again, since the breakup had been so hard on her, had kept him from relapsing.
“I refuse to be that big a fool,” he told Craig.
Teague’s little brother leaned closer. “What’d you say?”
“Nothing.” Craig wouldn’t understand Hudson’s reluctance to churn through women even if he tried to explain it. Part of it was Craig’s age. At twenty-four, nothing sounded better than sex with as many girls as possible. Hudson had felt the same eight years ago. Only his peculiar background, and that trust issue, had kept him from acting on his baser impulses. Also, he’d achieved some early success through his college play at UCLA, had already had something to protect when he was twenty-four.
“So why don’t you go talk to her?” Hudson pressed, gesturing toward the blonde.
Craig took another sip of his drink. “Think I should?”
The song had ended and she was walking off toward a table on her own. “What do you have to lose? She might shut you down, but then you’ll move on to someone else, right?”
Freshly empowered, Craig put down his glass and slid out of the booth. “Good point. Okay. Here I go.”
As soon as he left, Hudson slid on the sunglasses he kept in his shirt pocket—he was already wearing a ball cap—and called over the waitress. But she was so busy she barely looked at him anyway.
“What can I get for you?”
“That woman over there—what’s she drinking?” He pointed at the lone figure he found so intriguing. He didn’t have to worry about her seeing the gesture, since she had yet to look back at him.
The waitress cast a glance in the direction indicated. “I’d guess a peach margarita.”
As he’d thought. “She needs a fresh one. Will you take care of it?”
“Of course.”
“Thanks.” He handed her a twenty. “Keep the change.”
Copyright © 2017 by Brenda Novak, Inc.