Confession. It isn’t going very well.

I had never been to Cintano’s before. But if a girl is going to try and get herself laid, she may as well go to the top place in town for it. On Saturday night.

This was the new me—or, should I say, newer than the last new me. I was going to be bold and sexy. Adventurous. But I was also going to be confident and in control. I wasn’t going to be the sad-sack cheating victim Josh had made me out to be, or the pathetic hard-up girl who begged Nick Mason to have sex with her. I also wasn’t going to be the boring bank teller with “marriage material” on an invisible sign over her head. None of the guys at this bar knew me, so I was going to be someone new, and sexy, and fun, just for one night.

Fuck Nick Mason and his stupid scruples. Just fuck them.

There were plenty of men in Millwood. Nick Mason wasn’t the only one. I would go pick another one. Easy.

While my roommate Heather blared Howard Jones in her room, I picked out a wrap dress from my closet: basic black, knee length to cover my ass, with a deep V neck. I added a silver necklace and a pair of heels. On a wave of inspiration, I picked up the jean jacket Nick had lent me and tried it on. The look was dressy and classy, overlaid with the sharp denim, and I liked it.

I was adjusting the jacket when I noticed something in the breast pocket. I pulled it out and found a business card. Andrew Mason, programmer. Specializing in PHP. There was a phone number and an email. Huh. Who was Andrew Mason? A brother or a cousin? The jacket was a too small to fit Nick, but it was definitely a guy’s jacket, big enough to give cover to my ample boobs, though I had to roll the cuffs.

Whatever. Nick was a mystery in a lot of ways, but he wasn’t one I was going to ponder tonight. I put the card back in the jacket pocket, blow-dried my hair, put on some makeup, and headed out.

I only had a mild panic attack when I got out of the Uber in front of the bar. And a second one—again, mild—as the bouncer waved me through. Oh, God, I was in Cintano’s. To pick up. Right. Let’s do this.

There was a dance floor, already full, ringed with tables, chairs, and booths in lots of dark nooks and crannies. A huge bar lined the back wall, lit with cunning little lights inside the bar and above it, so you could see what you were ordering and paying, but not a whole lot else. The whole place smelled like perfume, cologne, dank dance floor sweat, and sweet mixed drinks.

I walked to the bar and ordered a white wine. I was dressed to kill and obviously on my own—should I find a guy and talk to him? Or would he talk to me? Even in the bad old days I’d met guys through work, school, or friends, so I’d never done this before. But I got my glass of wine and nothing happened, so I sipped it like a loser, wondering what was next.

There was lots of traffic at the bar. The guys were dressed up—nice dress shirts, styled hair, some of them with necklaces or rings. There was a lot of cologne. They weren’t the kind of guys I’d dated before, but they weren’t hideous either, and that was what this night was about. Someone new. Someone different.

Too late, I realized why women tended to come to these places in groups. Right now even Dar, or Heather, my roommate, would be better than standing here like a stick.

“Hi,” a guy next to me said. He nodded to me as the bartender slid his drinks to him.

“Hi,” I said back.

“Nice night, huh?” he said.

“Yeah,” I said.

He nodded again, picked up his drinks, and walked off.

That was when I started to panic. I wasn’t feeling confident anymore. I looked down and realized I’d drunk my wine too fast, but I needed another glass, or I’d be standing here with nothing in my hand. So I ordered another.

I was about to pull out my phone and pretend to be talking to someone when another male voice said, “Hi.”

I turned. This guy was all right: short dark hair brushed forward, a blazer and a shirt unbuttoned at the throat. I could work with this. “Hi,” I said.

“You here alone?” he asked. I mostly got the words by lip-reading, the music was so loud.

I nodded in answer.

“Come sit with me and my friends,” the guy said. “Let’s hang out.”

He pointed, and I looked past him. In a booth, watching us and nodding, were five other guys. Five. Two of them had backward baseball caps on. While the others weren’t looking, one of them waggled his tongue at me.

Um, that was a lot of men. There was no woman in sight. “You have a lot of guy friends,” I said.

“Come on,” the man said, ignoring me. “You like to party? We like to party.”

The guys in the booth waved. The tongue guy waggled his tongue again.

Great. I’d apparently replaced my Marriage Material sign with one that said Please date rape me. “I’m okay,” I said, the all-time lame version of No, fuck off that every woman seems to use in a situation like this. “I’ll just stand here.”

“It’s a good time!” the guy said, standing closer.

So I used the second weapon that women use in bars. “I have to go to the bathroom,” I said, and walked away.

Should I actually go to the bathroom? Was he watching? Why did I care? I ditched my drink—that creep had probably roofied it—and kept walking toward the back of the bar. Operation Get Laid hadn’t lasted fifteen minutes before a retreat to the ladies’ room. I needed a break before round two.

Forty-five minutes later, I was sweaty, tired, and depressed. I was going to die without ever having sex again, and I had the creeping feeling that my hair smelled like cologne. I might have to burn this dress, which sucked, because I liked it. If this was the selection to choose from of the male of the species, I was totally doomed.

The crowd was a thick, solid wall of bodies now, and I was making my way slowly through it on sore feet to make an escape when my phone buzzed. I looked at the display. It was Nick.

I tried not to feel excited. I really did. But when I couldn’t hear him over the pounding music, I had a moment of panic until my phone buzzed again with a text. Where are you?

I didn’t know why he was asking. Did he care? He was probably at a party himself somewhere, like he was every night. Maybe even with some girl he wasn’t saying no to. Cintano’s, I wrote.

What are you doing there?

That made me mad. He didn’t have to know I was teetering on the brink of existential despair, so I wrote You told me to find someone to fuck me. And you won’t do it. So here I am.

He didn’t answer that. Maybe he didn’t care. Maybe he was too busy with what’s-her-name (I already pictured someone better-looking than me in my head) to use his thumb anymore. Too bad.

People bumped in to me, and someone stepped on my foot. I wasn’t cut out for this; I had to face it. The fight went out of me as I looked at the long distance from me to the faraway exit. Confession, I typed to Nick almost without thinking. It isn’t going very well.

I’ll be right there, he wrote back. Don’t move.

My stomach flipped. In that split second, I forgot about my shitty situation and our fake relationship and our almost-fight, because Nick was coming to get me.

It wasn’t that I couldn’t get out of here on my own; I could. But right now, in the middle of this crowd, I was so lonely I wanted nothing more than to see a familiar face. His face.

I didn’t know exactly where he’d find me, so I spent twenty more minutes making my way through the crowd toward the door. My hair was sticking to my neck and my bra was digging into my ribs under the wrap dress. I had just made it to the thinning crowd near the door—and had gulped down a precious breath of fresh air—when I did, indeed, see a familiar face. Just not the one I wanted.

Gina was wearing a red dress that hung off her perfect frame like a tunic, barely covering her ass. Her hair was long and glorious down her back, and her legs went for miles before ending in three-inch heels. She was with two other women, and she was rifling through her tiny clutch for something. Then she looked up and saw me.

I didn’t know what to do. I was sort of frozen. What I really wanted was to turn and run away, but that would look bad. I could put my chin up and look snobby, maybe, but even I knew my face wasn’t very convincing that way. So I just settled for standing there, once again like a loser, while she came toward me.

“Where is he?” she said. Her perfectly made-up eyes were staring at me like lasers, her nicely glossed lips terrifying in their pouty beauty.

Nick? Did she mean Nick? Why was she asking about him? “He’s coming,” I said.

She rolled her eyes. “Sure he is. Because you’re totally dating, right?” She looked me up and down, her perfect tongue touching the corner of her mouth. “He’d never date a girl like you. You’re not his type. That’s why you’re at this bar alone. Trying to pick up, huh?”

Jesus. “Butt out,” I told her, narrowing my eyes. “Why are you here? Where’s Josh?”

“I’m on a girls’ night out. And I know exactly where Josh is,” Gina said, putting a slight emphasis on my ex-boyfriend’s name. “Josh is not your problem, honey. Nick is.”

“What does that even mean?” I was angry and helpless at the same time, and I didn’t know why. It was just the sight of her, when the last time—the only time—I’d seen her, she’d been half-naked after fucking my boyfriend.

“Josh told me about you,” Gina said. “Little Miss Mommy’s Girl. Practically picking out rings. You think Nick is going to fall for that?” She tutted. “He’ll use you and dump you, if he even bothers. You’re a total fucking bore, and you need to stop eating so much cheesecake. And I’m supposed to believe this little lie that he’s fucking you?”

My mouth opened, and the words came out automatically, like a bitch reflex. “He keeps his condoms in the top right drawer of his bathroom vanity,” I said. “We used three of them last night.”

Gina paused, her glossed lips parted as she stared at me.

“He likes blow jobs,” I said. “A lot.” This was an educated guess, because Nick. Also, every guy liked blow jobs a lot. “He likes it best when I swallow.” Again, this was Nick—another educated guess. “Also, fuck you. Can I go now?”

She still looked at me, as if assessing whether I was lying, and suddenly I was so close to saying it: Josh is cheating on you. It was the truth, and I knew it, and she didn’t. She wasn’t so different from me. I could say those words and hurt her right now. I could ruin her snooty girls’ night out with her snooty friends in her tiny red dress. I could tell her about Alison and Valentine’s Day and all the things I knew.

And I didn’t. It was partly because we were standing in a bar, with people walking by, and I had a complete revulsion for having this conversation here. But it also came from a second reason: I wasn’t mean. I wanted to be. Right now, I wished I was. But I wasn’t.

Gina’s gaze flicked to something past my shoulder, and she licked the corner of her mouth again. It was probably a nervous tic of hers that men found unbearably sexy.

Someone came up behind me, and I smelled leather and laundry soap as a male chest pressed to my back. Nick’s familiar hand came around my waist from behind, and instead of simply grabbing me, he played it just right: he slid his hand over my belly, his palm warm through the fabric of my dress, taking in my contours as he took his time, ending by cupping his fingers over my hipbone. At the same time he tugged me back so he was pressed flush against me, his hand angling me so my ass was pressed snugly against his hips. All of this right in front of Gina’s surprised expression.

And just like that, my body woke up, my blood singing, every nerve ending alive. I didn’t even have to look at him—just his hand, big and sculpted, pressing against my hip and the fabric of my dress, his arm clad in black leather, the two familiar bracelets on his wrist. I’d seen a hundred men tonight, and I’d met half a dozen, and the thought of a single one of them putting a hand on me like this made my stomach turn. And when this one man touched me, everything went nuts.

He dipped his head so his lips brushed the side of my neck. “You ready to go, babe?” he said in that awesome low voice of his, making my pussy throb with the vibration of it.

I put my hand over his. “Yes,” I said.

He paused for a second, and I could tell he was reading me. The tension in my body, the rise and fall of my breath, my grip on his hand. He was reading exactly what I was feeling. Then he lowered his lips again and kissed the side of my neck—just a brief kiss, gentle and familiar, as if we did this all the time. He ignored my sweaty skin and my sticky hair and just kissed me.

And in that one, wild second, while he did that, I was absolutely fucking crazy about him. I would have done anything for him at all.

He lifted his head again, and I remembered Gina. She was standing there. This was all for her benefit. A good show, really. Maybe he wanted to make her jealous. Maybe that mattered to him. I didn’t really know, did I?

Nick took a step back, pulling me with him. He turned toward the exit, his hip against mine, his arm still around me. He looked at Gina over his shoulder. “Excuse us while you go fuck yourself,” he said, and led me away.