Free Misguided Heart by Amanda Bennett Page B

end up working out.
    I stood there waiting for him to respond or show some emotion, but his face was drawn in a hard stare. I began to tap my foot annoyingly when finally I turned around to resume paying attention to my real friends at the table. I could feel his glare burning a hole in the back of my head, but I never turned around. I wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of thinking he was better than me. I rolled my eyes at Shelby and threw back at least three more shots, one right after the other. I figured if he wanted to have a mature somewhat intoxicated conversation, then he could be the first one to apologize.
    Shelby gave me a hard stare and motioned for me to once again turn around. I shook my head no and continued drinking with the rest of the table. I could feel the alcohol warming my blood all the way down to my toes. I didn’t have to turn around to know that he was still standing impatiently behind me. I drank one last shot and lunged towards Shelby over the table. I grabbed her arm, moving her around the table pulling her onto the dance floor with me. I was not about to have my ex whatever he was , ruin a perfectly good night out.
    “What are you doing Aston?” Shelby shouted in my ear.
    I threw my hands up and turned around in a circle while dancing to the sound that was pumping through the speakers. “I’m dancing, what are you doing?” I shouted back.
    “You are crazy. Why won’t you just talk to him?”
    “I don’t want to and given the fact that he was being a complete asshole makes it that much easier to ignore him.” I smiled as I gave into the rhythm.

Twelve
    Aston
    Shelby kept peering back at our table to see if Darren was still waiting for me to approach him. I did my best to simply block out all the crazy shit that had happened to me tonight. I have to admit, I did look back at our table once to notice that Darren had wandered back over to Braden and their friends. I swallowed back hard and began to feel extremely guilty for possibly hurting his feelings, again after all these years.
    As the minutes ticked by , I began to get more and more drunk. I would usually be happy about this fact, but given the current predicament that I was in, being drunk was the last thing I should be. Shelby kept giving me the evil eye, as I continued to keep dancing while she continued to look blatantly bored.
    Four songs later I was wrecked, and man do I mean wrecked. Shelby had made her way back over to our table a few songs back and was now shamelessly flirting with Davis. I don’t know why she wasn’t into him. He was a fairly good-looking guy. He definitely wasn’t my cup of tea, but he suited her well. She had always been attracted to the really nice guys, and that was Davis. His short dirty blonde hair was sticking up in random directions and he was staring at Shelby, hard. He was adorable.
    I had met Davis my junior year in high school and we somehow had remained friends all these years later. He was hilarious and was always the one to start the party. I really couldn’t understand why she didn’t like him. As I weaved through the overwhelmingly large crowd of people back to our table, I felt a strong hand clamp around my wrist. I didn’t have to turn to know who it was, but my stomach took flight and that scared me.
    In my inebriated state, having a conversation with him was definitely not a good idea. Contrary to what he believed, I was truly sorry for how I had left things with him. I had spent my teenage years in and out of a physically and emotional abusive relationship and I was all but shutting down when I had first met him. I’m not going to lie, Darren had awoken something in me and it worked for the time that we were together. The relationship was a good one, not too much to complain about there. And the sex, well the sex had been phenomenal. Oh the sex. My tongue slipped out between my lips, bringing the bottom fuller one back in between my teeth, as I turned to look at