Boy meets girl, boy wins girl, boy nails girl—boy’s gone by morning.

I think for sure it must've been a dream because there’s no way a guy could look like that, touch me like that and be so in tune with me on every known level, and disappear, leaving me with nothing but a good story to tell my friends.

When he walks into my bar three months later, everything I thought I knew and what we’d had disappears in the blink of an eye and the blinding light of the three-carat diamond on his fiancée's hand.

It seems what I thought was a dream is now my most complicated reality, and I've got absolutely no idea how to fix it - or if I even want to.

Present Day

I have tingles, and not the kind that feel great in all the right places. The ones I’m feeling right now are the hair-standing-up-on-the-back-of-your-neck, someone-walking-over-your-grave kind of feelings that you get when something bad is about to happen.

Unable to ignore them any longer, I turn around from my stock take sheet and come face to face with my worst nightmare.

Lana fucking Mason, childhood best friend turned high school nemesis and arch enemy, and…

A man stands beside her, his eyes as wide as mine and—if I’m not mistaken—he looks kind of pissed off. At me.

And just like that, this moment has just gone from bad to worse.

Hold on! I’m the one who should be annoyed, with him. It wasn’t me who did a disappearing act three months ago, and now he’s here, standing with her. Of all the fish in the sea, he had to go for the smelliest, rottenest one.

“Kenzie,” she says, all saccharine sweet, like she wouldn’t choke on the first dick that came close to her perfectly-made-up lips. “Long time no see.”

Forever wouldn’t have been long enough, Lana.

“We were in town running errands and thought we’d stop by. I wanted to let you know what I’ve been up to.” Without preamble, she holds out her hand as if she’s the Queen of Sheba and I’m a lowly minion at her bidding. But that’s the last thing I care about, given that I’m being blinded by a huge, shiny rock on her ring finger.

What in the ever-loving fuck?

I don’t get a chance to hide my surprise, or the fact that my eyes dart to Millen, his jaw twitching like crazy, his grey eyes that I remember turning molten with lust now blazing with some unreadable emotion.

Why is he angry at me when he must’ve known that I’d be here?

Lana turns her head and beams at him all doe-eyed and vomit-inducing, reaching out her arm to Millen before returning her attention to me, positioning herself to deliver the final death blow.

Then she says them. The words I don’t want to hear—let alone believe.

“I have amazing news. First, my daddy just bought this place. And second, meet Millen, my fiancé…”

Yep. Dead. Done. The see-ya-later, don’t-let-the-door-hit-your-ass-on-the-way-out kind of done.

Then Drew walks through the front door. Drew who warms my bed most nights. Finally, a friendly face.

However, one look at Lana’s expression and I know this moment has just gone from bad to plain awkward. It’s like the universe is making a joke at my expense.

Drew’s already big smile grows impossibly larger when he spots the two people standing in front of me.

“Mills!” he says, pulling Millen into a man-hug the likes of which I’ve never seen Drew hand out before. He turns to the she-bitch and wraps his arms around her too. “Lans.”

Lans?

“What are you guys doing here?” Drew asks.

“You know them?” I blurt out, my brain unable to engage quick enough to care about putting a filter in place.

Millen’s eyes snap to Drew then back to me. “You know Drew?” he asks at the same time as Lana juts a hip to the side and asks Drew, “You know Kenzie?”

“Millen is my best friend from college,” Drew happily informs me, and his smile falls at the same time that all of the blood rushes from my face.

Awkward, meet Mortifying. Also here are Shame, Embarrassment, Anger, Disgust, and over in the corner there is Complete and Utter Confusion and her friend I’m Going to Have to Move to the States and Join a Women-Only Commune with Cats and Unlimited Batteries.

With nothing else to say—at least, nothing that wouldn’t take a bottle of Jack and a whole lot of time—I decide to just go with the flow and revert to my old trusty auto-pilot because seriously, what else is there for me to do?

“Soooo, would anyone like a drink?”

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