MY SO-CALLED SEX LIFE

  LAUREN BLAKELY

  CONTENTS

  About

  A How to Date Novel

  My So-Called Sex Life

  1. The Anti Meet Cute

  2. It’s Becoming a Habit

  3. Table for Two Strangers

  4. Mister Nice Guy

  5. He Likes Tacos

  6. Wineday

  7. A Horror Valentine

  8. Under-exaggerating

  9. Separate-ish

  10. Schadenfreude

  11. A Tidge Rugged

  12. Grab Life by the Meatballs

  13. The Long Con

  14. Symptoms of a Romance Heroine

  15. Take the Pill

  16. Elephant Bed

  17. Accidentally on Purpose

  18. Game for Anything

  19. The Plotting Game

  20. Blindsided

  21. Stop Talking

  22. My So-Called Sex Life

  23. The Anti-Cuddler

  24. The Truth about Sixty-Nine

  25. The Nutcracker

  26. A Competitive Monster

  27. Sex Mischief

  28. Two Tickets

  29. Hold the Tuna

  30. Adulting Reward

  31. Iron Dick

  32. Vodka and Tonic Together Again

  33. No More Words

  34. The Finesser

  35. Date Night

  36. Romance Fuck-up

  37. That Lucky Guy

  38. Stubborn Fool

  39. Of Course a Fountain

  40. The Hero

  41. Vex Me

  42. Ten Points

  43. I’m Imagining

  Epilogue

  Final Epilogue

  Excerpt - The RSVP

  Be A Lovely

  More Books by Lauren

  Dear Reader

  Contact

  Copyright © 2023 by Lauren Blakely

  Cover Design by Kate Farlow, Photo by Wander Aguiar

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means whatsoever without express written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, business, events and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  ABOUT

  I’ve got a list of people I absolutely don’t ever want to be stuck with on a boat, or a plane, or a train, and it starts and ends with the broody, grumpy, too-sexy-for-my-own good Axel Huxley.

  Also known as this romance novelist’s number one nemesis.

  The man is legendary for his mighty pen and his even mightier scowl. I tried to work together with the cocky thriller writer once upon a time, but the two of us are like vodka and good decisions. We don’t play well together.

  Only now, our publishers are sending us on a joint trip across Europe to mingle with our most devoted readers on an old-fashioned luxury train. And thanks to a booking snafu, we have to share a sleeper car.

  You guessed it--there’s only one bed.

  I’m not sure I can survive the next seven days and nights with my dangerously sexy enemy and all our fiery tension.

  Which explodes one night in a desperately needed hate bang.

  But the bigger plot twist is this – the more time we spend together, visiting the most romantic cities in Europe by day and discovering each other at night, the more I’m forced to face our past.

  To let go of the hurt.

  To see the man he’s become.

  And when I do, I wonder if it’s too late to write a new happy ending for us?

  A HOW TO DATE NOVEL

  By Lauren Blakely

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  MY SO-CALLED SEX LIFE

  BY LAUREN BLAKELY

  A Standalone in the How to Date series

  1

  THE ANTI MEET CUTE

  Hazel

  Obviously, I believe in love.

  If I didn’t, I’d be the worst kind of romance writer—the kind who lies to her readers.

  But there’s something I believe in more fervently than love, and that’s the meet-cute. You can’t get to the happy ending without the unputdownable beginning.

  The start of the story is my writing church, and I worship at the altar of those delicious moments when the hero and heroine meet for the first time.

  Or meet again.

  Tonight, I’ll be researching a new here’s-how-they-met possibility as I head to dinner in New York.

  I’m one block away from the restaurant. My short, black ankle boots click against the sidewalk on Twenty-Fourth Street as I gaze up at the numbers on the buildings. I pass a tattoo parlor where a goth gal inks a burly man’s arm, and then I acquire the target.

  Menu.

  “It’s as trendy as it is annoying,” my friend TJ said of the joint when he told me about it last week. “And I promise it’ll inspire your next chapter one.”

  I was sold. I made a reservation right away.

  Now, I’m here at the minimalist-style restaurant. Under the sign for Menu are the words Meet, Eat, Mingle.

  Change your life.

  Ambitious, but the way I see it, this place is going to be full of fodder. I can’t wait. I draw a deep inhale of the May night air, then square my shoulders. “Cover me, I’m going in,” I say to, well, no one.

  Sometimes I talk to myself. It’s a thing. Whatever.

  I head inside, marching to the hostess stand. A woman wearing a black tunic and sporting a blonde undercut shoots me a bored look. Yeah, that’s on point for a place called Menu.

  “Hello. I have a reservation. Valentine. Party of one,” I say.

  “It’s all parties of one,” she says, monotone.

  “Old habit,” I say with a friendly shrug. “In any case, it’s for seven-thirty.”

  With an aggrieved sigh, she scans the tablet screen, then meets my eyes. “The other party isn’t here yet. If he or she is five minutes late, we’ll have to ask you to leave.”

  Okaaaay.

  It’s a new world order. Restaurants have rigid rules. But I knew what I’d signed up for. “Works for me,” I say. You catch more flies with honey and all.

  “Fine,” she says, then she nods toward the dining room behind her. It’s small and bare, in keeping with the theme, aka we’re cool, you’re not. The tables are black wood, the walls are steel gray, the tiles are white. Everything is ordinary, except the experience.

  This restaurant is très chic because it seats strangers together.

  As I follow her, I smile, giddy at the thought of an inspired meet-cute. Two sexy strangers happen to be seated together at a hipster restaurant just like this. They hit it off. Get it on that night. Then, oops! The next day he turns out to be her brand-new boss, perhaps?

  But who is he? A mafia king? A sexy CEO?

  The muses will let me know who the next hero is. Maybe he’ll even reveal himself tonight.

  Undercut brings me to a table at the back. She waves a limp hand in the direction of the framed QR code on the black wood surface. “We use QR codes. You scan them with your phone. Have you ever used one before?”

  I’m thirty-one, missy. I can work a phone, a power drill, and a twenty-speed vibrator. Not all at once though. “I’m familiar with the concept of QR codes. Also, phones,” I say.

  “Cool,” she says blandly, then walks away, her tunic swishing against her leggings.

  Once I sit, I rub my palms on my jeans, a tiny bit nervous. What if I’m seated with an over-sharer? An endless talker? A dullsville candidate?

  But I’m excited too.

  What if my companion is an enigmatic billionaire like in a romance novel? A broody rock musician? A hot tech nerd who’s looking for a matchmaker?

  Gah. The meet-cute possibilities are endless, and when I write this as the opening of my next book, it’s going to be epic.

  I just know it.

  I’m making some notes on my phone about the vibe when a man’s voice interrupts my thoughts.

  “Four minutes and forty-five seconds.” His tone is a little gravelly and a lot know-it-all-y.

  Say it isn’t so.

  I was already dreading sharing a stage with Axel Huxley at the reader expo I’m doing this weekend. I can’t believe fate would inflict him on me any sooner than necessary.

  I turn my gaze toward the front of Menu, praying that’s not my archnemesis. Maybe he has a vocal twin. Maybe that’s a thing now.

  But my prayers are unanswered. Standing tall at the hostess stand is the smart-mouthed, glasses-wearing,
smirky-faced romantic-thriller writer.

  Wearing black because of course he wears black.

  And of course he’s arguing with the hostess. He never met a statement he couldn’t debate and dissect into a million julienned pieces, then pepper with disagreement.

  He blah blah blahs a little more, finishing with, “So, you have to seat me. It’s the policy of the restaurant.”

  I snort. Get over yourself, Huxley. I hope they kick you out.

  I feel sorry for whichever sucker is getting seated with King Dick tonight.

  Inspired, I make another note, chuckling fiendishly as I imagine my heroine running into her enemy before the clever, charming, hottie hero enters the scene. Then I check the menu options while waiting for my brilliant professor, my inscrutable tycoon, my good guy with a heart of gold in need of a makeover.

  Until the sound of footsteps grows louder and closer. I look up.

  At a face I want to punch.

  2

  IT’S BECOMING A HABIT

  Axel

  A long time ago, in a decade far, far away, I’d been terrified to walk to the front of my eleventh grade English class and present a speech on the dangers of wealth in The Great Gatsby.

  Speaking in front of a few dozen high schoolers who mostly didn’t give a shit was horrifying.

  My stepfather told me to picture everyone in the class naked. My brain did some extra credit. I didn’t just undress everyone as I opined on Fitzgerald’s depictions of the moneyed class. I imagined everyone in my class fucking.

  A writer’s habit was born.

  Ever since then, I’ve mentally written character bios for almost everyone I’ve met, detailing traits all the way down to their bedroom preferences. Assigning habits—like if they talk during The Godfather, how many cardboard wrappers they could possibly need on a cup of coffee, and whether they like it doggie style or being tied up and taken—has become the way I keep everything in perspective.

  The hostess? She only drinks soy chai lattes, and she brings her own cup to the artisan fair-trade coffee shop. She doesn’t have a favorite position because sex is boring in the same way everything is boring to her.

  Poor gal.

  The bartender over there with the goatee? The ring says he’s married but the way he stares at the hostess says he jerks it to her when the wife’s asleep. That is, after he reads lit fic in hardback.

  Then there’s the redhead I’d recognize from several football fields away. Too bad I don’t have the luxury of yards and yards. Instead, she’s seated mere feet from me at the last table at the edge of the dining room. The woman with the long, lush hair, the dangerous green eyes, the pouty lips, and the sharpest mouth I’ve ever met.

  Fuck her bio. I refuse to write one for Hazel Valentine.

  Ever.

  She’d better not be the other party at my dinner. I came here to research how to hire a hitman for my next book, not to share a meal with a woman who hates me.

  But as the hostess walks me to the last table, the inevitable becomes my Friday night, and my brain concocts a bio in spite of my better judgment.

  Hazel Valentine:

  Emotional wounds—we’re going to need a bigger boat for hers since someone clearly has daddy and boyfriend issues.

  Coffee—ideally via an IV drip. At all times of the day.

  Sex preferences—nope. Stop. Just stop. Don’t go there.

  As I near, Hazel looks up from her phone. For a moment she seems flustered but then she schools her expression. There’s simply flint in her gaze.

  The hostess waves to the table without speaking. I thank her and pull out a chair as she walks away, dismissing us already.

  Hazel stares at me unflinchingly, as if challenging me to leave.

  Won’t happen, sweetheart.

  I park myself, sliding into the chair across from the redhead, then smile without showing any teeth. I fold my hands and meet Hazel’s steely gaze. “Let me guess. You’re here to test oh-so-cute opening chapters for your next book,” I say.

  She tilts her head, smiling slyly. “And you must be researching how your next bad guy will off someone, hoping it will make your latest book more…scintillating.”

  Well, maybe she will give me some inspiration on how to hire a hitman after all.

  3

  TABLE FOR TWO STRANGERS

  Hazel

  It’s weird how, in this city of nearly 1.7 million, you can run into the same people all the time. But Manhattan’s more like a collection of small towns. Axel returned to New York a month ago, and I’ve bumped into him twice. First time was at the arcade three weeks ago when I was hanging out with my sister and her fiancé, Milo. The last person I wanted to see then was Axel. But he’s friends with Milo so I didn’t have a choice.

  Some days, it’s downright claustrophobic here.

  I also think New York, with its twisted sense of humor, loves to play chicken. Well, Manhattan, I won’t back down from this challenge you’re throwing at me in the form of my once-upon-a-time writing partner sharing a table for two with me.

  Oh, New York, you don’t know who you’re dealing with.

  “So, your next book,” I continue, crossing my arms, gaze locked on the man I used to call a dear friend. “Is it? More scintillating? More suspenseful?”

  Axel hums, marinating the question, taking his sweet time with it. “As a matter of fact, Hazel,” he says, lingering on my name, overemphasizing it like he always does with names. I know why he does it, but I won’t let that soften me. “Scintillating and suspenseful is exactly how the New York Press referred to A Perfect Lie.”

  Somehow, I manage not to roll my eyes as I give him an almost-real smile. “That’s sweet,” I say as if I mean it.

  With a cocky glint in his eyes, Axel shrugs, accepting the comment at face value. “Thank you. That one meant a lot to me,” he says.

  I stifle a huge laugh. Of course he loves reviews from pompous news outlets.

  “I’m sure it did.” I lick my lips and go for the kill, “It’s sweet that you’re still as obsessed with reviews as ever.”

  His expression falters, blue eyes flickering with what might be embarrassment. I’ve hit a sore spot. Good. But then his face goes blank like he’s rearranging his thoughts to hide them from me. “I’m not obsessed,” he says, defensively.

  “Don’t you know by now? You can’t make everyone happy with a story.” I fight off a smile. Hell, it’s hard not to grin when I can bust him on the thing he loses sleep over—what everyone else thinks of his words. I tried to help him with this, once upon a time. Look where that got me.

  Axel nods slowly, like he’s letting my comments sink in. “True, Hazel. That’s so true. And you’d know better than anyone. You can’t please everyone even if you stuff all the quirky pets in the world into your rom-coms,” he says, grabbing his own rusty knife and shoving it into me. I simmer as he taps the Lucite frame that holds the QR code. “Want to order, sweetheart? Or are you ready to walk out?”

  I burn brighter, hotter. I stare hard at him. “No, Axel. That’s your style.”