Satisfaction Guaranteed(4)

I jerk my gaze to the questioner—the brunette.

“It’s just that you have the same hair and everything,” she says, gesturing wildly from Truly to me.

My sister answers, “Yes, we are. You might have seen us in the Guinness World Records as the world’s first male-female identical twins.”

Her jaw drops. “That is so cool. I can’t believe I’m meeting identical boy-girl twins. I thought it was always one gender only.”

I point to my sister. “She had a penis in the womb. It fell off before she was born.”

Truly tosses a cloth at me while the brunette stares, slack-jawed. “And you became one. One giant dick.”

“And on that note, I need to go.” I tug Truly in for a quick kiss on the cheek, and then I'm out.

As I head down the cobblestoned block lined with trees, I unknot my tie, humming “The Curse of an Aching Heart.”

I’m lost in thought, and then, looking up, I come to a stop.

I have to rub my eyes.

I check my surroundings to make sure I haven’t walked into my own dream life. Everything seems abundantly real, from the air I breathe to the ground beneath me.

And yet this is a fantasy bar none. I’ve definitely dreamed of those legs, that body, that gorgeous face.

Here she is, walking toward me.

The one I still wonder about.

The one who got away.





3





Sloane Elizabeth’s Notes to Self on ALL THE THINGS



What sort of trickery is it for an old flame to appear even more good-looking?

Surely this is voodoo of the highest order. Some sort of spell, right? What other explanation can there be?

Malone Goodman, wearing a suit and tie, tailored probably. He belongs on a Pinterest board of hot men in suits.

Obviously, this is alchemy.

Just don’t let on.

Don’t let on about ALL THE THINGS.

Don't let on that you googled him.

Don't let on that you checked out his Facebook page.

And definitely don't let on that you listened to one of his songs.

You are so not thinking about that right now.

You are not thinking about that at all.

It's seven years later, and you don’t still think about what might have been.

You've got this, girl.





4





Some women you never forget.

Your brain won’t let go of the scent of her skin. Your muscle memory holds the shape of your body curved around hers, and your senses recall the feel of your hands in her hair, your lips on hers.

It can be months, even a year, since you’ve seen her, longer since you’ve touched her, and everything rushes back in an instant.

Every damn image collides at once in a traffic jam of sensation. Sounds, sighs, scents. Her back arching, her lips parted, her waterfall of hair cascading over my hands.

But now, she’s three-dimensional, flesh and bone. I blink all those memories aside, and they take a back seat to the woman in front of me.

As I drink in the long blonde hair, the chocolate-brown eyes, a body I wanted to get to know so very badly, I’m reminded of one damn near perfect week seven years ago.

One tempting, tantalizing, torturous week. It’s seared in my mind. We met at a fundraising event in Manhattan, danced, drank, laughed, and stayed out all night. In the seven days that followed, we embodied infatuation. Late nights, lingering calls, chats you never wanted to end. So many sparks you could light up the night sky.

I can recall every moment, I swear.

Including the ending.

The bitter realization of who she was.

One more step, then another, and she stops in front of me, looking impossibly sexy, and she was the sexiest woman I’d ever known when she was a mere twenty-two.

But now? Dear God. She’s not even dressed up. Sloane Elizabeth is decked out in exercise pants, running shoes, and a sporty tank, and I still want to lick and kiss every inch of her. A canvas bag is slung over her shoulder.

I gesture to it. “You’re still shopping at midnight?”

“It’s the best time to go.” She raises her hands in fists. “I don’t have to fight anyone over the last head of radicchio.”

“I bet you don’t have to arm wrestle anyone for radicchio during the daylight hours either.”

“True,” she says with a laugh, then eyes me up and down. Those brown irises. Those red lips. God, I remember exactly how they taste. She punches my arm, knocking my thoughts from the dirty zone to the buddy level. “How the hell are you, Malone?”

“I can’t complain. And you? I take it from the grocery bag on your shoulder that you’re living here. Did you move from Connecticut?” She’s lived an hour or so from the city for the last several years, first New Jersey, then Connecticut, so I’ve run into her every now and then. But it’s been a little over a year since the last time.

“I did. I’m working here now.” She shifts her weight to her left leg, her soulful eyes never leaving my face. “What has it been? A year or so?”

A year and two months. We bumped into each other at a Moroccan restaurant in Chelsea that Truly dragged me to because the drinks were legendary. Sloane was dining with some hipster wannabe with a dangling earring who was clearly an asshole. Who else wears dangling earrings? She introduced me to him that night. His name was Plant. Or Brick. Or something painfully trendy that made me dislike him even more. She was still living in Connecticut at the time, so she obviously took the train into the city to see him. That tipped the scales to loathing for Dangling Earring Boy, who was also too young for her.