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  Operation Resolution

  SKY CORGAN

  Text copyright 2020 by Sky Corgan

  All rights reserved.

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  CHAPTER ONE

  BELLA

  “Are you really sure you want to go to this thing, Bella? You know it’s going to be a madhouse, don’t you? Like, the craziest night of the year? I almost never go out on New Year’s Eve. It’s when all of the amateurs come out to play.”

  “The amateurs? You make it sound like you’re out drinking every day. I’m pretty sure we’re the amateurs, buddy.”

  On the other end of the phone line, Maggie laughed sheepishly, which made me laugh in return. Maggie had been my best friend since our freshman year in college, and at twenty-four, it was a friendship that was still going strong. We had seen each other through illnesses, awful pseudo-boyfriends, family arguments, and less than desirable jobs. It was because we were such good friends that I had been able to talk Maggie into going out with me that night, arguably the craziest night of the year to go anywhere at all. I wasn’t a party monster by any stretch of the imagination, but on this particular New Year’s Eve, I had a good reason for doing so. Said good reason was about six feet tall with sandy blond hair and dimples when he grinned. Even thinking about Eli made me blush, and I was almost sure that Maggie would be able to hear it in my voice. The only question was whether or not she would call me out on it.

  “Oh my God, this is totally about a guy, isn’t it?”

  She called me on it. That was the thing about Maggie. She was the kind of girl people tended to write off as a hopeless romantic, and some of the time, that was precisely what she was, but at other times? Other times she was like this, like she was right now, which was shrewd as hell. That, combined with the fact that she had known me for like, forever, and there was no way my intentions for the evening were going to remain my own. Even if I wanted them to, which I wasn’t totally sure I did. Backup was never a bad thing, or at least not as far as I knew.

  “Bella?” She said with her best foreboding voice, “Are you holding out on me? Have you been?”

  “Um, maybe a little bit?”

  “Spill it, then.”

  “It’s really nothing, okay?”

  “Nope. Not okay. If you want me to come to this thing tonight, you’re going to tell me why you really want to do it in the first place. I should have known there was something up! You never want to go out on New Year’s Eve!”

  Again, she knew me too well. So I spilled it, spilled everything that I’d been storing up inside of me for the last couple of months. Eli was a trainer at my gym. He was, in fact, the reason I had decided to shell out the big bucks for a personal trainer in the first place. I wasn’t exactly what you would call in impeccable shape, but I wasn’t in bad shape either, nor were my finances such that I could afford to drop an extra four hundred dollars a month on exercise. When I’d walked into my neighborhood gym to sign up, however, it had been Eli who had processed my information, and by the time an hour had gone by, I had signed a contract for a year’s worth of one-on-one sessions with him. I had wanted to crawl under a rock and die afterward, smart enough to realize that nobody actually wound up in a relationship with her freaking trainer, but as the weeks had gone by, my mind had started to waver on that point. I was pretty sure that it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility for a trainer to flirt with one of his clients, but the way Eli had been flirting with me seemed like more than basic flirtation. When during our last session, he had invited me to a friend of his’ New Year’s Eve party, my hesitation was almost gone. There was something there, and I wanted to see what it was. I wanted to see badly enough that I convinced Maggie and poured my five foot six frame into a little black cocktail dress that was tight enough I was iffy on my ability to breath. A short cab ride to retrieve my bestie and the two of us were in the middle of a warehouse party, unlike anything I had ever been to. Up to this point, I had been too driven to get there to give much thought to what the party itself would be like, which was a blessing. Now that we were actually there, though, panic was starting to creep into my blood. The people at this party were way, way more hip than I was, hipper than I had ever been in my life. If this was the kind of girl Eli thought I was, he was most definitely in for a disappointing surprise.

  “Um, Bella?”

  “What? This is great, right? I’ve never been to a party like this.”

  “Yeah,” Maggie said uncertaintly, pushing her wire-rimmed glasses up her freckled nose and looking around doubtfully, “me neither. Isn’t that kind of a good thing, though?”

  “Aw, come on! You don’t really hate it, do you? You do. You hate everything about this.”

  Maggie shrugged her shoulders and gave me a look I was sure was supposed to be comforting. Suffice it to say, it was not that. Looking around at the immense crowd of people and the gritty, borderline dirty building itself, my stomach sank. I couldn’t exactly argue with her if she said she wanted to leave. In my head, I’d pictured a warm apartment with a smattering of people. Eli would greet us at the door and be so charming that Maggie would give me her blessing right there on the spot. He would sweep me off my feet, and the two of us would embark on a relationship right then and there. Instead, I was in a massive building made of corrugated tin, full of people in dayglo colors, sporting extreme levels of intoxication. Basically, it looked like a borderline rave, and any hope I had of finding Eli was fading fast.

  “Do you really think you’ll be able to find him in here?” Maggie strained to make herself heard over the roar of our fellow partiers, “This place is a madhouse!”

  “I’m not sure. I hope so.”

  “If you do, you better make it count!”

  “What do you mean, make it count?”

  “I mean, you better have your way with him, start the romance flowing! I didn’t come all of this way to have you strikeout.”

  “Maggie! I wouldn’t just leave you alone here. We’re just here to see him, that’s all.”

  “No way. Ideal scenario, you take him home and make sure he never wants to be with another woman, and I get to go home to my DVR. Win-win.”

  My whole face burned bright red, and I was about to tell her to talk a little more quietly when I felt a hand on my shoulder. I whirled around, somehow sure one of the hipster partiers had realized that I was in no way cool enough to be at the party in the first place. When I saw Eli standing in front of me, his brown eyes warm and full of mischief, all words died on my tongue. His hair was expertly disheveled, and despite the chilly weather, he was wearing a tight, short-sleeved t-shirt that showed off every single one of his muscles. Behind me, Maggie half-coughed, half-laughed, and I knew she was having a field day with my embarrassment. I couldn’t even do anything about it, either, because any hope of intelligent speech had left me as soon as Eli and I had made eye contact.

  “Bella! You made it!”

  “Um, yeah, I guess I did.”

  “Right on! And what about your friend?”

  “My friend?”

  “Her best friend,” Maggie interjected, stepping up next to me and jabbing me in the ribs covertly as she did so, “Maggie Wells. Nice to meet you.”

  “Cool,” he answered, shaking her hand vigorously with a slightly lopsided grin, “glad you two made it. You know, Maggie, I have a friend here somewhere who would
love you, I think. Hold tight, and I’ll go and find him, okay? The four of us will make a real night of it.”

  “You know what? I was actually just telling Bella that I have a pretty massive headache.”

  “No shit?”

  “Um, yes shit. It just kind of crept up on me, you know? I didn’t want to make her leave the party, and I didn’t want to leave her on her own, but now that she’s got you to entertain her, I think I’ll go ahead and make my exit.”

  “Are you sure, Maggie?” I asked through gritted teeth, my eyes wide and trying in vain to get across the message that I was in no way ready for her to go. This whole thing had been my idea, but now that it was a reality, I was terrified of being left alone with Eli. If these were his kind of people, there was no way he could be attracted to me! He probably wished he’d never invited me in the first place.

  "Yeah, Maggs," Eli asked light-heartedly, missing the brief frown that crossed her face with his use of a nickname he didn't know her nearly well enough to use, "because my friend really would love you. He's always dug redheads."

  “Yeah, I’m sure. My couch and a pint of Ben and Jerry’s are calling my name. Although I probably shouldn’t tell you that, seeing as you’re a personal trainer and all.”

  “Hey, we can’t all make those tough decisions, can we?”

  “No,” she frowned again, raising her eyebrows in a gesture that made it clear she had some serious questions about my judgment, “I guess we can’t. Take care of my girl, okay? Unless you want to come with me, Bella.”

  Both Maggie and Eli looked at me, and I was overcome with the sensation of having been thrust inside of a cartoon where I had a devil perched on one shoulder and an angel on the other. Eli didn’t seem to notice, either that or didn’t care, but I could tell that Maggie was less than impressed with my choice. That wasn’t exactly an anomaly, either. She was a hopeless romantic, but that didn’t mean her standards weren’t high, and often times, higher than mine. On the other hand, she didn’t know Eli like I did. She hadn’t been working side by side with him in the sweaty, steamy gym, looking at the way the veins in his biceps popped out.

  His hand wrapped around my waist and moved down to my ass, cupping it firmly, and I shivered. Maggie might have had the right idea, who knew, but those strong, probing fingers were too yummy to ignore. I was a goner, and I told Maggie firmly that I wasn’t going anywhere. My head buzzed with the possibilities of where this evening might take me, and in no time flat, it was buzzing with champagne and tequila shots, too.

  “Eli? Eli, everything okay?”

  I propped myself up on my elbows, squinting my eyes in the unforgiving early morning sunlight. I had no real concept of how late Eli and I had been out last night but was sure it had been well past midnight. I could remember the two of us kissing sloppily underneath a giant mirrored ball and then dancing seductively as the new year officially began. I’d been nervous as hell about Maggie leaving me with Eli, but things had gone super well, much better than I’d expected them to. They had gone well enough that I had taken him back to my apartment, where he had poured his heart out to me about how much he had been wanting to ask me out since he’d first laid eyes on me. He’d told me that I was the kind of girl that was worth doing anything for, and I had completely melted.

  The sex, from what I remembered, had been drunk-sloppy and not the most fulfilling in the world, but that was something we could work on. It didn’t have to be fireworks the first time.

  “Eli?”

  I smiled to myself, happy to remember all of the sweet things he’d said to me despite a hangover of steadily increasing strength, and ran through a mental checklist of what I had in my fridge. It wasn’t what you might find in the refrigerator of a professional chef, but it was certainly enough to whip up a decent brunch. Eli and I could get to know each other a little better, and with any luck, decide on a time to have an actual date, one that involved a little less high-volume techno music. It was an idea that gave me all the warm fuzzies, right up until I stretched and felt a slightly crumpled up piece of paper on the pillow where Eli’s head should have been.

  “What the hell?”

  It was something that belonged in a movie, or maybe in one of those tv shows where women were always being fucked over. It wasn’t quite a Post-it note, but it might as well have been. I sat up all the way, quickly enough that I got light-headed and almost had to lie down again to keep from passing out. I read the note once, twice, three times, by the end of which I could hardly see straight through the tears blurring my vision. In the note, Eli started out by telling me that he had a “bitchin’” time last night. He’d been hoping he could get a “better look” at me and was stoked that he’d finally got it. He went on to say that he had a nasty habit of lying to girls in the heat of the moment, and he hoped I understood. In reality, he had no desire to explore a relationship with anybody, which included the date the two of us had spent time planning out. He hoped that I would be “cool” with it, but if I wanted to break my personal fitness contract with the gym, he would get it. He hoped that wasn’t my plan, though, because he’d gotten the chance to see me up close and personal, and there were several areas of my body he’d noticed that could use some more work. This was the kind of work that would require personal, one-on-one attention. He ended the vile thing by telling me that I should keep on “rockin’” and that he would see me around unless I was too sensitive and he didn’t see me again at all.

  I wadded the note up into a crumpled ball of awfulness, threw it across the room, and then screamed into my pillow. Once that was done, I retrieved my cell phone from underneath the bed and called the only person on the planet that I could imagine talking to in my current state.

  “Hey, bitch. Have a good time with the cretin last night? Sorry, I know you like him, and I swear to God I’ll keep my mouth shut about him in the future, but good Lord, he seemed like one of those pretty, dumb boys. Maybe he’s just one of those guys you have to get to know, I guess. I’ll take your word for it.”

  “Maggie?” I said in a small, desperate voice, one that wavered and wobbled pitifully and made me feel even more sorry for myself than I was already feeling, “Can you stop for a minute? Please?”

  “Shit,” she said abruptly, all of the playful judgment instantly gone from her voice. “What happened? What did the pretty boy, fucker do?”

  “Nothing I shouldn’t have expected. Nothing that men don’t always do.”

  “Want me to kill him?”

  “No. I want to never feel like this again.”

  That was when my very tentative control over my emotions broke, and I started to sob into the phone. As New Year’s days went, this one was not my best. Not my best by any stretch of the imagination.

  CHAPTER TWO

  BELLA

  “I’m so, so sorry.”

  “You know what? I’m done. That’s my New Year’s resolution, okay? Screw the gym. I’m going to have to find a different one, anyway. My resolution has nothing to do with the way I look. My resolution is to never give my heart to another guy again. I’m going to date like a guy does it. No emotions, no regrets. Ever, ever again.”

  Maggie looked almost as rough as I felt. Apparently, she had gone home and run through her DVR with a bottle and a half of wine for company, and she was feeling the effects in a big way. It was not, however, anything close to the misery I was feeling, nursing my own hangover along with this latest awful, embarrassing twist to my non-existent love life. It was almost impossible to tell whether it was the champagne or the rejection that was making my stomach jump, but whichever one it was, I was feeling brutal.

  The second Maggie had realized that I was in such a bad place, she had ordered me to meet her at Benny’s, our favorite brunch place, where the two of us now sat with a carafe of mimosas and a big basket of buttermilk biscuits. It was our favorite post night out meal, the one we’d been having since we were in college and making poor decisions on the regular. It was almost always
a sure-fire way to cheer me up, and the fact that it wasn’t doing so now made things all the more depressing.

  I picked at the half-eaten biscuit on my plate miserably, Eli’s note playing itself over and over again in my head. Maggie, who might as well have been reading my mind, pounded one fist on the table loudly enough that a couple of the other tables near us looked at her curiously. Typically, this was the kind of thing I would admonish her for, but in my current state, I couldn’t even be bothered to do that. I was too defeated to care if we were the subject of scrutiny.

  “Where in the hell does he get off treating you like that? That’s what I want to know!”

  “It’s his right, isn’t it?” I answered glumly, keeping my tears from returning by sheer force of will. “It’s not like he owed me anything.”

  “Of course, he did! He owed you basic human decency. And if he was going to be such a shit, why did he say all of those things to you? What was the freaking point?!”

  “I don’t know. I do know that I don’t have any right to be surprised.”

  “Bullshit, you don’t.”

  “No, seriously, Maggie, it’s true. I’m not a kid anymore, and this isn’t the first time I’ve met a guy like Eli. It’s not the first time a guy has done something like this to me. Isn’t even the third or fourth time. If it’s happening to me over and over again, maybe the problem isn’t the men. Maybe it’s me.”

  “There’s absolutely nothing wrong with you, Bella. You’re smart, funny, and not to mention, a total fox. Seriously, you’re the hottest person I’ve ever seen outside of a movie.”

  I squirmed uneasily in my chair, going through the same uncertainty I always did when people commented on my looks. My relationship with my parents, especially my mom, had been strained, to say the least, but one of the things she had always been proud of was my appearance. I could remember from the time I was very little, my mom asking anyone who would listen to her to affirm how beautiful her only daughter was. I was often told I looked like Snow White, and I had gone as her for Halloween three years in a row. My hair was naturally so dark it was practically black, and my eyes were bright blue. Because my skin was so fair, I easily flushed. On top of that, I had been blessed with a quick metabolism and curves that easily got attention, whether I wanted it or not. The only problem I had ever had with my looks was my lack of comfort accepting compliments for them, something I dealt with even with the people I was closest to. Maggie, who knew this, watched me turn bright red and then rolled her eyes dramatically.