by Maya Rose
“Clearly.” I quip wryly with my eyes on that move.
“I’m confused, not mad!!” She actually, literally, stomps her foot. “Because you’re confusing me! Because...what is this exactly?” Her hand lifts and one finger darts frantically back and forth in the inches that separate us. “You’re not being condescending or reminding me that I’m in your way to get rich and you’re asking for my opinions and actually listening when I give them and now you’re letting me get away with this kind of crap…what are we--friends now?”
Huh. Goddammit, maybe? Would that be so bad? “And so what if we are?”
“I CANNOT be friends with you!!”
Her open palm strikes my chest, and I’m so stunned at the vehemence that only after she’s got two smacks in, do I grab her arm and twist it behind her, pulling her into me. So up close that I can see a bewitching tiny trail of freckles on her neck. Her back is straight like a bar as she tries to prevent her tits from grinding my chest. Nothing on her feet, which tells me she doesn’t like to wear shoes indoors, and then I’m wondering where she’s ticklish and how loud she sneezes and whether she snores. So much I don’t know about her that it’s making me stark raving mad and why is she fighting this? “Why not?” I bite out viciously. “Why the fuck not?”
“Why?!!” Her eyes gash through mine, shooting flares of both pain and heat. “Because you know everything about everything! Because you work like a damn maniac and watching you talk and boss around in these meetings is outrageously erotic and should be outlawed! Because you look at me like it matters if I live or die!! Because I’m nobody but you still won’t leave like everybody else! Because you were my first kiss! We can’t be friends, Mr King, because it’s not enough for me! Because I have a stupid freaking crush on you and you don’t!! Why won’t you just cut me loose?!!”
Her first kiss. Not enough. Crush. Words string together randomly, when there’s a world to unpack there. A tangle of what-ifs in my head that I’m morbidly curious about. A miasma of ache and frustration in my chest swirling down to my gut that I need to deal with. But all of it can wait. All I want to do right now is make her face sing again, and her heart lift.
“This will pass, Ariel, you understand that, right?” I talk softly, my palm flat on her back, letting her wrist go. “You’re young and impressionable, and this is an unusual situation and I’m...here. That’s all it is.” I steer clear of the sore pang that buds within me at my own words, and I just keep going. “Few months down the line, you and I will be out of each other’s lives, and one day you’ll find someone you actually like and all this will be behind you. You won’t even remember me.” I hate words. All words.
“How do you know that?” She entreats desperately. “How could you possibly know that?”
Because I do. Because I’m not the kind of man that can make anything last. “Because I know you. You took care of yourself all these years and you took care of your mother when it should have been the other way around. You didn’t let the world beat you and you won’t let me either.”
She blinks, slower at first, and then when her eyes won’t stop glistering, faster. “See--it’s shit like this that you need to stop saying to me!!”
She gets another weak smack in, before she takes a step closer to me and her arms circle my waist, her fingers twining on my back and fuck. She’s hugging me. And I’m feeling...I’m feeling. So much that I want to stop breathing and focus on just all the feeling. Hope. Delight. Pleasure. Peace. Why has no one ever done this to me before? I run my own arms around her, returning the embrace for all it’s worth, and for a while we simply hold each other like wayward idiots.
“You’re going to have to take off your tie.” She says, her cheek moving on my chest.
My pulse hammers. “What?”
“If you’re going to help me in the kitchen.” She pulls back to face me, and my chest seems weirdly heavier without her weight on it. “Why don’t you ever wear casual?” She asks with a gentle frown. “Like jeans and T-shirts? Why are you always dressed like you’re in a never-ending lifelong business meeting?”
I don’t have an answer. “You don’t like how I look?”
Goddamn does her face ripen. “That’s not--” She stops, bites her lip hard and lets it go. “Take off your damn tie and roll up your sleeves. And no questioning me or improvising when we’re cooking--just do exactly what I tell you to do. Get it? Exactly.”
Chain your goddamn dick, man. “Do I need a safe word?”
“How about ‘kiss my ass’?” She says tartly.
“I don’t think you understand how safe words work. They’re meant to make you want to stop, not--”
“Shut up!” She cries out, her face likely to set off the sprinklers. Then she walks past me out of her room to the kitchen, and I follow her, and then carry out each of her instructions to the last letter for the next hour because...what else am I gonna do?
◆◆◆
When I answer the door, Scotty has the dazed appearance of someone who has opened the wrong door. His wide eyes rove over me without any words, and his feet don’t move.
I could have changed. Could have redone the top two buttons of my shirt, or tucked the edges of it inside my pants. Cleaned the couple of pasta sauce splatters at its sides. Turned my sleeves down from where they are folded at my elbows. Put on my vest, or at the very least my tie. And if she had stopped stealing glances at my bare forearms, or at the skin below my neck where my buttons are open, I would have. But she kept wetting and biting her lips and breathing funny every time I leaned over or across or against her to ask or give or take something. My nose is fucking full of wet pussy mixed in with spices. So no, I decided not to change a damn thing about me looking like a hobo. And not even Scotty’s reaction is making me regret it. Of course it helped that I knocked one out in the bathroom earlier, when she fled to her room to ‘change’. Fuck, I haven’t jacked off this much in...ever.
“Scotty.” I prompt him impatiently to get his ass inside.
“Don’t Scotty me.” He says through gritted teeth. “What the hell happened to you?”
“Hello to you too.” I step aside for him to enter just as Ariel walks up to the entrance with an unfeigned smile that I want to keep, then wipe the fuck off because someone else is the recipient.
“Half naked, no scowl, solid eye contact, pleasant greeting.” He makes his assessment of me, and then says to Ariel. “Did you replace him with a clone?”
What do you know, my brother has a sense of humor.
And a death wish apparently, from the way he openly inspects her, tight jeans and a sleeveless top, tiny little bumps all over her arm from the cool breeze when I don’t immediately close the door. I wait till the Uber drives off and confirm that there are no other vehicles trailing it. When I turn, she’s giggling at something he said that I missed.
“Maybe I should leave, so you two can braid each other’s hair and gossip in peace.” I comment, sharp and irked.
“No!” She exclaims at me in genuine alarm, then goes pink and silent, when she catches on that it was a taunt, not an actual offer to leave her alone with him.
Our locked gaze lingers, and damn if it doesn’t do my ego wonders the way she doesn’t blink. It’s the kind of potent, endlessly watchful look that will make a man puff his chest out and scream I’m the king of the fucking world before sinking to his death. She likes me. Not just my body. Me. How’s that possible?
Scotty’s stunned ‘Jesus fuck’ breaks the moment, and when I look at him, his eyes have leapt so far out that it might take a team of EMTs to put them back in, as his neck makes the journey between me and her and me and her. “What did you do, Eli?” He starts with a calm anger I can’t quite fathom. Then louder, “What the hell did you do? She’s nineteen, you dickhead!! And a goddamn virgin!!” Then he gives her an accusing glare. “Did you tell him you’re a virgin before you let him fuck you?!!”
“How the hell do you know she’s a virgin?!” I ask him, boiling.
>
At the same time as her loud rejoinder goes his way, “We did not have sex!!”
“Because she’s my friend!” He advances on me and hollers right in my face. He’s as tall as me. When did that happen?
“Are you sure that’s all it is?” I ask him bitterly. Please, fuck, let that be all it is.
“Eli--” Ariel’s voice is a low note that Scotty entirely ignores.
“Of course a manwhore like you won’t get the concept that a guy can care about a girl without wanting to fuck her!” He stews at me.
“Scott--” Ariel tries to be a part of the dialogue again, and it just fucks with my head that she’s trying to talk to him right now.
“She doesn’t need your care.” I spit out at him.
“She needs someone to care, you asshole!” He bellows right back. “Because all you care about is fucking and making money!”
It’s true, I suppose. Still hurts like goddamn hell.
“SHUT UUUUUUUP!” Ariel screeches in a voice so loud, the neighbors--even though the nearest house is a reasonable distance away, are likely calling the cops complaining of a disturbance. “She is right here! And she doesn’t need two idiots fighting over something that has not happened!” She yells collectively at the two of us. “One dinner--one evening where we all have a nice time together--is that too much to freaking ask?”
“Maybe it is.” I sulk at her, and I’m acting like a juvenile instead of the oldest adult in the room, but I’m too pumped up to care. He knew before I did that she’s a virgin? What else does he know?
Not to be left behind, Scotty says tightly, “Yeah, maybe I should just leave. Don’t know why I even--”
“Nobody is going anywhere!” Christ, her voice has gone ultrasonic. “You’re both going to put on a smile, then sit your spoiled baby butts down at the dining table and you’re going to eat and have a brotherly conversation and you’re going to enjoy every minute of it even if it kills you!”
“Jeez. Take it a notch down, mommy.” Scotty mutters under his breath.
And for the second time that day, I dissolve into laughter. Because suddenly the situation seems ridiculously underrated for me to have overreacted that way. Because Scotty is actually shrinking away from her furious form, inching closer toward me, as if I’m safer than her right now. Because no one ever told either him or me to sit our butts down at the table for dinner. Because Scotty called her mommy, and instead of evoking any painful memories, I can’t get over how fucking cute she looks, red-nosed and exasperated.
“Since when do you find anything funny?” Scotty asks me in debilitating shock.
“She said brotherly conversation. And you called her mommy.” I manage to explain while guffawing.
“Stop laughing!” She commands me in a strict tone.
Except it sets Scotty off the same way as me now. Then we’re both guffawing, while she stands there pissed.
“Do you know she cut off my soda because she says it has too many calories?” I tell him and he laughs harder, shaking his head, clutching his stomach.
“She asked me to put on my big boy pants when I tattled on you.” Scotty quips back.
“She asked me why I’m such a dick to you.” I tell him.
“She’s into candy like a toddler--every shop we went to, she asked for free candy.” He rests his arm on mine like he needs it to keep his balance. One of my own is against the wall.
“She’s scared of thunder! And she won’t listen to me unless I say please.” God, this feels good.
Scotty hoots louder before adding, “She was totally oblivious that a TA we ran into in the U’s admin office was flirting with her. When he finally got around to asking her out, she says to him ‘I thought you were hitting on Scott’.”
Goddamn the cold bucket of water that’s thrown on me, my laughter dying an abrupt death. “Some dipshit just met her and asked her for a date?”
“Relax.” Scotty says, sobering up himself. “I told him to put it back in his pants.”
“Are you two done?” She queries, and we both turn to finally acknowledge her. Her arms are crossed in a wardenly stance, and all I can think of is that body naked. Shuddering against mine with her pussy swallowing my cock. “Maybe I’m the one that should leave so--”
“Let’s go eat.” I brusquely interrupt. One, because I need to stash my raging boner under the table, and two, I don’t want to troubleshoot how I’m going to keep her away from other men when all this is over. Or why I can’t stop wanting her for myself when I know I shouldn’t. Wanting people is for the weak. Not doing that is what has given me a semblance of stability all these years. Not living in the shadow of fear of anyone leaving. Of someone having that kind of power over me, that life stops, even for a second, when they leave.
It’s quiet at the table, a sudden dearth of topics, funny or otherwise, only cutlery sounding on plates, or water being poured in glasses, as the three of us eat, until Scotty remarks, “So I was thinking.” He takes a pause before continuing. “A couple of guys living near the U need a roommate.”
I don’t like this. Wherever he’s going, I don’t like it. “So?”
“So I think it’s time I moved out.” He comes out straight with it.
Fuck, what? “What for? What’s wrong with the condo?”
“Nothing’s wrong with it.” He sighs. “I’m 22, Eli. I should have been out of your hair when I started college. But it was comfortable and I…” A dip between his eyes, a thoughtful quirk to his lips, he halts again. “I guess I liked having a safety net around.”
He thinks of me as his safety net? Because you are. You’re supposed to be that. “Then why are you talking about moving out?”
“Because it’s not fair to you. Me asking you to not bring women home--it’s not fair. You not knowing when I’ll be home or not--not fair. I’m cramping your space and keeping you from living your life the way you want.”
It was bound to happen. He needs to be more independent. I also get my place to myself. Bring women home. But as crazy as it is, that ain’t happening, is it? Not anymore. “No.” The single word leaves my mouth.
“What do you mean--”
“I mean no. You can’t move out.” I spell it out for him.
His face struggles to decide if it should be annoyed or confused. “I don’t understand.”
That’s okay, because in a flash, I do. “You can’t move out because I like having you there. I like stepping on those tiny-ass plastic model pieces in the hallway. Like the passive aggressive way you eat when I’m in the kitchen, as if you hate me, but yet you never eat inside your room. And I like that if I need help, you’re just two doors away. There’s no one else I can ask for help.” I take a brief stop, so he knows I’m serious when I say my next words. “So stay. Don’t move out. We can get a bigger place if you think this one is smaller.”
His Adam’s apple bobs, slowly, multiple times, for a long drawn moment. “I don’t think it’s smaller.”
“Then you’re not moving out.”
“I guess I’m not.” He agrees, eyes glazed, and goes back to eating, before looking around searching, “Huh? Where’s Ariel?”
She’s not at the table. Her plate’s gone. Neither of us saw her get up or leave us. But it doesn’t surprise or scare or anger me. I know why she did. She didn’t want to intrude on our moment, and she wants us to have this time. She didn’t call him here just for him. She called him here for me too. And I’m seemingly powerless to refuse the girl anything.
“Five years ago, mom called me.” I tell Scotty, and he stills.
“What?”
“The man she was with, went bankrupt or dumped her, I don’t know. She told me some story I didn’t really believe.” I’m the victim here, Eli. Your father was a money-grubbing stupid man. All those lawsuits he left behind--what was I supposed to do but run? I was helpless and I was scared. I had to take care of myself and follow my heart. But the man I gave up everything for, he turned out to be just another selfish as
shole.
“What did she want?” Scotty asks slowly, still coming to terms with the information I’ve just given him.
I want to live with my boys now. There’s no one to take care of me, Eli. I have nothing. You’ll take care of me, won’t you? You won’t let your mother live in poverty while you skim Warren, will you? “I’ve been giving her money every month for the last five years. In return, she stays away from us. From you. Because I didn’t--”
“Want me to go through her disappearing again.” He completes, and I can’t tell what he’s thinking.
“I’m sorry.”
“For protecting me?”
I shrug lightly, even though I’m heavy as fuck with some unnamed emotion at him understanding why I did what I did. “I should have told you. It should have been your decision to make.”
“Is it still my decision?”
No, I know what’s best for you. “Yes.”
“Then don’t give her a goddamn penny more.”
Christ, the relief. “It’s fine. I just want to keep her out of trouble.”
He flings his napkin on the table. “No, it’s not fine. She’s our mother. It was her job to keep us out of trouble. Her job to be around when we needed her, her job to tell us that things were going to be okay. What the fuck is it with these people who are supposed to care about you the most in the world? How can they do the exact opposite when it is literally their fucking job to be there for us? Why did they bring us into existence if they can’t?!!”
I can’t answer that if I try. “It doesn’t matter anymore. We did good, without her or dad.”
“No!” He says vehemently, “You did, Eli. For the both of us! What I did was keep putting the blame on you like it was your fault dad messed up and died. Like it was your fault mom abandoned us. Like it was your fault we were the fucked up family from hell.” Elbows on the table, he puts his head in his hands. “She was right. I’ve been so focused on the things that I thought were taken away and kept from me, I didn’t even see the things you were doing for me.”
“Who was right?”
“Ariel.” He looks up and scoffs a smile. “He’s your family and he’s not leaving, she said. Stop treating him like your punching bag.” Then his smile changes. “Fuck, she’s something.”
