Come again, p.21
Come Again,
p.21
“Take it off! Take it all off,” Rory hoots.
“Get it, girl,” Bellamy calls out, then scoots nearer to me, pressing a kiss to my cheek.
Coco leans closer to us. “Watch out for Rory. She’s going to be such a troublemaker.”
“I think she already is, Coco,” Bellamy says.
“She was always the wild child,” Grandma says, then lifts her wine glass and swirls it. But she doesn’t take a drink because a shadow appears next to her. It’s a tall man in jeans and a leather jacket.
“I believe you ordered a lap dance for your twenty-ninth birthday.”
The deep, raspy voice comes from the owner of the club, who stares lasciviously at my grandmother.
“Did I? I don’t recall doing that, Rod,” she says, with exaggerated coyness.
“Then, consider this your birthday surprise.” Then my grandmother’s new beau—Rod and Coco have been dating for a few weeks now—gives her the owner’s special, gyrating his hips for the octogenarian.
TJ shouts his approval. “Get it, Coco,” he calls out, then he leans in, tapping his chest. “I ordered it for her.”
“Aren’t you just the Secret Santa for strippers,” Bellamy tells him.
TJ smiles. “Yes, I am.” Then he settles back into his chair and holds up a glass of champagne. “Here’s to love. Whenever it comes.”
Bellamy lifts her glass. “To taking a chance on it.”
I clink my glass to hers. “Most of all, to keeping love.”
And treasuring it too. That’s what I plan to do.
Epilogue
Bellamy whistles her approval when I stride into the kitchen, doing up the last button on my shirt.
“Looking sharp, cowboy,” she says, spinning away from her notebook and setting down her pen at the kitchen counter. She lives with me now, and I love seeing her in my home day and night.
“A host has to look good,” I say.
She sashays over to me. “And you do. You look positively fuckable.”
I drag her against me. “Don’t put any ideas in my head, woman. I have to get to work.”
She smacks my ass. “I know you do. But bring that cute ass home to me this evening so I can do bad things to you.”
“Sounds like a deal. But pretty sure I’ll be doing the bad things to you.”
I’d do them now, but have a party to host this evening, one of a new variety Carpe Diem has just introduced.
Our parties are now more open to many. I launched this style of event last month, hosting romance mixers at pool halls, and in parks, dive bars, arcades, karaoke joints. The membership fee isn’t platinum level. It’s affordable, and those parties are taking on a life of their own. Coco and I have been hiring hosts and hostesses throughout Manhattan so we can throw a handful of events each weekend. Soon, I’ll expand to other cities.
I still contend that in-person events are better than online dating. I haven’t changed all my stripes. But I do want more people to experience what I’ve been lucky enough to have in my life.
Big, powerful, written-across-the-sky love.
Like the kind Angeline found. She met her boyfriend at the first of this new line of events. “We just sparked,” she said when she told me about her guy.
I couldn’t be happier for her.
Though, selfishly, I’m happy she stayed on as a client. The partnership still fits—her company rolled out a new line of inexpensive sports watches.
I flash my new one at Bellamy as I head to the door. “Guess I’m not such an elitist anymore,” I say.
“You can be an elitist, though, when you take me to Europe next week and we stay in five-star hotels.”
“So, you do like my elitist side.”
She pretends to consider this. “Seems I do.”
“I knew it. I fucking knew it.”
“Feels good to be right, doesn’t it?”
On this count, yes.
But I want to be right on another one too. “Meet me at The Lucky Spot tonight?”
She smiles. “I’ll be there.”
The party was a hit, and after I say goodbye to the last guest, I check my watch. I’ve got thirty minutes until I meet Bellamy, and it’s time for a change of plans.
I send her a text, asking if she can meet, instead, on Forty-Sixth and Broadway at eleven-thirty.
Thirty minutes later when she walks toward me on the corner, I don’t get down on one knee.
That would be all too predictable.
But my intentions are brilliantly clear for her to see.
Epilogue - Bellamy Hart’s A Million Frogs Podcast . . .
Episode: A Big Rock
* * *
Dear Listener,
I have a story to tell you about my Saturday night. A certain someone surprised me, big time. My main squeeze asked me to meet him in Times Square, and he did the last thing I expected.
This was Times Square, after all. It’s a little crowded, a little dirty. But it also has these fabulous things that your most devoted guide to romance simply adores.
Billboards. Big, tall billboards with flashing lights and neon.
When I turned the corner to meet my guy, I stopped, froze where I stood, jaw dropped, heart fluttering. Because behind him, six stories high, lit up and glittering, was a love letter.
For me.
Blinking across the New York skyline, it said . . .
Dear Bellamy,
Will you marry me?
Yours in I hope you’ll be mine forever,
Easton
* * *
What did I say, you wonder? More like what did I do. I jumped into his arms, kissed him hard, cried my eyes out, and said yes, yes, yes.
Then he slid a big rock onto my finger . . .
And I kissed the frog who’s going to be my husband.
The End
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Eager for TJ’s story? His life is about to change in a scorching, hilarious and emotionally-charged romantic comedy spanning eight years and two continents in his roomies-to-lovers-to-enemies-to-pretend boyfriends romance Hopelessly Bromantic! A preview follows.
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* * *
The second my boss hits me with the news that he’s sending me to London for a year, I can picture my nights unfolding like a dirty fairytale.
After working my ass off all day, I’ll hit the music bars when the sun goes down, check out cool new bands and meet hot guys. They’ll charm me with their accents and I’ll charm them with my wit, and we’ll bang till Big Ben strikes morning O-O-O-and-one-more-O’clock. My sex life will be nothing like college, which was a lot like a drought.
A famine I’ve only recently started to emerge from two years post-graduation.
Ye Olde London will be a beefeater feast.
And, sure, yeah, a great work opportunity too. Obviously.
And I want that because I have goals. Big ones. Little ones too.
I want to stop at the bookstore on Cecil Court that I went to on a family trip when I was an awkward teenager. While my parents hunted for a guidebook, I browsed the paperbacks and for the first time in my life I visualized my name on a cover. I left there with an armload of books to drag back home with me…and a dream.
The bookshop is one of the first places I go when I arrive in London. I want an auspicious beginning to my year abroad. Full circle and all that.
But this time, when I reach Cecil Court, it’s not a paperback that sparks my dreams.
It’s a man.
This bloke has more charm and appeal than any hero I could write into a novel.
But he’s not simply between the covers of a story, where I can mastermind the ending. He’s vibrant, real and the most thrilling time I’ve ever had. Soon, my London life is full of him.
And—spoiler—this guy in the bookstore is going to upend my world, not once, but twice.
Some guys are like that. They stay with you, even when you want them out of your head.
And they leave, even when you want them to stay.
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* * *
Excerpt from Shut Up and Kiss Me…
Nolan…
There’s this idea about certain moments in life. That we don’t have any choice sometimes. That some sort of cosmic force compels us into action. People often use this idea of “it just happened” to justify why they do something in the heat of the moment.
It’s the idea of temporary insanity. Or a temporary explosion of lust. But at the end of the day or at the start of the night, a choice is just that.
A choice.
You make it, and sometimes you do it with no regard for the consequences.
That’s me right now.
My hand cups Emerson’s jaw, and I’m fully aware of the what-could-go-wrongs, the what-may-implodes.
I just don’t give a shit. My want is stronger. I want to kiss her more than I want all the other things in my life.
So, I kiss her.
It’s quiet in the room, with only the ambient noise of a hotel. The low hum of air conditioning. The faint honks from traffic down below. And the thump, thump, thump of desire pounding through my body as I take her mouth with mine.
We kiss with the growing urgency of a first kiss. True, it’s not our first. But it’s our only kiss like this.
In bed.
With nothing to hold us back.
Lips slide. Breath mingles. Hands get in on the action. With my thumb, I trace lines along her cheek and chin, mapping the shape of her face with my fingers. I let my senses flood with the taste and feel of Emerson, like I’m savoring a glass of wine, its flavors filling my mind.
The faint hint of cinnamon from her toothpaste. The lingering scent of grapefruit from that face mask. Her clean, showery smell.
Most of all, the taste of her hunger too.
It radiates off her.
It comes in the soft murmurs she makes. In the pressure of her lips. In the eager exploration of her tongue as she kicks the kiss up a notch, deepening it, like she wants to know exactly what this kiss could be.
It’s a whole-body kiss, one I feel in my shoulders, in my stomach, in my fucking balls.
I want to remember every second of this. I want to recall this intoxicating kiss the next day and the next and the next.
But all moments break apart…
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Contact
You can find Lauren on Twitter at LaurenBlakely3, Instagram at LaurenBlakelyBooks, Facebook at LaurenBlakelyBooks, or online at LaurenBlakely.com. You can also email her at laurenblakelybooks@gmail.com
Lauren Blakely, Come Again
