Page 251 of A Matter of Time

The lounge wasn’t as crowded as usual since it was Monday night, but it wouldn’t have mattered if it were. Aaron Sutter was given the same preferential treatment as Dane or Rick Jenner. Money bought clout, and if you were a patron of a certain place, when they saw you, they moved fast to take care of you. The manager was fast getting to us, and we were seated at a private table near the fireplace, away from the noise of the bar. I ordered a Jack and Coke and sat there staring out the window as Aaron spoke to the waiter.

“Hey.”

I looked back at him resting his chin on his hand, absorbing me with his eyes.

“It’s a nice jacket.”

“Thanks.”

“Why don’t you take it off and stay a while?”

I smiled and shed my racing jacket, hanging it behind my chair.

“You look good,” he said softly.

“You too.”

He breathed in deeply. “So tell me all about Dane’s big day. Any juicy stories? Any women charging down the aisle after him, screaming about not holding their peace?”

I smiled wide. “No, nothing like that.”

“I’m sure Aja was stunning.”

“Yeah, she was.”

“All right, then, speak.”

I told him all about the wedding and the reception and had his eyes watering with laughter over Dane’s groomsmen and the sorry state they were in. I drank, and he listened and ate. I told him about the date I had been on with Brandon Rossi earlier in the evening, and all about Aubrey Flanagan and Rick Jenner. I listened when he told me his war stories from Hong Kong, and how badly he had mangled Mandarin while he’d been there. He had studied the language for a year before going, but in actual practice, he stank. I was laughing as I listened to him tell me about the food he’d ended up eating because he got his nouns mixed up.

“I really missed you,” he said, suddenly serious, his eyes locked on mine.

I smiled at him because it was a nice thing to say.

“Did you miss me at all?”

“Yes,” I said, because I had, just not like he wanted.

“Come home with me.”

My eyes flicked to my empty highball glass instead of his face.

“Jory.”

I finally looked across the table into the clear turquoise-blue eyes.

“You’re a mess,” he said with a chuckle. “Let me take care of you.”

“I’m good,” I assured him.

“You drink too much, Jory.”

It was an old argument that he was never going to win. I knew my tolerance, even though no one else seemed to believe me. At Dane’s wedding, for instance, I had one glass of champagne with the toast, and that was all for the entire night. People mistook me for an alcoholic, and that wasn’t the case.

“And I don’t want you to end up in some guy’s bed because you fell in.”

This was what our last conversation had degenerated into when we broke up. He was sure I would end up in the gutter without him, as that was, apparently, where I’d been when he found me. He had wanted to know why I didn’t want my life to be good, why I couldn’t let myself have nice things, and why I couldn’t leave the self-destructive party boy behind. It was time to grow up and start a life with someone, he said. Time to make a commitment to being a boyfriend and a partner… I wouldn’t be young forever. Drinking until all hours of the morning, sleeping with nameless men, how was that good for me? He was offering me a life people would kill for; why would I ever turn him down?

“Jory?”