Try - The Complete Romance Series (28 page)

“I’m not sure,” Evie said, frowning
slightly. “She’ll probably turn up in a few minutes; maybe Mom wanted her to
take the next round of appetizers out of the oven or something.” Evie’s face
cleared. “Mack said you have an absolutely wonderful little boy? I have kids,
too. Mack is just amazing with them.” I settled in to talk with Evie while I
waited for Mack to reappear, reminding myself that it wasn’t like she was going
to leave the party altogether; I had a claim for a kiss with her in a few
hours, and I was sure I’d run into her again before that.

Chapter Seven - Mackenzie

When my parents took Patrick aside to
start talking to him, I found my way to Evie’s side and immediately started
venting—as quietly as possible—about how horrifying it was to show up to a
party with my new boyfriend only to find my old boyfriend attending the same
party.

“Mom invited him,” Evie told me lowly as
we stuck close to the food table.

“I can’t believe her,” I said, my stomach
twisting around in knots inside of me. I kept looking around, seeing Patrick
talking to my mom, seeing Dad join them, everyone except for me and Evie
apparently clueless that anything was wrong.

“You’d think he’d know better than to take
the invitation,” Evie had pointed out, “considering how things ended between
the two of you.”

“You’d think, wouldn’t you?” I poured
myself a glass of champagne and knocked half of it back right away. My gaze
fell on Noah and the anger just rose up in me hotter and faster. “I’m going to
talk to him.”

“Is that a great idea?” Evie looked at me
doubtfully. “Just avoid him. Go save your new boyfriend from Mom and Dad.” We
argued about it for two or three minutes; but just as I was starting to decide
that Evie was right and that I shouldn’t even dignify Noah’s presence with any
attention from me, the subject of our conversation appeared.

Noah looked good in the suit he’d worn,
even if it was a little on the rumpled side. When he popped up at my elbow,
smiling and looking just as confident as ever, I wanted to slap him right away;
but I took a deep breath.

“I knew you’d be surprised to see me,”
Noah said, snagging one of the bacon-wrapped dates from the platter in front of
us.

“Surprised isn’t the word,” I told him
lowly.

“Don’t get tetchy, Mack,” Noah said,
reaching out and touching my arm. “I just wanted to catch up a little bit.” I
looked around; Patrick was still talking to my parents.

“What do you need to catch up on? We
aren’t even friends anymore.”

“Can’t a guy change?”

Noah gave me a sleek, charming smile. My
cheeks burned and I could feel the anger rising up inside of me again.
Don’t make a scene. Just because he decided
to be an asshole doesn’t mean you should humiliate yourself any more.

“Come on,” I said, grabbing at his arm and
pulling him along with me as I hurried out of the room. I brought him into the kitchen
where we’d at least have a little bit of privacy.

“Oooh, I was hoping I’d get a kiss at
midnight, but if you want a little preview…”

“No Noah,” I said, my whole body going hot
with anger and embarrassment. “I came in here to ask what the hell you were
thinking coming to this party!”

“Your mom said you hadn’t been dating
anyone for a while, and I thought it might be a good time to revisit what we
had together,” Noah said with a shrug.

“I am obviously dating someone right now,”
I said, crossing my arms over my chest. “And how could you think that in a
million years I’d want to see you again?” Noah and I had broken up five years
before; it had taken me months and months to finally get over him.

“I’d hoped you might remember the good
times,” Noah said, giving me that charming smile again. “Yeah, sure—things
ended poorly. But that was five years ago, Mackie.”

“Which makes it even weirder that you
would come here,” I said, my arms tightening across my chest.

“Hey—all I wanted was to reconnect, maybe
talk about the way things were, and have a good night with one of the most
beautiful women I’ve ever known,” Noah said. He took my glass from me and found
one of the stray bottles of champagne hanging around to fill it. “You have to
admit that we had some good times, right?”

“That’s in the past Noah.” I sighed. I
took a sip of my champagne and shook my head. “I haven’t even thought about you
for years.”

“You do realize that just makes you even
hotter,” Noah told me, grinning again. “Not that you don’t already look
stunning tonight.”

“It’s not going to work, Noah. I’m in love
with Patrick.”

“Your mom didn’t even know for sure if he
was a real person; you can’t have been dating him for that long.” Noah reached
out and touched my arm. “You can at least hear me out, can’t you?”

I took a deep breath and another sip of
champagne. “You have fifteen minutes,” I told him.

“I’ve been doing really well—really well,”
Noah said, pouring himself a glass of champagne as well. “You’d be proud of me,
Mack.”

“I’m glad you’re doing well,” I said,
without any real enthusiasm.

“You remember how I wanted to start my own
business? I managed to save up and I’ve got a really great app I’m developing.”

“That’s great.” I said, and smiled as
brightly I could manage, hoping that I could get out of the conversation as
soon as possible.

But in spite of the obvious signs, Noah
didn’t seem to care; he started chatting about his life, asking about mine, and
as I drank more of the champagne I began to relax. “I’ve really missed you, you
know,” Noah told me at one point. “Come on, Mack—you have to admit that you and
I had some good times together.”

“We did,” I said.

“Like that time that we found the hot
spring at the campground? Oh man, I was thinking about that just the other
day.”

I shivered, remembering that night with
Noah. He started to remind me of other times we’d spent together, and I had to
admit that before everything had gone so horrifically wrong between me and
Noah, we’d actually had some very good memories. It had made it that much
harder for me to break things off with him, even when I’d known that things
weren’t ever going to be the way they’d been at the beginning of our
relationship.

Noah had been a good guy at first; he’d
been charming and sweet, thoughtful and funny, and I’d been blown away at the
fact that he’d actually wanted to date me. Every weekend we’d gone out, and
even a few times during the week—and I’d loved the fact that I was dating a guy
who could party it up all night and then go to class the next day without
missing a beat, even if I couldn’t always match him.

I kept to the champagne, but Noah switched
to whiskey, sipping from a half-full glass with a little ice in it while we
talked. I started to think to myself that at least if my mom had been enough of
an idiot to invite a long-time ex-boyfriend of mine, it was nice that we could
just talk like this. Obviously enough time had gone past that we could maybe
even consider being friends, though when I thought about Patrick in the next
room with my parents, I decided I should probably ask his feelings about that
first.

“Oh god—it’s been ages since I thought
about Tracy and Ken,” I said, when Noah mentioned he’d spoken to the couple
we’d gone on so many double dates with. “Did they ever get married or
anything?”

“They have a kid together,” Noah said,
chuckling. “Still not married though. They say that they’re waiting for baby
number two, so they can have both a ring bearer and a flower girl.” I laughed
and rolled my eyes; it was exactly what I would have expected of the couple.

Noah started really knocking back his
drink, and I started to feel uneasy again. It was too easy to remember just how
things had started to go wrong between us; Noah’s partying had gone out of
control so many times towards the end of our relationship together that I’d
gone from fearing for his safety to fearing for my own.

“Just as a friend,” I said, gesturing to
the glass in his hands as he added more whiskey to it, “you should probably
slow down.”

“I’ve got a great tolerance,” Noah said,
shrugging. “And since I’m obviously not going to get you in bed tonight, it’s
not like I have to worry about whiskey-dick, right?” He smirked at me, his eyes
bleary.

“I’m sure that I’m not the only single
girl in this house right now,” I said; while we’d been talking, I’d seen more
and more people coming through, going into the living room to mingle with the
rest of the party. “Come on, Noah. Switch to water for a little while so you
can make it to midnight, how about that?”

“I can make it to midnight anyway,” Noah
told me with the sleek confidence that I had both loved and hated about him.

“Let’s get back out there before my mom
starts rounding people up for the stupid party games then,” I said. “You know
she’s going to make absolutely everyone participate.”

“I already put my resolution in the fish
bowl,” Noah told me. He leered, leaning in closer. “Do you want to know what it
is?”

“That would be cheating,” I said, trying
to keep my voice light in spite of how uncomfortable I’d started to feel.

“Just between you and me. Besides, it’s
only one…my New Year’s resolution is to get back into your bed.”

“You didn’t seriously put that in there,
did you?” I felt my cheeks burning at the thought of someone reading that out,
of everyone trying to guess who had written it, and how Patrick would feel when
he knew that my ex-boyfriend had “resolved” to sleep with me again.

“Nah—nah, I’m just kidding,” he said,
wagging his finger in my face. “But I had you there for a minute, didn’t I?”

“You did,” I admitted.

“I should’ve put that in. It’s totally
true. I do want to be back with you, Mack.”

“That ship sailed a long time ago,” I told
Noah. “And the way you’re acting right now doesn’t really make me want to try
and bring it back.”

“Your new guy got you flowers, big deal,”
Noah said. He pointed at the corsage pinned to my dress, rolling his eyes. “Do
you still have that necklace I got you when we were going together?”

I shook my head. “No,” I told him. “I took
it to a pawn shop and got all of twenty bucks for it.” It wasn’t entirely true;
I’d taken it to a thrift store and donated it, hoping that someone who wanted a
nice piece of jewelry would enjoy it since they didn’t have any memories like
mine attached to it.

“That’s cold, Mack.”

I shrugged. “What can I say? You burned
the bridge, Noah. I just managed to get to the other side.” I shook my head
again. “I’m going back to the party before my date thinks I’ve abandoned him.”

Chapter Eight - Patrick

I had started to actually worry about
Mackenzie as I spent more and more time talking to first her sister Evie and
then her brothers, Alex and John; while none of them gave me the third degree
quite like Mack’s parents had, it was obvious that they were curious about the
guy dating their sister. They asked me about Landon as soon as they confirmed
that I’d met Mackenzie through my son being one of her patients; they all
agreed that Mack had always been good with kids—and John even went as far as to
say that they’d all always thought it was a shame that Mack didn’t have any
kids of her own.

Mackenzie’s mom announced that it was time
for the annual “awards”—and handed out ballots; I took two, and looked around
for Mack once more. She appeared almost out of nowhere—I definitely didn’t see
her approaching before I saw her—and smiled up at me. “I was starting to worry
that someone had stolen you away,” I told her, leaning in to give her a quick
kiss. “I grabbed you a ballot for the awards.”

“Oh god, this is going to be humiliating,”
Mack said, grinning and shaking her head as she took my extra ballot and one of
the pens.

“I know we have some new people with us
tonight,” Katherine was saying, talking into the DJ’s microphone. “So here’s
the deal: I’ll announce each of the categories, and you can write in the name
of anyone at the party for that award. David will take up your ballots, and
we’ll tally up the votes—and then announce them after midnight.”

“I’ll tell you who to put in for some of
them,” Mack told me, grinning wryly. “Please—whatever you do: do
not
write me in for most likely to get
knocked up.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” I told her,
giving her shoulder a squeeze.

“All right! Here we go. First category:
Most Likely to Go to Jail!” I glanced at Mack; she was scribbling something on
her ballot.

“Put in John for that one,” she muttered
to me, grinning.

“Oh? He’s like that is he?”

“The fact that he’s never been to jail is
evidence of the existence of luck,” Mack explained. I wrote in her brother’s
name for that one.

Everyone got into the activity as
Mackenzie’s mom announced each of the categories: Most Likely to Get Knocked
Up, Most Likely to Get a Raise, Most Improved Life, until I wondered if Mack’s
parents had come up with a category for each person at the party. Mack and I
joked while we filled out our ballots; she explained why it was funny for me to
put down who she told me to put down, and I did nominate her for one of the
awards without telling her: Prettiest Member of the Family.