My So-Called Sex Life (How to Date, #1)(15)

Or at my dick.

Though honestly, I’m not sure Hazel even looks my way anymore, but still I’ve got my emotional Kevlar on whenever I see her, so I fasten it tighter before I go.

I take off to meet the French tutor, dropping on my shades once I leave my building. I still don’t have a survival plan for this train trip, and I need one badly. I really should ask Carter how he handles cornerbacks barreling at him on the field every Sunday when he plays football before millions. Surely that’s similar to the kind of hard defense I’m up against now.

As I walk, I fire off a text to that effect. He answers immediately.

Carter: Fleet feet. Nerves of steel. Also, pads. Those football pads fucking work!





I laugh as I reply.

Axel: Noted. I’ll invest in shoulder pads for the trip.



Carter: Consider a cup too.





I wince in sympathy, then text goodbye as I bound down the steps to the subway, hopping on. As the train slaloms through the tunnels, I survey the passengers. A college-age dude with huge headphones and a goatee is bopping his head. Bet he likes craft beer and playing guitar with his buds. The harried mom with one kid in her lap, and two hermetically sealed to her death grip hands, probably needs a stiff drink, but not a stiff anything else.

I write some more character bios in my head, feeding possible supporting characters in my current book. When I reach West Seventy-Second, I’ve got a headful of backstories for the museum guards, Interpol agents, and crooks that Brooks Dean will face.

Damn, I admire that guy. That steely-eyed bounty hunter of stolen goods who’s got a sharp sense of humor, a chip on his shoulder, all the moves with the ladies, and a dead-set determination to right the wrongs in the world. He uses his law degree for good. To help him solve puzzles.

Maybe he’ll be my shoulder pads. Maybe I’ll pretend I’m one of my heroes on the trip and that’s how I’ll handle Hazel.

Then I laugh at that ridiculous idea.

I suck at pretending.

Although, maybe I want to relocate Brooks’s upcoming story to Antarctica. Just in case. Pretty sure Hazel, even though she’s a helluva word wizard, couldn’t pull off a sexy romantic comedy in the tundra.

Eh, who am I kidding? She’d write hot igloo sex and then melt all the penguins’ hearts and cocks.

With no game plan in hand, I head into Big Cup where Angeline, the French tutor our publishers hired, likes to meet. These twice-weekly sessions have helped me learn some basics. I do understand the value of knowing some key phrases since I write stories mostly set in Europe. It’s just fucking polite to try to speak the language when you’re abroad, at least when you order a meal or buy a train ticket. I speak Spanish and that knowledge came in handy when I researched and wrote my last book hunkered down in Barcelona, stuffing myself with Gaudí and paella.

I survey the shop for the stern, silver-haired, no-nonsense French woman at the sea of tables. Angeline’s not here, but my pulse shoots higher when I spot a woman with waves of red hair piled high on her head, her supple neck exposed. Hazel’s tucked into a corner booth, tapping away on her laptop, lost in the world in her mind. Her gaze is fixed on the screen, her fingers flying, nothing else happening but her imagination.

It’s just how she looked when we’d work together, and I’d find her in the back of a coffee shop, having started early. She’d apologize, saying, “I just had this idea…”

Then she’d share it with me, and invariably, it was a good idea. I’d build on it, and together we’d make something…electric.

A persistent part of me wishes I could go back in time to that day in Chelsea when we blew up and find her like this again. I could say something different. Say a lot of things different.

But you can’t go back. You can only go forward and learn to live with your regrets.

I gird myself for the knives she’ll deservedly throw at me as I grab the chair across from her. She doesn’t look up for a few seconds, then she startles when she does. “Oh. Shit. I didn’t see you.”

I hide a smile as best I can. That’s familiar too. Her reaction. Then I wipe the grin all the fucking way off. “That’s clear,” I say.

With an eye roll, she looks at her screen. “I guess this is a good stopping point anyway. And Angeline should be here in a few minutes.”

“But she’s always late,” I say.

“True. She is,” Hazel says, sighing, then tapping on her keyboard. She’s emailing her work to herself, making sure it’s stored in Dropbox too. She shuts the silver laptop.

“And what shenanigans are Hudson and Laini up to today?” I ask because I’m a jackass poking at a bruise. “Wait. Don’t tell me. He answered the door with only a towel on right after he showered. That clean, masculine scent drifted into her nostrils, lighting her up. Then her eyes popped wide open as she salivated over his six-pack, then she dropped the—hold on, give me a second—the cupcakes she’d baked to give him. To welcome him to the building. He’s her new next-door neighbor.” I take a beat, savoring the annoyed look in her eyes, since, well, I’m still a jackass. It’s easier, this Kevlar. “Am I right?”

The death rays she shoots from her stunning green eyes tunnel into the center of my heart. Possibly, she’s charred that organ to a crisp.