It was as if she were a scientific observer watching a unique species and trying to understand them. She was near the women, but that didn’t make her one of them.
Luckily nobody seemed to notice that she wasn’t bumping along, so she kept that smile plastered on her face and tried to look as though she was enjoying herself.
“We’re here!” Cindy suddenly called out.
Their first stop was Firefly, a Spanish tapas restaurant off Las Vegas Boulevard. Jessica took a deep breath, trying to clear out the crazy idea that she would somehow spot Aaron here.
If she didn’t let that idea go, it was going to spoil her whole weekend. She could either call him or not, but thinking random chance would throw them together was beyond idiotic.
She walked down the steps of the SUV limo carefully, very aware that another near spill like in the airport when this high up would probably end with a trip to the hospital. She wasn’t exactly confident in the heels she was wearing, and was relieved and quite proud of herself when her feet were on asphalt.
Marilyn/Arely—their names were way too similar—followed her out and took a deep breath. “Don’t you love Vegas? This is their December weather!”
Jessica couldn’t agree more. The night air was cool, but not cold enough to cause discomfort despite the thin fabric of her dress, and the air smelled deliciously of spices and seafood. Vegas had a few things going for it, that was for sure. Early December in New York involved biting winds and the musty smell of melting snow mixed in with the garbage. This was much better.
Once all the women successfully climbed out of their outlandish vehicle, they strolled into the restaurant as one mass of femininity. They were seated at a private booth, and several waiters descended on them.
“Hello, ladies,” one began as the other placed pitchers of sangria on the table. “Welcome to Firefly. We will bring out a variety of tapas for you to enjoy once you are settled. Please enjoy your meal and let us know if there is anything we can do to make your evening more pleasant.”
Cindy had told Jessica that the first night’s dinner was all part of whatever package her sorority sisters had picked out for her, but she’d had no idea it would be quite like this. Within minutes, dozens of plates filled with bite-size delicious morsels were spread across the table and her glass was filled with sangria, fruit floating around in it cheerfully. How much had the sorority sisters spent on this? She felt bad for Lacy, the one who had been unable to come and whose place she was currently filling.
These girls all seemed to really love Cindy.
The alcohol was a welcome addition to the evening, and Jessica drank a large glassful to steady herself and throw off her discomfort, and then another to try and help her forget the blue eyes that kept swimming to the front of her consciousness.
By the time they left, she was full and had downed enough sangria to help the next hour or two pass in a blur. She even danced with the other women at some very dark, very loud nightclub. She laughed and shouted with them, just one of the girls. This wasn’t college anymore, where she’d been too tall and awkward, too much of a homebody to let loose like this.
As they made it to their last stop of the evening, however, the alcohol was wearing off and she’d begun to get back to her old self, and her old self was very uncomfortable with the fact that she was walking into a strip club.
She would have fun, though. How bad could it be?
As she was ushered along into the side of the Sapphire Club designated for female clientele, her mind began to recoil at the mostly nude women leading the way to the other section of the club. Not because they were nearly naked—that could’ve been even a bit exciting if her drinks weren’t wearing off. It was because they were not the sexy alluring women she’d expected. Instead they looked like any other bored women stuck at work. With the exception of their clothing, of course.
The men were worse. They were handsome, to an extent, and all had some pretty impressive abs, but as soon as the show began, Jessica knew she was not where she wanted to be. Something about it bothered her, and though she knew it was supposed to be fun to ogle the strippers, she just couldn’t bring herself to do it.
After a few minutes, she made a decision. She walked over to Cindy, who was surrounded by giggling friends and dancing men in their underwear. Leaning in to her friend’s ear, Jessica pressed on Cindy’s arm to get her attention. “I’m going outside for some fresh air. It’s okay, I’m having fun,” she continued quickly, seeing that her friend was about to scold. “I just need to take a walk. Enjoy yourself and I’ll see you in a little bit!”
She smiled as she walked away to show Cindy that everything was fine, then turned around and got out of there as quickly as she could.
Outside, the air was fresh and clean. She took deep breaths of it, enjoying the sensation as it ran through her, just cold enough to tickle her lungs. She moved away from the door and began strolling, slightly unsteadily in her too-tall shoes, around the parking lot. She considered taking them off and walking barefoot, but she didn’t want to even imagine what kind of diseases she could catch if she stepped on something.
She was a little disappointed in herself at first, thinking she should have stuck it out and tried to enjoy the show.
When she thought about it, though, she knew it wouldn’t have worked. All the other women seemed to think those men grinding against them was fantastic, but it just wasn’t in her nature. She was only attracted to guys who were intelligent, never wasting time drooling over handsome men she didn’t know.
Well, except for the one.
Jessica pulled the folded paper from her purse, looking again at the blocky writing. She wanted to tell herself that he seemed smart, though she had no idea how she could’ve decided that in the few seconds of their interaction—he’d used a bookmark to give her his number, after all. Not that she had any idea what book it had been, but it seemed thick enough to be important and literary.
It seemed much more likely that she was just as shallow as everyone else and swooned the moment she saw a sexy cowboy. That had to be all it was, which was a relief, in a way, because that would make him easier to forget.
Jessica kept walking, considering for the thousandth time whether or not to call him. Then she had the urge to call her family and check on them, at least as a way to occupy her mind and stop herself from doing something incredibly foolish. But it was past four in the morning in New York, far too late at night to call without a very good reason.
Her mom would kill her if she called that late, but it didn’t stop Jessica from wanting to feel near them. Since her father’s diagnosis a year ago, she had seen her family nearly every day, and even if it was a burden sometimes, the distance now clawed at her nerves.
Not being around for four days, not helping with medicine, driving to the doctor visits and helping her mom and sister seemed an impossibly long time. What if something happened? She hadn’t been away more than two days at a time in the past year, and his six months to live had come and gone. He was still battling away, but she knew what could happen.
When Jessica was asked to take Lacy’s place on the Vegas trip, her father was the one who did most of the convincing. He had squeezed her hand and said, “You need a vacation. Enjoy yourself for a few days just this once.”
And now here she was, wandering through a strip club parking lot in the early hours of the morning. She doubted this was what he’d had in mind.
Jessica finished her circuit of the lot and was beginning another when a small mob of people stumbled out of the entrance, laughing loudly and chattering at the top of their lungs. They had to be absolutely smashed. She glanced at the party to see if any of Cindy’s friends needed to be rescued, but none of them were in the group. There was someone she did recognize, though, and the sight stopped her in her tracks. She couldn’t have been more shocked if someone walked up and slapped her in the face.
It was him. Straight out of her fairy tale and back into the real world, only not like her fairy tale at all. Aaron.
At first she couldn’t believe it, but it was definitely Aaron from the airport. The same man, this time with his muscular arms wrapped around two women who were wearing little more than the strippers, and he was laughing and joking while staring down the too-low top of the girl on his right.
3
APPARENTLY HER IMAGINED version of him was not quite true to life.
Judging by the cowboy’s ogling, he wasn’t the kind of guy to walk up and whisper words of love unless they were helping him get into a woman’s pants. It seemed pretty clear that he hadn’t given her his number because of some special magical connection. He just saw a girl who was obviously attracted to him and he thought she’d be an easy lay.
If only her body would get the message and stop tingling.
She had pictured seeing him again in some strange happenstance, only now that it had happened, she was forced to abandon her fantasy world for harsh reality.
That was when Jessica realized she was standing in a pool of light from a streetlamp and staring bug-eyed at the group, and that he’d notice her any second if she didn’t do something about it. She turned away, looking desperately for a place to hide before she was spotted.