THE WRIGHT BOSS (Wright #2)

3. Heidi

3

Heidi

Leaving Landon standing outside felt horrible. I knew he was in a rough place, and he needed someone to talk to. I was happy to be that person. Even if the last thing I wanted to hear about was Miranda. I couldn’t do that while we stood out back where we had just kissed. I trusted myself with most things, but Landon Wright was not one of them.

I glanced over my shoulder to make sure that Landon hadn’t followed me. The last thing I wanted was for people to see us coming in from outside together. When we’d walked out there, only a handful of people had been in attendance, but already, the bar was filling up. I recognized nearly everyone and was stopped constantly as people wanted to say hi to me.

In high school, I’d been a cheerleader, class vice president, and student council vice president. I’d been very involved. So, planning this evening with Meredith and Dave—the class president and treasurer—had been a blast, but it’d also put a lot of pressure on me. I was the only one who still lived here. That meant I was the one who’d had to do most of the groundwork. The benefit of that was, we got to have the event at Flips.

“Tequila?” the bartender, Peter, asked when he saw me approaching.

I nodded my head and held up two fingers. Yeah, make it a double, buddy.

Peter knew what kind of alcohol I was into based on my mood. That was how often I was in here. It was a little scary honestly.

“Care to toast with your bestie and roomie?” Emery asked, sidling up beside me.

“The shots are not celebratory unless I am licking them off your stomach,” I informed her.

“Let’s do it, baby!” Emery said. She leaned back on her chair and hoisted her black tank up to reveal her flat stomach. “Peter, I need the salt!”

“Oh God, are you two doing this again?” he asked. He tilted his head and judged us, as per usual.

“Hand it over!” Emery crooned.

“It’s really not a reunion if we aren’t drunk and ridiculous,” I said.

“Let’s be real,” Emery said. “It’s not a reunion if we’re not drunk on wine coolers and running from the cops because Landon has pot and is afraid he’ll get arrested.”

Emery hoisted herself up onto the bar and lay down. She balanced the shot on her stomach and started shaking salt next to her belly button.

“Honey,” Jensen said, appearing at her side, “what in the hell are you doing?”

“Body shots. Don’t tell me you’ve never done one.”

Jensen’s face pinched. “Who is doing a body shot off of you?”

“Heidi, of course,” Emery said with a grin.

“Yeah, Wright, get out of the way.” I nudged Jensen, and he gave me a pained expression. I knew how much it hurt him not to get to take that shot, but I wasn’t giving it up. “This is my girlfriend, and we might or might not have done this once or twice in high school.”

“There were a lot of things you two did in high school that don’t need to be repeated,” he said.

“Party pooper,” Emery called at him.

“Don’t listen to him, Em. He’s jealous because I get to take the shot. We all know he’s done worse.”

Jensen shrugged and didn’t deny it.

Emery winked at her boyfriend and then placed the lime in her mouth. She made a come-and-get-it gesture. I laughed at my best friend and felt unbelievably grateful for having her. Even if she didn’t know something was wrong, she allowed me to completely forget about what had happened.

I bent down, licked the salt from Emery’s stomach, and then downed the shot. After I swallowed the tequila back, I took the lime straight from Emery’s mouth. She hollered with excitement as I sucked on the lime. My grin was magnetic as I raised my arms like I’d won a gold medal.

“What did I miss?” Landon asked as I turned around to face the rest of the crowd.

I dropped my arms and shrugged. “Body shots.”

“Ah, like old times then.”

“You don’t have any weed on you, do you? Emery reminded us that you used to be a pothead.”

Landon raised his eyebrows at me and then shifted his attention to Emery. “I was not a pothead.”

Emery hopped off the bar. “Nah, you were too scared of getting caught to be a full-blown pothead.”

“Actually, I think he was too afraid of our dad,” Jensen chimed in.

Landon shrugged. “Well, he could be a scary motherfucker.”

“Landon! Brah, I didn’t know if you’d come,” a guy said from behind him.

My eyes moved from Landon’s gorgeous face to the guy behind him. Brandon McCain. My lucky number twelve in high school. I’d been obsessed with him all four years, and I had even adopted his football number as my favorite. Emery liked to make fun of me about it. I couldn’t even remember all the times I’d mooned over him, but nothing had ever come of it. He’d had a serious girlfriend all four years of high school and never looked my way. But, as far as I knew, he was single now and lived in Los Angeles as a wannabe actor and model.

“Brandon,” Landon said. They firmly shook hands. “Good to see you, man. I didn’t know you were going to be here either.”

“f**k, man. I wouldn’t have missed it. High school was the s**t,” Brandon said. “Though who am I kidding? You killed it in high school, and look at you now! f*****g PGA Tour!”

Landon winced slightly. I narrowed my eyes at that movement.

Why would he flinch about being on the PGA Tour? That was his dream. That was his life. He loved golf with everything in him. It seemed odd that he would be uncomfortable with discussing it. I’d never seen him upset about golf.

“Thanks, man,” Landon said.

Brandon’s eyes shifted from Landon to me, and his smile grew. “Heidi Martin. f**k me,” he said, pulling me in for a hug. “You look even hotter than you did in high school, and you were f*****g gorgeous ten years ago.”

When Brandon said that, I searched Landon’s face, and he went from wincing to pissed in a second. If I wasn’t mistaken, he was remembering that crush I’d always had.

“Thanks, Brandon,” I said, stepping out of his embrace. “You look great, too.”

“We should definitely catch up later.” Brandon pointed his finger at me and winked. “Definitely. But, first, I’m going to steal Landon here,” he said, throwing an arm around Landon’s shoulder, “and get the rest of the football team together.”

Landon shot me a grieved look but disappeared with Brandon. I could already see that a huge group of football players was convened in the back. Landon was their star. Of course they had come to collect him.

I’d really wanted that interaction with Brandon to make me feel better about the whole Landon situation, but it didn’t. Brandon McCain was still really good-looking. Los Angeles ate people alive if they didn’t stay in shape. It was clear that he had been putting in a lot of time at the gym, but I didn’t feel the same spark as I once had.

Goddamn it, Landon. Even guys I could hook up with were tainted by him.

All I’d wanted for four years was this one sexy guy. Now that we were here and I definitely had not misinterpreted his catch-up-later line, I was meh about the whole thing.

“Whoa!” Emery said. “Brandon McCain is so f*****g into you. Hello, dream come true!”

“Yeah,” I muttered. “Dream come true.”

Emery wrapped her arm through mine. “Okay, roomie, we’re supposed to be having a good time. You know I hate reunions and basically all things high school. But I’m here for you because I love your face. Tell me what’s wrong, so I can fix it.”

“Nothing’s wrong.”

“News flash, Martin! Brandon f*****g McCain just hit on you, and you’re sad. You would have blown that guy behind the bleachers after a game if he’d let you. What part of him thinking you’re super hot is a bad thing?”

I cleared my mind of everything I’d been dealing with since Landon had stepped back into my life. Landon Wright was not right for me. There was no future for us. I didn’t know if he would go back to his wife tomorrow. I didn’t know if he’d ever file divorce papers. I didn’t know if that kiss was a bullshit rebound move. Stressing over it would only ruin my high school reunion. And I had put too much effort into this reunion for that to f*****g happen.

I was the life of the party. I was smart, beautiful, and confident. I could rock this reunion with or without Landon Wright.

“You’re so right,” I said, bolstered by my own pep talk. “There is not a damn thing wrong with that.”

“You sure? You seemed a little out of it. Maybe you and Landon…”

“Please, do not finish that thought. Landon and I do not belong in the same sentence. You’ve bugged me about it in the past, Em, but he’s married. You know what my dad was like. You know I could never do that. And I could never do that to you.”

“But it doesn’t bother me.”

I held my hands up. “Irrelevant. It bothers me! Now, let’s talk about Brandon McCain and how he just hit on me.”

Emery gave me a look that said she didn’t believe my bullshit, but she wasn’t a pusher. She wouldn’t bother me until I gave up the info.

“Okay, are you going to hook up with him? Because he went from being like gruff hottie in high school to being an LA pretty boy,” Emery observed. “I don’t know if you could f**k a pretty boy.”

“Oh, I could. I assure you.”

“Plus, he used brah in a sentence without irony.”

I snort-laughed and signaled for another drink from Peter. “So, he’s not the sharpest tool in the shed. As long as he has a big, long tool I can use, then we’re good to go.”

“Oh my God!” Emery said, busting out in laughter. “I pray that he does, for your sake, Heidi.”

We hung out at the bar as more and more people showed up. It was even more than I’d anticipated. A lot of the local crowd hadn’t RSVP’d, so I’d thought it was mostly going to be out-of-towners. A lot of people had complained about the location and lack of food and it not being kid-friendly…and on and on. So many complaints. But it looked like a ton of people had shown up anyway. Probably because of the open bar I’d finagled.

By the time it seemed like most people had finally arrived, the bar was packed. Meredith had planned to make some kind of speech, but with the crowd, that would be impossible. I wasn’t worried about it, but she was.

Eventually, she gave up and turned on the slide show she had prepared with all the pictures that everyone had turned in for the reunion. The whole thing was a walk down memory lane.

I had only turned in a couple of pictures of me and Emery together, but it was almost obnoxious, how many images there were of me. It was never clearer to me that I had been totally obsessed with popularity. I cared nothing about it now, but I had deeply stressed over it at the time.

I was sure I had my dad to blame for a lot of that. We never had much, but he’d indulged me with everything I’d wanted at the time. I’d taken every cent. Man, how that had all backfired.

The football team was hooting and hollering over all the images of them. Landon was in nearly as many as I was. Then, one stopped on him in a high school golf polo, holding his club. My eyes shifted over to where he had been sitting all night with an IV of whiskey practically hooked into his arm. When he saw the picture, he openly cringed at it.

Then, his gaze found me. I quickly looked away.

I shouldn’t be looking at him. I shouldn’t be worried about him. I shouldn’t be wondering why golf was a trigger for him.

But I couldn’t seem to focus on anything else.

I’d tried to forget him.

I’d tried to stay away from him.

I’d tried not to look at him.

All I did was fail.

Our eyes met across the distance, and my heart tugged in his direction. He nodded his head back toward the exit. It was a question and a promise. I knew that, if I went out there, he’d kiss me again. And I would give in to him. Because I wanted to.

“Ugh, who sent in these pictures?” Emery asked from next to me.

I guiltily looked away from Landon and stared at the picture. It was Emery and Landon together after a football game. She was in his letter jacket, and they were laughing. The next one was of them seated side by side for their Best Couple shot for the yearbook. The one after that had Emery sitting in his lap by a bonfire. I was sitting next to them, grinning like a fool.

There were three or four others, all in a row. A barrage of Emery and Landon. One big fat reminder that the guy I was dreaming about had dated my best friend.

This wasn’t like Jensen, who hadn’t known Emery when she dated Landon. I’d been there with them through everything. I knew the good, the bad, and the ugly. Emery and I had spent hours lamenting over our love lives.

There was no way in hell that I should be interested in Landon. I wouldn’t allow it. I promised myself that I wouldn’t look in his direction again. No way, no how.

And, when Brandon McCain moseyed back over to talk to me, I let him hit on me and told myself I wasn’t going to feel guilty about it.