by Sophie Kent
The look on her face was as blank as a page of copier paper.
Susan realized that she was rounding the final turn in her story--dinner with Kevin, him saying he was over her and had moved on, and her going, drunk, to Francesca Costa’s apartment.
When she was finished she sat back down in the chair, exhausted, and waited for Liz to react. She would no doubt chastise Susan for ever sleeping with Kevin, but she would understand and help her figure things out. Liz was always on her side, always there when she needed her.
She was glaring at Susan like she could kill her.
“I can’t believe how dumb you are!”
“Huh?”
Liz stood and started pacing the floor like a caged tiger. “He’s been in love with you since the moment he laid eyes on you. Only a complete idiot could’ve missed that!”
“You’re way off base.” Susan couldn’t believe her ears. Liz was pissed at her? Calling her dumb and an idiot?
“And you’re deeply stupid!”
Stupid! What the hell was going on? Her best friend was on Kevin’s side?
“Kevin is not in love with me. Lust...he’s definitely in lust with me, but--”
Liz turned mid pace and rounded on Susan. “Look, sweetie, I’m not going to sugarcoat this for you. Kevin worships the ground you walk on. Always has, and I suspect he always will. And that was fine, as long as you kept it strictly platonic. But you didn’t. You slept with the poor slump. Well, I guess he’s not a slump anymore. More of a lean, handsome stud. But you slept with him...” Her eyebrows knitted in contemplation. “How many times?”
Susan was so taken aback by this question she answered it before she could help herself. “Twelve times.”
“No way!” Liz shrieked. “You were only down there for a couple of days!”
Susan shrugged, all pretense gone.
“Okay. So you two...fucked like bunnies in a tropical paradise, giving Kevin what he’s always wanted, in spades.” Liz walked over to Susan, leaning in until their noses were about to touch. “And he hasn’t called you since, not once in six months, right?”
Susan had taken a deep breath, ready to refute whatever Liz was trying to get at. But it was true. They’d made love--a lot--and it hadn’t just been sex, and she knew it. Then he’d left when Liz arrived, and he hadn’t called her in six long, torturous months.
Susan nodded.
“Sounds like a man in love, licking his wounds.” Liz took a step back and lifted her head, giving Susan an appraising look, the kind she usually only gave to newly acquired art work, or very short men who were hitting on her. “Tell me I haven’t over estimated your intelligence.”
That stung. “Hey! It was all your idea.”
But Liz’s expression didn’t change, she wasn’t being funny, just deadly serious. “I told you to find some random stud and fuck your brains out. I didn’t tell you to get involved with Kevin. That’s the worst idea I’ve ever heard.”
Susan looked away, down to the floor. Was Liz right? Had Kevin been in love with her all these years? Was she really so moronic and self-involved that she couldn’t tell?
That would be a yes.
“So, Kevin’s in love with me.” The sentence tumbled from her lips.
“Yep.”
Susan shook her head, lost. “What do I do now?”
Liz’s expression finally softened, and she smiled as she stepped forward and gave Susan a long hug.
“Admitting you have a problem is the first step,” Liz intoned in her best twelve-step sponsor voice, and Susan laughed, though tears were brimming in her eyes. Liz let Susan go and walked over to her desk, pulling a bottle of single malt whiskey out of a drawer and two crystal rocks glasses. “First, you belt back one of these.” She poured three fingers in each glass. “And then you ask yourself if you love him.”
Susan shook her head. “Of course, I love Kevin.”
Liz tilted her head again, and her blue eyes sparkled. “Yeah, you love him like a friend. That’s established. Now you gotta see whether you love-love him. Are you in love...with him, and not just his cock--”
“Liz!”
“Or with that amazing body? Did I mention him being hot and handsome too?”
“Liz...”
Liz handed Susan her glass, and chugged hers straight back in typical Liz fashion. “The point is, you’ve got to figure that out, and quick, before you hurt him.”
Susan just stared at Liz after that last bit. Before you hurt him.
“Since when did you start caring what happens to Kevin?” Susan said, expecting some bitchy, funny comeback. Like owner loyalty: he has been your stalker for a lot of years, or call it my good deed for the year. But Liz just looked Susan in the eye and gave it to her straight.
“Ever since he stood by my best friend in her time of need.” Liz clinked her glass against Susan’s. “He picked her up and put her back together again.”
Chapter 14
SUSAN HADN’T REALIZED SHE’D even left Liz’s office until she was outside on the street and a cab driver started talking to her. Well, shouting at her.
“Lady! Are you getting in or not?”
Susan looked down at his thick, ruddy face and shook her head, looking around her, feeling completely lost and utterly confused.
“I need to walk...” Susan said, yet she just stood there, not moving a muscle, staring straight ahead as the cabby called her a few nasty names and took off with a squeal of tires.
Looking up at the bright, sunlit sky line, she recognized the tower of glass and steel that she worked in. She needed to go there. She needed to start work. She walked slowly as if in a dream, as if there were twenty pound weights on her ankles, toward her tower of steel and glass.
The usual blasting, shrieking sounds of the city seemed muted out to the point they sounded miles away. And even as slow as she was walking, no one seemed to be bumping into her, as if she really wasn’t there.
Maybe she’d fallen or stepped into another universe where no one could see her?
Except for cab drivers?
Something was glittering in her peripheral vision. She turned her head and found that she was walking by a large, splendid fountain, replete with harp bearing cupids and even a half-man, half-goat with a pan flute.
Of course, Susan was pretty sure the fountain had neither cupids or flute-wielding goat men. She’d passed this fountain numerous times and had never noticed anything of the kind.
Looking from the goat man to the cupid closest to her, she remembered what Liz had said. He’s been in love with you since the moment he laid eyes on you.
“Kevin’s in love with me.”
It wasn’t a question. It was now a fact. It hadn’t just been a lust thing, or solace, or anything she’d been telling herself for the last six months, things she’d told herself just to get by. No. Kevin was in love with her.
Was she in love with him? She shook her head, miserable and not knowing what her answer would be. He was the best man she’d ever known, and she never felt better than when she was talking to him. She never felt more than when he was with her. And she’d never felt so engulfed in lust and want than when she’d been with him in Cancun.
Another question came to her. Is he still in love with me?
The thought that he might not be struck her in the chest, making it hard to breathe. He’d said he’d moved on, and that he was over her. Maybe that meant he was in love with someone else. Maybe there was someone besides Francesca Costa? Maybe they were planning on getting married and running off to the same Cancun beach, and to their own Virgin Drop!
No! Susan’s hands were in tight, white knuckled fists on her knees. He had to still be in love with her. There couldn’t be anyone else, there just couldn’t...
“Miss...Miss, are you all right?”
Susan looked up into the prettiest golden eyes she’d ever seen. The woman who owned them looked to be in her late sixties, and her shiny gray hair was pulled back into a neat braid. Sh
e had two small children at her side and a large canvas satchel slung over her shoulder.
Susan nodded, but no words would come out.
The woman leaned down, looked hard into Susan’s eyes, and shook her head doubtingly. “You don’t look good to me. Maybe your sugar’s low.” She reached into the satchel and pulled out a juice box, wrenching the straw free and expertly stabbing it into the box. “Drink this,” she said, handing it to Susan. “It’ll make you feel better.
The old woman’s smile was not only sweet, but it gleamed white and girlishly youthful.
As the woman and what looked like her two grandchildren strolled away, Susan found herself knowing the answer to her own question.
Did she love Kevin? Yes. Most definitely, most positively, yes.
But was he still in love with her? If he wasn’t, then she was going to win him back...and tonight.
###
Susan waltzed through her workday. Meetings flew by. She demolished her workload during lunch--a turkey and Swiss on whole wheat--then called Kevin at Costa Consortium, insisting that he come to dinner with her. “I promise not to drink a single drop of alcohol.”
Reluctantly, Kevin agreed. He’d sounded put upon. As if having dinner with her again would be an imposition. Susan bit her lip in angst, yet cheerfully ignored his reluctance, telling him to meet her at her favorite Italian Mom and Pop restaurant.
Susan was already planning what she’d wear. A nice blouse, something silky, unbuttoned just so. A skirt of proper shortness that she would look sexy in, yet not like a street walker. And black leather sling-backs with the two-inch heels. They’d lengthen her legs without the pain or gracelessness as her fuck-me pumps from the night before.
She’d look sensational.
She was in the elevator, weighing having her hair up or down, heading to the lobby from the twenty-second floor, when two secretaries from the twentieth floor got on the elevator. They were chattering away, office gossip or some sort of foolishness. Susan had to really concentrate to get back to her inner hairdo debate. And she heard the words “opera house.”
This caught her attention.
The next few words whizzed by Susan without any comprehension, but she heard, “So the board already made their decision?”
Susan’s heart thumped hard against her chest. She shouldn’t be hearing this. It was unethical, possibly illegal. But she couldn’t bring herself to do anything but stand back and listen to the gossiping secretaries. She recognized one of them from the city council meeting. The blonde with the extremely long neck and even longer legs.
“Well, not officially. They can’t say that until the bids have all gone through accounting and logistical testing.” The blonde leaned in to the other secretary and said in a confidential voice, “But the Maestro is in love with the design from Costa Consortium.”
Susan’s heart stopped beating, and her blood turned cold. But Maestro Rossi doesn’t have the final say!
“The old goat really has that much clout?”
The blonde smiled slyly. “You’d be surprised. The man gets whatever he wants, if you get my meaning.”
The other secretary blushed and both women started giggling. “You are a complete slut! And he’s sooo old.”
Wistfully the city council secretary fanned herself with her hand. “Yeah, but he’s Italian, and what he can do with just his fingers...”
“You’re disgusting.”
The elevator stopped. The two secretaries moved like feral cats out the sliding doors and through the lobby. Susan stood, still too stunned to move or to think, or to even breathe. The door closed, and she fell back against the chrome paneling of the elevator.
Might as well be a pine box. She closed her eyes and wrapped her arms around herself.
The elevator stayed perfectly still for over a minute. The whole time Susan kept telling herself, No, no, no.
The doors slid open again and the setting sun was shining off the highly polished floor of the lobby. A woman in a tank top and shorts, with an iPod in her ears, wrestled a large potted fern into the elevator, instantly making the box feel like a claustrophobic jungle.
Susan slipped out through the flora and staggered into the light. The world had never looked so bright, or so cruel.
###
Kevin stood outside Leo and Kate’s Italian Ristorante a half an hour, pacing, waiting for Susan. It had just rained, and his shoes made strange scuffing sounds every time he had to turn around. He was pacing because he was nervous, not because he was waiting. He was nervous because Susan was going to try and seduce him again. That was a given, after the vamp getup the night before, and the lust he’d seen in her eyes before she’d gotten all wasted.
He wasn’t up for this. And if that was all she wanted from him, she could forget it.
Yet he was there, waiting exactly where she’d told him to wait, like an obedient dog. Or maybe an obedient sex slave.
No, no. He would not let that happen again. That part was over. Over. For good.
But the bulge in Kevin’s breast pocket--the ring in its little box--reminded him that part of him had hope. Had hope that Susan would look at him differently. He remembered the way she’d looked at him in Cancun. It hadn’t been just sex. It had been a whole lot more. It was almost...
He shook the thought out of his head. Thunder chorused in the distance. More rain...
Fifteen minutes later Kevin had called both Susan’s home phone and her cell, and had texted her. No answer to any of it. He caught a cab over to her place, part of him worried that he couldn’t get a hold of her, part of him pissed that she’d stood him up, but there was a part that thought it was all some game. Susan had never seemed like the game playing type, but who’s to say what effect having your groom stand you up on your wedding day can have.
If it was a game, a trick to get him alone in her apartment, to try to get him back in her bed--what would it be like to have her in her own bed?--he wouldn’t fall for it, he wouldn’t be her sex toy.
But again...
No. He would find Susan, make sure she was okay, and he’d head back to his hotel room, to a nice, long, cold shower.
When the cab pulled up to Susan’s apartment building the lights of her apartment were dark. Kevin jumped out of the cab and jogged up the outside steps to the building. He rang her buzzer, then a few seconds later rang it again. Still no answer. He rang that stupid buzzer over and over again.
He started to think bad thoughts. What if she’s hurt or sick? There could’ve been a break in, or a leaky gas valve, or she could’ve fallen trying to walk in another pair of those ridiculous high heels.
Kevin started ringing all the apartments, a trick he’d seen in a movie once. There were a dozen voices squawking at him, cutting in and out like a radio. Then he heard the click of the security door. He slid inside the entry hall and bolted up the stairs. His heart was beating hard, and his breathing was like he’d run a marathon. He was at Susan’s door, beating on it, calling out her name, before he even realized he was doing it. Still no answer.
He was just about to take his shoulder to the door and break it down when he heard the door across the hall open with some clicks, a whine, and some metallic scratching. A woman who looked to be in her forties stood there wearing a blood red silk robe, open wide to reveal a matching lace negligee. She held a twenty dollar bill between her red manicured fingers. When she saw Kevin, her ruby lips stiffened into a hard line and she hastily pulled the robe around her, suddenly modest.
“Jesus.” She tried to laugh, but she was obviously too stunned to play the scene off. “I thought you were the delivery man.”
Kevin shook his head. He could already picture the scene, especially the extra tip she would give the delivery guy.
“Pizza?” Kevin asked, not really knowing what else to say.
“Chinese.” The woman blushed as she looked down the hall and back to Kevin. “You looking for Susan?”
“Yes!” Kevin sounded too damn exc
ited. The woman probably thought he was some demented stalker. “I mean, we were supposed to meet about an hour ago.”
“Well, I saw her lugging some suitcases down the stairs about two hours ago. Said she had to get away.”
Luggage? Had to get away? What the hell was happening?
Kevin thanked the woman in red and trudged down the hall. How could Susan want to see him one minute, then run away, with luggage, the next? It didn’t make any sense. Of course, she’d stopped making sense to Kevin six months ago.
But there was someone who understood Susan perfectly, better than anyone else. Kevin pulled out his cellphone and scrolled through his contacts until he found her name. He hadn’t called since Cancun, and he’d forgotten he’d put it under Evil Bitch Monster of Death instead of her name. Liz answered on the third ring.
###
Liz had just had energetic, if not downright mind bending, sex with a hot bartender she’d met a couple hours prior. He was twenty-three, Russian or something close, and his accent had been so thick she could hardly understand him. But his face had been handsome, not beautiful, the face of a man, and his hands had been the hands of a man. Strong and thick, and they’d know exactly what they were doing as he pulled her clothing off without ripping or popping one of her seams or buttons. And when he’d gotten naked, his body had been to die for. His manhood had not only taken Liz’s breath away, but had driven her to yelling out in orgasmic ecstasy for well over an hour.
He’d written his number on a McDonald’s receipt and handed it to her, with a deep, delicious kiss and a few dirty sounding words. Liz hadn’t the faintest idea what they meant. He stepped into his jeans and hopped as he pulled them up; his firm young body jiggled, as did his still huge, yet sated penis.
And that’s when Liz’s cellphone rang. Loser by Beck shrieked from the phone. She’d forgotten that she’d put that as Kevin’s personal ring tone.
She rolled her eyes and reached for the phone, watching the hot bartender walk out of her apartment with his t-shirt draped over his shoulder. She licked her lips, pushed away the warm, pulsing feeling the sight of him evoked in her, then answered the phone.
