Page 5 of Auction Time
Chapter 2
Vanessa
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Sometimes…I truly, truly believed that the universe was out to get me.
It had to be to explain the bad spell of things that were happening to me lately.
It was just a matter of crazy that every time things went all haywire in my life, that guy was always around.
Cole, Coleridge Buchanan, as in high schoolColeridge Buchanan. Who I’d thought I was rid of when he left high school. But oh no, no, no.
I got that part wrong. My nightmare came back three months ago, and just when I’d put myself on this mission to lose my V-card.
Just when I’d finally decided to actively do something, he came back like a bad dream and everything started to crumble.
He was like a reminder of why I still had it. He was my bad experience that had put me off sex completely, and the bad experience that had damaged my confidence in so many ways.
Then, to add salt to my ten-year wound that never closed, he was always around wherever I went, and always when something was going on with me.
The worst was a month ago, when I’d found out that Tony, the guy I’d been seeing, was married with a child. I was sitting in the restaurant when in came his wife and the said child.
No one had to guess what was happening when his wife started screaming at me on top of her lungs calling me a homewrecker.
Me, the virgin.
Vanessa the Virgin, as my sisters had called me, like Joan of Arc, was being called the homewrecker.
As I’d gotten up to flee, my eyes landed on good old Cole sitting at the bar with a smirk on his face like the devil he was.
Then, every time I’d seen him since, he had that smile. It was one that told me he remembered my stupid high school mistake, and one that showed amusement.
It was the same smile he wore now as he glanced at me from the booth area of the bar. Like he found something funny about me.
Like he knew when I was having a bad day, and it amused him.
Today’s shit was being asked to arrange the editorial campaign for the football season.
I worked with my mother and sisters at Cartwright Marketing. I’d fallen into the client engagement aspect of things as well as doing all the literature and articles for the company. Having done marketing and creative writing back in college, it was just my thing, and I absolutely loved it.
It wasn’t the first time I’d arranged the campaign for the football season. To be honest since I’d started working at the agency I’d looked forward to this time of year. It was just different this year because there was one Centaur player I was trying to avoid like the plague.
Of course, no one, however, knew that.
“What do you think, Vanessa?” Mia asked, poking me with her cue stick.
I’d been staring into space and didn’t even realize it. I blinked to refocus and glanced at her, not sure what on earth she was talking about.
“Maybe he’ll do it this weekend,” Mia added, bringing her hands together. “Oh God, what if it’s not what I think?”
She was talking about her boyfriend, Eric Declan. I couldn’t get a word in on Sunday night when she’d called me to tell me he was going to be taking her to Bora Bora in six months, which was after the season ended. Mia’s voice had risen several octaves when she added that he’d tell her more in a few weeks and that she’d come back different from this little trip to Bora Bora.
Neither of us could think anything other than that he was planning to propose and that the wedding had to be in Bora Bora.
She’d been talking about it every day since, every chance she got. So, while I may have zoned out in my Cole-filled worries, I knew what she was talking about.
“Girls, can someone take a shot?” Gage said with a very deep frown.
