Not a Second Chance (13 page)

If no one had held the door open for her friends and they’d buzzed instead, she could have gotten Sidney out the door and none of this would have happened.

If only.

She hurried to Temptations. Just seeing the bakery brought a smile to her face. When she walked inside, the smell of delicious baked goods nearly made her close her eyes and sigh in bliss.

“What’ll it be today?” Eliza asked.

Unlike usual, Allison didn’t have to spend five minutes deciding what to get.

“Triple…” she began, then remembered their new cake. “Better make that quadruple chocolate.”

Eliza laughed. “Tough week?”

“Yeah. I’ll have a coffee too. Small.”

If it affected her sleep, well…She’d already been sleeping like shit for the past few days. It seemed unlikely this would make it any worse.

She took a seat at a table near the door, rested her elbows on the table, and ran her hands through her hair. It really hadn’t been a very good week. She hadn’t been sleeping well, and she didn’t have an appetite for anything that wasn’t chocolate. She was probably consuming the same number of calories as usual, but not healthy ones. Although wasn’t chocolate supposed to be good for you—the dark stuff, anyway? She couldn’t concentrate at work either, which she blamed on the lack of sleep.

It was like she was having the breakup blues she’d never had ten years ago. Because yes, this was definitely related to Sidney. She thought about him all the damn time.

And maybe going to the bakery hadn’t been such a good idea after all. It just reminded her of Sidney, of last Friday.
Damn
. The thought that he’d ruined Temptations for her pissed her off. He wasn’t even here, and she was pissed off at him. The man was a master at getting under her skin.

Eliza came over and placed a slice of cake and a cup of coffee in front of her.

“Your ex came in the other day,” she said.

Allison jerked up. “What?”

“He just looked around and bought a coffee. Maybe he was looking for you.”

Eliza walked off to serve another customer, and Allison puzzled over Sidney. She missed him a lot. She was more than a little pleased that he’d been looking for her—why else would he come to Temptations? The evidence pointed toward her having strong feelings for him. If this was science, that was what she’d conclude.

She still thought it was ridiculous. One lousy weekend—and they hadn’t even spent all of it together. But she couldn’t deny that it had affected her a lot. That maybe she’d started to fall in love with him. Hell, maybe she already
was
in love with him.

She ate her cake absently. As far as she could tell, it tasted exactly like the triple chocolate. Maybe her taste buds weren’t refined enough to tell the difference or to appreciate deconstructed Caesar salad.

The thought of that bizarre salad, with the raw egg yolk and garlic clove, brought a sad smile to her face. The dinner had been painful. But when she and Sidney had their heads bent together, discussing the incomprehensible menu, or when he squeezed her hand under table, or when he surprised her with that kiss in the middle of that restaurant, it hadn’t been painful at all.

Being with Sidney was unlike being with anyone else. That’s just the way it was.

When they’d been together all those years ago, she’d cared about him, of course, just not as much as he cared about her. But maybe she could have loved him, if she wasn’t trying to keep her distance because he didn’t fit into her plans. She hadn’t wanted to plan her future around someone else, and she’d freaked out whenever he talked about their future together. It was understandable; she’d only been twenty-one.

But now, she didn’t freak out when she thought of being with him beyond tomorrow. She hadn’t been ready for this ten years ago, but it was different now.

Her phone rang. Her heart leaped…and then she looked at the display and saw it was Kristy.

“Hi,” she said. “What’s up?”

“Guess what?” Kristy said. “I found this guy who—”

“No. I don’t want you to set me up with anyone.” Allison paused. Time to admit this out loud. “I changed my mind about Sidney.”

“Oh my God. Really? So you loooove him?”

“Don’t say it like that. It makes me cringe.” And the word still freaked her out a bit.

“Have you told him?”

“Not yet. It might not go well. I’m not sure he’ll be willing to try again.”

“Still, you’re going to tell him, right?” Kristy said.

“As soon as I get off the phone and finish inhaling my quadruple chocolate cake.”

“This is so exciting. Tell me how it goes! And I’ll tell Maya that I owe her twenty bucks. She bet me you’d change your mind.”

“Since apparently my friends delight in making bets on my love life.” Allison shook her head. “Why did you bet against her?”

“Because you’re really stubborn.”

Yeah, Sidney had said that too.

Allison ended the call and started wolfing down the rest of her cake. Usually she ate it slowly, savoring ever bite. But not today. Today she was in a rush to get out of here…and hopefully burn off all those calories. Once she and Sidney had talked—that needed to come first.

Shit
. She’d managed to drop a bite of chocolate cake on her white shirt. Perhaps she’d better go home first to change.

And then she’d head right over to Sidney’s.

* * * *

Sidney Hughes was not having a good day. Or a good week.

For starters, whoever lived above him was having sex all the damn time.

How did he know this? Because the sex was very, very loud. A woman regularly shrieked things he wished he could unhear. And then there was the thumping.

A new relationship, perhaps. In that phase where you never wanted to leave the bedroom. Or maybe they were being paid to spend the weekend together, and this was the only way they could make it without killing each other…

Okay. His bad week had more to do with Allison—whom he missed more than he should—than the weird sex marathon going on above him. But that really wasn’t helping matters. It reminded him of Allison, and it gave him a headache.

Sidney turned off the stove. He’d been about to cook a pork chop for dinner, but he wanted to give these people a piece of his mind first. Surely there was no reason to shriek at the top of your lungs twenty times an hour. It couldn’t be good for your vocal cords. This had been going on since Sunday, and it was Thursday now.

But before he could get out the door, his phone rang.

“Hi,” Mom said brightly. “Can you buzz me up?”

His family did not do surprise visits. Allison’s did, but his didn’t. And as Saturday’s dinner had shown, there were good reasons he kept his distance from his family.

So if Mom was here…
Shit
. Had something terrible happened? She sounded cheerful, but that was just the way she was—she could fake it when she wanted to.

“Is something wrong?” he asked.

“Why would you think something’s wrong? I just want to talk to you. I brought dinner.”

He hesitated. “Okay. Come up.”

She came to his door with several Styrofoam containers of Indian food and immediately started dishing it out onto his nicest plates, which seemed too fancy for takeout. The only reason he had a nice set of dishes was because his parents had given them to him for Christmas a few years back.
Since you probably won’t get nice plates as a wedding present. Because you won’t have a wedding.

His parents were always full of compliments.

He shouldn’t have let her in. This probably wouldn’t go well. But the surprise visit had thrown him off.

They sat down at the table with their plates, and Sidney started eating, waiting for his mother to say something. The people upstairs were thankfully quiet. Because the only thing that would make this more uncomfortable was loud sex noises.

Though maybe that would scare her away. And possibly make her think he lived in a sketchy building.

Mom stared at her food for a while, then said to her plate, “How is Allison?”

“She’s fine,” he said, ignoring the pain in his chest. He didn’t want to talk about Allison. He didn’t want to talk about anything with his mother.

“I like her.”

He dropped his fork and nearly spit out his food. “
What?
”

His mother wasn’t eating and she wasn’t really looking at him, but other than that she was composed.

“She’s…nice.”

“You’ve got to be kidding me. She told you off, and you’re calling her nice?”

“She clearly cares a lot about you, and I like that she can appreciate you for who you are. I guess she can give you what we haven’t.” She waved her hand away from her. “Something like that. I don’t doubt that you two are really together.”

He didn’t feel like admitting the truth right now. He’d wait a few weeks, then tell her they’d split up.

“Yes,” he said. “Unlike my family, she doesn’t think I’m a big disappointment.”

“I’m sorry about some of the things we’ve said. I’ve been trying to see you how she does and…” Mom reached across the table and patted his hand. “You’ve done all right.”

Wow. She’d actually said that.

It didn’t make up for the past three decades, and it sure didn’t make his heart swell with happiness, but at least it was something.

Unsure how to respond, he said, “Where’s Dad?”

“He’s—We had a fight.”

Mom provided no details, but presumably it had been over Sidney and Saturday’s disastrous dinner.

“I would like to have dinner again,” she said. “Hopefully we can make it to the main course this time. You, me, and Allison. Whenever is convenient for you. You can pick the restaurant.”

Sidney didn’t know what to say. Agree, then cancel later on? He pictured this dinner with his mother and Allison, who was wearing…

Okay, he really shouldn’t think about what she was wearing. But he couldn’t help it. And he couldn’t help the fact that he wanted this dinner to happen, assuming it was with this new version of his mom who thought he’d “done all right.”

More than anything, though, it was about wanting Allison to be a part of his life. He’d told himself repeatedly that trying again would be a bad idea, yet he couldn’t get her out of his head.

“Two weeks from now?” he said. “Saturday? Is that okay?”

“That would be great.”

As soon as she said that, the thumping upstairs started again. A minute later, there was a scream.

Mom glanced at the ceiling.

“It just started this week,” Sidney said. “It’s horrible, I know. But at least they’re always done by eleven.”

She laughed in a way that wasn’t pretend and forced. A sound he recognized from his childhood but hadn’t heard in years.

And then it was over—the shrieking and the thumping and the laughing—and she said, “I better go.”

Sidney finished his dinner and cleaned up, nearly breaking one of the expensive plates in the process. His mind wasn’t on the dishes—all he could think about was Allison.

He’d seen her at Temptations—what an appropriate name—and decided he would screw her and move on, prove to himself he was over her. But the real reason he’d done it was probably that, somewhere deep inside, he’d had this foolish hope that it would lead to them getting back together. That must be why he’d agreed to the bet, too.

Maybe it wasn’t so foolish, though.

He was different now, and she was different. Yet there was still that indefinable chemistry between them. Sometimes it came out in dumb arguments where they pissed the crap out of each other, but they’d gotten along better as the weekend went by. And some of the fighting happened because he was still pissed at her for breaking his heart ten years ago.

He loved her. He still loved her.

She might not feel the same way—she hadn’t before. But she was the only woman he’d ever loved. He had to try.

Forget the screaming upstairs. He had more important things to do than stopping a loud sex marathon.

* * * *

Twenty minutes later, Sidney was nearly at Allison’s. In fact, he was right in front of the bakery where he’d seen her last week. He glanced in the window, just in case…

And there she was.

Eating chocolate cake like she’d been on a starvation diet for the past year. Looking as gorgeous as she always did, whether she was lying underneath him or telling him off. The woman he’d always wanted.

He took a deep breath, his heart thumping like the poor bed upstairs. And then he knocked on the window.

She startled and fell off her chair.

Well, that hadn’t gone as planned.

He hurried inside. She was still on the floor when he reached her, but she had one hand on the table, like she was about to pull herself up. He wrapped his arms around her from behind and brought her to her feet.

“You okay?” he asked.

She exhaled unsteadily. “I don’t like unexpected knocks. And I’ve had far too many of them lately.”

“I disagree.”

“Of course you do.”

“If your friends had actually buzzed, you could have gotten me out the door before they came up. And then we never would have had that stupid bet and—”

“You’re glad about the bet?”

“I am.”

He still had his arms around her. Although she seemed perfectly fine, and he was sure she could stand on her own, he didn’t want to let go. But he should. He couldn’t see her expression right now, and he had no idea what she thought of him being glad about the bet.

He stepped away from her and sat down. She brushed her hands over her ass, then her thighs—wiping off dirt, or just torturing him—and joined him at the table.

Well, here it was. He was going to do this.

But she spoke before he could open his mouth.

“You know why I was eating so fast? I wanted to leave so I could go talk to you.”

Then she smiled, and he knew it was going to be okay.
It’s not all one-sided
.

“What were you going to say to me?” he asked.

“First I want to know why you’re here, scaring the crap out of me.”

But they were both grinning stupidly. They both knew where this was going. They just had to say it.

“I was heading to your condo,” he said. “Then I saw you in the window, so I thought I’d say hi.”