She turned her attention to the other guy, who was tall, with pale skin and brown hair, and…
No.
Abby felt her heart stop and the breath whoosh from her lungs. Everything in the park froze; the conversations silenced and the traffic halted; like time itself had stopped as Abby stared, her brain gasping out single words and fragments of sentences like, No, and Can’t, and What are the chances?
Because the guy with the brown hair and the light eyes, the guy with the beautifully molded lips and the birthmark in the exact center of his throat, was Sebastian. Mr. Bachelorette Party. The guy she’d gone home with one night, two years ago.
In more evidence of life’s unfairness, Sebastian seemed to have gotten even more handsome since Abby had seen him. His biceps bulged against the sleeves of his dark-blue jersey, his thighs strained the seams of his shorts. Abby allowed herself a single peek at his face, his wavy brown hair and full lips, looking just long enough to gather an impression of a haughty expression, and a lock of hair that flopped charmingly over his forehead. Abby bet that wasn’t an accident. She further bet that a parade of ladies had used their fingers to smooth back that unruly curl.
Abby forced herself to smile and reminded her heart and her lungs to do their jobs. When she was reasonably certain her voice would be steady, she asked, “Do you gentlemen want to introduce yourselves to the group?”
“I’m Lincoln Devries,” said the guy who wasn’t Sebastian.
“Sebastian Piersall,” said the guy with whom she’d had, hands-down, the best sex of her life. Maybe he doesn’t remember me, Abby thought, a little wildly, as Sebastian looked at her. His eyes widened briefly. Then he gave her a slow, undeniably intimate smile; a smile that let her know that he remembered everything, including exactly how many times Abby had conjured his face behind her eyelids and his voice in her ears when she’d touched herself, or—oh, the shame—when Mark had been touching her.
“Abby,” he said, his voice warm, his smile slow and sweet as warmed honey. “Nice to see you again.”
Sebastian
Sebastian Piersall was a lucky man. He knew it was true. He would have known it even if Lincoln, his best friend, his parents, and sister and brother-in-law weren’t constantly pointing it out. That’s Sebastian, they would say, shaking their heads in good-natured resignation. Falls into a pile of shit, comes out smelling like roses.
Sebastian had grown up white, male, and comfortably middle-class, the second-born child and only son of a college professor father and an elementary-school art teacher mom. Sure, his mom had her struggles—specifically, white wine and vodka. And yes, her struggles had become his dad’s struggles, as Sebastian’s father had tried （and tried, and tried） to get her into rehab, or to stick with a program of recovery. But none of that really touched Sebastian. He’d been a teenager by the time things had gotten really bad, out of the house and in college before his mother’s first stint in rehab. His childhood had been, in his mind, idyllic. He had fond memories of a fun mom, who’d let him stay home from school to watch cartoons, then take him bowling, a mom who’d laugh, shooing him out the door as they ran to go pick up pizzas before his father came home, after she’d fallen asleep on the couch and dinner had burned.
Sebastian, you know she let you stay home from school because she was too hungover to get you up and dressed, his sister had said, in the family therapy session at his mom’s first rehab. And she wasn’t asleep on the couch, she was passed out! Sebastian hadn’t responded. He hadn’t known. And if Fun Mom had been, in reality, Drunk Mom, he refused to let it change his memories of what his childhood had been like. You’ve got your take on it. I’ve got mine, he’d said. Greta had rolled her eyes, and the therapist had said something about denial, and how addiction was a disease of the family. Sebastian had tuned them out, thinking of his plans for the night ahead, and the woman he’d already arranged to meet.
He’d always been sociable and good-looking, academically successful, a standout athlete. He’d tried football and ice hockey and water polo, but his best sport was soccer. His high school team had made it all the way to the state finals; Sebastian had been named to the all-state team. Soccer wasn’t a sport in which you could go pro and earn fame and fortune in the United States. It was, however, a sport where your skills were of interest to college recruiters. Sebastian had been accepted early decision at Wesleyan, his first choice, and the only school to which he’d applied—just one more example of the way the Universe showed its favor to him.