Starting Over by Mia Malone

Chapter Four

Hung over

Rosie

The women from the book club joined Momo and me, and after some debate, it turned out that fortifying oneself for discussions with biker presidents was not done with wine.

It was done with Tequila.

After a couple of shots, we agreed that fortifying really was another word for dancing, so we strutted our asses around to Aerosmith and the likes. It was sweet music, but on the few occasions I’d danced in the past decade, it had been to mainstream pop from the latest charts, so I wasn’t sure precisely what moves were involved, but no one laughed at me or seemed to mind.

We decided to fortify me with some more liquid courage, and things went a little downhill after that.

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d let go and had such a blast before, though, and smiled happily as I plopped my behind down on a bench next to the fire-pit in the gazebo.

Eye and Dagger joined us, and then Finn came strolling.

Tony was standing on the other side of the patio, which I tried to ignore.

Our eyes met like they had done several times during the evening, and I tried frantically to remember that he was Tony-the-jerk, but a little voice in my head kept saying that he’d apologized, his mother had yelled at him, and everyone had told me to listen to what he had to say.

That voice also kept pushing the point that he really was amazingly handsome.

“So, Rosie,” Eye said. “What are you going to do now that you’re unemployed?”

“I have no clue,” I said happily. “I need to find a new job, but I can spend some months figuring it out. Might sell my house, and then I have a lot more time to decide what to do next.”

“Sell –”

“Huge,” I said and nodded sagely but also slightly drunkenly. “Worth a shitload of blood money, so I hate it.”

“Blood... money?” Eye drawled, and I giggled stupidly to hide the fact that I had not meant to tell them that.

“So, anyway, I need to figure out what to do,” I said breezily. “Might... You know? I don’t know.”

“You could be a model,” Momo squeaked, and I turned slowly to stare at her. “You could,” she insisted.

“Not really,” I said.

I didn’t look like dog-poop, but I wasn’t exactly model material, and I was fifty-three years old.

“You probably could, and there are a lot of models your age,” Dagger said, and I stared at him. “I could call some of my old contacts.”

“Contacts,” I echoed in a weak mumble.

“Dagger,” a chorus of voices said warningly.

“Yeah,” Dagger said. “I was a model for a few years. Didn’t feel like going to college straight out of high school, and it paid well.”

“Dagger,” Momo snapped, suddenly sounding unhappy. “I do not think Rosie wants to be in that kind of pictures.”

“What kind of pictures?” both Dagger and I asked at the same time.

There was a short silence, and then Janelle mumbled, “Pornography.”

I turned to stare at Dagger, who was blinking furiously.

“You were in nude pictures?” I breathed out, turned to Eye, and added, “We worked together for two years, and you never told me you have a porno-brother?”

We hadn’t really talked about anything private and sharing that one’s family was in the adult entertainment business might not be the first thing to disclose.

But still.

“I –”

Whatever Eye had been about to say was cut short by Dagger, who sounded as if he didn’t know whether he should roar or laugh.

“I wasn’t a goddamned porn model,” he barked. “Why the hell would you even think that?”

The women looked at each other, and then Momo leaned forward.

“You weren’t doing porn?” she asked, eyes full of confusion. “Were you a regular model? Like toothpaste commercials and shit?”

“Of course, I wasn’t a –” Dagger choked on nothing at all, but then he pushed out a short laugh. “You all think I did porn?”

The women looked uncomfortable suddenly, and I decided to step in and save them.

“It isn’t so strange, Dagger,” I said with what I hoped was a sweet smile, although I mainly wanted to laugh. “You totally look like a porn star.”

Someone sat down on the bench behind me, and a strong arm took a firm grip around my waist when I swiveled around to see who it was and almost fell off the bench.

“Exactly how would you know, Rosalind?” Tony said with a distinct smirk in his voice. “Watching that kind of movies often?”

My mouth fell open, and I felt a blush creep up my cheeks when I heard the hoots and snickers around me.

How the hell had the situation changed into this?

“No,” I said weakly.

“Of course, you don’t,” he said affably, but his grin shared that he did not believe me. That grin looked happy and sexy, and it distracted me, so I didn’t move away when he leaned closer. “I wouldn’t judge you if you did,” he breathed into my ear, and the warm puff of air sent a shiver down my spine.

“Um,” I mumbled and tried to come up with something clever to say.

“Just saying,” he said with another mind-befuddling grin and straightened to look at Dagger. “So, you really weren’t doing porn? We all thought so.”

The mayhem that erupted was a whirlwind of laughter and accusations, and I threw my comments into it all. I swayed a little, but Tony was straddling the bench and held his hands on my hips so I was pretty sure I wouldn’t topple over. I leaned to the side and twisted my head around to look at him.

“I’m a little bit ipsy-tipsy,” I shared.

“I know,” he said. “I won’t let you fall.”

“Thank you,” I said primly and turned back to the discussion, which had moved on to discuss if Dagger’s underwear commercial couldn’t, in fact, classify as pornography.

Tony’s hands slid up to my waist and then back over my hips, slowly caressing me in a way that made heat shoot through my gut. I clearly hadn’t been fortified enough to handle someone like Tony Ryan, so when Addie joined us with a tray of glasses, I cheered with the others and reached for one of them.

***

Tony

Rosie walked through the back doors and out on the patio, and he realized that he’d been completely wrong. She wasn’t as hot as he remembered her.

She was approximately a thousand times hotter, something just about every man noticed at the same time he did.

“Jesus,” he mumbled before he could stop himself.

She looked away when Finn said something, and then Chao’s woman squealed her name loudly. To his surprise, she was greeted like a close friend and someone they’d known forever. The women were laughing, and the group around them grew as Rosie was introduced to some of the others.

“Fucking shit,” he muttered when he saw some of the men starting to move.

“I know,” Chao said with a grin. “It’s unexpected, but Rosie fits right in. Momo loves her, and so do the others. Told me more than once how she’s funny as hell. Also says she is not afraid to voice her opinion clearly and loudly but will back down when she’s wrong and changes her mind without a fuss if someone has a view she likes.”

“Really?” Tony managed to press out and scowled when one of the men wormed his way up to Rosie to get introduced.

“Yup. Every unattached brother is going to want an introduction, so I guess Momo and Addie will be busy.”

“Not happening,” Tony said. “She isn’t used to people like us, so the boys need to back off.”

“Huh?” Chao grunted and tried to hide how he wanted to laugh.

“I’m only trying to protect her.”

“You can tell yourself that, but it won’t make it true,” Finn said, showing up from fucking nowhere. “Rosie can take care of herself.” He didn’t even try to hide his laughter and added with an annoying smirk, “You aren’t afraid of the competition, brother?”

“No,” Tony simply said because he wasn’t.

Either he’d sweet talk Rosie into a little something which would make them both very happy, or he wouldn’t. If she ended up preferring one of the other men, or no one at all, then that was her choice and his failure.

And he had no intentions of failing.

It was much later in the evening when he finally sat down next to her, though. She’d looked so happy while she danced with her friends, and the way she almost seemed surprised when someone put an arm around her shoulders just got to him. So, he wanted her to have fun and told himself he could wait. He also caught her looking at him every now and then, and liked how anticipation of what might come created a slow burn in his gut. And crotch.

When he approached the group Rosie sat with, he realized immediately that the evening might not end up exactly as he had hoped. All the women had done shots, plural, and also had beers or glasses of wine, so they were approaching the state of shitfaced at high speed.

Then she turned and told him with a crooked smile that she was something she labeled ipsy-tipsy, which was a term he’d never heard before.

It was cute, though.

Heat flashed through his groin when he moved his hands over the curve he’d been obsessing over in the past weeks, and the way she leaned back on his chest and trusted him to make sure she didn’t fall felt good in a way he hadn’t expected.

Then she cheered with the rest of the women and reached for another glass of whatever Addie had brought, and Tony knew he wouldn’t get laid that night.

She was in no condition to hop into an Uber, though, which meant he might get to sleep with her after all.

***

Rosie

I didn’t want to open my eyes because I was pretty sure my head would explode if I did.

“Hey,” a deep voice mumbled, and I registered a warm body next to me.

Suddenly, I wanted to open my eyes even less because I recognized that voice.

Tony.

Dear Lord, I was in bed with Tony-the-jerk, and he seemed to be naked.

Or perhaps not naked but at least bare-chested because I felt him against my arm.

“Um,” I mumbled.

He laughed softly and slid a hand over my cheek.

“Do you need to hurl?” he asked calmly.

My eyes flew open, and I looked straight into his brown, soft eyes. He was on his side and leaned his head into one of his hands in a way that made his muscles bulge. The other hand slowly moved some hair away from my face, his hair was mussed up, and if I hadn’t wanted to die from embarrassment and the effects of way too many glasses of wine, I would have jumped him.

“No,” I said after a while.

“No?” he murmured.

“No, I don’t need to throw up,” I clarified.

“Aspirin?”

“God, yes,” I breathed out but remembered that I hadn’t brushed my teeth and probably hadn’t done so the evening before either, so I closed my mouth with a snap.

“I’ll get some,” he said with a chuckle. “Do you want breakfast?”

I wasn’t sure, but getting some food into my system would probably be good, so I nodded and tried to pretend that I didn’t watch his behind as he pulled a pair of jeans up over his black, tight boxers.

“Take these and stay in bed for a while,” he said and plopped a couple of pills on the nightstand. “I’ll go get something for breakfast that’ll help with the hangover. If you want to make coffee, it’s in the cupboard above the coffee maker. The toothbrush you used is still on the sink.”

“Toothbrush?” I asked and regretted it immediately because his grin turned into laughter.

“How much do you remember from last night?”

I closed my eyes briefly with a wince.

“Someone said, hit me again, baby,” I whispered. “Then it’s, um... blurry.”

He laughed some more and leaned down to do that gentle sweep of his hand over my cheek again.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said, straightened, and added decisively, “Breakfast will be good.”

Then he snagged a tee from a chair on his way out the door, and I was alone. I heard his bike start up as I brushed my teeth, and then I washed my face. I really needed face cream, which I assumed he didn’t have, but he might have some body lotion or whatever, so I opened the top drawer. To my surprise, he had a tube of rose-scented hand balm, and next to it was a pile of condoms.

And it hit me.

I had been drunk, but I hadn’t blacked out completely. I remembered telling him that I was sleepy. He’d told me that I could sleep with him, which somehow had seemed like a fantastic idea. Then we’d walked across the large lawn behind the Cascadia property, through a small cluster of trees, and entered his house through the back door. After that, he might have said something about dropping my pants. He’d taken off his tee, and I’d been in bed. Then I must have fallen asleep.

Or, holy shit.

I had no clue if we’d had sex.

I wiggled my hips, thinking that since I hadn’t engaged in any sexual activity in a while, I would surely know?

I stared into the mirror and tried not to panic, but I didn’t know what to do. I’d never had a drunken one-night stand in my life, so I didn’t know the morning after protocol. And if we hadn’t done it, then he definitely wouldn’t want me to there.

I’d driven my car to the party and had planned to take an Uber home. Addie had told me that someone she labeled one of the boys would get the car back to my house, but the boys had partied too and were probably still sleeping. I also hadn’t given anyone the keys, so unless they hot-wired it, which quite a few of them admittedly had seemed eminently capable of doing, it should still be by the Cascadia House where I’d parked it.

Before thinking it through, I walked back into the kitchen and looked around for a piece of paper and a pen. A half-finished shopping list on a notepad shared that Tony needed milk and tomatoes, which made me blink a few times in surprise, but even handsome biker-presidents had to eat, of course. I tore off a blank paper, grabbed the pen, and jotted down my thanks for his hospitality. I swallowed and watched the small piece of paper for a second. It might be a stupid thing to do, but I just couldn’t stay to have breakfast with a man I might have had drunk sex with. He’d been a little bit flirty the evening before, I remembered that clearly, but he’d called me an overaged groupie when we first met.

So, even though I knew it was rude, I put the note on the pillow I’d passed out on, grabbed my things, and left via the back door. I didn’t run, exactly, but my stride was decidedly what one might call a brisk pace. Or a slightly embarrassing trot.

When I got home, I went straight over to my neighbors to pick up my dog.

“Did you have a good time?” Mr. Kacic asked with a sweet smile.

“Absolutely,” I said, and the smile I gave him wasn’t fake at all.

Except for not knowing if I’d had wild sex with a huge, gorgeous biker-president, I’d had a fantastic time.

“You look tired, my dear,” Mrs. Kacic said. “We took Blue for a long walk this morning, so if you want to sleep some more, he won’t bother you. Or you could leave him here?” she smiled just as sweetly as her husband. “You know we love to have him.”

They did love him and were always eager to be dog sitters, but I wanted my darling with me, so I thanked them, promised to be in touch, and walked back to my own home.

The sky was blue, and it was a warm day, so I brought blankets and a couple of pillows with me and went out to the big lawn, which was a pain to maintain.

“Let’s snooze, buddy,” I murmured, and Blue immediately curled up next to me. I put an arm around his broad back and snuggled closer. “I fucked up,” I whispered into the soft, curly fur just behind his right ear. Something buzzed inside, and it sounded like my phone, but I didn’t want to talk to Addie or Momo because I wasn’t sure what to say. “It’ll feel better once we’ve slept for a while,” I said to my dog and a little to myself.

My grandmother had told me that when I first came to live with them, and she’d been right.

I hope it worked this time too.

***

Tony

He went straight to his bedroom when he got home, and the first thing he saw was a fucking note on the pillow Rose had snored on.

Or, not snored exactly, but puffed out air softly in a way that had been cute.

“The fuck?” he muttered, but he knew what a note on a pillow meant, and it was never good things.

He’d left a few notes himself in his life, but it had been many years since he took the cowards way out, and he hadn’t expected that from Rosie.

“Thank you for letting me sleep off the unfortunate effects of a few too many glasses of wine. I hope it wasn’t too much of an inconvenience, and I’m sure you’d rather have a quiet morning without uninvited guests. Brgds/Rosie”

This wasn’t a note from a woman who tried to dump his ass. This was a note from a woman who was embarrassed, and he started laughing but shook his head in disbelief.

“Best regards?” he snorted out. “Rosie, for fuck’s sake.”

Then he turned around and got back on his bike.

Rosie didn’t answer her phone and didn’t open her door, and he was about to leave again when her neighbor came walking.

“She picked up her dog, so she should be at home,” the elderly lady said, glanced at his bike, and added, “Were you at the same dinner last night perhaps?”

It hadn’t been a formal dinner exactly, but Tony decided to not point this out and told her that yes, he had indeed been to dinner with Rosalind the evening before. Then he lied through his teeth and shared that Rosie had invited him over for brunch.

“I brought chocolate cupcakes,” he said and wiggled the bag.

“Rosie’s favorite,” the lady squealed. “How clever!”

How lucky, he thought with a grin.

“Just walk around the house to see if she’s on the patio,” she suggested and moved toward her own house. “She’s probably in the backyard playing with Blue.”

Tony thanked her, waved as she disappeared, and decided that since the neighbor made it seem like a normal, non-stalker thing to do, taking a quick look to see if she was outside and away from her phone wouldn’t be creepy.

Rosie wasn’t playing with her dog, though.

She was wrapped up in blankets and curled up next to a big, black dog. When Tony moved closer, the dog slowly got up and ambled over to meet him with a grin and a sniff in the crotch.

“Not much of a guard dog,” Tony mumbled and let the animal sniff his knuckles.

When it seemed as if he’d passed inspection, he walked over to crouch down next to Rosie. Her hair was spread out in a mess around her face, and she looked relaxed, but then her eyes flew open.

“Hey,” he whispered. “You left.”

She looked at him for a while, and then she whispered, “Did we have sex?”

“Oh, baby,” he said. “No, we didn’t. Was that why you left?”

“I didn’t know,” she mumbled with a wince.

“Rosalind, I can see that you don’t understand how insulting it is that you even have to ask me that.” Her eyes widened, and he stretched out his hand to let it glide over her cheek, pretending to move a few strands of hair away. “I’m not the kind of man who would try to get it on with a woman as drunk and tired as you were,” he said quietly.

“I’m so sorry. We had shots, and I haven’t had a lot of alcoho –”

“Rosie, no,” he said. “Don’t apologize. You had fun. I had fun watching you and the others. It’s been a while since everyone let loose that way.”

“I didn’t black out,” she said with a sigh. “I wasn’t that drunk, but it’s a little blurry.”

“You were mostly tired,” he said. “Fell face first into bed and was asleep before I’d even brushed my teeth.”

“I’m sorry that I thought we might have...” she trailed off but added, “You know.”

“I know,” he said, trying to suppress images of what he hoped they would do some other time when she wasn’t hung over. “Are you tired?”

“A little.”

“Let’s sleep for a while,” he said and moved to lay down behind her

“What are you doing?”

“You’re tired, and so am I. Let’s sleep for a little while and then have breakfast. We can talk more then.”

She stayed on her side, so he fit his taller frame to hers and put an arm around her in the pretense of wanting to pet her dog.

“Tony,” she whispered.

“Yeah.”

“Why are you here?”

He wasn’t sure what to say because he didn’t want to sound like a sleazy douche, and his obsession with her curves was anyway not the whole truth. Not anymore.

“I just want to show you that I’m actually not Tony-the-jerk,” he said and tightened his grip when she started moving. “Yeah, babe. You told me.”

“Oh, God.”

“It’s okay. I was a jerk.”

“Um,” she mumbled.

“I was,” he repeated. “Let’s get some rest, and then we’ll talk, okay?”

She was silent for so long he wondered if she’d fallen asleep, but then she whispered softly, “Okay.”

He felt how she relaxed in his arms and hadn’t planned to actually sleep himself, but he hadn’t lied. He was tired too and decided that a few minutes with his eyes closed wouldn’t hurt.