CHAPTER 11
Hudson nursed his pale ale while surveying the crowd. He’d taken a ferry over to Seattle, making his way to a bar/club that he’d been going to for about a year or two. It wasn’t anything particularly special: a brick building with a door painted black, a plain bar with the usual mixed drinks and a few beers on tap. Still, the music was a good mix: nothing too pop, nothing too trendy or EDM, just a steady stream of sorta-Latin-sorta-alternative-but-still-danceable. Even country on some nights, not that he particularly cared for that. Not his kind of dancing. But it accomplished what it needed to: the crowd wasn’t a bunch of college kids. The bar was close enough to an office complex that it was usually people trying to blow off steam after work.
Much like he was.
He was wearing his favorite jeans and a black T-shirt that was just tight enough to get second glances. He’d left his face unshaven. He knew that, especially for office workers, the “rough and ready” look played well.
He was here to get laid, point blank. He didn’t feel particularly bad about that.
He’d used dating apps in the past, but after a few instances of that going wrong fast, he’d abandoned them. One time a woman, who obviously should not have been on any sort of dating site, wound up weeping about her ex for a solid hour as he’d bought her delivery dinner and listened. He got her to call her best friends, then fled. Another time, he’d had a woman who wanted him to tie her up and choke her ... and then wanted to “switch.” Which, hey, he wasn’t going to yuck anybody’s yum, but he’d literally just met this woman. There was no way in hell he was doing anything like that, from either angle, without some level of trust or even a simple heads-up, especially since nothing had come up in their messaging.
Now he did things the old-fashioned way: meet at a bar, size each other up, go back to someone’s place (hers, obviously, since he didn’t bring anyone home, and even if he’d been inclined, the island was very inconvenient for anybody from the city). Occasionally a hotel.
Have some fun, sweaty, athletic sex. Get off, leave happy. They didn’t exchange numbers.
It wasn’t that he hated relationships or anything, although he imagined that’s what it looked like from the outside. He’d had a good role model with his parents, who had been married and in love for over forty years now. But his marriage to Amanda had been a mistake, for a number of reasons. She’d been his high school sweetheart (okay, senior-year sweetheart). But they shouldn’t have gotten married when she got pregnant. It’d made sense at the time—it was the only way things should go, as far as the small town was concerned. (Well, except for her family. They were pissed enough to kick her out and then move off island.)
Since they’d divorced and he’d become sole guardian of the twins, those two kids had been his total focus. It might seem clichéd, but they were his whole fucking world. It wasn’t just that he wanted to protect them from getting attached to someone who he might break up with, although there was certainly that fear, and he had some history there too. It was just that juggling actually caring for the two of them with being self-employed in order to care for them, and making sure he wasn’t burning out his folks ... that was already too much.
He didn’t go off island often, and the women he got with understood very clearly that it was just sex, or least he tried to emphasize that idea as clearly as he could. It might make him a dick, but better to hurt feelings up front than essentially take advantage and then cause resentment later—or at least, that was the best he could come up with.
The problem was, he was tired . Getting dressed up (or at least dressed to fuck), then taking the ferry and a cab, paying a cover if there was a live band and the price of the drinks ... meeting the women, seeing who was interested in just what he was, making sure they were at least somewhat compatible ... the older he got, it just seemed to get more exhausting. And empty. Sometimes, he wondered if he wouldn’t be happier just jerking off and sleeping. It’d certainly be cheaper.
His fatigue wasn’t helping his current frame of mind. He knew that as he shook his head when the bartender’s raised eyebrows and nod asked if he wanted another beer. He glanced down the bar, his gaze locking with a woman with sandy-blonde hair and a wide, mischievous smile. She had eyelashes so long and thick, he wondered if they were real, then silently cursed Kimber for telling him fake lashes were even a thing.
Still, he got up, making his way to sit next to her. “Hey,” he said.
Really suave, asshole.
She didn’t seem to mind. “Hey, yourself,” she said, leaning close to be heard over the music and, possibly not coincidentally, letting him get a good look at the cleavage that was presented in a sky-blue top. She looked up at him coyly through those thick eyelashes. “What’s your name?”
“Hudson.” He smiled. Damn it, he knew how to do this. “I was wondering if I could buy you a drink.”
“ Were you?” Her smile was flirty back. “Just a drink, hmm?”
“Depends on what else you’re interested in.”
It was all just a routine at this point, and he felt like he was going through the motions. It felt empty, like when you weren’t hungry but you ate a whole damned bag of cheap potato chips in a flavor you weren’t even crazy about because they were there and they were good enough.
I want to have an orgasm or two with a fun woman who also just wants to have an orgasm or two. Then I want to go home and sleep.
He winced at himself. He wasn’t even sure if he was convincing himself anymore.
“You okay?” she asked, looking a little concerned, and he shook it off.
“Yeah. Just a long day.”
“What do you do?” she asked, still flirty.
“Handyman,” he said without thinking.
He saw the exact moment her interest waned. Those blue eyes dimmed and quickly looked elsewhere in the bar. “Oh! I think ...”
“Your friend just got here?” he supplied, since that was the usual response when someone lost interest. She latched on to it, and he shrugged, giving her a friendly smile and nod before turning away. It didn’t hurt. He didn’t even know her.
Maybe he ought to just throw in the towel. He took another long sip of his beer. He’d just finish this off, and then ...
“Hi!”
He glanced over his shoulder at a red-haired woman, who looked back at the two women flanking her, giggling and nodding encouragingly. Her friends, obviously. The redhead was probably in her thirties, on the younger side. “Hi,” he replied.
They giggled again en masse. He suppressed the sigh. The young end of thirties, and acting even younger. He hoped she wasn’t late twenties. Twenties was a deal-breaker for him. He refused to sleep with women who were closer in age to his kids than himself, thinking of how he’d feel if the situation was reversed with either of the twins.
“You’re hot,” the woman said without warning.
He grinned. It was the grin that he knew was, as a previous hook-up had said, panty melting. “You’re not bad yourself, darlin’,” he said, laying on the vaguely sexy drawl thick. Her responding smile was like a ninety-thousand-lumen flashlight.
At that moment, the DJ shifted to a song that had a good beat, something sexy but still kind of fast. He glanced over.
“You dance?”
“You asking?” Her expression looked like she was trying to challenge him, but the excitement was still there.
He smiled back, then led her to the small dance floor. There were a few other people—it was Wednesday, after all—but he got into the beat, moving easily. He’d gained his love of dancing from his mother. His father grumped about it sometimes, but Hudson knew, deep down, his dad liked dancing too. Sometimes the two of them would groove in the backyard during barbecues. His dad would smile at her like they were still twenty, meeting at some concert, falling head over heels. And while he’d never admit it, it made Hudson happy to see it. Hopeful.
It might seem weird to other men Hudson’s age, but even when he couldn’t get laid, he genuinely liked dancing.
He gave her space, watching her as he sank into the song, gauging her interest.
Dancing also told you a lot about a person—especially how they’d be in bed. He guessed by the way her gaze ate him up that she knew this already, and she seemed to like what she saw.
Unfortunately, he also saw what she was doing.
For one thing, she was all about acting sexy, which meant either she was more than a little tipsy or she was interested in getting laid. The second, obviously he was okay with—he, too, had that in mind. The first one, absolutely not.
Beyond that, she was off rhythm and, worse, seemed to hope that the gyrations and the shimmies and flaunting of her boobs would help him overlook that.
Honestly, with most men, it probably would. Even for him, it wasn’t exactly a hard pass. But he got the feeling she’d be either overenthusiastic or ... well, off rhythm . And while he didn’t mind doing the bulk of the work, or all the work, when it came to sex, he couldn’t help but wince a little, especially when she decided to move up on him, rubbing her pelvis against his and running her nails up his chest.
He sighed, mentally smacking himself. Get it together! What is wrong with you?!
But he knew what was wrong with him. He still liked sex, but at this point, he didn’t want to go through all this trouble just to get horizontal with a woman who he wasn’t really all that attracted to. He was getting tired of hookups: the anonymity, the fast-food convenience, and the similar feeling of dissatisfaction and emptiness afterward.
Not that this was about her—he was sure she was a perfectly nice woman. It was him. He finished the song with her, hoping that she didn’t notice he hadn’t chubbed up. Was it an age thing?
Fuck. He hoped it wasn’t an age thing.
They headed back to the bar. “Can I buy you a drink?” he tried again. He’d come all this way, after all, and she seemed pretty and amenable. Besides ... if he was burned out on convenient sex, what did that leave? Relationships?
He didn’t have a great track record there, and he wasn’t going to start here, that was for damned sure.
“You really want to?” Her smile was more of a smirk, and her friends were watching like hawks. “Or do you wanna ...”
Before she could finish, his phone buzzed. “Sorry,” he said quickly, glancing at the display.
Willa?
It buzzed a couple of times—a few texts. He found his heart fluttering, just a little, in his chest, and the smile he’d been forcing all night turned suddenly, reflexively real.
“Gotta take this,” he added, with what he hoped was an apologetic smile. She shrugged, a little irritated, and turned away from him.
He went outside, even though he didn’t need to, the air cool compared to the bar’s sweaty enclosed atmosphere. He scrolled through Willa’s texts.
Willa: Hi. It’s me.
Willa: You actually know it’s me. Anyway. I would like to get a bid for fixing the living room? What Uncle Harold did was hideous, and I want it back to what it was, especially if I decide to flip it.
He grimaced. He immediately knew, in his gut, he didn’t want her to flip the house.
For reasons.
Willa: Anyway, you seem to know the house, but if you need another visit to get the particulars, please let me know, we can schedule something. Thank you for your help.
He reread it. There was literally nothing in the text that could be taken as flirty. He could hear it in her voice: that soft, smooth, gentle tone. Yeah, it was purely professional, just this side of formal. There was that candor too. Like they were in this together, fighting the world of tacky remodelers like her uncle. He also liked that she appreciated his knowledge, seemed to respect what he did. Lots of people on the island trusted him to fix their homes. She didn’t need to look at his portfolio or get him to undercut “actual” contractors or any of that.
She was something, someone, valuable. She treated him like she thought he was too.
He looked back at the bar, all interest gone.
Maybe he was getting tired, or old.
Or maybe ... maybe he just wanted to get back on island.
For reasons.