Chapter 5
Emma
O nly Justice would catch Miles with a woman on her knees at the spa. The Ravine is a white colonial revival mountain resort, the largest in the valley. The square footage alone should afford us the privacy to not run into her ex or his best friend. But fate works in mysterious ways, and apparently it wants to be a vindictive bitch on this trip. Miles’s exhibition is the running joke of our lunch. Justice is bewildered that public sex is a thing, and I’m pretending that his being in another woman’s mouth doesn’t bother me. Because it doesn’t.
I left him in Ravenous last night drooling and ready to burst. He didn’t know what to do once my fingers touched his lips with my essence. I slept with a smile and the satisfaction of knowing I had the upper hand in this game we’ve played for a decade strong. But Miles one-upped me, and I hate it. I don’t give up power, and his ability to make me feel is new territory I don’t want to visit.
My guess is he’s with the woman who was hovering over him at the lodge. Justice and I spent the morning on a snowmobile, which put us with other singles who were hitting the slopes. Terrence was there. Justice didn’t see him—thank God—but I did. I also saw his friend, stretching a snowsuit over his burly frame and good looks. No one would judge me for doing a double take at the man with the beanie and trimmed goatee. I did, and I wasn’t alone.
The woman in question locked eyes with him from across the pine-walled registration room. She was pretty, with wavy dark brown hair, rosy cheeks, and heart-shaped lips—not that I paid attention. I grabbed Justice and my gear, put on my helmet before Miles caught me staring, and took off for the winter cold.
Justice and I cruised through tall pines on a trail coated in snow against a backdrop of mountains. I’m not what you’d call an outdoor person by any stretch of the imagination, unless it involves a beach or the Mediterranean coast. I live in Malibu for a reason. It’s a miracle I don’t have a concussion the way Justice flew over snow mounds like they were speed bumps and not knee-high tickets to the ER. This face is too cute to ruin, and I focused on the crisp air and sunshine to ignore my life flashing in front of my visor. But I stuck it out and have the keychain to prove it.
We wrapped hours ago and have been inside this bistro ever since.
“This is nice.” Justice leans into her rattan chair with a content sigh.
“Good food and cocktails will do that for you.”
She rubs her stomach over her sweater and reaches for the mug cake she has no chance of finishing.
“Does your ass feel better?” I ask.
Only my friend would twerk and get a cramp after driving us on a two-seater snowmobile. She couldn’t help herself once she got the hang of it after our safety course. Justice gets a gold star for not crashing us into a ditch, but that’s our friendship: riding until the wheels fall off.
“Yeah.” Justice squirms but nods. “It would feel a lot nicer if I didn’t have a thong wedged in my crack.”
My grin widens at her glare. “You’ll thank me later.”
This singles’ retreat is full of surprises for Justice, starting with her cluelessness about our destination and me packing her bag—which includes nothing but thongs. We’ve managed to keep our weeklong vacation tradition since college, which is a small miracle. Jay is busy being VP of marketing for her firm, and I’m the senior creative director of a luxury lingerie company.
What better way to decompress than at a resort in a winter? If Justice could jump into a Hallmark movie with a small town, tree farms, and mistletoe kisses, she’d disappear and send me a postcard. She grew up in Alexandria like I did, but she eats up those cookie-cutter stories in rustic locations with guaranteed happily ever afters. That’s my friend: a believer of love and cheer. Me? I’ll take the lumberjack in plaid whose ass looks good in jeans. Keep your sleigh rides.
Vail was supposed to be a place where Justice could clear her head, sleep in, and recharge. Who am I to judge if she gets over Terrence by getting under a new man? I love him like a brother, but I support my girl first and always.
Cobwebs, remember?
My worrisome friend gets nervous easily. While I anticipated Justice using true crime scenarios as an excuse not to socialize, Terrence’s presence is a trigger I never saw coming—same with Madison’s thirsty ass lurking in dark corners to chase after him. She already tried goading Justice at lunch yesterday, and it won’t happen again. Not on my watch.
This is only day two of the retreat, and it has to turn around.
“I need a nap and someone to roll me out of here.” Justice eyes her Nutella martini.
“Your sweet tooth always gets you in trouble,” I snicker. “Remember our junior year of high school, when you had the bright idea to melt all of your chocolate bars into a drink before stuffing your face with ice cream?”
She groans. “Mom turned it into a hot chocolate recipe. She still uses it today.”
Angela Garvey isn’t my mother by blood, but she took me under her wing and hasn’t stopped loving me since Justice and I met in homeroom during our first year of high school. She doesn’t want to replace my mother, nor step on her toes, but she has been a constant maternal figure in my life. Justice’s parents showed up to school events when mine were too busy, and they made space for me in their home.
I sat at the Garvey dinner table almost every school night. I learned how to drive with Justice and her dad and spent weekends—and some weekdays—sleeping over.
State dinners and congressional connections were far more important to my parents than the memories I created with Justice’s family. That’s why she calls Ms. Angela “Mom” and not “my mom.” I’m her second daughter, someone she made room for in her big heart.
We end our lunch stuffed and talking about nothing important.
“Holy shit, Jay!”
“Do you think it’s too much?” Justice smooths the sides of her black silk dress. She is out to make a statement tonight in peep-toe booties, her natural curls in full bloom.
“Honey, if I didn’t love dick so much, I would take you home with me tonight. You look amazing !”
After three hours in the bistro, we’re back in our suite, laughing and catching up. Justice and I are close, but texts and phone calls don’t cut it. I miss her, and I wish we lived closer. My introverted best friend is off to a whiskey-tasting tonight, and she’s going solo. The fact that she hasn’t run back to Austin yet is a testament to the strength she doesn’t realize she has.
I wish I could take away her pain of loving someone until it hurt too much to stay, but I’ve never known that type of adoration, and I struggle with how to show up for her—even if she tells me I’m enough.
“Where are you off to tonight?” Justice puts the finishing touch on her red lipstick and glances at me in the mirror.
“You know, a little bit of this and a little bit of that,” I force out. “There’s a poker game on one of the upper levels I want to check out.”
If I could kick my own ass, I would. Miles is still on my mind, and I’ll be damned if a man has me this ruffled. He’s loud, obnoxious, unfiltered, and enraging. He’s also a clit tingler and a panty soaker, with that hypnotic grin and the way he sinks those white teeth into his thick lower lip. I haven’t seen so much as a dick hair, and I still have his tip on my mind, wondering if Miles feels as good as he smells.
Lunch wasn’t a distraction. Neither was snowmobiling. Miles is everywhere—in my thoughts and wherever I turn. But I won’t fuck him, so fuck him .
I’m not on my way to poker, but I would clean house and take the deed if I were. I learned how to school my features at a young age, and that comes in handy with people who underestimate me. What little time I spent with my father growing up included his beloved card deck and his Congress buddies placing bets. I enjoy poker, but that’s not the game I want to play tonight.
My lie is believable enough for Justice not to look at me sideways. She doesn’t question my whereabouts. Another trip to Ravenous is how I’ll end my night.
It’s time I take my own advice.
The best way to get over a man is to get under a new one, right?
“This might be the best idea you’ve had in a long time,” I say to Justice through the hotel phone. Rising steam from the bubble bath creates a thin cloud of lavender from the tub.
Tonight was a complete bust that requires pampering.
I made it to Ravenous, fully prepared to enjoy all of its pleasures. The crowd was smaller than last night’s, but sex and kink reigned thick in the air, and I was ready for my high.
I looked flawless.
I felt amazing.
Even cloaked in layers of satin, eyes gravitated to me, hungry for the chance to see what was underneath my black robe and lace mask.
I didn’t need their lust to reaffirm what I already know: I’m fine as hell, and I could have any man I want on his knees at the tips of my open-toe heels.
If only they were the one whose desire mixed with pain at not touching me when I teased him within an inch of his life.
Every dark figure became an apparition of the man haunting me, the one I can’t escape. I saw Miles in the shadows at Ravenous, in the hooded gaze of masked figures who matched his build but lacked the fire in their eyes to incinerate me with a single look. Miles was everywhere and nowhere, with a hold on me as vivid as the memory of us in Justice and Terrence’s hallway that keeps seeping back into my mind.
“How’s your chocolate cake?” Justice asks.
“It would taste better if it could erase the memories of a certain dick,” I confess.
“A person or an organ?”
“Both.”
After Ravenous, I rushed back to my suite with my tail between my legs, unsure how to extract myself from the nightmare of the man I can’t stop thinking about. I opened Pandora’s Box, and wish I could close it again.
“I’m surprised I didn’t find you with your suitcases ready to go when I came back.”
Looks like I’m not the only one whose night went to shit. Justice freaked out after seeing Terrence with Madison at tonight’s whiskey tasting event. The details are blurry, like why he walked in with her and Miles, but Jay acted out of character. She saw West and pretended to flirt to guard her heart, which blew up in her face once Terrence followed them into a back room. The only thing he walked in on was Justice keeping West company while he retrieved wine bottles. But that didn’t stop an argument with years’ worth of heartbreak thrown at their feet.
“You should’ve seen how much I hurt him tonight,” Justice murmurs under a long breath. “Terrence was as mad as the night I left him.”
I was on a plane out to Austin the same night Justice called me to say her marriage was over. The swell of her pain was beyond tears when I finally reached her. She was numb, a fragment of her cheerful self, who was slipping away. I wanted to do something— feel something—for her to transfer the agony. Hurt lay naked in her eyes seven months ago, the same way they did tonight when she finally came back to the room.
We’re on the phone with each other from our bathrooms now, soaking in our freestanding tubs with dessert trays to comfort us. If only they worked.
“You two spent close to a year not talking,” I tell her. “It was only a matter of time before things erupted. You’re hurt. He’s hurt. You both lost so much, and you haven’t properly healed.” I don’t pray, but in this moment I do in hopes it will soothe her. I can’t erase the fight Justice had with Terrence, but I can be here for her however she needs.
“You know, you have some pretty good instincts for someone who hates relationships.” The first glimpse of humor cracks through her voice.
“I’m not sure I’d know how to be in a relationship if I tried.” My words stun me to silence. I don’t know what possessed the admission. It’s nothing new, nor a secret. Casual sex guards your heart, to keep you from giving it away to the wrong person.
How’s that going?
“Em, you okay?”
“Never better,” I blurt. “Are you ready to get out? I’m a prune, and it’s not a good look.”
We’re in the living area fifteen minutes later with our robes and hot chocolate. I try to nudge Justice to skip speed dating and put some distance between her and Terrence. And me and his sexy ass best friend.
She doesn’t bite, but come tomorrow, maybe I will.