See, this was supposed to be the weekend I lost my virginity. Yes, that's right. I was a twenty-five-year-old virgin. You read that correctly.
Having four older brothers who were known around our small town for being full of piss and vinegar meant that I didn't date in high school. Ever. No boy would even talk to me, much less ask me out, for fear of the wrath of the Prescott boys.
Well, I wanted that to change.
I had it planned out. I didn't want a relationship because men were a huge pain in the butt. Again, four older brothers had taught me that. Watching them screw up their relationships throughout my teen years had been extremely informative.
If they weren't taking their girlfriends and later wives for granted, they were cheating, or carousing, or just plain being jerks. It was enough to turn a girl off from romantic relationships.
I knew that not all men were like my brothers, but even they didn't act like that in the beginning. Who would?
I didn't want to waste my time trying to get down to the truth of a man, only to have him prove that he wasn't worth the effort.
Now, don't get me wrong, I loved my brothers dearly. I just didn't want to date anyone like them.
So, losing my virginity would have to be a casual sort of thing. Sure, I could wait until I was ready to deal with dating and everything that came with it, but I had more important things to worry about.
Like grad school.
I was starting my first semester this fall. It would be another eighteen months to two years before I would be done, and I really didn't want to be a twenty-seven-year-old virgin.
I had no idea why that seemed even worse to me, but it did.
Where was a good place for a single woman in a small town to troll for a one-night stand?
Not The Red Boot, the local pub. Or online hookup sites.
That was a guaranteed way for word to get back to your overbearing, butt-head brothers that you were trolling for a quick roll in the hay.
The only chance I would have without having to drive an hour and a half away to a club in Dallas would be my employer's wedding.
I decided to lower the skeeziness factor of picking up a guy at my boss's wedding by arranging a date for the following night or even the following week. I hated to do it but my options were extremely limited and I knew that I wouldn't have time to take care of this issue once the fall semester started.
Since the moment I'd bumped into him outside the rehearsal dinner, he'd stayed glued to my side. It wasn't necessarily a hardship because I'd known him most of my life due to his friendship with my brother, but he was also throwing a monkey wrench in my one-night-stand plans.
Jackson James McClane had been the star of many of my adolescent fantasies, but I'd grown out of that. Mostly. He'd already graduated high school by the time I was a freshman, but he was the same age as the youngest of my four brothers, Scott, so I saw him constantly at my brother's basketball games in high school.
When I was twelve, I thought he was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. And he was always nice to me. He picked on his little sister incessantly, but he never picked on me.
When I was thirteen, I went from innocent admiration to full-blown crush. I could barely speak around him. I always felt flushed and hot in his presence. He was still nice to me, but his smile had the power to make my heart race.
And when he came over to our house to spend time with Scott, God, I wasn't sure if I wanted to hide in my room or lurk outside Scott's room just so I could hear his deep voice as he trash-talked my brother while they played video games.