Try - The Complete Romance Series (29 page)

We turned our ballots in and the DJ
started up again. I’d been looking for Mack ever since she’d disappeared in
part because however much her parents had made things awkward for me, they had
definitely managed to find one of the better DJs in the city—he wove together
David Bowie, Notorious B.I.G., Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers, B52s, and more
without missing a beat, and I’d been wanting to dance with her all night. When
the DJ started playing The Strokes, I turned to Mack.

 
“Dance with me?”

“Absolutely,” she said, looking more
joyful than I had seen her appear almost all night since we’d walked into the
house. We moved onto the crowded “dance floor” that her parents had put up in
the big living room and started moving together to the beat. It had been ages
since I’d danced with anyone; I felt a little stiff at first, but then as I
realized that nobody in the room was going to be winning the trophy in a dance
competition anytime soon, I started to loosen up, especially as Mack swayed her
hips closer and closer to me, barely brushing up against the crotch of my pants
and shimmying her chest so that she almost touched me.

The DJ went from The Strokes to Tupac, and
Mack and I kept going, twisting and moving together; it was like there was no
one else in the whole world except for the two of us. I forgot that her
ex-boyfriend had even existed—all I cared about was the fact that Mack was
there with me, and that I would hopefully go home with her after the party was
over, making good on the kiss I’d get at midnight.

We got a breather after that when her dad
interrupted the flow to remind everyone to put in their resolutions; Mack steered
me towards the table where the big bowl stood, and we both wrote our
resolutions down. For myself, I resolved to give my son more of the love and
attention he needed—I figured that was as close as I could come to saying I
wanted to make Mackenzie a more permanent part of my life without opening her
up to embarrassment from family and friends. I didn’t know what Mackenzie
resolved to do in the New Year; we kept our resolutions secret from each other.

We went back out onto the dance floor
after that and started moving together again. The bass pulsed through us and we
were dancing closer and closer together, barely keeping things
family-appropriate. “God, I wish we could sneak off to your room,” I murmured
in Mack’s ear. She giggled, pressing her cheek to mine, brushing her breasts
against my chest as she moved and swayed.

“Everyone would notice if we did,” she
said, with real regret in her voice.

“Only thing keeping me from it,” I told
her. I managed to hold back when I gave her a quick kiss on the lips—but
barely. We were both drenched in sweat, and I think that Mackenzie was just as
grateful as I was when the DJ switched to a downbeat Yeah Yeah Yeahs song.

As it got closer and closer to midnight, I
started looking forward more and more to midnight. I would kiss Mack, we would
call Landon, and after sitting through the “awards” I would go home with her
just as soon as I could, to spend as much time as humanly possible making love
into the New Year. “You know,” I murmured in her ear as we slow-danced together
to “Heroes,” “if we could get some caffeine in us on the way home, we could
keep going until dawn—ring in the New Year together with as many orgasms as we
possibly can.” She giggled, shifting closer to me and tightening her arms
around my shoulders.

“That sounds good—what time do you need to
get Landon in the morning?”

“Probably the afternoon,” I told her.
“It’ll be as late as possible.”

“New Year’s Day brunch?”

“That sounds good: make love until dawn,
sleep for a few hours, pick my boy up from his grandparents’ house and get a
big stack of pancakes.”

We kept dancing together, taking a few
breaks to snag some of the food hanging around on tables all over the common
areas of the house. We talked to Mackenzie’s siblings, and the family friends
who had known her since she had been a child, and I realized that everyone was
trying as much as they could to make me feel like a part of the group; apart
from her parents, no one made me feel too much pressure, and I appreciated
that. Whenever someone got too pointed with their comments, Mack and I just
went back out onto the dance floor to avoid them, and she told me choice gossip
about whoever it was until we almost had to stop dancing from laughing so hard.
I couldn’t wait to be alone with her, but while we were obligated to be at the
party, I was at least glad that the food and drinks were good, that the music
was great, and that the atmosphere was relaxed.

“Have you seen Noah lately?” Mackenzie
stepped back to look up into my face, frowning in concern.

“I don’t think I have,” I admitted. “Why?”

“No particular reason,” Mackenzie said,
though she still looked worried. “I’m just a little concerned…he was starting
to get pretty drunk the last time I saw him, and he’s a hot mess when that
happens.”

The DJ announced that he was taking a
break and let the system continue onto the next song, and I forgot about
Mackenzie’s ex once more, happy just to dance with her and be close to her. I
was moving in to kiss her again when a loud thump broke through the song
playing on the system. “How’s everybody doing tonight?” Mack stiffened in my
arms and pulled back, looking over her shoulder. I turned to look in the same
direction and saw Noah standing in the DJ booth, microphone in hand. “Dwayne
and me go way back,” he said, his words slurring a little bit. “So he said I
could take over while he gets a smoke break before the ball drop.”

“Oh god,” Mackenzie said, burying her face
against my chest. “He’s going to be a total ass.”

“So since I’m in charge for the next ten
minutes, I thought I’d pull up a real blast from the past—how does that sound?”
Some of the others on the dance floor cheered, and Noah looked supremely
pleased with himself. “All right then! Y’all might know that Mack and I used to
be together. This is the first song we were listening to when I took her
cherry.” Mackenzie gasped and pulled away from me, her face going white.

I heard Li’l Jon, “Get Low” start to play
and Mackenzie went even paler, and then her face went red from the roots of her
hair to the collar of her dress, and I saw the tears starting in her eyes.

“Patrick…” I shook my head.

“He’s drunk,” I told her.

“No—you have to listen to me. I
never—this—he’s…” I knew that in a moment she’d dissolve into tears; my heart
ached for the embarrassment I knew she was going through.

“He’s being an asshole because you aren’t
going to be going home with him,” I told her. “I know you, Mack. I know how you
feel about me.” I smiled into her eyes.

“I’m so humiliated,” she said, shaking her
head again.

“Do you want to go somewhere else?” I
hugged her quickly.

“Yeah, I think I do,” she said. I grabbed
her hand and led her off of the dance floor and into the kitchen, closing the
door behind us.

“He’s being an asshole, and everyone knows
it,” I told her. “I’m sure no one believes that you actually lost your
virginity to that song.” Mackenzie smiled slightly, starting to regain her
composure.

“I guess.”

I hugged her tightly. “I just wish my mom
had never invited him.”

“Well, with any luck, they’re kicking him
out and putting him in a cab right now after that bullshit,” I suggested.

“I hope so,” she said. I kissed her and
hugged her and for a while we just hung out in the kitchen, away from the chaos
in the living room and any further embarrassment at the hands of her ex.

Chapter Nine - Mackenzie

I had known that Noah was getting drunk
when I’d left him in the kitchen to go back to Patrick; but I’d been having
such a good time that I had totally forgotten he was even at the party. I saw
him a few times while Patrick and I were dancing, but I didn’t even care—even
when I realized he was only getting drunker.

It shouldn’t have shocked me at all that
Noah would pull something like what he had.

“It was actually part of why he and I
broke up,” I explained to Patrick while we sat in the kitchen, sipping some of
the non-alcoholic punch Mom and Dad had put out to help everyone pace
themselves through the night. “At first I thought he was great—confident, and
he could party all night and keep going the next day. I guess when I was in
college it seemed great.”

“I’ve known some people like that,”
Patrick told me. “It gets old after a while.”

“It does,” I agreed. “He was charming
enough for a while to where I kind of forgot how bad he gets when he drinks—or
gets high, or whatever else—when he would sober up for a bit.” I pressed my
lips together, shaking my head. “He’s never been abusive, I guess, but he just
got worse and worse, and more and more out of control, and I couldn’t take it
anymore.”

“It’s a real statement of how strong you
are that you walked away at all,” Patrick told me, giving my hand a squeeze. “I
can’t judge you for having fallen in love with someone who turned out badly.”
He grinned. “That’d be the pot calling the kettle black. Before I met Joanne I
dated this girl for—maybe a year and a half?” Patrick rolled his eyes and shook
his head. “She was probably the person that inspired the phrase hot mess.”

“Oh god, this sounds good,” I said,
starting to relax a little bit.

“She was a hard partier, like you were
saying about Noah,” Patrick told me. He shook his head, grinning sheepishly. “I
have to admit that at the time some of the things she was into—in the bedroom,
you know? They were pretty thrilling and extreme.”

“Careful,” I said, smiling in spite of
myself. “I might start thinking I need to buy you a whip to use on me if I want
to keep you.”

“That seems like something to talk about
maybe a year from now,” Patrick said, raising an eyebrow. “I’m still so out of
practice with regular sex that I can’t even imagine trying anything more
extreme.”

I giggled. “Go on,” I told him.

“She got into drugs; at first it was sort
of experimental for her—wanting to see what her limit was, stuff like that.” He
shrugged. “Then she started doing more and more, and harder stuff—coke, speed…I
think once or twice she tried heroin even.” He shook his head and shuddered. “I
stayed with her as long as I did because she insisted that I was the only thing
holding her together.”

I nodded; Noah had said much the same to
me when we’d been dating, when things had just been starting to go bad. “Seems
like
it’s
part of the playbook.”

“Definitely,” Patrick agreed. “Anyway, it
kept getting worse and worse, and I just couldn’t make myself stay with her
anymore. It was like someone drowning; if you let them pull you over, it’s just
going to be two people drowning instead of one.”

“I can totally get you there,” I said,
nodding again. I felt a little bit better about what had happened with Noah,
knowing that I wasn’t the only one—and not even the only one in the
relationship—who had a few skeletons in my closet. “And then you met Joanne
after?”

“I did,” Patrick said, smiling slightly.
“You already know how that was, though. And all of that’s in my past—just like
Noah’s in your past.” He squeezed my hand. “Want to head back out into the
party? It’s got to be getting close to midnight.” I took a deep breath and
nodded; I was as ready to confront everyone who’d seen Noah’s crazy display as
I would ever be, and knowing that Patrick was confident in me made it that much
easier.

We went back into the living room, and
wherever Noah was, he wasn’t in the DJ booth anymore. I spotted Evie dancing
with her husband and gave her a wave. She shimmied over to where Patrick and I
were hanging out at the edge of the dance floor. “Noah just left in an Uber,”
she told me. “Dad insisted.”

“I like Dad a lot more than I like Mom
right now,” I admitted to her. Evie laughed and patted Patrick on the back, and
we all went back to dancing.

We had just enough time to dance through
one more song before the DJ announced that it was one minute to midnight.

“Still want to give me that New Year’s
kiss?” Patrick whispered in my ear.

I grinned up him in answer to his
question.

“More than I have all night,” I told him.
My parents pulled up the scene in Times Square on the big flat screen TV mounted
on the wall, and everyone watched the countdown beginning. The DJ cut the music
out and as he started to take up the countdown, I felt myself tingling all
over.

“Ten...nine…eight…seven…”

I looked up at Patrick, getting more and
more excited. This would be the first year in ages that I actually had someone
to kiss at midnight; and even better—I knew that Patrick cared about me, that
he wanted to be with me. I wasn’t just a pity date for him.

“Four...three…two…one! Happy New Year
everybody!”

I didn’t even quite hear the DJ calling
out “Happy New Year,” because as soon as he reached one, Patrick swung me into
his arms and brought his lips down on mine. I could hear the cheering, but it
was no louder than the roar of blood in my ears as Patrick and I kissed for
what felt like a second and an hour at the same time. I melted against him, so
happy, so completely overjoyed for the first time all night, and I didn’t want
to pull away ever.