Safe Word (3 page)

When he noticed her and gave her a casual nod before taking a sip of beer, Melody lit up like a Christmas tree.  Beaming at him, she waved a bit too animatedly.  Immediately, she regretted it and pulled her arm down, holding it stiffly against her side. 

She couldn’t help her reaction.  She was really, genuinely excited to see him.

What was that all about?

At the wedding reception, it had been easy to write her giddiness off as being under the influence.  But now she was stone cold sober and was still blushing like a schoolgirl simply from being in Zane’s presence.  She was flushed merely because he’d acknowledged her existence.  Melody wasn’t usually like that.  In fact, she couldn’t remember the last time she had reacted that way to a guy she barely even knew.

Something about Zane set her alight with sexual energy.

She hoped he felt it too.

“Have another drink,” Zane offered.  “I’m buying.”

“I’m fine, really,” Melody insisted.  “Thanks though.”

“Alright then,” he replied, signalling to a passing waitress that he wanted another pitcher of beer.  “But I will warn you right now, the shame of coming in last at trivia will be dulled considerably if you’re drunk off your ass.  I speak from personal experience here.”

Melody chuckled.  “Well alright,” she told him as the waitress brought a fresh pitcher of beer. “Maybe I’ll have one more.”  So much for her one drink limit! 

“You look like you had a good day,” Zane observed.

“What do you mean?”

He grinned.  “You haven’t stopped smiling since you got here.”

Mortified, Melody immediately frowned.  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Hey, it’s cool,” he reassured her.  “It’s actually pretty cute.  So...was it a good day?”

She shrugged.  “It was a day like any other, I suppose.  How was your day?”

“It’s better now that you’re here,” he said, holding his glass up in a mock toast.  “Here’s to you!”

“Nice try, smooth talker,” Melody told him. 

“Smooth talker?  Me?”

“Yep, you,” she nodded.  Then, changing the subject, she demanded, “Tell me about you.”

“What do you want to know?”

“What do you do for work?”

He hesitated.  “Honestly?”

“Well yeah, of course I want the truth,” she replied.  “And if you try to tell me you’re a dragon slayer I’m going to know that you’re lying to me, Zane Shepherd.”

“Dammit, and that was going to be my answer, too.”

“So...?” she urged.  “What do you do?”

“Um...nothing,” he replied.

“Oh, so you’re in between jobs?” Melody asked, feeling awkward that she had put him on the spot.  “I get it.  I mean I, of all people, should get it right?” 

“Yeah well that’s not exactly what I meant,” he clarified.  “I uh...remember I told you I’d been in a bad car accident?  Well I lost control of my car because of a faulty part.  The manufacturer was involved in a class action lawsuit and I ended up getting a pretty significant settlement out of it.”

“Ah, I see.  So you choose not to work?”

“I guess you could say that.”

“So...what do you do all day?” Melody asked curiously.

“Whatever I want to do,” he admitted with a shrug, looking rather embarrassed by the whole discussion.  “Sometimes I try to pay it forward and help people out.  And other days I’m a lazy, selfish bastard who’s drunk by noon.”

“So basically what you’re saying is you’re living everybody’s dream,” Melody summarized.

“Am I?”

“Aren’t you?”

Zane didn’t reply.  Instead, he refilled both their glasses until they were overflowing with ice cold beer.  Then he nodded over to the stage where a guy with a microphone appeared to be getting set up.  “It looks like trivia is about to start.”

“Is it weird that we’ve made it our mission to lose?” Melody asked.

“Nah, winning is overrated,” he replied.  “I want to see how bad you can be, Melody.”

“Then prepare to be impressed!” she bragged, feeling her face inexplicably heat up at his words.

“You talk a big game, but can you really deliver?”

“You will have to wait and see,” she told him with a sassy flip of her hair.

*****

“You don’t disappoint,” Zane told Melody a while later, once trivia had ended. 

“Oh?”

“You really are very, very bad,” he told her with a devilish grin.

“You have no idea,” Melody purred in a seductive – and slightly slurred – voice.  Then she immediately wished she could take it back.  Since she couldn’t, she instead opted to laugh and announce, “I am really drunk.  I am like, really,
really
drunk.  I so wasn’t planning to drink that much tonight!”

“You and me both,” Zane replied as they both stood up.  “You want to share a cab?”

She made a face.  “It’s a nice night out.  I think I’ll just walk.  My parents’ place isn’t that far.”

“I’ll walk with you,” Zane offered.

“Hey you two, wait up!” one of the bartenders called as they made their way to the door.  “You forgot your trivia prize!”  He jogged over and handed Melody an envelope.  “Congratulations, you two really sucked tonight.”

“Did you hear that?” Melody giggled as she and Zane stepped outside.  “I suck!”

“But do you swallow?”

Melody burst out laughing at that, mostly because she was incredibly drunk.  “Wouldn’t you like to know,” she shot back, not missing a beat.  Then she let out a hiccup.  “Oh God, I drank way too much.  Why did you let me drink so much?”

“Are your parents going to ground you for coming home drunk?” he teased.

“Ugh,” she groaned.  “I know you’re only playing around but yeah, welcome to my life.  I mean, don’t get me wrong.  I love my parents because they’re, like...my parents, right?   But here I am twenty-eight years old and my mother still tells me to take a jacket when I leave the house and take my vitamins every morning.  I seriously need to get out of there!”

“I hear you,” Zane replied.  “I had to stay with my parents for a while when I was recovering from the accident.  I was grateful they helped me out, of course, but damn, was I glad to get my independence back.”

“This will sound weird, but can you not walk me right to my door?” Melody asked sheepishly.

“Because they’ll see me and start asking all kinds of uncomfortable questions?” he guessed.

“Yep,” she nodded.

He chuckled.  “All this sneaking around kind of feels like high school all over again.”

“Speaking of high school, why didn’t we ever hang out?” Melody asked him.  “We must have gone to some of the same parties, right?  We must have had some mutual friends or something?”

“Yes and no,” he replied.  “My sister was always mortified to have her big brother hanging around, so I kept my distance from most everyone in her grade.  It kept her from making my life a living hell,” he chuckled.  “But you and I definitely did go to some of the same parties.  I remember you.”

“You do?” Melody asked, surprised.

“Yes.  You kicked Troy Kerr in the balls one time when we were partying down at the river.  I distinctly remember that,” he said with a grimace.  “When a guy witnesses something as painful as that, it’s kind of hard to forget!”

“Oh yeah, I did do that.  He was being a big creep.  He grabbed my ass,” Melody recalled.

“Well in that case I would have kicked him in the balls, too,” Zane said.  “What an asshole.”

“This might sound strange, but I’m kind of sad you and I didn’t know each other ten or twelve years ago,” Melody confessed.  “I feel like we would have been friends or...something.”

“Can’t we be friends now?”

“Yes.”

“Do you remember a Halloween party at Dawn Weiss’s place?” Zane asked suddenly.  “It was my senior year, so I guess you would have been what, a freshman?”

“I do remember that,” Melody told him, smiling at the memory.  “It was my first real high school party and I was so excited!  And it was such a fun time.  No one wanted to go home!  I think pretty much everyone stayed at the party until the sun came up.”

“Do you remember the haunted house?”

“Oh my God, yes!” Melody exclaimed.  “It was so scary!  The entire basement was full of amazing decorations and there were people hiding down there waiting to jump out and scare you as you as you made your way through the dark!  Of course, by the end of the night it had just become another place to make out...typical high school party,” she laughed.

“What about the guy in the devil mask?” Zane asked softly.  “Do you remember him?”

Melody stopped in her tracks and looked at him questioningly.  “How did you know about that?”

She remembered the unexpected kiss she’d shared in the darkened basement with the guy whose identity had been obscured.  It had been her first real kiss, or at least the first one with tongue.  A tall, broad shouldered guy had emerged from the shadows.  At first she’d been startled and then, once she’d realized it was just some guy wearing a mask, she’d started laughing.  He’d held out his arms as if to apologize for scaring her, and she’d hugged him.  Then he’d kissed her.

“Wait.  That was you?” Melody demanded, putting two and two together.

“It was.”

“I...had no idea it was you,” Melody confessed.  “I assumed it was Chris Lowe because we’d kind of been flirting a bit in English class.  I remember being really confused when I saw him in class after that and he acted like nothing had happened.  I got mad at him in that melodramatic way only teenagers can and that was the end of our flirting!”

“Sorry for ruining the thing you had with Chris Lowe.”

“Ha, no worries,” Melody replied, still looking at him.  “That was really you?” she asked again.

“It was.”

“I want to see for myself.”

Brazenly, Melody took a step forward and stood up on her toes.  With liquid courage pumping through her veins, she stood up on her toes and pressed her lips to Zane’s, recreating the brief moment in time they had shared all those years earlier.

“So?” Zane asked when the kiss ended.  “Do you believe me now?”

“I...I’m not sure,” Melody told him, flustered by how good it had felt to be up close and personal with Zane.  In her most throaty, sultry, seductive voice, she purred, “I think maybe I need to do it again to be sure.”

She tried to kiss him again but he took a step back, dodging Melody’s attempt.

Dazed, Melody blinked and then looked up at Zane in confusion.  He looked pale, like he’d seen a ghost.  Actually, no, that wasn’t it at all.  The expression on his face, Melody realized, was that of a man whose heart had been ripped out and stomped on.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, taken aback.

“You’re drunk,” he told her, clearing his throat and averting his eyes.

“So?”

“So we shouldn’t.”

“We shouldn’t kiss because I’m drunk?” Melody asked, completely baffled. 

If he was trying to be chivalrous and avoid taking advantage of an inebriated woman, he was overdoing it.  He was
way
overdoing it.  In fact, at this point the wasted, sloppy young guy who had painfully hit on her back at the wedding reception had more game than Zane.  What the hell?

“No, we shouldn’t kiss because it’s a bad idea,” Zane said, offering no further explanation.

Utterly confused and more than a little embarrassed to have her advances rejected, Melody cleared her throat awkwardly.  “You don’t have to walk me home,” she told him, offering him an out.  “Have a good night, and thanks for the drinks.”

“Wait.”

“What?”

Her question seemed to catch him off guard, as though he hadn’t had an actual reason to call out to her, but simply hadn’t wanted to see her go.  He stood there silently for a moment, his brow furrowed as though he was thinking.  Then, finally, he asked, “What’s our prize?”

“Huh?”

“Our prize,” he said again.  “The one we got for losing at trivia?  The bartender gave you an envelope as we were leaving...”

“Oh, right.”  More than anything, Melody just wanted to get away from Zane, go curl up in bed and try to sleep off his rejection.  She felt so dumb for trying to kiss him when he clearly didn’t want her to.  How humiliating! 

The night had started out so promising, but had ended on a very sour note indeed.  Melody searched her purse for the envelope but came up empty handed.  “I don’t know what I did with it,” she admitted apologetically.

“Is that it?” Zane asked, pointing to Melody’s chest.

She looked down and saw the envelope sticking out of the top of her button up shirt.  Apparently she had thought it was a good idea to cram it into her bra.  Ah yes, the good old tit purse...very classy!  But at this point, Melody realized, it didn’t really matter.  Zane had already rejected her.

“Here you go,” she told him, pulling the envelope free and handing it to him.  “Goodnight.”

“Wait!”

Growing irritated, Melody turned back around and looked at Zane.  “What?”

“Don’t you want to see what the prize is?” he asked as he opened the envelope.

“Not really,” she replied defiantly, yet she made no move to walk away. 

“We got two passes to the petting zoo down at the river,” he told her, holding them up.

“Oh.  Well I’m sure you’ll put the passes to good use.”

Zane stared at her.  “What, are you seriously telling me you don’t like the petting zoo?” he asked, seemingly having recovered from whatever strange sentiment had come over him following the failed second kiss.

Melody shrugged.  “Who doesn’t like the petting zoo?”

“Atta girl,” he told her.  “I’ll meet you outside the bar tomorrow, say around one o’clock?”

Melody raised an eyebrow.  “I don’t understand you,” she told him, crossing her arms.