“Come on, Mae. I’m still attracted to you. Hell, I never stopped being attracted to you. You’re beautiful, kind, smart and witty. You’re driven, and I see you’ve changed a lot since getting out on your own.”
She rolls her pretty lips under her teeth as she nods, probably trying to overthink what I’m about to say next. “Give me a shot. Spend the night with me? It doesn’t have to be anything more, but I want you. We don’t even have to do anything. Let’s catch up like old times.”
She hesitates and I can see the wheels turning before she nods. “Okay. One night. That’s it.”
And I’m already on my feet, waving the server over to pay the check.
Chapter 15: Mae
I’m not going to sleep with a client.
I can't sleep with a client.
I won’t sleep with a client.
Fuck, I’m going to sleep with Cody Cameron, aren’t I?
Cody walks to the kitchen of his beautifully decorated apartment in the heart of the city and pours two glasses of whiskey at my request.
To me, wine has always been an intimate drink—one that encourages deep conversations, where you purposefully catch up, relax, and unwind.
Whiskey, on the other hand, is for the messy. It's for heartbreak, grief, and healing. Difficult conversations and dirty sex. It isn't a celebratory drink like vodka or tequila; it's for those who are broken and in need of forgetting - orremembering.
I've done lots of healing over the past few years.
Healing from the control that my parents wielded over me for most of my life.
Healing from Vance's abuse and the regret I felt in allowing myself to be manipulated into marrying him.
Healing from an unexpected, unplanned pregnancy.
And healing from a lost picture of what my future should have looked like in my mind.
But none of that included healing from the way that Cody Cameron broke my heart when I was just a young girl. When he'd given up on us so easily at my parents' demands and the way it felt to say goodbye one year later the summer before leaving for college.
He’d said it’d be better that way for both of us. A clean slate since we were both leaving for college.
I’m realizing now that I haven’t had a chance to properly grieve our love after we parted ways and maybe this, this last night spent together with him, is the closure that I’ve been seeking for all these years.
“You want to sit on the porch? Sometimes I sit out there and look at the crazy bachelorette parties that run up and down the sidewalks. I swear Nashville is the hub for that kind of thing.”
I laugh easily. “Sure. That sounds nice.”
We settle into two chairs that he has situated on the balcony as we sip our whiskey in silence, enjoying the laughter that’s filtering up from the street below us.
"It's hard to believe that so much time has passed since we last saw each other,” he says, breaking the silence.
I nod, remembering our last days together and how my heart broke wondering if we’d ever see each other again. But then life happened, I met Vance, got pregnant, and he was pushed towards the deep recesses of my mind. A faded memory of my youth, gone way too soon.
"Did you ever ask about me when you left for college?" I ask, nervous to know the truth.
He sets his glass down and turns to face me. "The summer after we graduated and spent every day together, I couldn't stop trying to figure out a way to make things work long distance. ButI knew you were staying in Texas, and I was going to Michigan. There was no way we could have made things work while your parents were bankrolling your education and controlling your decisions."
He sighs and I feel that familiar squeeze in my chest. The same one that I get anytime I remember the way my parents controlled my every move back then. "The fall of my freshmen year, I heard through a friend I'd made in college that the new rookie signed to theThunderhawk'swas marrying a girl from Lonestar Junction. Something in my gut told me it was you. One night, I googled Vance's name to find a photo of you draped on his arm, wearing his jersey. It absolutely crushed me to think we'd just been together, and you were already marrying some other guy, let alone a player in the NFL. It made me feel like our love had been dispensable."
I swallow and nod my head, realizing now how terrible that must have made him feel to see that practically immediately after we split. When I’ve looked back at those photos of myself from the early days, the hollowness and sadness behind my eyes makes me unrecognizable. My hair was shorter, my face caked with makeup to cover up the stress acne from all the worries I had around being pregnant by a man I hardly knew, and didn’t trust, and my eyes were empty and dull. I'd been in a dark haze, pressured into the marriage and struggling to come to terms with Elsie’s pregnancy.
They were some of the darkest days of my life.
