The Seduction Vow

The Seduction Vow

By Bonnie Dee

SMASHWORDS EDITION

* * * * *

PUBLISHED BY:

Bonnie Dee on Smashwords

The Virginity Vow, Copyright © 2014 by Bonnie
Dee

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Chapter One

Graciela E. Ramirez … cordially invited …
celebrate the union of two souls …

The script flowed in
elegant copperplate loops over the cream parchment. A date, a good
friend she’d all but lost touch with over the past couple of years,
an event she must attend, and two words that struck like lead slugs
into her heart:
plus one.

If she’d received the
invitation early last week, the words wouldn’t have made her almost
nauseated. But now, all her dreams and plans for the future, all
the years and emotions she’d invested in Joey Coronado, all the
fruitless
waiting
she’d done exploded around her. It was like being at the
center of a minefield. There was no place she could step that was
safe. It hurt to move or breathe. Every thought, no matter how
trivial, circled back to the one certainty that had filled her mind
since last Tuesday.

I am going to die alone and unloved.

Graci tossed the wedding invitation onto her
desk and clicked Replay on the stereo remote. A song of sorrow and
loss filled her apartment, and she sobbed along with the mournful
melody as she unwrapped another chocolate kiss. Just two more. That
was all she would allow herself. Two more chocolates and two more
plays of that miserable song.

Pathetic. Even in the midst of her sorrow,
she knew Joey didn’t deserve a single one of her tears. He’d done
the unforgivable—cheated on her—and he’d apparently been doing it
for some time.

“
I’m sorry, Graci. I feel
terrible,” he’d said as he stood in the front hall with his bags
already packed in his car. “You’re so amazing. You were my first
love. I wish we could have made it work. I always thought you’d be
the mother of my children. But after Tessa exploded into my life,
my feelings for you and the future we planned paled in
comparison.”

“
I can’t believe this is
happening,” was all she’d been able to say over and over, as if
saying it would stop the train wreck.

Joey had reached out and tried to take her
hand, but she’d snatched it away.

“
Graci, come on. You know
we haven’t been really close for some time. It used to be hard to
keep that promise to wait till marriage before we had
sex.”

So this was about the sex. Joey had always
sworn waiting wasn’t a problem. They’d done plenty of other things
but agreed to save the final act for their wedding night.

“
But toward the end, I
didn’t even think of you that way,” he continued. “We were like
roommates sharing the house. I would have broken it off sooner
except I dreaded hurting you like I’m doing right now.”

“
This isn’t happening,”
Graci said for variety.

“
There’s no spark between
us anymore. Maybe there never really was. I think I might have
committed to you because you were the right type of woman for me to
marry. College was over, and I thought it was time to get serious
and settle down. But Tessa…” He exhaled deeply, and his eyes glowed
in a way Graci hadn’t seen them do in a long time. “Tessa makes me
feel…vibrant. When I’m with her, I don’t feel stifled or dull or
half-alive. Do you understand?”

Oh hell yes, she understood. She was dull and
stifling. While she thought they were living a comfortable,
harmonious life, Joey had been dying of boredom.

Graci popped the chocolate kiss into her
mouth and let it melt on her tongue.

Probably part of the blame was hers, but he
still shouldn’t have packed everything up and had one foot out the
door before talking to her. Maybe if he’d expressed himself at some
point during their nearly two-year engagement, their relationship
could have been salvaged.

In hindsight, she could see that moving in
together last year had been a last-ditch effort to save an already
failing relationship. Living together was meant to bring them
closer, but they’d never quite been on the same page at the same
time. Better one of them realized their relationship was a mistake
before it was too late.

That was her mother’s voice, calm and
sensible, echoing in her mind. When Graci finally called to tell
her the engagement was off, she thought it was exactly the sort of
thing her mother might say. But Graci hadn’t made that call yet.
The wound was too raw. She needed a little more time to grieve
before she pulled herself together and carried on.

Her phone chimed, and she
picked it up to read an incoming text from Tara.
Whaaaat? Did you get the same mail I did today?
Bree’s really going thru with it. Call me.

Graci tapped the phone with
one chewed fingernail, which had been so beautifully manicured just
last Monday. She hadn’t even told Tara about her
breakup
—
her closest friend and the only
one of the old group she’d stayed close to. In the week since the
split, other than going to work, she’d simply sat in the half-empty
apartment, listening to depressing music and eating until she felt
sick.

With Joey gone, she couldn’t afford this
place. She’d have to get a roommate, a smaller apartment, or, God
forbid, move back in with her parents, the ultimate proof of
failure. No. Not the ultimate. Being a twenty-five-year-old virgin
was a pretty epic fail in many people’s opinion.

If she had a good reason for it, like
religious beliefs, it would be understandable, but though she’d
been raised Catholic, Graci wasn’t overly religious. Nor was she
afraid of sex or frigid. Would this disaster with Joey have been
avoided if she’d simply agreed to sex? He’d never really pushed,
and he’d claimed he was on board about delaying the act, but
perhaps Tessa wasn’t the first woman who’d “exploded into his
life.” Maybe all along Joey had found other women to “make him feel
alive.”

God, now she felt worse than ever, and she
truly deserved another chocolate kiss.

Sex. The root of all her problems. She didn’t
know exactly what had held her back from it, other than waiting for
a wedding day she’d always believed was right around the
corner.

And now Bree’s wedding was coming. There was
no way she wanted to attend that event still a virgin. Her friends
would expect it of straitlaced, by-the-rules Graci, the one most
likely to preplan every detail of her life.

She needed to burst out of the prudish role
they’d cast her in and surprise them. Surprise herself.

Of course, she could simply
not mention that she and Joey hadn’t consummated their
relationship, but it was nearly impossible to keep secrets from
these women.
No secret too dark, no
judging ever
had been their youthful
motto, when the biggest confession any of them had to share was
Bree’s announcement that she’d let Kenny Wise feel her
up—underneath the bra.

But, despite the part of
the pledge about
no
judging
, judgment percolated under the
surface. Two years ago, when her relationship with Joey grew more
serious, Corinne and Bree had held an intervention of sorts. That
was why she’d stopped hanging with Corinne, though they lived in
the same city. Tara was the one friend who’d really stood by her,
even though she wasn’t a Joey fan either.

Now that her friends’ assessment of Joey had
proved true, it would be hard to swallow her pride and try to
rebuild her friendships.

Before she went to Bree’s wedding, several
months away, she would completely overhaul her life. She would make
a list of things she’d never tried before and then do them. Crazy,
bold, un-Graci-like things like hang gliding or singing karaoke.
She would change her style and her hair and definitely her
apartment. She would throw off “sparks” like an arc welder.

And
she would lose her virginity at last. Just toss that useless
thing out the window with some random stranger. Virginity had
become an albatross she needed to shed. She would take the plunge,
end the big mystery, and move on with her life.

****

“
Graci, I’m so sorry. Is
there anything I can do?” Tara pulled her into yet another hug, as
if she could squeeze the sadness out of her. “I’ll stay at your
place a few nights if you don’t want to be alone. I can’t believe
you spent an entire week moping and never called me.”

“
It’s all right.
I’m
all right. Really,”
Graci repeated for the tenth time since she’d announced her news
over a pancake breakfast at Dizzie’s Diner, where Tara
worked.

When she heard the news, Tara had exclaimed
so loudly, heads had turned, then she’d come around the table and
dragged Graci into the first of several hugs before scooting onto
the bench beside her.

“
I needed some time alone
to process. But I’m better now,” Graci said. “I have a
list.”

“
Ah, a Graci list. Of
course.” Tara threw up her hands in a typically extravagant
gesture, almost knocking over the coffeepot on the table. “A
breakup isn’t something you simply get over in X amount of days.
You and Joe were together for three
years
. More if you count that first
year when you were on-again, off-again.”

“
Thank you. I’m aware,”
Graci said dryly.

“
And even though this is
probably for the best, that doesn’t make it hurt any less. Remember
when I broke up with Abram? We were together
only
three weeks, but it tore my heart out.” She
clapped her hands to her chest. “Pain is pain. You have to let it
wash over you and sweep you away. You have to
feel
it.”

“
Which I did, and now I’m
finished. I’m going to plunge back into life and not let this…this
setback incapacitate me.”

“
Well, good for
you!”

Graci smiled at her friend, who was so
sincere yet so dramatic it was sometimes hard to take her
seriously. Tara was a sporadically working actress, larger than
life, a simmering ball of energy, a star in waiting. She always
commanded the stage of life.

Tara pushed back the mass of braids that
curtained one side of her face, a multitude of bracelets clattering
on her arm. “Here’s what we’re going to do, have a girls’ night,
and then, when you’re feeling ready, you and I are going clubbing.
We’ll find you a transition guy, someone to remind you how
beautiful and sexy and desirable you are.”