1. Avery

“Don’t miss that catch, don’t miss that catch! OH, COME ON!” I hollered, hopping up from the side of the tub as I held my cell phone in my hands. Never in my life did I witness such a heartbreaking play. The football game was only in the first quarter, and for the life of me, I couldn’t understand why the quarterback decided to throw the ball to Mr. Butterfingers.

They were lucky the throw wasn’t intercepted like the one a few plays back. My team was making way too many mistakes too early into the game.

A knock on the door startled me.

“Avery? Are you coming out?” my fiancé, Wesley, asked from the other side of the door.

I glanced around the bathroom, slightly panicked, before shoving my phone into my bra.

It was a no-technology event that evening at Wesley’s and my house, which made no sense to me, seeing how it was freaking Super Bowl Sunday. Who had no-tech nights during the Super Bowl?

That seemed like a good enough reason to call off an engagement. Especially when the score was so close. It was anyone’s game, and I was going to miss it. After the foreseeable breakup, Wesley and I would tell people we had “irreconcilable differences” and go on our way.

The following year, I’d throw a Super Bowl party.

Okay, maybe breaking up over a game was a little far-fetched, but it wasn’t every year that your favorite team played at the game of all games. It would probably be another thirty years before we made it back to the Super Bowl.

My dad was probably celebrating at his place with my sisters, Yara and Willow, my brother-in-law, Alex, and our aunt-by-choice, Tatiana, who helped raise me and my two sisters. Tatiana was our mother’s best friend, and after Mama passed away, she stepped up to make sure we had a woman figure in our lives.

Tatiana always made the best dang buffalo chicken dip for Daddy’s Super Bowl parties.

A heavy sense of jealousy raced through me knowing Yara would eat all that dip without me while Willow ate her vegan dip.

“You good?” Wesley asked.

“Yeah, yeah, sorry,” I called out. I smoothed my hands over my black dress and combed my straight black hair behind my ears. I looked in the mirror and saw Mama’s brown eyes staring back at me. I had so many of her features, which felt equally like a blessing and a curse. From her round nose and high cheekbones to her dark-brown skin and jet-black hair.

I took a deep breath and released it slowly, mentally preparing to socialize with a group I didn’t know. I wasn’t the best at striking up a conversation with strangers. Then again, I wasn’t really into striking up conversations with people I knew either. The best types of human beings were the ones who shut up. Or at least the ones who didn’t try to talk to me.

At the ripe age of thirty-six, I was hoping I’d met all the new people I’d ever have to meet in my life, outside of my students. Unfortunately for me, my rocket scientist fiancé was a social butterfly. Even worse, the people he socialized with were very intelligent. Like super smart. The kind of brilliance that made me feel like a box of rocks. I was talking about IQs of 150 and up.

What was I supposed to talk to those people about? Clearly not the Super Bowl. That was for certain.

When it was just Wesley and me, I could handle his intelligence. We had a normal relationship, except when he was excited about statistics. I didn’t know a man could love stats and probabilities so much until I met him. When he finally convinced me to date him, he showed up with a whole pie chart, breaking down why someone as cold and closed-off as me was a perfect match for his vibrant and social personality.

I couldn’t disagree with the numbers.

We were a match made in a science lab.

Still, the idea of spending the rest of the evening with his close college friends was enough to make me want to break out into hives. I’d been to a few of his work functions and dealt with colleagues of his before, and I always left feeling less than those around me. I didn’t think they did it on purpose, either. They just spoke in a language I didn’t understand. I was pretty sure they’d feel the same way if I had gone full-blown sports talk with them.

Needless to say, I was scared of having nothing in common with the people who meant the most to Wesley.

I swung the bathroom door open and smiled at Wesley. “Sorry, sorry. Got a little backed up.”

He smirked and raised an eyebrow. “Is that so?”

“Yup. That’s so.”

He reached forward , dug into my bra, and pulled out my cell phone. “So you weren’t just cussing at your cell phone watching the World Series?”

“The Super Bowl,” I corrected, snatching my phone back from him. “And no. I wasn’t watching that. Of course not. Not when we decided on a technology-free evening.”

“Good. I’m guessing that means you won’t mind if I keep this,” he said, taking the phone back from me. He slid it into his back pocket and kissed my cheek. “Now, come on. It’s about time you meet my friends. They just texted that they are about two minutes away.”

Wesley and I had been dating for over three years, yet I’d never met a handful of his closest friends. He moved from Charlotte, North Carolina, to Illinois for a job position over five years ago, leaving most of his close friends in North Carolina. This was the first time his three friends had come to visit him in small-town Honey Creek.

It would be nice to meet his groomsmen finally. I’d heard many stories about Patrick, Lance, and Drew, though Drew wasn’t in the wedding. I only had my sisters standing up for me, so it would’ve been an odd number. It did feel odd that Wesley said Drew was his best friend, yet he didn’t ask him to be his best man. Wesley offered that role to Lance instead. When I asked about it, Wesley shrugged it off. I guess guy friendships were different.

The four of them went to undergrad together and kept close contact even after going their separate ways for graduate school. As far as I knew, they were all super brains, too, like Wesley.

When the doorbell rang, I followed Wesley to the foyer, ready to be as social as possible. I put on a big smile as Wesley opened his front door, and the three individuals stood there with huge grins. They all shouted big hoorays, holding up bottles of champagne as they rushed over to Wesley and pulled him into a big hug.

They laughed and celebrated a warm reunion as I stood back, taking in the situation. Once they released their grip on Wesley, they walked into the foyer and smiled my way.

Wesley walked over and wrapped an arm around my waist. “You guys, this is my beautiful, talented, breathtaking fiancée, Avery. Avery, this is Patrick, Lance, and Drew,” he stated, gesturing toward each individual.

I shook hands with each of them, a little thrown off when it came to the last hand I shook, Drew’s. It appeared to me that there had been some kind of miscommunication along the line when it came to Wesley’s best friend.

Drew Jacobson was a woman.

A very beautiful woman with long blond hair and the bluest of blue eyes.

I tried my best to play it cool as I was introduced to them all, but I couldn’t get over the fact that I had no clue his best friend was a very beautiful woman with long blond hair and the bluest of blue eyes.

Lovely.

I wasn’t an insecure woman, but seeing Drew sent a wave of discomfort through me. Especially based on how she looked at Wesley with heart-shaped eyes. Maybe it was my imagination, but Drew seemed to hug Wesley a little too long for my liking. There was always a slight bit of discomfort when another woman hugged a taken guy a little too long. Last year, I almost got into a fistfight with our town’s gossip, Milly West, when she put her grimy hands around Alex on his and Yara’s wedding day. Willow informed me it would’ve been unladylike to beat up a woman in her sixties on our sister’s wedding day, but I considered it. That was until Alex grimaced and peeled Milly’s hands away from him. He instantly wrapped himself around Yara and rolled his eyes at Milly.

One thing Alex Ramírez would always do was roll his eyes and sit in annoyance with anyone and everyone who wasn’t his wife. He loathed human interaction as much as I did. One of the things he and I had in common. The other thing? Our love for my younger sister.

Alex was a good, loyal man like my father. Wesley was on the list, too.

I’d only dated one man before Wesley, when I was a very young eighteen-year-old. That only lasted for a summer, too. Since then, I’ve spent most of my life single, and I didn’t have a problem with that. It wasn’t until Wesley came around that I saw the real possibility of being with someone again, of loving someone else. Before him, I was content with the idea of being an old maid and living my life to the fullest. I knew I didn’t need a man to have a happy life. Overall, the male species kind of annoyed me.

My youngest sister, Willow, the free spirit that she was, made sure to always remind Yara and me that the greatest love stories were with the ones staring back at us in our reflections, and men were just fun play toys that we could pick up and put down whenever we wanted.

I thought that was her way of excusing her promiscuous ways when it came to her picking up and putting down quite the array of play toys herself. Still, I believed her. I never let my life revolve around men. To be honest, I thought most of them were arrogant, smelly, and low in value. So when I found myself falling for Wesley, I knew he was different. He made me question all my sour beliefs about the male species.

At least, I thought so until I sat in our living room playing a game of charades with his friends.

With Drew.

Drew, the woman.

A few facts I’d learned about Drew over the past thirty minutes: she had a hyena laugh; when she lied, her mouth twitched; and she avoided refined sugar with every fiber of her spirit. Though, based on the twitch of her mouth, that was a lie.

Also, the more champagne the woman drank, the more obnoxious she became.

Drew stood in front of everyone, pulling her long hair into a ponytail and clapping her hands together. She made the hand gesture as if she were operating an old-fashioned camera.

“It’s a movie!” Wesley called out. A little too elated if you asked me. He hadn’t stopped smiling since that woman—and his other friends—entered our house. I swear, I’d never seen all his teeth before that night. My gosh, did he still have his wisdom teeth? Wesley was normally much more reserved with his smiles and somber with his expressions.

Drew nodded in agreement. She then put up one finger.

“One word!” Wesley shouted.

She nodded again, then started acting out a scene—poorly. She looked like a wild child, holding her hands out into the air, and Wesley stared at her as if she were Meryl Streep in an Oscar-winning movie. That was when my Spidey senses began to tingle. Something was amiss with how my fiancé was staring at another woman. Some might’ve called me paranoid, but my father taught me at a young age to never go against a hunch. And my hunch told me something was odd about Drew and Wesley’s connection.

Patrick and Lance laughed at Drew’s actions, having no clue what she was doing. I was just as lost as I studied the woman trying her best. I guessed her best wasn’t good enough. She might’ve been a rocket scientist, but the woman was not a charades queen.

“Come on!” Drew said, clapping her hands toward Wesley. “We did this for our first date, on the boat!” she urged.

And there it is.

My hunch had been hunched.

First date?

We weren’t just going to skip past that comment.

Or perhaps we were because Wesley shot up from his seat and clapped his hands together. “Titanic!” he shouted, doing wild karate chops in the air as he exploded with excitement.

This. Dickhead.

I stayed planted on the couch in an indescribable state of shock.

“Yes!” Drew replied, rushing over to my fiancé and wrapping him in a big embrace. He hugged her back tightly as if that was the right thing to do. My blood began to boil like no other as I sat there like an idiot, taking in the romantic scene unfolding before me.

What.

The.

Actual.

Fuck?

I stared at the two as if they had grown three heads. I was stuck in a state of complete disbelief. They might as well take off their clothes and start going at it on the living room rug, for all I cared. The amount of disrespect happening right in front of me was mind-blowing.

When they finally let one another go, I said, “It doesn’t count.”

Everyone looked at me, confused.

Drew narrowed her eyes. “What doesn’t count?”

“Your point for the game. It doesn’t count. You’re not allowed to use words during charades.”

Wesley laughed and sat down beside me. He raked his hand through his reddish-brown hair and shrugged. “I think we can make up the rules as we go.”

Did he just somehow become less attractive to me?

I swear, earlier that day, I found him much more handsome.

Now, the sound of his voice sounded like nails on a chalkboard.

Oh my gosh, I was engaged to an ugly man!

“Why would we make up the rules as we go? There are already rules to the game,” I remarked. “The whole point of charades is not to speak. That’s the literal definition of charades.”

“Charades can also mean an absurd pretense intended to create a pleasant appearance,” Drew urged with laughter. I was glad she was still having a bang-up time.

“Yeah, well, that’s not what this game is. So you don’t get a point.” I crossed my arms as the whole energy of the room shifted. Instantly, I felt like a jerk because I was the one who caused it. Me and some newly unlocked insecurities that I didn’t know how to deal with. I didn’t even know I could get insecure! Over a man?! How deeply disappointed I was in myself. What was happening to me?

“It’s not that serious, darling,” Wesley said, leaning over to me. The way he said darling came off as condescending to me. Or maybe I was simply overthinking every syllable that fell from his ugly tongue. He kissed my cheek lightly. “I think we just need some more champagne.”

I glanced over at the kitchen counter, where Patrick stood, holding the empty bottles. “Sadly, we are all out of champagne,” he mentioned.

I hopped up from the couch. “I’ll run down to the corner store and get some more. I’ll be back.”

“Oh, you don’t have to—” Lance started.

I shook my head. “No, it’s fine. You all continue the game of talking charades. I’ll be back before you know it.” I didn’t look back toward Wesley because I was almost certain his eyes would be packed with confusion by my oddities. But also, screw him.

Because why was his best friend someone that he used to date? Not only did they date, but they reenacted scenes from Titanic. That was love!

I grabbed my purse and jacket before heading out the door. As the chilled February breeze smacked my cheeks, my overheated body relaxed slightly. Maybe that was all I needed—some fresh air to calm down. I couldn’t imagine what my blood pressure numbers would’ve been from a simple game of charades.

Walking down the semi-snow-covered sidewalk to Jackie’s Beer Spirits store, I muttered how stupid I was for getting so upset over a game. Did I overreact? Maybe, but Wesley was wrong for never mentioning that his best friend was a woman. A woman he once-upon-a-time dated, nonetheless. I felt as if I had every right to be upset. Yet what bothered me the most was how dramatic I looked in front of his friends. It was a terrible first impression, and now they probably thought I was some kind of psychopath.

As I walked into Jackie’s, I felt a breath of relief as I heard one of my favorite sounds—a sports anchor speaking on the television screen. I grabbed a few bottles of champagne and headed to the front of the store, where Jackie sat behind her counter watching the Super Bowl game.

“Hey, Avery. Kind of surprised you pulled yourself away from this game. Did you see the halftime show? Miley Cyrus came out as a surprise guest!” Jackie said, taking the bottles of champagne from me and ringing them up.

I grumbled to myself and shook my head. “I missed it.”

“You? Miss Sports Lady herself missed it?”

“Yeah, not watching the game tonight,” I muttered, staring at the television. My team was up by three points in the fourth quarter, and I wanted to shit a few bricks trying to figure out how they got to that point. I paid for the champagne, took the three bottles by their necks, and kept my eyes on the screen. The crowd went wild as the opposing team threw the ball, which Jameson intercepted.

“Oh shit!” I shouted, tossing my hands up in victory. I couldn’t believe I made it down to the liquor store to witness one of the greatest interceptions ever. Jameson not only caught the ball but ran down the field as if he were running from a masked murderer, sprinting as if his life depended on it. “Go, go, go!” Jackie and I shouted together. My heart pounded wildly as Jameson crossed into the end zone, scoring another touchdown.

“Oh my gosh!” I said, jumping up and down in glee.

“That was wild!” Jackie said, shaking her head in disbelief.

“You’re right. That was intense,” a deep, velvety voice said from behind me, spooking me back into my body. I turned around and bumped straight into a big, firm body, causing me to lose grip on the bottles in my hands. They began to fall, but the man was quick with his response time to catch all three bottles within his arms.

Massive. F**king. Arms.

“Whoa, nice save there, Nathan,” Jackie mentioned before returning to the game.

My eyes rose as my heart began to pound against my rib cage when I met his stare. This time, the pounding of said heart wasn’t from excitement. It was from disgust.

Nathan. F**king. Pierce.

As if my evening could get any worse.

Nathan stood there with my champagne bottles in his arms. He had enough nerve to smile at me with his toothy, all-American grin. I hated that smile more than anything, and I went out of my way to avoid said smile since he had moved back to Honey Creek, Illinois.

Nathan Pierce wasn’t simply the boy who got away—he was the one who freaking sprinted. I wasn’t certain I hated anyone with a deeper passion than that man standing in front of me. With an annoyingly impressive physique sculpted through countless hours on the baseball field, his powerful six-five frame made me feel tiny beside him. I wasn’t even short at my five-nine height, but Nathan made me feel like a pathetic ant when he stood near me.

Not only was he massive in size but he was massive in heart, too. His features were so warm and welcoming, which drove me up a wall. Everyone in town loved the man. Probably because he was once-upon-a-time famous. People in Honey Creek loved anything that had a touch of success attached to it. Even though Nathan’s career did crash and burn.

Since his return to town, I had watched him from a distance. His deep-set brown eyes were intense and expressive. He could express a million words solely with his eyes, and once upon a time, I could decipher every syllable. He had rich, smooth ebony skin that seemed to glow with health, even in the wintertime. His smile drew people in with its warmth, and the rugged handsomeness about him made women toss themselves at him as if they were at a 1980s New Kids on the Block concert. The light stubble that framed his jawline and the way he wore his baseball hat with a very prominent bend to the bill brought him an amount of effortless charm and attractiveness.

For anyone other than me, that was.

To me, he looked stupid.

Stupid and ugly.

Ugly and stupid.

His smile stretched wider. It made my skin crawl like a million spiders were unleashed over my whole body. I’d never had a smile that made me want to upchuck until I received one from Nathan Pierce.

“Hey, Avery,” he said.

My gosh.

I wished he had forgotten my name because the last thing I needed to hear was it rolling off his tongue. Wesley was my current love, and Nathan was my first. He was the man who made me hate men. My man-hating villain story, one might say. The one who left scars on my heartbeats many years before he ran off to win the World Series for California.

Twice.

Wesley was the redemption arc for my hatred of men. Well, until pretty Miss Drew showed up.

Now I was back to hating all men again.

Especially the one holding my champagne.

I snatched the bottles from his hold as I stared at him with piercing hostility. “Don’t talk to me,” I ordered with sharp disdain. I didn’t say another word as I walked out of the liquor store and stomped my feet all the way back home.

Leave it to Nathan to ruin a perfectly happy touchdown moment with his mere existence.

“Okay, I get it,”Wesley said as he twirled some dice between his fingers after his friends left for the evening. “You’re upset.”

“Am I?” I huffed as I took the emptied bottles of champagne to the recycling bin. I hated when he did that—when he told me what I’d been. If I was upset, I wanted to come to that realization on my own. I didn’t need Wesley to tell me I was upset. That only annoyed me more.

After returning from the liquor store, I had to put on a brave smile and function as if I wasn’t bothered so Wesley’s friends wouldn’t think I was some raging drama queen. Even though I was, indeed a raging drama queen. I started noting every little comment Drew made toward Wesley, and I counted every time she found a way to touch my fiancé.

Forty-seven times.

She touched him forty-seven freaking times!

“You are, and that’s completely understandable,” Wesley said as he followed me to the kitchen with the almost-empty charcuterie board. “I should’ve told you about Drew.”

“You mean you should’ve mentioned that your best friend was a woman and that you two used to date each other? You should’ve mentioned that your ex-girlfriend was coming to our place instead of having me find that information out during a game of charades? Yes. Yes, you should’ve. You’ve never even mentioned dating anyone before me.”

“That’s because no one mattered before you.”

“Nice try, smooth talker. How long did you two date?”

“Not long.” He tossed his hands in the air in surrender. “It was really short.”

“How short is short?”

“Like three, four years.”

“Four years?!” I gasped, stunned by the news I was discovering.

He’s so ugly!

“I know that sounds bad, but honestly, Avery, it was so long ago. We were in a college relationship. It is ancient history.”

“It didn’t seem really ancient to her,” I muttered. “She’s in love with you.”

He laughed and shook his head. “She’s not in love with me.”

“She spent the whole game night talking about how wonderful you are and how you taught her everything she knows about thrust-to-weight ratio, which sounds highly inappropriate to me.”

“Oh no. That’s not some weird sex thing if that’s what you’re thinking. Thrust-to-weight ratio is what compares the thrust produced by an engine to the weight of the vehicle and?—”

I placed a hand on his forearm. “Wesley.”

“Yes?”

“I might not know rocket science, but I know women. She was talking about you thrusting your weight into her vehicle.”

He shook his head. “You’re overreacting.”

“Don’t say that. Otherwise, I will truly overreact, and you’ll end up sleeping on the couch. All I’m saying is it would’ve been nice to have a heads-up that you were bringing an ex to our house for game night. When the only game we should’ve been watching was the Super Bowl.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Is that what this is all about? The fact that you missed your football game?”

“No, it’s not about missing the game even though rumor has it that it turned out to be one of the most exciting games in the history of football. It’s about the lack of communication. I was put into an uncomfortable situation, and I didn’t like that, Wesley. I don’t like being blindsided.”

“You’re right.” He moved over to me, placed his hands against my shoulders, and kissed me. “I’m wrong.” He kissed me again. “I’m sorry.” Kiss. “Forgive me.”

I grumbled but kissed him back. “Fine. But only if you watch the replays from the game tonight.”

“Deal. But tell me… What did you think of my friends?”

I liked Lance and Patrick. They were funny and down-to-earth in a way that I appreciated. But Drew? Yeah, screw her. I didn’t want to tell him the truth, though, because that seemed mean, and I was almost certain he’d just chalk it up to me being insecure. Nothing drove me crazier than the idea of a man thinking I was insecure due to him.

Still, I didn’t want to lie because that seemed wrong, too. So I told him the only thing I could think to say. “They’re smart,” I complimented them. “Very, very smart.”

He smiled as a burst of pride shot through his system. “I know, right?”