Ice on Wheels by Aurora Rey

Author:Aurora Rey [Rey, Aurora]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781636791791
Publisher: Bold Strokes Books
Published: 2022-04-22T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seven

Brooke rarely had hangovers, not because she was immune but because she was an adult and practiced restraint. She’d lapsed on both those fronts. And if the hangover wasn’t bad enough, she had the heavy mantle of regret to drag her down. What had she been thinking?

She hadn’t. That was the problem. Too much alcohol paired with her absolute exhaustion over Riley and what to do with her had rendered her good judgment null and void.

Could she merely have made a general fool of herself? No, of course not. She had to go for the jugular of self-inflicted humiliation and throw herself at Riley. And Riley couldn’t just push her away or call her out for being drunk and stupid; she had to be calm and rational and the grown-up of the whole thing. Which maybe shouldn’t have made it worse, but it totally did.

Riley had even sent her a text the next morning asking if she was okay. Ugh.

Brooke had managed to avoid her at the office for most of the week, but tonight was practice, and there was no getting out of it. Her dread was made even worse by the fact that she seriously considered skipping. She never skipped. Besides, skipping would only prolong the inevitable.

She slogged through the day, grumpy and snippy and hating herself for it. She grabbed an early dinner with Meg, who sensed the depths of her frustration and didn’t tease her too terribly. She insisted on a blow-by-blow, though, as her best friend prerogative.

“It sounds to me like she regrets stopping more than you kissing her in the first place.” Meg took a bite of her Cobb salad and pointed at Brooke with her fork. “What exactly did she say again?”

Brooke closed her eyes and tried to summon the precise words from her whiskey-addled memory. “‘It probably isn’t the best idea.’ I’m pretty sure that’s it. Oh, and ‘in this moment.’ She said, ‘in this moment.’”

“Uh-huh. She definitely wanted to hook up with you.”

“Stop.” She’d not allowed her brain to go there, and she certainly didn’t want to now.

“I’m serious.” Meg pointed again with her fork. “She offered you a ride home, she walked you to your door. And unless you’re lying to me, she didn’t try to stop you from kissing her.”

“Ugh. I wish she had.”

Meg took a deep breath, and Brooke felt a pep talk coming on. Meg, a director of social work at a hospital, was really good at pep talks. Especially when they might be needed but weren’t really wanted. “What if you hadn’t stopped?”

“I could regret sleeping with her instead?”

Meg frowned, clearly unimpressed with Brooke’s answer. “Did you want to sleep with her?”

The regret would be bigger for sure, but she couldn’t help wondering what it might be like. “I—”

She lifted a finger. “Not in hindsight with all the layers of whatever psychological bullshit you’ve got going on right now. In the moment, did you want to sleep with her?”

Lying wouldn’t get her anywhere and would insult Meg’s intelligence.

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