Page 6 of Back for Seconds

I knocked one last inflatable out of the way, and that seemed to do it. I’d made it to the edge of Joanne’s postage-stamp-sized lawn, her sleepy corner of Shore suburbia coming into full view. The neighborhood was alive with Christmas spirit. Cars lined the street, windows glowed warm with holiday lights.

I had to get out of here. I needed to slip into the darkness and run home, back over the Malaga Bay Bridge, to Evergreen Island—to the peace and quiet of my house a few blocks from the ocean. Right where bitter, lonely divorceés belong.

It would be a long, cold walk. But I needed it. I needed time and space to—

“Leaving already?” A voice sliced through my train of thought like a machete through bamboo.

“Jesus!” I gasped.

I was startled enough that the looming shadow figure jumped too.

“Shit! Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.”

Joey.

There he was, leaning back against a car, hands shoved deep into the pockets of a charcoal-gray peacoat, struggling to keep his lips from stretching into a smile.

“Not scared. I’m not scared.” I shook the fright off me and turned vaguely in the direction of the bay. “Yes, leaving. Me. I’m leaving.”

He pushed his bottom lip out in a little pout. “But the silent auction hasn’t even started yet.”

“Yeah, well, I really do not think this is my year to win big.” I rifled through my purse, extracting my glasses.

“Did I ruin your night?”

“You?” I laughed—a cold bark. Joey came swimming into full HD quality with my glasses on. He was watching me with his chin tilted upward, broad shoulders relaxed, holding back a twitchy little smile. I ripped my eyes away and went back to digging in my purse, hunting for my mittens. “Yeah, you wish.”

“Jeez, I’ve been here ten minutes and I’ve made a lifelong enemy.”

“If you think cornering me at a Christmas party and bringing up some stupid shit I posted on the internet is enough to scare me, you’ve lived a very soft life.”

“Well, I was going to apologize—”

“No need.” I extracted my mittens, holding them up in surrender. “I was the asshole. I should apologize. I am very sorry I laughed at you for fingering a block of tofu. I won’t do it again.”

He jerked his head back at my words. “Wow. That felt insincere. Apology denied.”

“This”—I gestured between us, the tops of my mitten flopping back and forth—“is not happening. Not tonight. I’m all maxed out on…on men.”

He dropped his gaze to his shoes, and for one brief moment I worried I’d gone too far. That I’d been too aggressive, too biting. After all, I was so deeply and profoundly in the wrong here. I was the one who had gone viral for laughing in his face.

You just never know when to stop. My stomach tightened with the memory of those words, said to me so many times.

But then Joey lifted his eyes to mine and pulled his lips back into the most knee-melting, stomach-tossing, lopsided smirk I’d ever seen. “So, I am the reason you’re leaving the party?”

I squeezed my eyes shut. And I relaxed. Weirdly, my hangover headache was actually starting to fade. “Would it make you feel better if I said yes?”

“Well…” The word buzzed in his chest, warm and deep. “Kinda.”

“Then, yeah, you’re the reason I’m leaving this party, Joey. It’s you. Happy?”

He shrugged a shoulder, eyelashes fluttering. “Meh.”

“Great. Well, guess we’re all done here.” I huffed and turned away, but then realized, suddenly, I was not all done here. “You know—” I spun back around on him. “You have, like, a million fans. So what if I laughed at you? What you were doing was ridiculous. And out of literally one million people falling over themselves in your comment section and in your replies, on their hands and knees begging to taste one single drop of your piss, you picked out the one video of us just…laughing. I didn’t even say you’re not hot!”

Joey pushed off the car and took a lazy step toward me. His curls were all pushed to the side, ruffled from the wind, his heavy brows drawn together. “That’s not really what bothered me.”

“Then what is it?” I asked, softly. “I’m all ears.”