She felt stupid, and her whole body felt as though someone had pounded it with a meat tenderizer. She’d avoided dating because she’d wanted to avoid this numb feeling that followed someone rejecting her just for being herself. And not only had she opened herself up to him, broken so many of her rules for him, but she’d started to believe that he could actually like her back.
Such bullshit. Dating—love—was bullshit.
Tears burned the back of her throat, and she wasn’t sure she could make it through the evening without falling apart. She was never like this, and it just made her feel like crying more. She hated crying, and the fact that she was about three seconds from bawling at a work function was deeply embarrassing. Jack had embarrassed her, and it burned in her gut.
If he hadn’t been serious about her, why had he introduced her to his family? That still made absolutely no sense to her.
It didn’t matter now. He was done with her, and she was going to make herself done with him. She wasn’t about to get a promotion, but she wasn’t going to show any more cracks in public.
She spotted Sasha’s wig—she was doing kind of an ancient Greek Barbarella thing with a beehive—and moved across the crowd. Even though she was cracked and crumbling and close to tears, she managed a couple of handshakes and smiles with the heads of marketing for her most loyal clients.
Just when she’d finished chatting up the head of marketing for the Hawks, the one who had gotten her tickets at center ice for her and Jack, she spotted him.
She hadn’t seen him before because he’d been hidden behind Sasha’s wig. He was holding a drink and laughing. Both of those things brought a haze of red over her vision. He’d been ignoring her texts and drinking and laughing with her best friend while she’d been mourning both her promotion and their—whatever this was.
And he was just standing there—laughing?
* * *
—
HANNAH’S MURDEROUS GAZE WAS like a spiked heel digging into his nuts. Tonight, he was trying “lack of basic consideration and respect” on for size, and it didn’t fit him any better than flirting with other women or making things too serious, too soon.
Because he knew her well enough by now to know that behind her obvious anger there was some hurt on the side. He hated himself for doing this to her, but he was determined to follow through. He’d screwed things up by lying to her, and losing her for real was his penance.
She made her way over to him and Sasha and put her hand through his elbow. He knew he looked like a jackass. Although he’d followed instructions and worn his Mark Antony costume, he hadn’t shaved in about three days and had made sure to smear some wing sauce on his toga. Chris had suggested that he go to the gym and not shower before the party, but that seemed excessively slovenly.
Instead, he decided to show up forty-five minutes late, not respond to any queries about his ETA, and then not look for her when he finally did show up. Jack had always been an ace communicator in relationships because he’d been taught basic manners. And he hated when a woman didn’t communicate with him.
Except no communication might be preferable to the rage that Hannah was communicating to him perfectly right now. She hadn’t even said anything, but the way her nails dug into his arm was plenty evocative of the way she’d probably like to skin his balls with her fingernails. And the feral smile she gave him when he looked down at her told him that this was the night. She was done with him.
“What are you two talking about?” Her voice was bright but almost brittle. Translation: Where the hell have you been? And why didn’t you let me know that you were going to be late?
Seeing how angry she was now, he wished he had gone this route first. She would have broken up with him before they’d even slept together, and he could have told her the whole truth. She would have laughed at his stupidity and then continued dating him because he would have put on a charm offensive to rival any romantic-comedy movie. Grand gestures galore.
“I got caught up with the boys.” It was partially true. After the gym, they’d gotten beers and his friends had given him more advice on how to drive Hannah to dump him in the most efficient way possible. Chris and Joey were an endless font of that kind of information, had Jack thinking that they might be lost causes in the relationships-with-human-females department. And it had him feeling really bad about being a dude.
“And broke your phone?” Her tone was sweet, but he was pretty sure she was laying a trap for him.
He could feel her emotional investment in him in the form of her anger, and he had a feeling that there would be no going back. He felt as though he were being torn in different directions.
He pulled his phone out of the one pocket conveniently sewn into his rented toga and pretended to be seeing her text message for the first time. There was only one of them, which surprised him. He expected multiple messages, increasing in anger. At the very least, he expected her to threaten his future ability to have children. That’s what the girl he’d met at that stupid speakeasy would have done.
This Hannah was not that girl at all.
The moment he’d laid eyes on that girl, he’d been able to see a whole future with her. That wasn’t uncommon: he’d had the same kind of trippy romantic projection with all of his former girlfriends. And none of those relationships had worked out, despite his best efforts.
That Hannah was different because she’d looked right through him. She’d seen past his try-hard Boy Scout exterior and straight to the heart of him. He knew this because if she hadn’t seen it, she wouldn’t have let him buy her a taco, much less see her naked.
All of his other girlfriends had been sweet. And Hannah was, too. She just hid her sweetness under a layer of tart that made her sweetness all the more satisfying. But something had changed between the night they’d met and when he’d almost had sex with her. Seeing her tonight, with all her sweet and tart broken up together, he realized the gravity of his mistake—she’d been serious about letting him in, while he’d been using her.
“Must have had my ringer off.”
“Oh.” Just one loaded word before she turned back to Sasha and started talking about some wedding that they were planning together.
He tuned them out, letting his mind wander and taking in the party. He was supposed to be arm candy tonight, which was rich. This was the sort of place where his mother would feel comfortable. His father would stick out like a sore thumb. Jack and Bridget had become as adaptable as possible—they could pass for neighborhood kids at the corner bar, but they could also clean themselves up for fancy parties with their mom’s friends and colleagues. Maybe Michael had never bothered because he’d been older when their mom left, hadn’t needed as much mothering.
Tonight, he felt out of place. Not just because he’d made some half-hearted effort to not fit in, but because he hadn’t felt this sort of desperation to please someone since right after his mother had left. And even though plenty of water had flowed under the bridge of his parents’ divorce, he still felt like he wasn’t enough and had to try harder. That was why it was so much more difficult not to try at all.