Just This Once by Evelyn Jeannie Hall

Four

Zane couldn’t believe he’d engaged in an unplanned staring contest with Lacey. He didn’t customarily make it a habit to go full dumbass, but here he was, playing with fire. Zane didn’t do seconds with women because seconds led to thirds, and thirds led to something more long term. And since he’d already had seconds with Lacey, continuing to ogle her would be straight up lunacy.

He’d known from the first moment she’d smiled at him with that luscious beauty marked grin of hers that she would be hard to forget, and not only because they ran in the same circles. Still, he’d risked having her, not once but twice, which made a bad decision worse. Who the fuck had he been kidding, anyway? Lacey had been like a sister to Benjamin. His best bud had said those exact words to him. So as much as he might like to pretend he hadn’t violated the bro-code, deep down he knew better.

He’d been a horrible friend.

Zane had cast all his scruples aside because he’d felt this instant and undeniable sexual awareness around Lacey that had him imagining her in his bed from that first second on. Everything she’d ever said to him had lit up his libido like a lighthouse lantern. Long story short, he’d been thinking with his dick.

Moron.

So why had he just leered at her like some trench coat wearing creep on the subway?

Maybe he could blame the situation. Here the two of them were, off with only a handful of others in the single most spectacular locale he’d ever visited. Underwater restaurants where you could watch the majesty of the ocean floating by? How rare was that? Also, when they’d all splashed in the surf fully clothed, it should’ve made Lacey resemble a drowned rat. Instead, she’d somehow come out of the water even more ravishing.

Talk about an unfair advantage.

At least eyeing Lacey kept his mind off all this marriage nonsense. That shit reminded him too forcefully of Aliyah.

Thinking about his ex-wife, about that day, still pissed him off. It likely always would. He’d believed they’d had the real deal, that they would be man and wife for the rest of their lives. If he’d had any idea that his one foray into matrimony would wind up eviscerating his heart and slamming it’s sad remains into a meat grinder, he never would’ve taken those vows.

Standing up for his best bud meant placing himself at an altar for the first time since he’d been a groom himself. So he hadn’t witnessed Kat floating down that sandy aisle toward Benjamin at all. Instead, his mind had played a reel of nothing but Aliyah. Her rich tawny complexion showing off that skintight lime green dress—white was so clichéd, she’d informed him. Her waist length braids careening down her back and flowing with her every move. Her shining butterscotch eyes. And that voluptuous figure. From early on, he’d teased her that she had the most delicious hips in the universe. Baby-making hips.

Some women would take that as a slight, but she’d taken his words as the highest of compliments, which was how he’d intended them. He’d gotten married at the ripe old age of twenty-three, thinking he had his entire future pinned down.

Yeah, not so much.

He’d finished his MBA and had begun the process of securing himself a successful financial investment career. He had a woman he considered his queen as a wife. In a few years, they’d produce a houseful of kids together. His children would have everything he hadn’t, plus more. They’d have two loving parents, a grandmama and aunt who lived to spoil them, and never know even a split second of the poverty he’d experienced.

They wouldn’t have to depend on the free lunch program in school or know the horror of having a cockroach climb out of their backpack in front of everyone in AP geometry. They’d grow up to be amazing. And Zane himself would serve as their example.

Those notions seemed so over the top now. Ludicrous and short-sighted.

He’d been able to control his monetary fortunes, but everything else had spiraled right off the rails. Zane had been an idiot to think of himself as a father and husband anyway. Probably neither one would ever be in the cards for him. Nor should they be. With his status as a type one diabetic, how could he guarantee any possible sons or daughters that he’d live long enough to be there for them? He knew what it felt like to lose a father as a child.

He couldn’t do it to his own.

Those were the morbid-assed thoughts going through his head as his best friend married the girl he’d adored all his life. Some best man Zane made. He hadn’t been capable of busting out of his moroseness until he’d been ordered to go jump in the ocean in his wedding garb. Feeling the warm island waters swirling around him had begun to bring Zane to a better mental place and being around Lacey’s free-spirited hijinks had been the final nail in his trapped in the past coffin.

But he’d only traded one past memory for another. Catching sight of Lacey and her sodden hot pink dress—one that clung to every inch of her—had helped him recall with perfect clarity what she looked like in no clothes at all. He wanted to grab her and work out all his frustrations right there in the surf. Exuberant, animalistic sex had been his go-to for getting over his shit for years and having Lacey nearby felt like divine providence.

Even if it was just the opposite.

Further up the beach someone had arranged a series of tiki torches, a necessary touch now that night had truly fallen. Zane traipsed along at the back of the pack, only glancing up at the sound of the officiate’s voice.

“Everyone,” the native woman announced. “Please show your support to the newly wedded Mr. and Mrs. Torres as they share their first dance as husband and wife.”

Zane clapped along with everyone else even though he knew Kat would be hyphenating her name to Farrell-Torres. But the officiate was right. He’d come here to support his friend, and that’s what he would do. The steel drums started up again as Benjamin led Kat, still dripping, to the center of the sandy space to waltz with her. It was one of those things many married couples did, but despite Zane knowing this had been coming, he felt dread slither into his heart.

His best bud didn’t know this, but dancing had been why he and his ex had met. It’d been back in Detroit at Wayne State University where Zane had earned his undergrad. As a senior, he’d gone to the gymnasium to work out, and there she’d been on the sidelines, dancing with some other girls in a troupe. Even though she’d only been there to compete and wasn’t a college student, he’d pursued her. Part of that had eventually meant agreeing to be her partner for competitions, so dancing had been a major component of their dating relationship.

All that had transpired almost a decade ago, for Christ’s sake. He should be capable of watching two people sway back and forth without wanting to either vomit or sprint away like a little bitch. But he wasn’t.

Fucking dancing.

Fucking Aliyah.

He made himself go through the motions of applauding for his friends as they wrapped up their first dance. Then, he stood by and observed the cake-cutting, cheered as they sweetly fed each other, and quietly witnessed them threading their arms together as they drank from their flutes of champagne.

His focus narrowed to that particular libation. Seeking it out, he downed one glass, then a second.

Humberto, Tandi and Anastasia appeared, settling in to eat at the buffet that had been laid out, and so did some of the others. But Zane avoided the food, hoping to numb himself instead. To be fair, his mind was already beginning to feel the tiniest bit fuzzy.

Elizabeth and Lacey unveiled a table of framed photographs as a surprise gift to the bride and groom. Inwardly, Zane groaned at the delay until he saw what those pictures contained. All of them were of Kat and Benjamin. The first one showed the two of them in a wagon being pulled along by an older Latino—probably Benjamin’s big brother—and they appeared to be about three or four.

The next displayed the pair at about eleven, each covered head to toe in mud with broad toothy grins. Their prom picture featured third in the collection, but it didn’t look to be a portrait formally taken onsite. It was a candid image that someone else had shot, maybe the triplet’s mom, and it depicted a teenaged Benjamin staring with obvious affection at a seventeen-year-old Kat.

Man, his best bro hadn’t been kidding when he said he’d loved the girl ever since he could remember. Here was the proof.

Then came a photo of them wearing SEMO sweatshirts from the college they’d both attended back in Missouri. Kat had been doing some kind of vogue pose like Madonna for the camera, and hilariously, so had Benjamin, but his friend’s eyes had still been glued to her.

Lastly Zane’s eyeline landed on three shots taken from their engagement photo shoot. They’d been on top of the Empire State Building—which must’ve taken some doing since there were usually masses of people up there—and Kat was riding piggyback style on her fiancé. They’d been laughing uproariously in the first one. In another shot, the photographer had caught them at just the moment Kat had pressed her lips to Benjamin’s temple. And in a third, they’d peered into each other’s eyes, displaying an equal combination of tenderness and desire.

When taken altogether, the table served as a visual record of two lives intertwined, which Zane felt sure had been Lacey and Elizabeth’s intent. He felt happy for Benjamin and Kat, he really did, but all these wedding trappings also brought up the latent resentment he felt towards his ex. Trying his damnedest not to feel it, or to at least push it away, he tossed back another glass of bubbly. Champagne had a high sugar content he liked to avoid most of the time, but he’d do whatever necessary in order to not disappoint his friends.

As people commenced whirling around the quasi dancefloor again—the three triplets in a group with Benjamin as he held his baby sister, Humberto with Tandi, and Rookie performing some sort of twist with the lady who’d officiated—Zane used the cloak of night to slip away from the festivities. He’d done his due diligence, had served his time, and now, he’d earned his ticket out of there.

Still, the further his feet took him from the celebration, the more guilty he felt about abandoning his friend. He was known as this tough motherfucker, and yet maintaining his characteristic gregariousness tonight had nearly killed him. He peered down at his hand, only then registering that it still held one of the crystal flutes of Dom Perignon. Draining the last swallow, he carried the empty glass into the darkness.