Double Your Standards (The Carlson Brothers #3)

1. Celebrating

CELEbrATING

Ovulating in your thirties is violent, feral, and unfortunate when you don’t have a partner to alleviate the unbelievable ache of wanting to get fucked within an inch of your life.

Not that I really know what that feels like anymore.

I sigh, glancing down at my manicured nails wrapped around a martini glass. I don’t even have a tan line where my wedding ring used to be anymore.

My plan wasn’t to be thirty-three, divorced, and trying to figure out what I wanted in life. But here I am, at my own divorce party with my two best friends, who happen to also be my co-workers, and truly the only two people I can count on in the world.

This bar is the hottest new place in Tampa. It’s set right outside of a marina. A row of party boats lightly rock in the late night breeze off the bay. If it wasn’t for the music and other bar-goers talking over one another, it would be peaceful, serene even.

The place is packed, my best friends are here, but I still feel alone.

I don’t want a relationship, far from it. I know I’ll never marry someone again, and truthfully, I’m rather disgusted that I both hate men currently and still want to mount one so desperately right now.

Savannah bumps my shoulder, nudging me out of my thoughts, and making me spill a bit of my drink over my knuckles in the process.

“Come on, Kate, we’re celebrating. You’re finally free from that tool,” she says, holding up her own martini.

I give her a smile and take a sip of my drink.

“Is celebrating the right word?” Chelsea asks, her dark brows furrowed.

These two women are my everything. All three of us met at our teaching jobs at the University of Tampa. The one major thing we had in common was too much education and still, apparently, too little sense.

“‘Celebrate’ is definitely the right word. I mean, hell, when was the last time you came out with us, Kate?” Savannah asks.

I have to think long and hard about the last time we did something together and I’m filled with guilt. I’ve been a shitty friend, too caught up in my own failing marriage to do much of anything besides mope and mourn.

“I’m sorry?—”

“Hey. I didn’t say that to guilt trip you. We just missed you is all,” Savannah says, wrapping an arm around my shoulder and squeezing.

“You deserve better,” Chelsea says.

I take another sip of my drink, letting the vodka coat my throat.

I know I deserved better than what Will did to me, but it still hurt.

We’d been together since sophomore year of high school.

He was all I knew, the only man I’d ever slept with.

While he was with his mistress turned fiancée and their newborn, here I was, at thirty-three, figuring out what I was going to do next.

I had a job, a decent one, though I don’t need the money. I’d gotten mostly everything in the divorce since it was my money that paid for everything.

There was this tangible sadness over this idea that I missed out on so much, that I hadn’t truly lived.

I gave all my best years to a man who stopped seeing me at some point, and I embarrassingly held on to him for dear life, even though he didn't want to be kept—at least not by me. In retrospect, I didn’t want to be kept either, I just don’t think I knew that at the time.

I’m still trying to figure out what it is that I want.

“Kate,” Chelsea says, reeling me out of my thoughts as she grabs both sides of my face.

She’s never been one to mince words and she doesn’t now.

“You gave too many years to that man for him to do what he did to you. You two haven’t lived together for a year now; the divorce is final.

You deserve to live it up, do all the things you wanted to for years but never did because you thought you had to be this perfect little wife.

It’s time to live for you. I mean, that’s what you want right?

You don’t still have feelings for him do you? ”

I look into her deep brown eyes. My beautiful friend, who only has my best interests at heart and knows me better than everyone else.

“I’m not still in love with him. In fact, I think I hate him. I’m just not sure what I want,” I say, though I have some ideas.

Ideas I never even shared the true depths of with the man I was with for nearly eighteen years. Those ideas were hidden away in the dark for moments when I was alone with my phone and the web browser in incognito mode. I didn’t want to date, but I wanted to have fun.

Fun that I’ve denied myself for far too long.

“At least we’re all in agreement on that,” Savannah says, holding up her glass, and Chelsea and I follow. “To Will, we wish you well…in hell,” she says cackling and we clink our glasses together.

“Alright, so are you wanting to date again?” Chelsea asks and I crinkle my nose. “Okay, no dating. What about some fun?”

“Isn’t it weird for me to be in my thirties trolling for one-night stands?”

“Take that back right now,” Savannah says, her big blonde hair bobbing as she speaks animatedly. “You never had a hoe phase, Kate. It’s overdue. It’s like every woman’s rite of passage to have a certain amount of time dedicated to getting railed by as many men as your sweet, little heart desires.”

“How long has your rite of passage been then?” Chelsea jokes at Savannah who grins.

“For some, it’s a rite of passage. For others, it’s a lifestyle. Plus, I do keep some of them for a few months until they bore me,” Savannah says.

“I wouldn’t even know where to start when it comes to hooking up with someone,” I say. My cheeks feel like they’re flaming hot.

“Kate, you’re a Miami ten. Please, you could go touch the arm of any man in this bar from the age of twenty-one to nearly in the grave and they would say yes,” Chelsea says.

A Miami ten was beyond generous. I knew I was attractive, maybe minus the scars that hadn’t faded on my neck and collarbone, but I’d be lying if getting cheated on didn’t take a hit to my ego.

I didn’t know if I was good at flirting; hell, I wasn’t sure I knew how to flirt. The last five or so years felt like a blur of resentment, loneliness, and frustration. I swallowed the rest of my drink, hating how unsure I feel about taking a step out of my comfort zone.

Tired of being on autopilot and accepting less than what I deserve. I’m ready to lift this fog and try, really put myself out there and figure out who I am. Life is too short to not actually live it, I just don’t have a single clue where to start.

“Another?” a deep voice from behind the bar asks.

I glance up, and it isn’t the barely legal young man that waited on us before.

No, he’s all man, and he certainly doesn’t look like a bartender.

Not with the way his white dress shirt is rolled up against his forearms that are delicious.

Could forearms be delicious? I’m not sure anyone else’s have ever been, but his are thick, strong forearms lined with a phlebotomist’s wet dream of veins.

The previous bartender wore a button down of drinking parrots on them, while this man looks like he just got off work at his finance job.

But there’s something about his smile, the dimple on his chin, and the way his hair looks like he’s run his hands through it five hundred times today that tells me he doesn’t work in an office.

He looks too put together to be working behind a bar, but maybe that’s his whole appeal.

He looks like a GQ model with his sun-kissed skin, strong jawline, and eyes that bordered between blue and green. I bet it depends on what color he’s wearing and they’d shift in tone.

“We’d all like another. We’re celebrating,” Savannah says, ogling the man, and I wonder if my reaction mirrors hers.

“Oh? What are we celebrating tonight?” he asks, a dark eyebrow arching in my direction as he takes three martini glasses and starts mixing the drinks.

I watch in awe as his large skilled hands mix our drinks and wonder what it would be like to be that Boston shaker right now.

He’s assured in a way I never really noticed in a man before, almost effortless.

I bet he doesn’t have to flirt, he just asks a woman to get on her knees and she falls to the floor, her tongue lolling out, waiting for him to take what he wants.

The idea is…erotic.

“Our friend Kate here is finally divorced,” Chelsea says and I can’t decide if the heat on my cheeks is from embarrassment or from the alcohol they keep plying me with.

Mostly, when you tell people you’re going through a divorce or have just gotten divorced, you get looks of pity, or they don’t even know how to react.

Not this mysterious bartender. He smiles instead, placing the drink in front of me.

“Well, you’ll have to let me know his name, so if he ever comes in, I can give him a free drink for the misfortune of losing you.”

I blink at him, and he winks, helping the customers next to us. Goddamn, he’s smooth as fuck.

Savannah and Chelsea both look over at me with wide eyes and I realize I didn’t speak at all during that encounter. Just as I suspected, I’m shit at this.

“He was flirting with you, that’s how you seduce someone. Next time he comes back, say something, anything,” Savannah says.

I turn on my stool so I’m facing her. “Like what? Hi Mr. Hot bartender, you look like you were sent here from the planet Krypton to save the universe in the form of giving an orgasm to every woman who looks at your handsome face?”

Savannah shrugs, and her face scrunches into a frown that says maybe that wasn’t too bad. I hold my drink up to my lips taking a sip as I conjure up something better than comparing him to Superman. Nothing else comes to mind.

“I’m no good at this, maybe I should download some apps or something,” I say, noticing the drink he made tastes way better than the last round.

“Apps aren’t a bad idea, but you have a guy right in front of you, who was totally looking at your tits and complimenting you.

Plus, he looks like he fucks well. It doesn’t hurt that he seems age appropriate either, not that I would judge you if you wanted to be a cougar for a little bit. Those young ones have stamina.”

I blink at my friend before shooting back the rest of the cocktail. Maybe some liquid courage is what I need. Or maybe it will make things worse.

But what’s the worst that could happen? I make a complete fool out of myself and we just can’t drink here anymore? Those odds aren’t bad, and I need to practice. If I want to actually live like I’ve been telling myself, then I need to make a change. I need to take the first steps.

I wince as the alcohol trickles down my throat and hits my blood stream faster than I thought it would.

My body feels hot, my limbs are loose, and I’m absolutely one hundred percent going to at least attempt to flirt with this man.

Even if it ends in yet another form of rejection, at least I can say that I tried.

I’m not letting my failed marriage hang over my head another day. It’s finally real, stamped on paper. I already got all the paperwork together to change my name back. I’m no longer someone's wife. I’m an attractive woman who’s ready to take life by the balls, literally and figuratively.

I’m going to do this. I’m going to order another drink and say something cute and flick my hair and give him fuck me eyes.

I’m not someone’s ex-wife or professor right now.

I’m a woman in her prime fucking years, who needs to do something about it or else I’ll find myself another eighteen years from now filled with regrets, with no one but myself to blame.

I go to grab the martini glass, promptly knocking it over on the bar, where my hand lands.

“Ouch,” I hiss and a grimace takes over my face when I glance down at where a shard of glass pierced my palm.

“Oh, shit, Kate. Are you okay?” Chelsea asks, waving down the bartender.

I’m embarrassed as I go to pick up the shards of glass, even while my palm is bleeding and pain is radiating up my forearm. A large hand wraps around my wrist stopping me.

“I’ve got a first aid kit in the office. Leo, can you get this cleaned up?” the too hot for his own good bartender asks a fellow employee.

He grabs a clean towel and holds it against my hand before walking around the bar.

“What do I do?” I ask my friends in a sharp whisper.

“Do whatever he tells you to,” Savannah says.

The idea appeals to me more than she would ever know. It’s always been something I craved, but never received. I think I’d have no problem listening to whatever he told me to do; in fact, I know I’d get off on it.

“At the very least, let him check on your hand,” Chelsea says.

I nod as he comes to stand before me. He’s tall and I have to crane my neck to look at him, even while sitting on the stool. I’m holding the towel against my hand as he lightly grabs my elbow.

“Follow me,” he says, his voice sounds like a caress and I wish I could bottle his confidence up and drink even just a drop.

His hand is calloused and warm as he leads me up the stairs, unlocking an office door while I stare at his broad back and wonder what he looks like shirtless.

My mind is in the gutter, despite my hand bleeding. All I want to do is get a glimpse of more of his skin, because even if I get just that, I know he’ll be featured in my fantasies for the foreseeable future.