Misguided Heart (9 page)

“That’s my girl.” Shelby shouted to the bar with one arm around my neck.

We started out slow with a couple shots of this and that and then threw all caution to the wind and were eventually full fledged tipsy. I could feel myself having a wonderful time for the first time in what felt like forever. I had become so engrossed in my job over the past couple years, that I slowly let the old Aston fade away. This was a crying shame, because as of right now, I loved the old Aston. Shelby and I headed out to the dance floor at least a dozen times.

I headed back to the high top table to sit down and take a quick breather when the only song I could never say no to, came on over the millions of speakers. I turned around
and saw Shelby and in an instant we were screaming and running back out to the dance floor. Suddenly it was only Shelby and I jamming out to Young MC’s, Bust a Move.

We paid absolutely no attention to anyone else as we pulled out all the old school moves like the running man and the Roger rabbit. We were the center of attention, but the only person I could spot besides Shelby was Davis taking pictures of us with his phone. I was beaming. This was definitely going to be a night to remember.

We continued dancing without caution when I felt a hard wall slam into my back. I quickly turned and shot a nasty glance in the direction of whomever it was who thought they should interrupt my groove. I almost immediately changed the expression on my face when I realized who it was that I had run into. I threw my arms up and around his neck in less than a second and he quickly reciprocated.

“Oh my god Braden, how are you? I haven’t seen you in like ten years.” I squealed. Braden and I had met t
hrough my ex-boyfriend Darren. He was the only other man to hold a piece of my heart, besides Nole, of course. He and I became close while Darren and I dated, but obviously lost contact when the relationship had ended.

“I’m doing really well. How are you?” He replied.

“I’m doing great. I’m just working for the man. You know same old shit.” I laughed. I scanned the room for Darren without being too obvious, but Braden knew me a bit too well.

“He’s not with me.” He shouted.

“Who?” I pretended not to know what he was talking about.

“You know who girl. Don’t try to lie to me. I’m here with my
girlfriend. He is at home, with his wife.” He replied as he half hid his face as though I was going to punch him.

I know he could see the change in my expression but I tried to hide it anyway. “He got married huh? That’s awesome, I am so happy f
or him.” I was lying. “Well hey, it was good running into you.” I laughed. “I’ll catch up with you later.” And I ran as fast as my Manolos would let me into the women’s restroom.

I took the first open stall and leaned my back against the cold metal door. Tears of sadness began to creep through my
mascara-ridden eyelashes. I only let a few fall through, before drying my face and heading back out. I immediately saw Shelby back at the table and headed over to her. She must have seen what had happened because she was holding her arms out to hug me.

“Don’t you dare baby me, Shelby Graves; we are not done drinking and having a good time. Where are the shots? “I yelled at her.

“Who was that?” She half screamed into my ear.

“Shelby are you serious? That was Braden.” I shouted.

Shelby and Braden had a quick fling while Darren and I were dating. She was seeing someone else at the time but he was a bit of a dick so I guess she felt the need to find comfort somewhere else. It only lasted a short while but I knew Braden had always wondered if things would have worked out.

“You have got to be shitting me?” She chuckled. “I didn’t even recognize him. Damn, he has gotten HOT!” She hung her head and I could tell she wanted to go talk to him.

She was right though. Braden had always been a looker with is dark buzzed hair, emerald green eyes and tattoos stretched over his then thin muscles. He had since filled those puppies out. He now resembled a professional football player, with how big he had gotten. And the tattoos had seemed to multiply. Yum! I shook the dirty thoughts, clouding my drunken state of mind away before I threw out the next chunk of knowledge about him that I knew.

“He is here with his girlfriend. Oh and get this, Darren got married.” A look of disgust settled into my expression.

“WHAT? No way! You know, I would have thought that the two of you would have gotten married once upon a time.” She laughed.

“We almost did. You don’t remember our impromptu trip to Vegas?” I replied.

“Oh my god that’s right. The one where Braden and Darren thought it would be a good idea to get shit faced in the back seat while we drove.” We both began hysterically laughing. “And Braden swore he had an allergic reaction to the alcohol they were drinking.” Our laughing began to get louder.

I was doubled over
in my chair trying to catch my breath when I felt a hand touch my lower back. I turned instantly to come face to face with whoever felt the need to be touching me. My jaw dropped and I flung my hand up to my mouth and then turned to look at Shelby. She just gave me a wide-eyed expression and spun her finger around to tell me to do the same. I turned back around and he was still standing in front of me. All five feet eleven inches of pure muscle was now staring right back at me. He looked so different in so many ways, but exactly the same in other ways. He looked older than me, despite our two-year age difference. He used to have a much smaller frame but apparently that was nothing but muscle these days. He still had the same sandy blonde hair that he insisted on shaving down and his piercing blue eyes still struck a chord in my heart. God, he looked good. Oh and he had more tattoos too, visible ones.

Oh my!

“Hi!” I managed to choke out.

“Hi.” He replied.

He was suddenly very fidgety in his own shoes. He didn’t look me in the eyes except for when I first turned around. I wanted to give him a huge hug, but his body language was telling me to stay away.

“Braden said you were at home.” I knew I sounded stupid the moment the words came out of my mouth. So much for playing it cool. Dumbass!

“He lied. I wasn’t sure I wanted to talk to you or even see you for that matter after I saw him run into you.” He still made no eye contact.

“Oh, I’m sorry.” I ran my fingers through my hair slowly and by doing so we finally made eye contact. My heart began doing somersaults just like it used to when we had first met each other.

“So what have you been up to since the last time I watched you leave me.” He growled.

I bit down on my lip knowing that he was still upset wi
th me. I guess I thought after eight years he would’ve gotten over the fact that I up and left with my family; well the family I had left. Darren and I had a complicated relationship to say the least. It all started out wonderful. We instantly hit it off and spent basically every day together when he wasn’t working, but eventually when you get down to the nitty gritty, you see things in someone you didn’t know existed, until it is too late that is.

“Wow, really that’s how you want to start our first conversation after eight years?” I snapped. “I mean seriously
, how mad could you really be; you’re the one who got married.” I scoffed.

“Wow, I see you’ve matured so much in the last eight years.” He snapped back.

“Okay so I can tell that this conversation is going to end up like most of our old conversations, so I think you should just walk away now.” The intensity that was there had now dissipated. I suddenly remembered why things didn’t end up working out.

I stood there waiting for him to respond or show some emotion, but his face was drawn in a hard stare. I began to tap my foot annoyingly when finally I turned around to resume paying attention to my real friends at the table. I could feel his glare burning a hole in the back of my head, but I never turned around. I wasn’t about to give him the
satisfaction of thinking he was better than me. I rolled my eyes at Shelby and threw back at least three more shots, one right after the other. I figured if he wanted to have a mature somewhat intoxicated conversation, then he could be the first one to apologize.

Shelby gave me a hard stare and motioned for me to once again turn around. I shook my head no and continued drinking with the rest of the table. I could feel the alcohol warming my blood all the way down to my toes. I didn’t have to turn around to know that he was still standing impatiently behind me. I drank one last shot and lunged towards Shelby over the table. I grabbed her arm, moving her around the table pulling her onto the dance floor with me. I was not about to have my ex whatever he was
, ruin a perfectly good night out.

“What are you doing Aston?” Shelby shouted in my ear.

I threw my hands up and turned around in a circle while dancing to the sound that was pumping through the speakers. “I’m dancing, what are you doing?” I shouted back.

“You are crazy. Why won’t you just talk to him?”

“I don’t want to and given the fact that he was being a complete asshole makes it that much easier to ignore him.” I smiled as I gave into the rhythm.

Aston

Shelby kept peering back at our table to see if Darren was still waiting for me to approach him. I did my best to simply block out all the crazy shit that had happened to me tonight. I have to admit, I did look back at our table once to notice that Darren had wandered back over to Braden and their friends. I swallowed back hard and began to feel extremely guilty for possibly hurting his feelings, again after all these years.

As the minutes ticked by
, I began to get more and more drunk. I would usually be happy about this fact, but given the current predicament that I was in, being drunk was the last thing I should be. Shelby kept giving me the evil eye, as I continued to keep dancing while she continued to look blatantly bored.

Four songs later I was wrecked, and man do I mean wrecked. Shelby had made her way back over to our table a few songs back and was now shamelessly flirting with Davis. I don’t know why she wasn’t into him. He was a fairly
good-looking guy. He definitely wasn’t my cup of tea, but he suited her well. She had always been attracted to the really nice guys, and that was Davis. His short dirty blonde hair was sticking up in random directions and he was staring at Shelby, hard. He was adorable.

I had met Davis my junior year in high school and we somehow had remained friends all these years later. He was hilarious and was always the one to start the party. I really couldn’t understand why she didn’t like him. As I weaved through the overwhelmingly large crowd of people back to our table, I felt a strong hand clamp around my wrist. I didn’t have to turn to know who it was, but my stomach took flight and that scared me.

In my inebriated state, having a conversation with him was definitely not a good idea. Contrary to what he believed, I was truly sorry for how I had left things with him. I had spent my teenage years in and out of a physically and emotional abusive relationship and I was all but shutting down when I had first met him. I’m not going to lie, Darren had awoken something in me and it worked for the time that we were together. The relationship was a good one, not too much to complain about there. And the sex, well the sex had been phenomenal. Oh the sex. My tongue slipped out between my lips, bringing the bottom fuller one back in between my teeth, as I turned to look at him.

Eye contact was once again lost, but I was too drunk to even care at this point. “Yes.” I sighed. I could feel the cold metal band around his left ring finger against the soft tender spot on my wrist and I gulped.

“What are you doing here?” His tone was still full of rage and I debated whether to answer him.

I pulled my wrist from his tight grasp before I answered him. “I’m pretty
sure that’s none of your business.” The alcohol coursing through my veins was starting to make me angry. This was going to end badly, I could feel it all the way down in my drunk little toes.

He took a step back, assessing my mood. “I didn’t say it was my business, Aston. I was just wondering.” His voice had smoothed out a bit, but a hint of anger lay dormant waiting to pounce.

Damn, why did he have to be so goddamn good looking? “Look, Darren I’m not trying to argue with you, or be a bitch to you. I know I did wrong in our relationship with how I left it, but its not like you were Mother fucking Theresa.” Oops, and here comes the bitch! Look out ladies and gentleman; this ride is about to get bumpy. “I may have left you without an explanation, but at least I didn’t run off and get fucking married.”

“Well, I see you
’ve still got that sailors mouth on ya.”

I wasn’t sure if I saw a hint of a smile, but either way it was only fueling my irritability. “If I remember correctly, you used to love this sailor’s mouth.” Oops!

“Never said I didn’t.” He winked.

The tension between us was palpable. My body was betraying me at every turn. I wanted to be angry with him. I wanted to scream at him and make him feel the way he had made me feel towards the end of it all. Instead, visions of the naughty things I knew he could do to me were flying around in my brain. His strong calloused hands and the way they used to tease and press hard inside of me. How
his tongue would only have to graze the tip of my nipples to send me into a euphoric state. The way he used to push me up against the wall and…. Ah fuck! If I didn’t walk away now, bad things were going to happen. I could feel it, deep down. In that area to be more exact.