Birthday Wishes - The List: Book 1 by Braxton Cole Page B

at the same time. She tended to throw things, so a food fight was always a temper tantrum away.
    "Oh my God, you're right. I should call and cancel right now." Never mind that I had my hands buried in a fickle-as-hell pie crust. I would never stop in the middle and Rachel knew that.
    "No! You can't."
    "Why not?" This was a fun game. She sounded genuinely panicked.
    "Have you seen him? You can't keep putting the man off." This is where Rachel was genuinely baffled. She couldn't understand why I would hesitate when a handsome, sexy man wanted a relationship. If it were her, she'd be all in before he could change his mind. Frankly, it was amazing she hadn't been married and divorced fifteen times.
    "I actually could, but I'm not going to." Or at least I didn't think I was going to. That had been an up and down thing ever since I agreed to go on an official date with him. More appropriately, I almost hyperventilated, followed by a bout of overwhelming nausea, then as I was sucking air through my teeth, I finally said yes. And I wanted to take it back immediately. He scared the crap out of me. As long as we focused on sex, he made me lose my breath in an entirely desirable, pleasant way. The second the conversation switched to relationships, I about lost my head in a totally bad way. I'll say it again, I was looking to get laid, not married.
    "What are you so afraid of?" She switched from annoying jerk to concerned friend. Apparently we were going to have a serious conversation now.
    I sighed and dumped my crust onto the work table. I processed thoughts better with a rolling pin in my hand. "Everything, really."
    "That's silly. You and Dillon had the nicest divorce in the history of marriage. I just don't get why you're so gun shy." That wasn't strictly true. She just forgot all the nastiness once the smoke cleared and we decided to play nice.
    " Dillon was. . ." A huge mistake. But how could I say that to any of my family or friends? They saw him as a saint. And he was, really. In some ways. I was simply not present for most of the time. Dillon was safe, non-threatening, and completely unexciting. It was like marrying my brother. Well, maybe a less annoying brother I actually liked. And my sex life with Dillon had been a perfect match for any American couple in their sixties. There was nothing wrong . There just wasn't anything right, either. It was exactly as my mom described. Perfectly good shapes that never should have been put together. And still our divorce had been a complete shock to me.
    "Just forget about what Dillon was or wasn't. You can't keep holding yourself back because it didn't go the way you expected."
    And that summed it up. I was blindsided by our falling out and hadn't trusted my own judgment since.
    "But how do I know if it's right?"
    "Oh, honey. It's not about being right. You need to give yourself permission to be wrong or you'll never live your life."
    Rachel really had been talking to my mom too much, who had said almost the exact same thing to me on Sunday.
    "He wants to meet for drinks this Saturday."
    "That's it? You're freaking out over drinks?"
    It sounded silly when she put it that way, but it was so much more than just drinks. I just didn't know how to explain. "It's. . .complicated."
    "How complicated can drinks be? Alcohol is the great simplifier. It strips away all the restraint."
    "That's not always a good thing."
    She frowned. "True."
    "Come with me." It was the perfect solution! Two people equaled a date. Three or more equaled friends getting together. Completely different.
    "Where?"
    "Saturday. For drinks."
    "Are you out of your mind? I want you to date Luca, not me."
    "Come on, Rach. You can meet a completely inappropriate man, take him home and do indecent things together, then complain for weeks because he never called like he said he would."
    She wrinkled her nose. "I do that a lot, don't I?"
    Now was not the time for her to have a crisis of conscious. She had no problem being slutty in