Page 4 of Rekindled

Two

Los Angeles, California - 2 months ago...

"One dirty martini, please," I requested at the bar while holding up a finger for emphasis. I'd just walked into one of the several award show after-parties held that night. The event planners hosted this one at a swank club in downtown L.A.

A few people invited me to their events. I still had two open invitations to sit in VIP for the night, but I avoided them like the plague.

A certain someone would be in attendance. My ex, Kai, and there was no way I'd survive bumping into him tonight. Not after the way we left things after ending our three-year relationship one year ago.

There weren't many people partying in the club I settled on walking into. This gathering was private. Held by a few executives at the label for a recording artist my business partner and I worked with, this was a party that wouldn't get wild and unadulterated. And I so desperately needed wild and unadulterated.

I turned my back to the lip of the bar to survey the place. Red upholstered lounge seats, handcrafted lighting fixtures glittered overhead. The room bumped with the label's latest artist's music. These after-parties were perfect for A&Rs to showcase new talent. To introduce the who's who to the tastemakers already out mingling and club hopping for the night.

I really should have been there to network, which I planned to do a little of. But honestly, I only attended because someone asked me to be there. So, I planned to drink one drink, smile in a few faces, then take my ass back to my hotel room to sleep the rest of my time in Cali away. I scheduled my private flight to return east for the next morning.

"Glad you could make it," he whispered in my ear. I turned to face him, already fixing a Kodak grin on my lips before our eyes met.

Vincent Chamberlain was the A&R forStarlight Records. He's held the position at the label for as long as I've been a songwriter, so about 11 years.

Really, I'd been songwriting since birth if you ask me. Being the only child of a musician and former background singer, songwriting seemed like a career path destined for me to take.

"You didn't really give me the option to decline your invite." I smirked, then pointed my chin in front of us. "Looks like you've had a good turn out though."

He smiled big, showing all of his teeth with his stunning smile. Vincent was a handsome 30-something exec. Young, black, and rich. Every woman's fantasy in waking, breathing life. Vincent held down a rewarding career, maintained a body to photograph, had no kids, and no woman calling him her man. And if my skill of judging the size of a man's dick based on the size of his hands was still on par, Vincent had a dick worth worshiping on my hands and knees long into the morning, without the drama attached after.

Normally, he and I wouldn't exchange this many words. The old me would have attended this party, drank my drink, and I would've only spoken four words to Vincent: your room or mine? But I was still getting over a breakup with a man I believed to be the love of my life.

Besides, Vincent reminded me too much of Kai.

Kai was now an A&R, Vincent was an A&R.

Kai was tall, dark, and handsome. Vincent was too.

Kai's voice could warm my soul and the seat of my panties, and I'm sure Vincent embodied the power to do the same. Or at least something close enough.

So Vincent had to have playing-with-a-woman's-heart in common with Kai, too.

Having my heart broken back to back like that didn't interest me. Who could survive that? The songs I would pen because of the heartache would be epic, but my feelings couldn't take the hit of something like that again. Plus, even if I were to just fuck Vincent, there was no way I was getting off the way I wanted to tonight with Kai on the brain.

"So what are you getting into after this?"

I sighed, already disappointed in my response. "My bed."

"Alone?" he asked, moving in close.

I peered at him from the side of my eye.

Vincent wasn't coming on strong in the least. We'd made eye contact from the time I strolled into the club, but he paced his advancement to me. Any guy unskilled in the art of the approach would have dropped everything and been in the woman's face he was trying to bed.

And believe me, I wouldn't have taken offense to that. I was far from being a stranger to having a good time. I joked with my girls on how I loved to line these men up and take them down.

I wasn’t always like that.

Maven in her early 20s had the no-sex-for-thirty-days rule in place and a dangerous habit of marrying the men she only dated in her head. Instead of just dating, I attached myself to men who showed the slightest interest in me and usually after the first date. The topic of a relationship would barely get discussed before I was foolishly fantasizing about the brand of towels we’d have in our apartment’s bathroom. While they were keeping their options opened, filling their calendars with dates with other women, I was behaving like a one man’s woman, getting pissed instead of even when I found out I wasn’t the only one they were courting.

Until I came to my senses.

So slut shaming be damned, I got mine proudly with the men I found attractive without a second thought about how I would look doing so or what people would say. Back then, my marital status was strictly single until someone married me. Period.

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