Waking Up in Vegas(57)

I bristled–that wasn’t entirely accurate. There was a woman (whose name escapes me) that I’d met on the Friday before Memorial Day, and she didn’t get the goodbye flowers until the Tuesday after. However, and of much more importance, we’d been discussing Jensen and the idiot had to go and utter sex. The context surrounding the word wasn’t relevant–the images bloomed like Pop-Up Video.

Fan-fucking-tastic.

I throttled my thoughts and made a conscious effort to stay on topic. “I don’t live in a bubble, Doc–I know how women are. I’m intentionally never around when the confusion and conflicting behavior starts. It’s painful to watch. I just thought she was… different.”

My favorite tenty-fingers popped up, right on schedule. “She is different, Tack. Different enough for you to care about her, and different because you care about her. But if you think she’s sending mixed signals, it’s nothing compared to what she’s doing to herself.”

I blew out a loud breath. “She’s still leaving.”

“You didn’t honestly think that smileys on a steamy mirror and telling her that you objected to her leaving would make her stay, did you?”

Well, yeah. A guy can hope. “I’m not that stupid.”

As far as you know.

“Like we talked about last time,” he said, starting with the bouncy steepled fingers, “it’s the little things that make or break a relationship. Keep up with the small gestures that say she’s always on your mind.”

“She is. So that should be easy enough.” Unlike how damn hard it was to not slap my hands over his and smash those clichéd fingers into the desk top. Maybe next session I should wear mirrored sunglasses so I can glare at him incognito.

“And then give her some time, Tack. She’s working through it in her own mind, too.”

I only had nine days. There wasn’t much time left to give.



Six months ago, if you’d have told me I’d choose staying home over going out on a Friday night, I’d have clocked you upside the head. Then again, I also never conceived that I would have any sort of reason to stay home. After all, I went out for the poontang, not the dancing.

Yet there I was, sitting on the floor, playing Shots Chess with Jen. The rules were simple enough–if one of your pieces got captured, you had to take a shot. Every time she tipped her head back to down one, I snuck one or two of her white game pieces back onto the board so she’d keep losing them. I think she’d had too much Jameson’s to realize that I only had one of her knights and a pawn off the board.

Maybe she was frustrated, like me, or maybe she just wanted to get blind drunk.

Also, like me.

After all, she’d wanted to play Strip Chess, and I had to nix that in a big hurry. I needed to prove that what we shared was more than lust, and that wasn’t going to be possible if either–or both–of us had no clothes on.

I was only wearing sweats and a tee. Losing just two pawns would have left me totally naked, and no fucking way was I going to sit on the scratchy carpet of my living room bare-assed and trying to hide the Jensen perma-rection. Don’t ask what possessed me to ditch the Calvin Klein boxer briefs with my jeans earlier. If I even had a reason. I couldn’t possibly tell you what it was now. There was too much Irish whiskey whizzing around my brain.

She moved her bishop and slurred out, “Sheck. Now you hafta tack off your shirt, Take.” Jen was pointing at me with her empty shotglass.

It took me a minute to process that she’d put my queen in check, and when it sank in, I scowled. “Takin’ off my shir’ss not in the rules.”

“Iddis now.” I think she tried to wink at me, but don’t quote me on that. Her face wouldn’t hold still in my vision. Must’ve been the angle; I was on the floor and she was sitting miles above me on the couch. “An’ since I made ‘em up, I can shange ‘em.”

I couldn’t argue with that.

No, seriously.

I wanted to argue my side, but when I tried to think of the words, all I got was a blank chalkboard.

I went back to trying to make out which piece was my queen. “I doan like your chess board. The pieces woan hold still.”

“Iss not them. You’re drunk, Tick.” Jen grabbed the bottle and poured herself another shot for no reason.

I focused on the tallest black chess piece in the sea of shorter white ones. At least, I think they were shorter. They were definitely white, at any rate. While she was knocking back her shot, I snatched what I hoped was my queen off the board.

“I saw that, you cheeder!” Jen dropped her shotglass and launched across the table, tackling me into the carpet.