The Virgin Society Collection

16. A Very Bad Idea

16

A VERY BAD IDEA

Layla

When the waitress clears the plates and Nick asks for the check, I’m dying to say thanks and leave.

I can’t sit here anymore with the man and my friend and this…corset.

I need to beeline for Harlow’s and flop face-first onto her couch. Or Ethan’s. I don’t know. I don’t care. I just can’t sit across from the man I was dying to see tomorrow night. The man who didn’t tell me a thing, it turns out. I hardly know him.

Of course you don’t know him. You had a one-night stand and then phone sexted, and he didn’t even tell you he was moving here.

Ugh. I can’t believe I thought there was more to this thing with him. I felt potential. Possibility. Things I never feel.

I should know better. But good thing I’m learning now. I try to shove those foolish fantasies far, far away and focus on simple matters, like manners.

“Thank you so much, Mr.—” I stop myself from saying Adams. Nick said earlier it was David’s middle name but neither one of them actually said out loud that Adams was Nick’s last name. Or did they? My brain is spinning. I don’t know what I’m supposed to know. But after the London snafu, I have to be more careful. I definitely don’t want to let on at all that Nick was my fuck date . Even if David wasn’t my ex, he’s absolutely my friend, and sleeping with your good friend’s father is a very bad idea. That’s just too complicated. I play the part of a grateful friend thanking her friend’s parent for dinner. “Thank you, Mr. Bancroft. I appreciate you buying dinner.”

“It’s Nick Adams,” he corrects tightly, like I knew he would. But I had no choice.

David’s never gone into the finer details of why he has his mom’s name rather than his dad’s. We’ve never dwelled on the past or family, mine or his. That was one of the things I liked most about him.

One of the things I still like about him. His focus on the present. But now I wish I had known more.

Like why the hell Nick didn’t mention he was moving.

I gather my bag, stuffing the lingerie at the bottom of it, wishing I could return the damn thing. “Thank you, Mr. Adams,” I say, using my best Layla Mayweather tone, the one my mother taught me to use in social situations.

“You’re welcome, Layla,” Nick says, ever the proper adult. But something flashes in his eyes.

Like a quick calculation as he opens his wallet. He shifts his attention to David. “Son, can you go pay this up front? To make it easier for them.”

“Of course,” David says. Nick’s speaking his language—being thoughtful about waiters, servers, bartenders and the like.

Nick hands David the credit card. “And get yourself a sandwich for the morning. You only ever eat breakfast if someone orders it, but you need to start eating it before you come to the office. Consider this me ordering you to have breakfast,” he says in a commanding, bossy tone, like the one he used on me in bed.

I shiver.

It’s still hot.

But I hate how hot it is.

David beams, then grins at his dad, clearly proud, clearly pleased with his pop. Pop . This is so weird. “Told you he’s the best,” David says to me as he squeezes out.

Then he’s off, and strategic, smart Nick Adams, who ferried me away from the press scrum at the conference three months ago to ask me out, has once again engineered a moment with me. He wastes no time. “I need to apologize for being a dick,” he says.

Wait. What? He’s apologizing? That’s a thing men do? “What do you mean?”

“When I first arrived. When we first spoke, and I gave you the third degree. I was frazzled. I came here to meet David. He’d texted me and asked me to join, but when I walked in and you were here, I stopped thinking.” He gazes at me with heat and fire. “You were so fucking stunning, and all I could think was how badly I wanted to see you tomorrow, to talk to you, to tell you a bunch of things, to get you alone. And then I was thinking how lucky I was to see you tonight.”

His vulnerable admissions—both sexy and borderline emotional—chip away at my annoyance and at my hurt.

“And I didn’t want to scare you off by telling you I was relocating here,” he says as he keeps going, reading my mind. “I planned to tell you tomorrow. I couldn’t wait to see you. And then I thought I can tell her tonight. I can see her tonight too. And then…all of a sudden, you were Layla. And I was a jerk.”

My heart softens from all those lovely admissions. Every single one. “I get it. The whole thing was just…a shock. But you have to know I planned to tell you tomorrow too that Lola’s my business name. I wanted you to know who I am and who my mother is.”

Just her. That’s all I want to reveal for now.

Nick lifts a brow in question. Since he just spilled his truths, I unspool some more of mine. “She runs Beautique, the makeup conglomerate. Well, she’s the founder. Anna Mayweather,” I say, and that’s something at least about my family. Now he knows that much, and the look in his eyes says holy shit, she founded a wildly successful Fortune 100 company , rather than you’re that girl from that night. “And when I started The Makeover, I didn’t want to be connected to Anna Mayweather or Beautique. I just wanted to do my own thing. Be my own woman. I funded The Makeover on my own with my own money from my videos, and I brought on a partner in Geeta. She codes. I want this to be all mine, and ours, so when I was in Miami, I was there as Lola Jones. I registered as Lola Jones. I don’t want special treatment as Anna’s daughter.”

There. That’s what I wanted to tell him tomorrow. At least I can walk away tonight knowing I’ve said the most important thing to him, but still I add, “It didn’t feel like a lie to me. I am Lola, and I am Layla, and that night with you I wanted to feel like I was just…a woman with a man for the first time.”

He steals a glance at the front of the diner, then darts a hand under the table and squeezes my knee. “I’m glad I was your first, beautiful,” he says, and there’s resolution in his tone, like maybe for a little while earlier he struggled with what was a lie and what was the truth. I’m glad he figured out on his own that I didn’t lie about my inexperience.

“Me too,” I say, sliding a hand under the table, covering his. In no time, he links our fingers with a desperate grasp.

My insides flutter. I feel warm all over.

“And when I was with you, I didn’t want to feel like”—he stops, like the words forming in his throat are uncomfortable. But he pushes through—“I didn’t want to be a guy who had a kid. I didn’t want to have the inevitable conversation of yeah, my son’s twenty-one, and you can do the math. He was born when I was seventeen, and the only way his mom and I could go to college was if my ex-wife’s parents raised him for those four years .” He winces, then adds, bitterly, “By their rules.”

My throat tightens with emotions. I want to hug him. “Oh, Nick,” I say, squeezing his fingers tighter under the table. There are details I’m dying to ask about. But I’d only be satisfying my own curiosity. He’s told me how he feels—in words and tone. So I say sympathetically, “That’s a lot too.”

“When I was with you, I just wanted to be a man romancing a woman,” he says, almost embarrassed, but then he shrugs, like he’s all good with the man he was that night. With the choice he made.

And the thing is—I’m good with it too. I run my thumb along his finger, savoring this stolen, under-the-table touch. “You did. Romance me, that is,” I say, my chest fluttering, my heart beating so fast. From the memory, still fresh and hot, and from the here and now.

This is an unfamiliar rush. Though it’s dangerous, too, this fizzy feeling. But it can’t last, right? So I’m safe. But as he touches me, I hardly feel safe from emotions, and I hardly want to.

I just want this moment to last a little longer. I want to live in this warm, buzzy land some more.

“I think about that night all the time, Layla,” Nick says, and it’s the first time tonight my name on his tongue has sounded inviting. Like the way he used to say my name. I savor the sound of it. “And I’ve been caught up in you for the last week too. I can’t get you out of my head.”

“Same for me,” I say softly, but there’s regret in my tone too.

There’s regret in his as well.

We both know what happens next.

Someone has to say it though. “And now we’ll be…working together on this fundraiser,” I say, “with your son.”

A terribly sad smile comes my way. “Yeah.”

It’s an admission. There is no date tomorrow night. And I can’t ever let David know his dad was my tomorrow night, so I wince, but say the hard thing. “We’ll just pretend Miami never happened.”

He’s quiet for several wistful seconds.

“What night in Miami?” he asks, playing along, but I can tell from his eyes that it hurts him too, this charade.

That night already feels like a distant memory.

When we leave, Nick offers me a ride home. I turn it down, but they both wait till my Lyft arrives, father and son. A former lover and a former boyfriend.

But only one of them will likely stay in my life. The one who’s a friend.

When I reach my building a few minutes later, I say hi to Sylvester, then Grady, then head to my sixth-floor home and turn on all the lights and deadbolt my door. Then I text that one . Telling David it was fun to meet his father.

I don’t text my friend’s father.

He doesn’t text me either.