Chapter 1
Kennedy
I was the first one to arrive at the bar. Apparently, it seemed like everyone else had other things to do. Was it too eager of me to turn up there so early? I tried not to think about it as I sat at our usual table and ordered a beer.
Eventually, nearly twenty minutes later, my friends Carly and Sarah turned up.
“Kenni! Look at you!” Sarah squealed. It was strange that she was making such a show of seeing me. We got together for brunch just a week ago. The three of us hugged and as soon as we sat down, our friends Silvia and Mona walked into the bar.
Carly and Sarah squealed again and the four of them fell into tight hugs. It was almost like they were loving the attention…no, it wasn’t almost that. It was definitely that. Nothing had changed since high school. My friends loved the attention. They enjoyed the fact that other people at the bar were now turning to look at our table.
I still wondered, even though I’d known these girls for a decade now, why they included me in their group. I was nothing like them. Sarah and Mona used to be in the cheerleading team. Silvia and Carly were equally popular.
I was neither.
I guessed the reason was Ava.
Ava and I had been best friends since fourth grade. She’d picked me—the dorky redhead—out of everyone in class, to sit beside. Ava on the other hand, was a beautiful raven-haired stunner. She was the kind of girl everyone wanted to be friends with. Every guy in high school wanted to bang.
It was no surprise that Carly, Sarah, Silvia and Mona had naturally gravitated to her. And since I was Ava’s best friend, they had no choice but to include me in that group.
By now, I’d grown to like them. I wasn’t nearly as close to them as I was with Ava, of course—but they were my friends. I’d known them for what felt like forever.
“It’s a shame Ava couldn’t make it,” Sarah said, when we finally settled down.
“She has a thing tonight,” I spoke up, gripping the bottle of beer in my hand.
“I’ve been looking forward to this night all week!” Carly declared, rolling her eyes.
“Me too. Nobody warns you that it gets harder as your baby grows up,” Silvia added.
“How old is she now?” Mona asked.
“Two and three months, and it’s only getting worse. Thankfully Steven helps out when he can, but he works a lot. I can’t blame him,” Silvia replied.
“Oh, he’s a good dad. I can’t say the same for Chad. I mean, he’s trying…he’s really trying, you guys. But sometimes I feel like he just doesn’t have the daddy genes in him. You know?” Sarah said.
“Oh, honey! It’ll be okay. At least he’s trying. It could be a lot worse!” Carly leaned in towards her to give her a hug.
I drank some more of my beer. I didn’t really have anything to contribute to this conversation. I wasn’t married and I didn’t have a kid. In fact, I couldn’t even remember when my last serious relationship was. While my friends were dropping into the marriage game like flies, I was the only one left standing.
“Last night, Jordan called me up at nine…right after I took the roast chicken out of the oven. He tells me, he can’t make it home for dinner because he has an important client meeting,” Carly said with a sizzle in her voice.
The others rolled their eyes in unison. We’d been hearing about Jordan and his antics for months now. Carly was clearly unhappy. The last time I gave her my advice—which was to dump his ass, the others gasped.
She can’t divorce him now. Not for another few years at least! They don’t have a kid yet. She’ll be losing out on child support!
I didn’t understand. If you were unhappy, you got out. Right? Sometimes I asked Ava if any of our friends were happy. Because all they did was bitch and moan about their husbands and how having babies had ruined their perfect figures. Ava always laughed at that, and said I was too naive and too romantic. She insisted that real life was exactly like that. I loved Ava, but I thought she was wrong.
I’d made up my mind. I wasn’t going to commit to anyone or anything unless I felt true happiness. The kind that would make me leap out of bed every morning with joy. A reason to start the day with a skip in my step.
Carly’s squeal interrupted my thoughts. I saw now that Mona was showing them photographs of her recent trip to Paris. The others were crowded around her phone, swiping through the photographs and bursting with excitement at how lucky she was.
Had they forgotten about how miserable Carly was just a few days before that? She’d found incriminating text messages from some other girl on her husband’s phone. That Paris trip was a way for him to apologize and she’d fallen straight for it.
I chugged my beer again. None of them had even noticed that I wasn’t a part of their conversation. They were immersed in exchanging notes on their pseudo-fabulous lives. I wished I could be happy for them.
With a sigh, I looked around the place. My eyes fell on a guy sitting at the bar. I could only see his profile and realized that he looked familiar. He looked a lot like Nico Rossi.
I focused on his profile, looking past the people who were blocking my path of vision. It couldn’t be him! He was still in Seattle?
The more I stared at him now, the more I was sure. There was no mistaking it. It was Nico. I hadn’t seen him in six years, not since high school…but I would have recognized that face anywhere.
He had the same dark hair, bronze glistening skin and gray eyes. His features were chiseled, like cut out of a marble rock. In the past years, he’d grown more handsome, more masculine.
I could see the way his biceps bulged under the thin cotton t-shirt he was wearing. The width of his muscular shoulders. Everything about Nico Rossi was delicious now. Just like it always was.
I gulped as I stared at him. Around me, my friends continued talking. They hadn’t even noticed me staring at a guy at the bar.
Nico appeared to be deep in thought. In a crowded place like this, there was little chance that he would have noticed me anyway.
I still couldn’t believe it was him. He’d left high school so abruptly, disappeared without a trace. Just when I was beginning to have hopes that something could happen between us.
Unlike me, Nico had always been popular in high school. He didn’t have to try too hard. He was crazy-handsome, in that bad-boy way all our mothers warned us about. He was the quiet type, a loner…and had a reputation for dating hot older girls.
I knew I was nowhere on his radar. I didn’t think he even knew I existed. But then one night, he turned up at a house party. Nico didn’t usually make an appearance at those things. He was too ‘cool’ for them.
Was it pure luck that we got talking that night? It seemed to me like it was. My friends were all getting drunk and making out with guys who usually turned out to be bad kissers.
Nico and I remained sitting on a couch, talking in hushed tones and making fun of people. That was the first time I ever spoke to him. That was the first time he’d even known of my existence.
He was too good looking; I couldn’t help but want him to kiss me. Then miraculously; he did. It was a slow sensual kiss. Right there on the couch, with pop music playing in the background. When he kissed me, it felt like he had my heart in his hands. Nobody had kissed me like that before.
“Nico…” I’d whispered breathily when he pulled his mouth away from me.
“Not tonight. I want to take you to dinner first,” he’d whispered in my ear.
I thought he was asking me on a date. I imagined us going to dinner, then going back to his car…and him taking my virginity. But that dinner never happened.
After that house party, I waited for him to call, I looked for him in the school—but it seemed like Nico had just fallen off the face of the earth. He never came back to school, nobody seemed to know where he’d gone. My hopes and dreams of a big romance with Nico Rossi was crushed.
And now, he was right there, at the bar. Just a few feet away from me.
And I was bored. My friends didn’t even notice me.
There was only one thing to do.