Chapter 1
October
“So, what’s your body count?”
A laugh bubbled up my throat, but when Todd’s blue eyes didn’t crinkle, and his mouth slowly closed, the sound halted. Awkward. I swirled my merlot, still kind of waiting for a punchline. When nothing came, I scoffed, “Excuse me?”
“You know. Your body count,” he repeated with a derisive amount of emphasis, as though I simply hadn’t heard him the first time. My nails dug into my palm beneath the table. “Like, how many dudes?—”
“Hmmm…I don’t know, do the ones in the freezer count?” Tone dripping in disinterest, I set my wine down to refrain from pouring it over his blond waves. If for no other reason than just because it was an exquisite year, and I didn’t particularly want to waste it. Giving him a little wink, I added, “Or just the ones I’ve disposed of?” I shot a pleading glance at our server, who blanched but nodded. It was a shame, really, as this restaurant boasted the best chef in the city. But Todd was, unfortunately, only one in a long line of shitty blind dates, and my asshole tolerance was entirely used up.
The world’s most perfect autumn afternoon came to a bumbling halt as he grappled for a response. Hell, just this morning, I’d sat in the booth recording an episode for my podcast, TrailblazeHer, with one of the most inspiring women I’d ever had the pleasure of befriending, celebrating her seven-figure year, only for her to shock the hell out of me and turn the celebration around with gushed affirmations over my book deal. When the show wrapped, we’d enjoyed a leisurely lunch sipping wine and eating mezé while Mara caught me up on her adorable four and six-year-old children, her husband’s new affinity for fishing, and the book club recommendations she’d gained in the last year.
The two of us had been talking for ages about starting a foundation together, resonating with TrailblazeHer’s mission to empower women everywhere to reach their professional potential, and her daily mantra to raise the damn bar in all categories of life.
Evidently, Todd’s ‘bar’ had somehow become ensconced in Hell itself, as he had the audacity to scoff in my direction. “What? I don’t think it’s too personal of a question to ask someone. You’re beautiful, I’m, well—” he gestured vaguely at his entirely average-leaning-on-lanky body, “and we’re old enough not to beat around the bush. If we’re doing anything, have you been tested? A man’s gotta evaluate the risks of dating a woman over thirty. If you’re this easily offended, it must be terrible,” he laughed as he swiped up his martini. Some people’s children, so help me. Who in their right mind could ever think this was an appropriate conversation starter? What in the hell happened to ‘Hello. How are you? What’s your zodiac sign? Are you looking for a good time or something serious?’
A dull ache brewed behind my eyes, gaze settling on his fingers where they twirled the olive toothpick as he shrugged and added, “I’m probably around forty.”
Of course, you are. I didn’t have to engage in this conversation to guess if I responded with a number anywhere near that–which it wasn’t–he’d tell me it was too many. After all, only men are intended to enjoy their bodies. For fuck’s sake. Deadpanning, I lolled my head sideways, blinking pointedly as our server made her way over. I held up my card with pleading eyes.
“God bless you. Please ring me up.” To Todd, I demanded, “And what, pray tell, is your goal in asking?” Though placid, even I could hear the blade of temper threatening my composed tone.
“Just not big on sloppy seconds. I mean, you’re what, almost forty?” Thirty-two and about to go spend a stupid amount of money on a new eye cream. “So, I know you’ve been around.”
With a suffocated glare, I threw back my drink, wincing as too much liquid funneled down too tight a space and stood. Forcing an expression more grimace than smile onto my face, I turned my attention to the tool across the table, our server scurrying away. “Alright, that’s enough for me. Todd, have the day you deserve.”
His protest fell on deaf ears as I gathered my phone and purse, and followed the waitress’ path to the bar, my heels clicking over the slick concrete floor. Music bombarded my senses with some modern calamity of heavy bass, the mouthwatering scent of steak worth selling a kidney for assaulting me. Dammit, Todd. That smells amazing.
My ride-share pulled up by the time I made it out the front door, and I slunk onto the back seat with a huff, face falling into my hands as I rubbed my temples. Focusing on your career in your twenties was supposed to be the smart thing to do—the path to a happy life, or at least that’s what every academic advisor said in my high school and college careers.
For the most part, it had been. Hell, I’d seen half the damn planet, visited countries we’d never even learned the names of in school to speak to leaders from CEOs to ambitious politicians. My golden touch came with me.
Prior to the dry spell of the century, I’d slept with whomever I wanted—which, admittedly, wasn’t even half as many people as Todd’s self-righteous body count. In my world, the need for company didn’t overrule keeping my standards high—going wherever I wanted, chasing the clients I wanted… and I loved every. Damn. Minute of it.
My company had evolved from life coaching to holistic business coaching, and until this year, I’d regularly made it home to Mistyvale to see my family. Which was necessary with eleven brothers and sisters. My life was perfect. At least, it was until I opened my phone to the family text thread, where everyone was sharing holiday season photos. My oldest brother, Rhyett, shot over the cutest picture with his wife and daughter—with her perfect button nose painted black, whiskers painted on her sun-kissed Florida skin, those squishable cherub’s cheeks sandwiched in a red lion’s mane on for early trunk-or-treating. Tears pricked at my eyes, and the lump in my throat made me decide to book early tickets to Florida this Christmas to soak up snuggles before I had to compete with ten other siblings. I needed to lock down my spot as favorite auntie before the rest of the yahoos made their attempts to secure her affection.
Elora
Brex, you make a very cute mama lion.
Brexley
Thanks! Papa lion with our lil cub is my favorite though.
The image bouncedright into my inbox. Rhyett throwing baby Quinn up in the sky as her eyes vanished with the size of her open-mouthed, buck-toothed giggle. Noel, Jameson’s girlfriend, followed it up with a picture of the two of them ice skating back in Mistyvale, bundled faces rosy-red with cold. By the time my younger brother, Axel, sent his selfie with his new girlfriend on a beach halfway around the world, my chest constricted, and I slid my cell back into my purse with a heavy sigh.
If careers were the most important part of our twenties—figuring ourselves out, establishing financial security—why did my heart ache so severely? And what was it about hitting my thirties that made it all feel so…urgent? I didn’t want to find a man and jump right into child rearing. I wanted the whole fairytale. The love story. A romantic engagement. Planning a dream wedding with my sisters and friends. Time to travel and soak each other up before we were in the trenches of midnight feedings and spit up on my blazers. But, shy of sticking my eggs in a freaking freezer, it seemed like that fantasy was slipping right through my fingers.
Which led me here, in the back of a rideshare after yet another shitty blind date with the sticky heat of an Emerald Bay fall fastening my thighs to the leather as my soft-spoken driver told me his entire life story.
My eyes glazed over, watching the traffic pass us by in a blur of gradually illuminating red light, the sun sinking over the horizon. Okay, so maybe living nomadically had its drawbacks. Drawbacks like no network of trustworthy referrals to men who were actually worth an hour getting ready and a subsequent thirty minutes in the back of some dude’s Kia. Hell, I would rather turn on a good sitcom or curl up with a romcom and some tea than go out with a dud. I wasn’t fucking desperate. At least this time, I wasn’t alone in a random city. I was visiting my sister, just outside of San Diego, which was a personal paradise of mine.
The blue light of dusk filled the air when my driver pulled up to the curb in front of Alice’s apartment complex, and I scraped my thighs off the leather and scooted out with a cordial ‘thank you,’ before heading for the gate. Past the coded entrance, I seriously eyeballed the pool, half a mind to just collapse in sideways like a tree, yelling ‘timber’ as I free fell, just to wash off the sensation of hungry-but-misogynistic blue eyes on my skin. There had to be more than this…right?
That was the question still circulating in my mind when I finally made it to the front door and found not only Alice, but our best friend, Max, planted comfortably on the sofa in front of the glow of the television. Two heaping bowls of popcorn—peanut butter for Alice and cheddar for Max—were surrounded by Milk Duds, Red Vines, and Hershey’s Kisses, all neatly poured into cute teal bowls on the coffee table. We’d found Max some time in elementary school and decided to keep him forever. His neatly coiffed black hair was slicked back and complimented his coordinating cashmere sweater and slacks. The man had always possessed impeccable taste, right down to the shoes neatly lined by the door. He reached over to snatch up the remote, wincing as he took in my face and simultaneously paused the movie. My sister was draped across the couch with her feet in his lap, her long, dark hair flowing over the pillow propping her neck up, as she slowly ceased sipping on the chocolate milkshake I was certain she’d hogged. She lifted her phone and grimaced.
“Eight o’clock?” she said, followed by a sympathetic sigh.
“The dry spell of the century strikes again,” Max lamented heavily, scooting over to free up a sliver of space for me between him and the armrest. We’d both been on a long run of crappy romantic luck, leaving me no option but to blow out a heavy breath as I accepted the gesture. Head on his shoulder, I sighed.
“Small talk aside, he opened the date asking about my fucking body count.”
“What the fuck?” Alice scoffed, shaking her head as she returned to her dessert.
Max smirked, adding, “I would have told him I don’t count bodies, just orgasms, and of those, there’ve been plenty.”
An aggrieved sound, more sigh than laugh, bubbled between my lips before I admitted, “I asked him if the ones in the freezer counted.”
Max’s evil cackle was one of my favorite sounds on the planet. He took way too much satisfaction out of any kind of savagery, and I loved him all the more for it. “That’s my girl,” he said, leaning his cheek on the top of my head. “What about that guy from last week? The foxy one.” I might not have been able to see him, but the Max that lived inside my brain absolutely waggled his brows. Sitting up, I turned to face them, greedily accepting the rope of licorice he offered.
“Carrick. He was nice.”
“But…?” Alice hedged, not bothering to unwrap her lips from the straw.
“Bad kisser?” Watching as I snapped off a bite of my candy, Max canted his head with narrowed eyes.
“No, he was fairly decent in that department.”
“No career path?”
“Shitty credit score?”
“Socks with sandals?”
“Bad tipper?” The two of them rattled off potential reasons for my rejection of Carrick, the semi-adequate kisser, like it had become a game to guess why none of the men I’d matched with were ever good enough. I couldn’t help but laugh as Max amended, “Oh! No tipper?”
“Super religious, so you couldn’t test the chemistry?” Alice said, a strangled shred of hope in her tone, like that objection might be redeemable. Hell, maybe it could be. My prospects were as abundant as the Sahara Desert is in trees. But they were proportionate with the amount of effort I’d given dating as of late.
The pathetic reality was that I was the absolute best at giving advice…so long as it pertained to anything aside from my love life. Try as I might, I’d been hung up on one asshole since I was fifteen. Every time I saw the same guy more than a few times and things got serious, my walls went up, because no matter how fabulously attractive or wildly successful they were, they weren’t—him. The worst part? Broderick Allen was anything but an asshole.
We’d grown up as rivals in school—which wasn’t really fair, as I had the advantage of being a few years behind him and made it my personal mission to break every record he ever set. Petty? Absolutely. But when he chose his friendship with my older brothers over our feelings for each other my senior year, I decided I no longer felt bad about our childish games. He picked them—honoring some stupid high school pact. Last summer was the first year we’d spent an excessive amount of time together since I’d left Mistyvale for college, and while I’d been endlessly subjected to everything about him I’d always loved—the gravel of his familiar laugh, the way the warm umber skin around those dark eyes wrinkled every time he smiled, his passion to advocate for literally anyone in need, even if they weren’t his responsibility, and that gorgeous, clever mind—he never made a damn move.
It was high time to move the fuck on. So, I’d returned to life on the road, which was usually where I was happiest. These speaking engagements were what I lived for, even if my thirty-two-year-old body just didn’t jump between time zones as easily as a twenty-something body did, and I was growing acutely aware of it.
Max’s lips twisted to the side, Alice’s gray-blue eyes growing concerned as they both stared me down, my silence evidently lingering far longer than appropriate. “It’s just… he’s not…”
It was Max who confirmed my spinster status and finished my thought. “Broderick.”
His name made me groan, burying my face in my hands as I growled against them before jerking them away to stuff a handful of cheddar popcorn in my mouth. Aggressively chewing over the cheese-powdered deliciousness, I rolled my eyes. “The man has had over a decade since I was officially ‘legal’—if he was going to do something, he would’ve by now—and I’m just being dragged along on a hook he doesn’t even know exists and—what is wrong with me?”
“You know, they say we store our first love in the same part of the brain as a heroin addiction,” Alice offered helpfully, as though I wasn’t the one to tell her that after her first heartbreak.
“Great. So, I’m a junkie for a man that doesn’t even want me.”
The abrupt upheaval of the snack bowl punctuated Max’s eye roll as he stood, setting the popcorn on the table. Grabby hands outreached for me as he demanded, “Get up, Elly. We’re getting you laid.”
“What?” I barked, laughing, but the man never relented and wasn’t about to change now. Snatching my hands in his, he heaved me to my feet with an eager Alice on our heels as he led us through the living room.
“That’s all you need. Hell, that’s all anybody needs. One good fuck, you’ll be right as rain, and you can focus on the important things again.”
“The Summit’s in a few weeks, right?” Alice redirected, flipping on her bedroom light as Max dragged me to the bed only to shove me onto the floral spread with a petulant bounce.
“Yeah, just before Thanksgiving,” I said flatly, resigned to my fate. Once Max and Alice made a plan, there was no escaping it. Not alive, anyway. And while I would absolutely not be climbing a stranger like a tree tonight, drinks and nachos with these two yahoos sounded like the perfect distraction. The Leaders in Thought Summit was the event of my year—hell, my decade, if I had anything to say about it.
This year’s conference was different. Having attended every fall since my first year in college, this was the year they had invited me back as a speaker. To say happy squeals had occurred the moment the phone was off would be an understatement. While my love life might’ve been barren, my ability to analyze a company and pull out their strength was what God put me on this earth for. In a few short weeks, I’d stand in front of colleagues and role models who’d inspired my love of the field and share what I’d learned with them for once.
“Good. That leaves us one week for fun, and two for prep,” Max said, as if I didn’t already have two completed drafts of my speech for that stage open on my laptop. “In the meantime, let’s get the stick out of your ass, and let your hair down. Get out of that dress. It smells like desperation and blind date douche.”