The Rule Book: A Novel

After leaving the restaurant, we dipped into an Uber and headed to a nightclub in the touristy district of downtown Cancún.

Inside, it’s loud. Blue and purple lights stream through the dark, hazy, sweat-drenched atmosphere and reflect off mirrored surfaces. The place is full but not packed. Still, there are enough bodies in here to have me instinctively reaching for Nora’s hip as we walk.

“Let’s go get a drink!” she yells over the music. Her eyes are sparkling from the lights, and an addictive energy ripples off her. I haven’t seen her like this since college. Old memories and familiar sensations buzz to life.

“Are you sure?” I ask, leaning close to her ear so she can hear me over the music. “Last time we drank together we ended up married.”

“All the more reason to do it again,” she says, eyes shifting to my lips.

She slips out of my grasp and walks in front of me, taking my hand to pull me with her through the crowd. Every so often she tosses a grin back at me over her shoulder, and I doubt she realizes how weak it makes me. How scared I am that this is all a dream and it’s going to slide through my fingers when I wake up.

When we get to the bar, she flags down the bartender and orders us a round of shots in Spanish. It’s not perfect but the bartender nods and in perfect English tells her he’ll be right back with the drinks. I put my card on file for our tab, and a minute later, she’s counting us down before we toss back the tequila.

Nora grimaces with a smile and then slaps her hand down on the bar. She’s all freckled and tannish-pink. It’s a great look on her. The faint tan line running over her sunburnt shoulder from her bikini strap snags my eye and suddenly it’s all I can focus on. I want to use it like a path to take across her body.

There’s no use trying to hide my desire at this point. And when her eyes meet mine, I make it perfectly clear. “You look edible in this pink.”

“And you…must be drunk already.”

“Not even close.”

She studies me and the solemnness of her expression is at war with the party raging around us. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Anything. Always.”

Her expression turns mischievous. “What’s in your bedside table, Pender?”

Any question but that one. “Something important to me—but that’s all I want to say about it for now.”

She looks sad but doesn’t press me on it. “Fair enough. I’ll try another one, then.” We’re both sitting on barstools side by side, and she angles herself a little more toward me, our outer thighs pressing together.

“Why two years?” she asks. I don’t understand immediately what she’s referring to, so she continues, “You told me you didn’t start dating again until two years after we broke up. What changed at two years?”

I look out over the pulsing club and back to Nora. “You weren’t the only one who saw something you weren’t supposed to.”

Her brows knit together.

“I saw you in the airport.”

She looks like the floor is falling out from under her. “You did? Why didn’t you say something?”

“I was going to. But then I realized you were with someone.”

“Oh.”

I lay my hand over hers on the bar, tracing my thumb over each of her knuckles. Mainly to remind myself that she’s not at that airport with that random guy anymore. She’s here. With me. In whatever messy-beautiful situationship this is.

“I was about to catch a flight for a game, and I looked across the way and there you were.” I smile, remembering how it felt to look at her again after two years. The way my stomach clenched, and it was like light had burst through the room. “You were rolling a bright pink suitcase, wearing tennis shoes, black leggings, and a white hoodie that said Sesame Street is my happy place. Your hair was darker then, and you wore it in a ponytail. I remember you smiling over your shoulder, and even from twenty yards away you stopped my heart.”

Tension gathers between us, and she doesn’t ask to hear more. She already knows what’s coming. I didn’t realize it at the time but seeing her at the airport that day was just penance for her having to witness me kissing someone outside my apartment the week after we broke up.

“Then a guy walked up and took your hand and you two went to your gate together.” I breathe in, bracing against the memory. “I stood there for way too long watching you leave with him until I couldn’t see you anymore.” What I don’t tell her is that Nathan found me like that and said I looked like I’d seen a ghost. I didn’t bother telling him that I had. “You looked so happy with that guy, though…Ben or Liam, I’m assuming. I didn’t want to mess that up by saying hi. And similar to how you felt—seeing you with him helped me realize it was time to finally let you go too.”

Except I never really truly did.

Before I can say anything else, Nora grabs the front of my shirt and pulls me to her. She kisses me—and it’s desperate. She pours all of her feelings into this kiss. The low bass of the music thumps through us as we simultaneously deepen the kiss. Nora slides off her stool to stand between my legs, and my hands glide up her back, over her warm shoulder blades. She tilts her head and with this better angle, I sweep my tongue through her hot mouth, devouring the sweet, tequila-soaked desperation of it.

Someone bumps into me accidentally and it pulls me back to life. I’m making out with Nora in the middle of a club—and enjoying the hell out of it. When we peel apart, she looks up at me smiling, maybe a little embarrassed. I wish she wasn’t. Everything about her is perfect.

Nora pulls out of my arms and takes my hand, tugging me up from the bar. “Come on, let’s dance.”

Most men my size are embarrassed to dance. There’s nothing discreet about it. I don’t give a shit, though—I’ve always had fun making a fool out of myself on the dance floor, and it’s good to be out here again with her reminding me of that fortunate night when I met her at the party.

I can’t say I’ve really missed all the partying I used to do that much, but now, laughing and intermittently kissing Nora out here under the colored lights with music vibrating through my chest, I realize I need more of this in my life. I’ve closed myself off to fun and focused too much on holding as tightly to my career as possible. But not tonight—tonight, Nora pulls me onto the dance floor and reminds me to live.

Plus how much of a fool can I really look if I have the most beautiful woman in the world dancing against me like we’re trying out for the next Dirty Dancing movie?

There are a lot of people out here with us, but as far as I’m concerned, there’s only Nora. Nora’s eyes as they glitter against the darkness. Nora’s smile as it beams its own light through the room. Nora’s body as I curl her into me.

After who knows how long on the dance floor, we go back to the bar for a water and another drink. I leave her there sipping her water for no more than five minutes while I go to the bathroom, and apparently that was too long. When I return, I see an American guy with a death wish aggressively grabbing Nora’s bicep as she turns away from him.

“Don’t be such a prudish bitch! I was talking to you,” he yells above the music, but that’s all he gets to say before I grab him by the shoulder and whip his body around, throwing him back against the bar. He’s clearly a tourist because he speaks English and has that glazed-over, partied-too-much look in his eyes. Screams erupt around us and just as I’m about to throw my fist into his face repeatedly until each and every one of his damned teeth are on the floor, Nora wraps her hand around my raised arm.

“Derek! Don’t!” She says it as a command, and only because it’s her do I drag my eyes away from the dude. I’m shaking with rage and she’s breathing heavy, looking nervous by whatever she sees in my eyes. “Don’t hit him. He’s not worth the assault charges. Please. I’m okay—I promise.”

I clench my teeth against the anger and adrenaline surging through me. “That’s where I disagree. It would absolutely be worth it to make him pay for touching you.” And I mean it. I’d go to jail for her if it meant keeping her safe from assholes like this guy.

She squeezes my arm. “I believe you. But I just got you back and I don’t feel like losing you to prison bars.”

Nora drops my arm, but her words wrap around me and squeeze.

I drag in a long breath through my nose and swing my gaze back to the wide-eyed dickhead pinned under my fist. I crowd him even further, getting so close to his face that he’s doing a backbend on the bar. I want him to be able to see the fillings in my teeth.

“Do you see that woman behind me that you just touched without her consent and then called a nasty name?” I ask him in an intentionally low voice that I hope haunts his nightmares.

He swallows and barely manages to get his single-word answer out. “Yes.”

“She’s my wife. And if it were up to me, I’d have you bleeding all over this bar right now for laying a single finger on her that she didn’t invite. When I let go of you, you’re going to apologize to her. And then you’re going to leave this bar, and if you ever treat another woman like that again, I will know, and I will hunt you down…and for legal purposes, I’m not going to tell you what I’ll do to you. But I’m sure your imagination can fill in the blanks.”

I release him with a shove and step back.

It takes him a few seconds to peel himself from the bar and stand upright again. He looks around at the gathering crowd and shrugs his shirt back into place—rolling his shoulders.

I cross my arms and wait expectantly for him to address Nora.

“Umm…I’m sorry for—”

“No.” I cut him off. “Don’t look her in the face. You don’t deserve to look at her. Look at your ugly-ass shoes while you apologize to her.”

His gaze drops immediately and he is now physically shaking while he grounds out his halfhearted apology. And then like a chickenshit, he runs out of the bar.

I take one full deep breath and ignore the gawking crowd—ignore the phones pointed in my direction and look at Nora. Her eyes are misty, and when I open my arms, she steps into them, letting me hold her tightly against me. I want to be her human bubble wrap.

“Are you okay?” I murmur into her hair.

“Yes. I’d drifted away from the bar to watch everyone dance and then he appeared out of nowhere and wouldn’t leave me alone. I told him I didn’t want to dance but he kept getting in my face and insisting. So I turned away, and that’s when you showed up.” She pauses and I can’t say anything yet because fury is dripping into my veins. “It scared me. I realized very quickly that I need to sign up for self-defense classes when we get home. My wit is sharp as a knife and I could have killed him with a well-timed knock-knock joke, but I think maybe I need to learn to throw someone into the bar like you just did too. Wouldn’t hurt to have options.”

“I can’t joke around with you yet.” I take her hand and put it over my heart so she can feel just how forcefully it’s pounding against my chest.

She kisses me there, right over my beating heart. I don’t even care if an entire club is watching us, I take her face in my hands as gently as I possibly can and look in her eyes. “What he called you…”

“It’s okay, Derek. He was just a miserable person and—”

“No, it’s not okay. Not at all, because you, Nora, are beautiful, rare magic and nothing less.” A tear streaks down her face and I kiss it from her skin. “Let’s go.”