Playing Pretend Box Set

by Natasha L. Black

  Sounds that didn't even seem human were flying out of me. My legs were shaking; my whole body was trembling as I came.

  He didn't stop. He wouldn’t stop. He was claiming me, owning me. His hand was a machine. His mouth, fingers, and tongue were built for my pleasure.

  I was shrieking, wanting him to stop, wanting him to keep going, not able to take it, until... Pleasure exploded through me.

  Afterwards, I lay in his arms as he stroked me softly, my body breaking into trembles occasionally with the afterglow.

  Fuck. That was...

  Fuck.

  There weren't even words.

  "There's something I have to tell you, too," Giovanni said.

  20

  Giovanni

  "Yeah?" Kandice murmured.

  "I think we should just see where this goes," I said. "I like being with you and I don't know what it means. I know it's going to complicate things, but I don't want this to be just business."

  "Yes," she said grudgingly. But she didn't look any happier for it.

  My stroking fingers stopped. "What? What it is?"

  She straightened herself with her elbows. "Maybe I'm being petty, but... It just seems like you don't respect my decisions, despite you asking for my input. Or seem to care about what I want."

  I moved my hand away. "After what just happened, I thought—"

  "Giovanni, I like being with you. Our sex is amazing, okay?" Kandice said. "Is that what you want to hear? Because it's true. It would be easier for me if it wasn't, I hope you know that. As far as that goes, we absolutely work together. As far as everything else... I don't know. This whole party, the way you completely disregarded my wishes in respect to my parents—"

  "I just want to be sure you're as committed to this as I am," I said. "I told my sister and my mother, who are both dealing with my father’s death. It's a big deal. This could crush them if it falls through. This isn't even just about my business. It's about everything: my family, my reputation, my father’s reputation.” I was suddenly angry. “What do you have to lose, Kandice? What's stopping you from walking away from this whenever you see fit? I just want to be sure I'm not the only one with skin in the game, okay?"

  "So that's it, then," Kandice retorted angrily. "You don't trust me. That's what this whole thing is about. You basically want to hold me hostage by forcing me to include my parents."

  "So, you were planning on walking out then, is that what you're saying?" I spat.

  "Not at all," Kandice snarled. "But if you keep this up: this controlling, forcing me to do things your way, refusing to give me a choice? Yeah, I might be more than a little inclined to say fuck it—screw this whole thing and walk away. But no, I will keep the marriage intact so your precious will can be satisfied, okay? I just don’t want to deal with this—with you and your bullshit—anymore."

  She wrenched herself away from me and threw on her dress. Then, without looking where she was going, she stormed out of the limo and slammed the door behind her. I pushed the door open after her.

  "Kandice, wait! You don't even know where you are!"

  "Google Maps, remember?" Kandice said, hoisting her phone up high. Lowering it to type for a moment, she paused, then her face fell. "We’re just outside of Key Largo. Giovanni, an hour away from Miami?"

  I sat at the edge of the seat with my legs resting on the sidewalk, prepared to go after her. "I told you. I wanted time with you," I said. "I wanted to make this work, to show you—"

  "Screw you." She turned her back on me.

  "Don't be stupid," I said. "We’re far away. Just get in. I'll drop you off at any hotel you want, and you don't have to say a word to me."

  She stood there for a long minute. "I can call myself a cab," she said stiffly.

  "Fine," I said. "But I'm going to wait here with you until it gets here. So, you're going to be stuck with me for the same amount of time, either way."

  Her hands balled into fists. "Giovanni, seriously. I feel like enough of an idiot already, can you just go? Please!"

  I could hear the tears in her voice. I wasn't just going to leave it like that.

  What if the cab driver turned out to be a creep? Not to mention, standing on the edge of the road in the middle of the night was almost begging for something to happen. No fucking way.

  "That's my offer," I said. "Take it or leave it."

  "You're being stupid," she snapped.

  "No," I argued. "You are."

  "What about that friend of yours?" I demanded. "Would she think it’s a good idea to wait for a taxi on a dark, half-abandoned street in the middle of the night?"

  Kandice's shoulders sagged. She tugged on a piece of hair. "Fine. Whatever hotel you want, I don’t care."

  She walked back to the limo. I opened the screen to give the driver her address. Luckily, he had taken it upon himself to stop once he'd heard us arguing. We set off toward Kandice's place.

  Sure enough, Kandice was silent the whole trip back. Not that I minded. At this point, I'm not sure what I would say. I was just mad, all over. Beads of angry sweat were rolling down the back of my neck. My hands were clenching and unclenching madly. I had a patch of stress induced itchiness in my arm pit.

  Fuck it. Kandice could be so difficult when she wanted to be. And fuck, I knew she was right. I was being controlling.

  That's how you got things done, though. Or at least, how you got them done properly. You couldn't just sit back and trust fate, destiny, or the universe to do it for you. That wasn't what had gotten Papa to the mogul he was, nor had it gotten me here.

  Maybe she was right that I needed to respect her point of view. But she needed to see that I was right, too. I had a lot to lose at this point, she didn't. When it came down to it, I believed in certainties, not promises. Cold, hard facts. The cold, hard fact here was that Kandice could leave at any point.

  Why didn’t she see I could offer safety and freedom?

  When we arrived at Kandice's, she opened the door before the limo had even come to a full stop.

  "That's it?" I said.

  "Thank you for the ride," she said stiffly. "Goodbye."

  She walked to her hotel without a look back. "Can I walk you to your door?"

  Kandice slammed the door behind her. "No."

  21

  Kandice

  Ah, the morning after.

  These types of mornings were never good. I had a throbbing headache that began in the center of my forehead and spread outwards like a cobweb. This morning, though, I had a bit more to regret than the amount of alcohol I'd consumed.

  There were flashes of memory, vague, but undeniable all the same.

  Giovanni. Oh, Giovanni.

  He'd shown up out of the blue, giving me a surge of exhilaration. There had been want and pleasure that had gone through me all at once.

  Everything that followed had seemed magnetic. It had been as inevitable as the unspooling of yarn as it falls off a table. There was no way to have prevented it unless...

  I'd somehow stopped him from coming into that bar in the first place.

  There had been no real point where I'd had a clear-cut choice. Where my brain clicked on and said, okay Kandice, choosing time. Do you, or do you not want to be an idiot tonight?

  The problem was, lately I seemed to only ever be acting like an idiot. Every choice I made, I looked and felt more and more like one. Even now, here I was hiding under my covers like a child. Refusing to cry or pick up my phone.

  Battered. That was how I felt. Yesterday had been a day and night of cold, hard truths. Jen had basically spelled it out for me: I liked Giovanni. It wasn't just my pussy talking, either. I liked him as a person, and I enjoyed spending time with him. Not just because the sex was great either, but because he was. We were.

  It was just all kinds of messed up.

  I barely knew the guy. More than that, I was fake married to him. Emphasis on the fake.

  Furthermore, he'd made it more than clear he wasn't in the place for a
relationship. It was crystal clear he had commitment issues. Beyond that, his priorities were his booming business and his mourning family. That’s what he needed to take care of. I would just be another liability. He had shut me down enough for me to figure that out.

  Yet... I still came back for more. Or, he did.

  In the limo, he had said that he didn't know where this was going, but he wanted to see. He was obviously willing to take care of me, this room in Marriot being an example. We hadn’t talked about me ever needing to leave…

  Didn't that mean something?

  I let the question hang for a few uncomfortable minutes before I wrestled myself out of bed.

  Fuck it. I wasn't going to waste another minute moping around about some guy who probably hadn't even called or texted.

  I checked my phone. There was a missed call from Giovanni. My grimace tightened.

  Okay, a guy who probably hadn't called me about anything important. It was probably about the party he so desperately needed me to invite my parents to.

  I sat up and walked over the hotel's laminate wood floors, making my way to the coffee machine. If there was anything that could clear up my murky brain, it was coffee.

  Sipping my warm savior, I reeled my mind back to the beginning.

  My thoughts snagged on something that I couldn’t get over: Giovanni's lack of trust in me.

  How could he think that, after he virtually saved my life, I'd just leave him in the lurch? Sure, maybe I wouldn't be able stomach living with him, or seeing him as much as we have been, especially if he was going to keep being such a jerk.

  But I would never just divorce him because I'd gotten what I wanted. No way.

  What he had said made sense, but my side made sense, too. He didn't know my parents. He didn't know how unbearable they were when I did something they disagreed with—but I did. He wasn't the one who would have to deal with them when they scolded me for going against my dreams, as far as marriage was concerned. I would.

  Speaking of my parents... I would have to go over and visit them eventually. Along with the call from Giovanni, I'd seen two missed calls from my mom, too. Yep, might as well get it over with.

  Ah, crap.

  I’d forgotten about my money issue. My check from Rayli had finally come in, so I had some spending money, but nowhere near enough. Not enough to live off for months on end without the security of getting a job soon.

  I had one response to a freelancing gig sitting in my inbox that I needed to respond to eventually, but that wouldn't be enough to pay the bills. Certainly not enough to pay rent.

  Maybe the choice wasn't really to live alone or with Giovanni. Maybe it was whether to live at home or with Giovanni.

  I grimaced. Just the thought of living with my parents crammed my hands into one nervous-angry clasp.

  Sure, I loved my parents, but they were my parents.

  Mr. and Mrs. McArthur. Well meaning, but overbearing, nosy, and insanity-inducing.

  I typed a response to my mom that I would be over soon. That had been one of the things she had been wondering about, whether I would be visiting that day.

  Anyway, I guess visiting my mom and dad for a few hours would be a trial of sorts. If I wanted to shoot myself an hour in, then, maybe as much as I hated the possibility, I should be taking Giovanni up on his offer to live together.

  I guess two things would be decided today, I realized as I looked around the hotel. This luxury was going to have to end soon.

  I exited the cab and stood, looking up at my parent’s house: every red brick in its place, every window newly polished, every tulip carefully tended to. My engagement ring and wedding band, which I hadn’t even realized Giovanni had pressed into my hands last night, felt like beacons of deceit shining from my hand.

  As soon as I opened the door, my parents erupted into a flurry of exclamations and happy movements.

  "We had no idea you were coming!" my mom said, half-delighted and half flustered as she swatted back a stray hair that had flown from her greying bun. "I could have given your room an extra sweep, your father and I could have pulled out the old photo albums..."

  I kept my face immobile. No matter how many times I'd told Mom and Dad that, unlike them, I didn't like spending hours parked in front of a photo album, reminiscing about each photo, they refused to listen. I was a baby in most of them, after all, so I didn't remember a lot of them.

  They didn't get it.

  "It's fine, but I did text this morning" I said, hugging my dad first, his paint smell filling me with old, familiar comfort.

  Dad always liked to paint, and I was happy to see he’d picked it back up since they’d moved back. Since he was still at it, he must still be happy.

  "You look thin," Mom scolded, breaking apart from our hug to grab my wrist and give it a little wag. "Have you been dieting?"

  "No, Mom," I chorused dully, already over the attention.

  My mom had led me further into the foyer and sat me on a large chair, firing questions at me. “And what about a new place? Are you looking yet? And jobs?”

  "Lay off, Alice," Dad said gently, placing a hand on my mom's forearm. "Kandice just got home."

  "You're right," Mom agreed, turning to hurry up the stairs toward my room. She called back to us, "There's something she has to see..."

  I stood and my father and I followed her. A glance at my dad's impassive face gave me no clues as to what I might find. But when I stepped through the doorway after my mother, I was shocked to see that here, in my old room, was my old room.

  Like... Literally twelve-year-old me’s old room. There was a neat, glossy pile of J-14 magazines stacked dutifully in the corner. Different quirky IKEA cat posters that my mom and I had picked out covered the walls in tasteful places. There was even the same blue, pink, and purple squared bedspread that soaked up my tears when my first crush, Aaron, ended up asking out a girl named Marjorie instead of me.

  "You see?" Mom asked. "I made it exactly how it was. Now, you can stay as long as you like."

  I gulped. "Thanks."

  "Of course, I haven't asked you the most important question," Mom continued breathlessly, sitting on the edge of my bed, and patting the space beside her. I knew from experience that you couldn’t say no to that gesture. "What about all of this newspaper article stuff? Did you get home without a hitch? Is everything okay?"

  If it had been okay before, it wasn't now. My mom looked at me with eyes bulging wide, as if she was threatening to have an aneurysm any second.

  I forced myself to say the script I'd prepared in the cab. "It's fine, Mom, really. I think people were just overreacting. Jin even reached out to me. He's fine."

  My mom's dark, bushy brows knitted together. "Oh, did he now? And what did he say? He is your boyfriend, after all, Kandice. He can't just go and disappear like that."

  I put my hand on hers consolingly.

  It was kind of funny, my mom was more pissed off about Jin's disappearance than I was. Then again, it seemed like it had been years since everything had happened, since I'd been with Giovanni and...

  Not going down that road.

  "It's honestly fine," I told my mom. "Jin and I... We're both great people, we just weren't good together."

  My mom's hand stiffened under mine. Her cornflower blue eyes pricked at my face. "What do you mean you weren't good together? You were with each other for four years!"

  "I know," I said. "But I think we just let it last because it was comfortable. There was nothing wrong with Jin or me. Our relationship had just gotten stale. We barely saw each other."

  My mom clucked with her tongue. “That's young kids these days. Can't commit to anything. As soon as something gets hard, they go, ‘adios, see ya baby, off to the next!’”

  While it was kind of funny when my mom quoted from western movies, she had a point. It just wasn't exactly in the way she thought.

  Since she had no idea about my situation with Giovanni. I quickly ripped my thoughts away from tha
t. If I started going down that road and reminiscing, it was going to be that much harder for me to get through this conversation.

  "Honestly, Mom," I said. "I'd rather talk about something else. How are things here in Orlando?"

  It had been interesting taking the bus here from Miami, highway-95 taking us along the coast, then finally, inland to Orlando. The familiar sights reminded me of growing up here, family trips to the beach, and sneaking to West Palm Beach with Jen. When the bus had stopped, I’d easily grabbed a cab and took the expressway, past Lake Sunset and into the Lancaster Park neighborhood. Into my childhood.

  Neat. Weird.

  "Fine," Mom said unwillingly, interrupting my thoughts. "So how long are you staying, then? A week or two is fine, but I must tell you that if you're planning on staying for months on end, rent free, then I'm just going to have to put my foot down."

  "Mom—" I began.

  "I mean it, Kandice," she continued. "I've always supported you in following your dreams. Even when it was being a journalist instead of a much more sensible career, like accounting, for which you went to school for, for one year, may I remind you?"

  "Mom— " I said again, more forcefully.

  "But if you're just going to live in poverty for the rest of your life to keep up with this image of a starving artist, then—"

  "Mom!" I snapped. "I'm not even staying the night!"

  Her mouth opened and closed a few times, as if it was broken on a hinge or she needed to say more but couldn’t form words. Her brow furrowed. "Why not?"

  I left the room. "You’re why not," I mumbled, feeling childish.

  The remainder of my visit was okay, though the cloud of me not being able to stay with them hung over everything. Mom quickly fell into her routine of being completely dissatisfied with everything I did or said.

  During dinner, if I ate rice, she urged me to eat more meat to fatten up. When I ate the meat, she scolded me for eating the fatty part, because that part wasn't healthy. When I used my fork and knife, she claimed my grip was off, and when I drank water, she complained that I slurped.