by Bay, Louise
“Yeah, that’s fine.” I was the last person she probably wanted to see. After all, she thought I was an asshole.
* * *
I’d been glued to my iPhone, taking my office mobile while Amanda was in the changing room in the small Midtown boutique we were in. My fingers hovered over my emails. Should I drop Harper a note? But I had no idea what I’d say. This was why the rules of casual sex should be established before anyone got naked. But she’d been the one to talk about Vegas. Perhaps we didn’t need to have an awkward follow-up conversation to reestablish what had already been said. I stuffed the phone back in my pocket and tried to avoid eye contact with the sales assistants.
“What do you think?” Amanda asked, stepping out of a dressing room.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I asked, recoiling in shock. Shopping was not my favorite activity to do—Pandora usually bought Amanda’s clothes—but I was going to have to be involved in every shopping trip from now to eternity if she thought she was going to wear that.
Amanda rolled her eyes. “Dad, don’t swear.”
Don’t swear? She was lucky I didn’t kill someone. Someone like the designer of the dress she had on. “Take that off, right now. You’re fourteen not twenty-five.” It showed way too much skin—there seemed to be nothing holding it up and it was about three feet too short. It was as if she was wearing a towel.
“I’m not a child.”
I didn’t need a reminder she was growing up far too fast. “Yes, you are. That’s what fourteen is. And a child doesn’t get to wear dresses that don’t have arms.”
“It’s called strapless.”
“I don’t care what it’s called—it barely covers your butt. You’re not wearing it.” It seemed like yesterday that she’d refused to wear anything but a tutu. That particular obsession had lasted three months. She used to sleep in the thing. I’d laughed when Pandora had asked me to try to coax her out of it. I’d loved it. She’d looked adorable and it made her so happy—what more could I wish for? A tutu would be good right about now. Amanda glared at me. “I mean it, go change.”
“I don’t work for you. You can’t just order me around.”
I stared right back, raising my eyebrows. There was no way I was backing down on this. “If you want to go to the dance, you’ll go back in there and change.” I nodded toward the curtain behind her. “I’ll be out here trying to find something appropriate for you to wear.”
“Thanks, Coco Chanel.”
I wanted to laugh, but she needed to understand that under no circumstances would she be wearing something made for a twenty-five-year-old trying to get laid. Apart from anything else, Pandora would cut off my balls. I was going to have to get proactive.
“Excuse me,” I said to the shop assistant. “Can you show me some age-appropriate dresses for my fourteen-year-old daughter?” I’d left Amanda to pick her own outfit. That had been a mistake. I could have headed off this problem before she’d changed into anything.
“Certainly, sir,” the tall, blonde woman said. “It’s so nice to see a father taking his daughter shopping.” She smiled as if she wanted me to respond, but I wasn’t in the mood for chitchat. I wanted to find a dress and take Amanda to Serendipity, where we could catch up over ice-cream sundaes and forget she was growing up.
“What about this?” The assistant held up a very short, baby-blue dress.
“Something longer,” I said.
“Dad,” Amanda called. I turned to see her in a skin-tight dress that looked like it was made of strips of horizontal material sewn together.
I strode toward her. “Get that off. Right now.”
“It has sleeves,” she said, holding out her arms.
True, but it left nothing to the imagination, clinging to her teenage body and barely covering her bottom. There was no way she was going out in public in that.
“Get it off,” I snapped.
She let out a grunt of frustration and stomped back into the changing room.
“This,” the assistant said, holding up a pink-lace dress, “is a very popular dress this season.”
It looked as though it would hit the floor when Amanda tried it on, so that was a plus. It also had long sleeves. I stepped closer. “Is that see-through?” I asked, staring at the dress. For a second, I imagined Harper in the dress. The color would suit her.
“It’s sheer, but the lace covers all the important bits, so it looks more revealing than it is,” the assistant said, dissolving my thoughts of Harper.
What was the matter with people? “My daughter is fourteen. She doesn’t do revealing, not even fake revealing.” I turned toward the dressing room. “Amanda,” I shouted. “Get dressed. We’re going somewhere else.” Clearly this store was in the market to dress up little girls like hookers, so we wouldn’t find anything here.
Amanda didn’t speak as she emerged from the changing rooms, walked straight past me and out the door into the heat. I followed her as she headed east.
“Where do you want to go now?” I asked.
“Home.”
“I thought you wanted a dress?”
“Not if you’re going to growl at the clerks and tell me I look slutty in everything.”
I sighed. “I don’t growl.”
She raised her eyebrows at me.
“And you could never look slutty.”
She shook her head. “I’m growing up, Dad. You’ve got to get your head around it.”
I preferred it when Amanda screamed and cried to when she was resigned and disappointed in me. All I wanted was for her to be happy. Dressed in a burka, but happy.
“You know I love you, right?” I asked. “And I just want what’s best for you.”
She shrugged. “It’s just you totally go off the deep end. You can have a conversation with me, you know? Use logic rather than just have a meltdown.”
I tuned into the thump of my footsteps compared to the light patter of hers. “Yeah, you’re right. I could have approached things a different way.” I’d just been so stunned, but I didn’t want a relationship where we were just fighting from now until she went to college. “I just don’t want you growing up too fast, that’s all.”
“I know, Dad. But it’s happening.”
She was turning into my shrink slash daughter. “Okay, well you be patient with me and I’ll try not to have a meltdown. How about that for the terms of a peace treaty?”
“We can try that,” she said, shrugging.
We paused at the corner of Fifty-Sixth and Park. “Serendipity?” I asked.
She nodded. At least that was one thing she hadn’t grown out of. Yet.
“You going to put bricks on my head?” she asked.
I’d teased her when she was younger about stunting her growth. Back then she’d seemed to sprout a foot a month. It was like seeing time pass right in front of my eyes.
“If you had a girlfriend, this would be easier.”
I chuckled, trying to ignore the flashes of Harper’s smile as Amanda said the word girlfriend. “How do you figure?” I asked as Amanda linked her arm through mine.
“She’d tell you that those dresses looked pretty on me,” she said as we crossed the street, trying to dodge the mix of office workers and tourists coming at us from the opposite direction.
“Amanda, you’d look pretty in anything. That’s not the point. A girlfriend wouldn’t change my mind about you wearing clothes meant for women much older than you.” I liked her dressed as she was now, in jeans and a T-shirt.
“But another girl, an adult, might be able to convince you.”
“Honestly, no one would be able to change my mind, and anyway, you have your aunts, and Grandma King and Granny. And your mom. They’re girls.”
“Mom doesn’t count because she’s not here. And you’ve never listened to anything your sisters told you.”
“I listen to Violet.” I couldn’t exactly pinpoint the last time I’d taken her advice, but I was sure there was an example. “And I don�
�t have time for a girlfriend.” I hadn’t even had a chance to speak to Harper or to think what to say when we did speak.
“Grandpa always said you can always find time to do the things you want to do.”
My dad was a very wise man, but I didn’t appreciate his advice in this instance. Maybe because it cut a little too close to the bone.
“You could just agree to go to dinner with Scarlett’s friend.”
“What friend?” I asked as my cell buzzed in my pocket.
“You know, the one Scarlett mentioned earlier?”
I’d clearly tuned out when my sister was speaking. I didn’t remember her mentioning anyone. “I don’t remember.”
“You do. Her friend from college who used to live in LA.” She tugged on my jacket. “Please, Dad?”
“Why is this so important to you?” I didn’t understand why she was so set on me dating. Was she trying to distract me, hoping if I was dating I’d suddenly have a change of heart about the hair dye and appropriate clothing?
She shrugged. “It’s one night out of your life.”
God, she sounded like my mother.
“And I’ll do piano practice for a week without you having to ask. Think of it as the bill of rights to our treaty.”
Maybe having dinner with a woman would get Harper out of my system. She wasn’t the only smart, ballsy, beautiful woman in New York City after all. “I shouldn’t have to force you to do piano.”
“It’s up to you.” She shrugged. “Seems like a sweet deal to me.”
“A month. And you have to drop the whining about the hair dye.”
She grinned up at me. “Deal.”
Anything to keep my daughter happy—well, anything but a short, tight, or low-cut dress for her eighth grade dance.
Chapter Five
Harper
Max. Fucking. King.
I thought I’d hated him before but his assholyness had reached dizzying new heights. I stomped into my bedroom, threw the lid off my laundry basket, and started pulling out things to take to wash. I needed to channel my energy into something productive.
Okay, I had to take responsibility. I’d fucked him. I’d wanted to fuck him. And it had been great—a release, no more than that. It had been amazing, as if he’d known what I needed before I did. And he’d had all the right equipment and he’d known how to use it. But he hadn’t spoken to me since that night two days ago. Hadn’t even looked at me. We’d agreed on Vegas; I’d suggested it. But he didn’t have to ignore me.
Arrogant men should be illegal. Or sent to an island without any women on it to die of sexual frustration.
Coming to my rescue in the gym suggested he wasn’t quite the asshole I thought he was. Then seeing him shirtless, and the way he’d growled at me, like an animal? Well, I don’t know what had come over me, but any willpower I’d had just dissolved, and I’d wanted him.
But what had I been thinking? Fucking my boss was a bad idea for so many reasons. I desperately wanted him to think I was good at my job, not just know my depilatory habits. I’d worked hard for this position, and I didn’t just want him to see me as a piece of ass. I certainly didn’t want it getting out and people to start gossiping about how I was sleeping my way to the top or an easy lay.
Thank God it was Friday and I wouldn’t have to see him for two whole days. Not that I had to worry about that—he’d canceled three meetings with me just to avoid me. Which was the behavior of a fifteen-year-old boy.
It wasn’t as if I’d expected a ring, or dinner. But, hell, a “Hello, how are you, thanks for the hot sex” was surely only polite.
I grabbed my clothes, piled them into a huge Ikea bag, and dumped it by the door, ready to head down to the laundry room. I just had to find the bra I’d taken off in front of the TV earlier that week. As I entered the sitting area, the ceiling rattled with the clip of heels. Jesus, it had only been two days since Max’s dick had been in me, and now he was banging some other girl. I pitied any girl dumb enough to fuck Max King. Which, apparently, included me.
I let out a yell of frustration, then covered my mouth. Had he heard that? I didn’t want him to think I cared if he had another girl in the apartment.
I didn’t give a shit.
But the last thing I wanted to do was sit here listening to my boss fuck someone else. Maybe it wasn’t another woman. Maybe Max liked to dress up. Nothing about that man would surprise me anymore. I smiled, happy with that particular constructed reality.
Feeling under the couch cushions, I grasped a bra strap, then pulled it free and threw it over to join the rest of my laundry. I grabbed my keys from the side table, a report from work, and the detergent I’d bought on my way home from the office. I had at least three loads to do and if I stayed down there, I’d avoid the sexcapades of Max King. As I headed for the elevator, dragging the bag of clothes behind me, the clitter-clatter of heels seemed to follow me out of the door.
The elevator didn’t take as long as usual, and I realized it had come straight from the penthouse. When the doors pinged open I came face to face with the knowledge it hadn’t been Max wearing the high heels after all. There was only one apartment above me, so the woman Max King had just fucked would be standing before me.
I wanted the kind of superpower where I could stop time and rearrange things. Then I could hide and ensure that when the elevator stopped on my floor, the beauty in front of me would wonder why it had stopped at all. Instead, I had to step into the elevator in my sweats, forced to look up to smile when the gorgeous woman said, “Good evening.”
“Hi,” I replied as I discreetly studied her. I’d always wanted to be blonde. I’d tried to dye my hair once, but it just turned out a little like orange cotton candy. At least three inches taller than me, she made me feel like a hobbit standing next to her Arwen. Any moment now she’d ruffle my hair and say, “You’re a dear little thing.”
Max King might be an asshole, but he had great taste in women, even if I did say so myself.
It wasn’t as if I’d expected anything from Max, but it stung a little to run into his latest conquest when he hadn’t even given me the time of day. Asshole.
“Another glamourous Friday night in New York City?” she asked, smiling as she gestured toward my bag of laundry.
What a bitch. She didn’t know I wasn’t going out later with a hot guy or a hotter girl. “Something like that,” I replied. “But better that than waste my time on men who don’t deserve me.”
She laughed. “Yes, doing laundry is preferable to spending time with most of the men I’ve dated.”
Okay, maybe she was being funny rather than bitchy. Did she realize what an asshole Max was? Should I warn her?
“Let’s hope my date tonight raises the bar,” she said. “He seems nice so far, and every now and then you have to take a chance on someone, right?”
I couldn’t reply but smiled manically. She thought Max was nice? Oh yeah, a nice kind of asshole.
The elevator doors opened and she stepped out.
“Enjoy your evening,” she said with a little wave.
Max King was notoriously guarded about his private life. He never mentioned anyone in the articles I’d read about him. It had led to some speculation he was gay. If he was, he certainly did a great impression of a straight man. And he didn’t owe me anything, but just because we’d gone to Vegas, didn’t mean I wanted him making the trip with someone else quite so soon.
When the elevator got to the basement I got out, dragging my laundry behind me. Maybe I should think about trying to sublet my place and move to Brooklyn after all.
I’d dumped my Ikea bag on the floor, muttering to myself, when I realized I wasn’t the only one in the laundry room. A young teen sitting on the long table opposite the washers and dryers caught my eye. I looked up.
“Hi,” I said.
“Hey,” she replied with a smile. Papers on her lap, she looked like she was doing homework.
“Are you hiding?” I asked. I’d loved
escaping from real life at her age. There was never any peace in my house growing up, and I’d longed for quiet.
She furrowed her brow as if thinking hard about my question. “Not really. I’m doing laundry and homework at the same time.”
“You do your own laundry?” I flipped open the washer and began to fish out my towels from the bag.
She shrugged. “Only certain times of the month. When I’m at my dad’s place there are some things . . .”
“I get it. Boys have it easy, huh?”
She rolled her eyes and I wanted to chuckle. She was a pretty girl with olive skin and long dark hair that fell around her shoulders.
“So easy. I mean, no periods? How did God decide that was fair?”
I shut the first washer and flipped open a second. “Well, you’ve got to assume God is a man, right?” I pulled out my colored items and loaded up the machine. “And I guess he understood that men are such babies they wouldn’t be able to cope.”
“Babies is right. They squeal when they don’t get their way, just like infants.”
I laughed. “You’re totally right.”
“And they always think they’re right about everything. My dad went ballistic yesterday because I picked out a dress for my eighth grade dance he didn’t like.” She leaned forward, making circles in the air with her hands. “I told him I’m growing up and that wearing a strapless dress doesn’t make me a slut.”
“No, it doesn’t. But I guess dads have a different view. I can’t say because I didn’t have a father growing up.” I’d always wanted an overprotective father. Someone who would tell my boyfriends to treat me well and keep their hands to themselves. My dad hadn’t known when my eighth grade dance was, let alone had an opinion regarding my dress.
“You didn’t? Did he die?” she asked, seemingly unaware of how personal her question was.
I smiled. “No. He just wasn’t interested in me.”
The girl paused and then said, “Well my dad is entirely too interested. I thought my mom was strict.”
