Twice Upon a Blue Moon Read online

  “Really?” She wrinkled her lips. “Way to squander that hard-bought Yale education. I bet your Century City friends never let you join in any reindeer games.”

  “I didn’t go to Yale.”

  “Harvard?” Hazel ventured. He was too Ivy League not to be an alumnus.

  Dylan shook his head and studied his cards. “Ledwich U.”

  “Never heard of it.”

  “Private college. Very small. It’s got maybe about three hundred students? Something like that… All guys.”

  “Ah, I see. America’s last bastion of macho academic sovereignty,” Hazel ribbed as she glanced down at her hand. “Is that where you met the roommate?”

  On the edge of her peripheral vision, a shadow flitted across Dylan’s features. Hazel instantly regretted asking.

  “Sorry. It’s none of my business…” She couldn’t blame it on the gin, either, because she would’ve been curious anyway. Guilt bit at her insides like a snapping dog. “We don’t have to talk.” About that. About anything. She understood wanting to avoid hot-button issues. “We can just…play cards. I did say you didn’t like me for my stimulating conversation.” The corners of her lips threatened a smile. She hated herself for the stubborn urge to please.

  She hated herself even more for the flash of relief when Dylan curled his fingers around her ankle, something magnanimous and kind in the caress.

  He flicked up a glance, expression soft and open. “You’re wrong.” He won the next hand and smiled beatifically when Hazel peeled off her shirt and threw it at him. “Had enough yet?”

  A stubborn Hazel shook her head. She gathered up the cards again.

  * * * *

  The spill of sunlight through the blinds teased at Hazel’s eyelids until she could stand it no more. She rolled over with a groan, turning her face into the pillow in an attempt to get back to sleep.

  She was vaguely aware of her legs being bare beneath the covers. That’s weird. Why wasn’t she wearing her PJ bottoms? She remembered Dylan, the hastily assembled supper. She recalled the poker game and her luckless string of consecutive losses.

  Strip poker.

  Hazel bolted upright in bed, heart leaping into her throat.

  The right side of the mattress was empty, no dent in the pillow to suggest that a body had lain there. The apartment did not smell like freshly brewed coffee or sex. It didn’t echo with the prickly, out-of-focus mental snapshots of a drunken fling.

  It took Hazel a moment to recall walking Dylan to the door, then peering out of the kitchen window, in the dark, to watch as he boarded his cab five flights below.

  Dylan hadn’t spent the night. They hadn’t done anything worth regretting.

  She was about to sink back into the rumpled bedding, relieved, when the doorbell went off.

  “It’s me!” Sadie shouted into the intercom once Hazel had shambled her way to the door. “Buzz me in, it’s freezing out here.”

  Hazel cast about the room for any signs of compromising activity. Finding none, she did as she was told. She spent the minutes it took Sadie to navigate six flights of stairs pulling on her pajama pants and finger-combing her hair into place. She didn’t know why she bothered.

  One glance was all it took for Sadie to beam a knowing smile.

  “Looks like someone had a rough night!” Sadie breezed into the apartment with a foursome of Starbucks coffees in a disposable carry tray. “Latte, another latte… That’s a caramel macchiato—and a frappuccino for me,” she rattled off, then plucked out the last and parked herself on Hazel’s futon like her presence was a foregone conclusion.

  Hazel watched her peel off the plastic lid from her drink and lick the straw.

  “So?”

  “What?” Hazel took the armchair, trying not to imagine that she could feel Dylan’s body heat still somehow clinging to the upholstery. “He’s not here.”

  “You didn’t let him spend the night?” Sadie grinned. “You go, girl. Although I think I saw his car parked out front… You sure he’s not hiding in the bushes somewhere?”

  “Positive.” Hazel rolled her eyes. “We didn’t fuck.”

  “Oh.” The revelation seemed to take the wind out of Sadie’s sails, if only for a moment. “Why not? He do something to piss you off?”

  “No.”

  “You’re not into him?”

  That would’ve made it easier. If she could have just brushed last night off as another near-miss, she could put the thought of Dylan Best out of her mind and get back to the regularly scheduled routine of work, home, work, home. “No,” Hazel admitted. “It’s…complicated.” She winced at the words coming out of her mouth. “Christ, I sound like a status update.”

  “A bit,” Sadie confirmed, “but, hey, at least he’s not a creep, right? I’m all for not sleeping with a guy on a first date. Cheers.” They clinked their Starbucks coffees.

  “Thanks. And thanks for the coffee. I know you don’t splurge for any occasion.” Even with tips, they didn’t exactly make bank serving burgers at Marco’s. Starbucks was a rainy day extravaganza. It tasted like birthday cake or Christmas.

  Hell, it tasted like every breakup Sadie couldn’t get over.

  Sadie grinned over the rim of her plastic cup. “It’s not every day my girl finds a guy worthy of a second look, is it?”

  There was nothing in Sadie’s expression to suggest that she felt any way other than supportive, but Hazel still wondered. “Is this weird for you? I mean…because it’s Dylan.” Because you two had a thing, however brief, and now I’m not doing the sane thing and telling him to get lost.

  “Is it weird for you?” Sadie asked.

  “Putting those Psych 101 classes to good work, I see…”

  The joke fell flat. Sadie didn’t so much as crack a smile.

  Hazel rallied. “A bit. Knowing right off the bat that he’s into…you know. It’s something to get used to.” The men she’d dated since college were a varied bunch, but they had one thing in common. They were all safely and consistently vanilla. Whether or not that explained why the relationships never lasted was another story.

  Sadie folded her long legs, skinny jeans creaking at the knee. “Does he know he’s not the only one?” It was an oblique way of asking if Hazel had come clean with her dirty little secret. That Sadie even bothered couching it in vagueness was a sign of how well she understood the trickiness of the subject.

  “Not sure that’s first date conversation…”

  “You have to tell him.”

  “Why?”

  Sadie quirked an eloquent eyebrow.

  Oh. “Yes. Fine. Yeah, it’s part of the reason I’m attracted to him,” Hazel groaned. Then quickly added, “But I don’t know that it’s something I want to do again.” With him. With anyone. Ever.

  Most days, she was happier not thinking about it at all. Those cravings would go away eventually.

  “If… Okay, hypothetically speaking? If you were to jump back into that particular pool, you could do a lot worse than Dylan.” Sadie pursed her lips around the straw. Then she tapped a finger against the cup, meditatively. “I know you don’t want details, so I’m only going to say this once. He’s a good Dom. You’d be in safe hands. And his playroom—”

  Hazel held up a hand, grimacing. “Okay. I appreciate what you’re trying to do, but no. I can’t hear that from you.”

  “I’m only trying to help…”

  “I know and I’m grateful.” Somehow, her voice didn’t shake. “But I can’t be thinking of you and him together. Not yet. Maybe not ever, I don’t know.” Too much had happened since high school. Hazel wasn’t that gullible, naïve girl anymore. She knew her hard limits.

  She didn’t have many friends besides Sadie. Something like this—a kernel of doubt, the seed of envy blooming in the pit of her stomach whenever she compared herself to Sadie—could end their friendship.

  Sadie opened her mouth, closed it and nodded at the floor.

  “We need ground rules,” Hazel went on.


  “Kinky.”

  She ignored Sadie’s quip. “No talk about Dylan’s playroom. I don’t want to know what’s in there, what he does or how he does it.” Not even if it helps me mentally prepare.

  Sadie grinned, resting the tip of the green straw on her tongue. “But he does it really well.”

  “Rule number two, if I try any of…that with him, I’ll do it in my own time. And I tell him when I’m ready.” If I’m ready.

  “There’s a good chance we’ll be old and gray by then, but sure.” Sadie shook her head. “Your body, your choice… Right, chicken?”

  Hazel flipped her off. “Rule number three, if any of this makes you uncomfortable, tell me and I won’t bring it up again.”

  “Why would your completely rational…irrational hang-ups make me uncomfortable?”

  “You know what I mean.” Sadie could be flippant and mulish in her own relationships, but they had never experimented with seeing the same guy—albeit at different times. Hazel usually appreciated her mean streak, but this time it made her feel a little wary. “I don’t want to lose you because of some guy.”

  Sadie rubbed a finger under her glossy lower lip, as though considering this. “You’re worrying for nothing. I’m totally cool with it.”

  “Okay. Good.” Hazel tilted her head against the backrest of the couch. She yearned to believe it could be that simple.

  “Frank and I are doing great, by the way,” Sadie added with the twist of a smile. “Thanks for asking.”

  Hazel arched her eyebrows. “Like you need me to ask… Did you finally take him for a drive?”

  Sadie’s grin was ear-splitting, an answer unto itself. Her methods of seduction were limited to acting as crazy as possible or as flirtatious as possible—driving up the winding ribbon of highway that wreathed the Santa Monica Mountains fulfilled both quotas. Lately, she took Hazel’s car for those outings, having wrapped her own around a tree last spring.

  Nine lives, she’d say whenever Hazel urged her to ease up on the gas. Sometimes she listened. Mostly, she just gunned the engine and rolled the windows down, choosing to think of speed limits as suggestions.

  Hazel sighed into her latte. “Here’s hoping you filled up the tank.”

  Chapter Five

  Tuesday mornings at Marco’s were noisy, chaotic affairs, even more so than the usual. Tuesdays was the day he got to see his daughter, which meant he took off in the morning to drive her to school and didn’t come back until well after eight o’clock. Hazel had the run of the kitchen. She was never happier than when he finally breezed into the diner all wide grin and puffed up chest, il straoridinario papà.

  “You look like you’ve seen Jesus,” he teased, leaning on the counter that separated diner from kitchen.

  “Don’t let it go to your head.” Hazel brushed perspiration from her brow with her sleeve. “Are you going to stay there and gawp for the rest of the day?”

  “It’s tempting,” Marco admitted with a crooked grin.

  Sadie nudged him out of the way with her hip. If she noticed his blush, she hid it well.

  “Two hash browns, one large, one peppered, and one pecan waffle. And I’m still waiting for that sausage and cheese wrap,” she added in a singsong, perfectly matching the cheap muzak Marco insisted on pumping through the speakers duct-taped to the rafters.

  Hazel nodded, trying to find herself in the sizzling patties on the grill.

  “Step aside,” Marco ordered, “and behold the master at work.” He donned his apron with a flourish and claimed the spatula from Hazel’s hands as though taking up a scepter.

  Seeing his kid didn’t just put him in a good mood. It turned him into a nicer guy.

  Come evening, the pendulum would swing all the way in the other direction at the thought of driving his daughter back to her mother’s. Hazel was used to the seesaw. It was why Sadie usually worked Tuesday evenings. For now, she was just glad for the break.

  Hazel pushed out of the swiveling kitchen doors and slipped through the back door of the diner, gulping down breaths. The alley stank of dumpster refuse and cat piss—still preferable to the cloying, overpowering sweetness of pancakes and waffles.

  It was a beautiful day outside, much nicer than the one before. Summer had finally come to the west coast. Hazel leaned against the brick wall of the diner and turned her gaze toward the sky. Puffy white clouds drifted by on a blue backdrop, like something out of a child’s coloring book.

  She didn’t hear the sound of footsteps until they aborted and turned back toward the mouth of the alley.

  “Hazel? Is that you?” Dylan squinted, his expression twisted as if he’d smelled bad fish. It was entirely possible.

  “In all my overworked glory,” Hazel replied. She was technically supposed to be working, but Marco wouldn’t mind her taking a break. She’d covered for him all morning. “What are you doing here?” she asked, sidestepping oily, rainbow puddles to meet Dylan on the sidewalk. Standing near him was a constant reminder that she’d let herself go—the hairnet she was currently sporting and the pungent whiff of melted cheese didn’t help.

  He swayed toward her, then away again, as though he couldn’t decide between kissing her and giving her space.

  “Breakfast. I called to ask if it was okay, but…”

  “My phone’s somewhere in my locker,” Hazel explained. She had given him her cell number when it might have been smarter to give him the diner’s. “Everything okay?”

  “I think that’s my line.” Dylan smiled warmly.

  “Almost didn’t recognize you without the suit,” Hazel quipped, ogling him unabashedly. Maybe it counted as objectification—maybe not—but Dylan didn’t need a tailored suit to look a million bucks.

  He glanced down at himself, as if only then noticing that he’d dug out a pair of jeans from his closet instead of donning his usual Hugo Boss armor. “Yeah, I took the day off.”

  “Guess you were hoping last night would turn out a little differently, huh?”

  He waved a hand. “Let’s not live in the past.”

  “I’m free tonight,” Hazel ventured cheekily. Sadie owed her one, anyway.

  Dylan grimaced at the traffic whizzing past in a ceaseless succession of foreign cars. Marco’s hole in the wall was strategically perched on the main back road that tied LA to Newport, one of many wannabe pit stops on the scrap of urban decrepitude that had sprung up at the far edge of the city. If not for Sadie, Dylan might never have set foot inside. Hazel might never have contemplated throwing boiling hot coffee into his face.

  She wouldn’t be thinking of kissing him now.

  “Actually,” he started, “that’s something I wanted to talk to you about…”

  Dread bloomed in the pit of Hazel’s stomach. “Tonight’s no good for you?”

  “My roommate wants to meet you.”

  “Come again?” She’d heard him the first time, but when deciphered, the request made no sense. Dylan’s arrangement was his problem. She didn’t have a stake in that and it had nothing to do with her.

  He shifted his weight, as uncomfortable as Hazel felt. “I… I told him about us. About you. After I got back, we talked. A lot.”

  Wait, there’s an us?

  “And at some point in that talk he decided he wanted to meet up?” Patience was not one of Hazel’s strongest suits. Dread listed dangerously into panic the more she stood there, hanging on Dylan’s every word.

  “It’s your call.”

  “I’d be worried if it wasn’t.”

  Dylan smiled crookedly. “If you’re up for it, he suggested dinner. Tonight.”

  “I’m not cooking for three,” Hazel quipped. “Not enough plates.” Plus, her apartment felt cramped enough with two people in it. With three, they’d suffocate.

  “I know a place.”

  She was aware that she was equivocating. Dylan would probably take no for an answer. He might even agree to another date—just for the two of them—to make it up to her. The more time
they spent together the more he seemed like a genuinely decent person.

  Trusting your instincts again, are you? quipped a self-sabotaging voice at the back of her mind. You know they’re not worth shit.

  “Okay.” She let out a long breath. “Pick me up from the apartment at eight.”

  Dylan had no business heaving a sigh of relief when it was Hazel who was being asked to play nice with the in-laws—or the creepy, homo-romantic roommate equivalent. And yet it felt good to know she’d lifted a weight off his shoulders. So much so that she found herself smiling when he did, pleased to have been of service.

  “Still want to come in for breakfast or…?” Hazel trailed off, hitching up her shoulders.

  “I just wanted to see you,” Dylan admitted sheepishly. “Breakfast was an excuse.”

  Wings fluttered in the cage of Hazel’s ribs. She ignored the ticklish sensation. Just hours ago, she’d told Sadie she didn’t know what she wanted out of this thing with Dylan—if anything at all. It had started out as a harmless bit of fun. A dare.

  She wasn’t daring herself with the squirming in her chest or the heat in her cheeks. Those were all warning signs, a five-alarm carillon she couldn’t afford to ignore.

  The diner door clanged open, bell chimes swinging. The sound brought her crashing down to earth. “Okay, well… I should get back to work.”

  “I won’t keep you.”

  “See you tonight,” Hazel said, trying to inject enthusiasm into her voice. If nothing else, it would be a great opportunity to spend more time with Dylan—while getting grilled by his weird, not so platonic roommate. “Hey, I didn’t ask,” she called, one hand already on the diner door. “Did your car make it through the night okay?”

  Dylan spun around, hands tucked into his pockets. He might have been a cutout from a Levi’s commercial. Hazel’s mouth went dry. “Yeah,” he replied. “Why?”

  I’m pretty sure I dreamed of us in the back seat? Hazel shrugged. “And you?”

  He smiled ruefully and waved a hand from side to side as if to say so-so. “See you tonight.” With that, he turned and walked off the same way he’d come.