Broken Resolutions Read Online Free

Yolanda. I don’t know if Angie told you, but my name doesn’t go in the hat. I’m gay. Angie said she’d invited someone with me in mind.”
    “Angie didn’t—” Penny began.
    “That would be me,” another woman said, her curls surrounding her head in a dark halo. “I’m Tasha.” Yolanda smiled at her, and the couple walked off together to find adjacent chairs.
    Penny looked back at the sign-up list, making a notation beside the two women’s names. She counted. She recounted. Shit. Angie had been right. To make the numbers even, she’d have to participate, at least in this activity.
    The silence suddenly caught her attention. All of the attendees had seated themselves in the chairs, including the man in the shadows. He sat next to Brenda, his eyes once again on the older woman and her conversation with Carl. From close range, she could now see that she hadn’t been mistaken. He didn’t belong here. If the sheer amount of testosterone he exuded hadn’t told her, the resigned look on his face would have. Unless she missed her guess, Brenda had forced him to come. As Penny watched, she saw the older woman give him a consoling pat on his knee.
    All right. Enough gawking at the man. Time to get this party started. God help us all.
    “As you know, the weather tonight did not cooperate with our plans.” Penny tilted her head toward the library windows, indicating the snow still heavily falling. “Quite a few people canceled, and we’re one woman short.”
    “But there’s an extra woman,” protested a young man with a red tie.
    “Lesbians,” Yolanda and Tasha announced in unison.
    “Oh.” Red Tie subsided back into his chair.
    “So . . .” Penny closed her eyes for a brief moment, gathering strength. “It seems I’ll be participating in at least this first game.”
    Cologne Guy visibly perked up at that news, and she suppressed a wince.
    “All of your names, except for theirs”—she nodded toward the happy female twosome, who had already moved so close that their shoulders were touching—“are in a male or female hat. I’ll draw names to assign you randomly into pairs for this game. Each of you picked a favorite love scene, and you’re going to read them together in your pairs after introducing yourselves.”
    Red Tie’s mouth opened.
    “You won’t need to stay in these pairs for the other games, unless you want to,” she added, knowing what was coming.
    His mouth closed again.
    She glanced down at Angie’s notes. Read this next sentence exactly as written , her friend had ordered, underlining the demand twice. “You should listen closely to the scene each person has chosen, because it will illustrate something about what he or she is looking for in love and . . . lust.” I am going to fucking kill Angie, good friend or not .
    At that, the crowd sat a little straighter, a certain gleam appearing in the eyes of many. The mysterious man—she squinted at his name tag—Jack was not one of them. Instead, he was now glaring at Penny. But it wasn’t my idea, she wanted to protest. I don’t even want to be here!
    He ignored her telepathic message, turning away with a look of disgust.
    “And now,” she said, pulling her first name out of the men’s hat. “Let’s begin.”

3
    T he librarian—Penelope, if he remembered correctly—stared at the tall, skinny man to Jack’s right. The man had almost finished reading his love scene with his partner, whose eyes had grown almost as wide as Penelope’s over the past few minutes. Not quite, though. He hadn’t seen such a big pair of brown eyes since . . . ever, actually. And certainly never ones filled with such consternation.
    “—beneath him, her legs limp with ecstasy. The dread pirate Rafael took Chastity’s chin firmly in his hand, asking, ‘Do you now admit that you are completely mine, forever?’ ” The man next to Jack read with commendable, if misguided, enthusiasm.
    His partner in the game, a middle-aged woman dressed in a