Kittenfish: An Enemies-to-Lovers Romantic Comedy

by Brenda Lowder

  In seconds he has my bra off, too, and strokes my breasts with greedy hands. He trails kisses down my neck, and I twist in pleasure, my desire climbing like vines curling around us. When he reaches the curve at the base of my throat, he nips me with his teeth. I shiver, my whole body on fire, screaming silently for him. A tiny part of my brain whispers that this is Tarek, and he cannot be trusted. He’s a one-time-use kind of guy, but my body doesn’t care and arches toward him with a hunger I’ve never known.

  He pauses and his sea-green eyes study me. He strokes a hand down my cheek, softly, tenderly. “Marissa.” The way he says my name raises bumps on my skin.

  “Shhh.” I put a finger to his mouth. “No talking.” I pull him down to me and kiss him, taste him, absorb him. He doesn’t get to second-guess this if I don’t.

  I feel the tension in his shoulders relax as he gives in to me. To us. To what we’re about to do.

  The doorbell rings.

  We both freeze. I turn my head toward the door, listening. I don’t hear anything. “They’ll go away.” I pull Tarek down to me once again.

  The doorbell rings a second time.

  “Son of a bitch,” Tarek mutters under his breath. He rises a few inches, bracing himself on his arms, but doesn’t move away.

  We both wait, hoping whoever it is will go away. Then someone knocks on the door, hard, and I worry something might really be wrong. Is the building on fire and not just me? Tarek leans up on one arm, and I wriggle out from under him, grabbing my shirt from the floor and putting it on en route.

  I peer out the peephole. “Holy crap!” I say and lean my back against the wall defensively, my hand over my accelerating heart.

  “What is it?” Tarek sits up on his knees and blinks as if trying to wake up.

  “It’s Liam.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  Liam.

  Seriously? Could this night get any weirder?

  Tarek’s mouth drops open, and he looks as thrown as I am. “What do you mean it’s Liam?”

  “Liam. At the door.” I jerk my thumb behind me to indicate the door at my back as if he needs a visual aid. “This door.”

  He nods mutely, his eyes unfocused. I make a split-second decision and throw the door open.

  Liam pauses mid-knock.

  “What do you want?” I fold my arms across my chest and stare at him.

  His head snaps back in surprise. Did he expect a warmer reception? Or did he think he’d be greeted with tears and recriminations?

  He stands straighter and puts his knocking hand down to his side. “Hello, Marissa.”

  His gaze strays below my chin to observe the bra that I’m not wearing, the absence of which is no doubt obvious in my tight T-shirt.

  “Can I come in?” His eyes dart from my bust to my eyes and back again.

  “O-kay.” I’m too shocked that he’s here to think of a reason against it and hold the door open for him.

  He steps through gingerly, and I wonder at the complete absence of feeling I’m having for him. This is the man who left me the night before my wedding. For a stripper. The man I’d planned to spend my whole life with. The man I’d thought was my soul mate and best friend. The man who was supposed to forsake all others and love only me.

  But he didn’t. He wasn’t. And the only person he forsook was me. After seeing him and his girlfriend dancing in his kitchen, I decided he wasn’t ever any of the things I’d thought he was.

  He didn’t want me? No problem. I don’t want him either.

  Wow, I’m healthy.

  He brushes my arm as he passes me through the doorway, and I feel nothing at the physical contact. My heart is a vacuum. A nice deluxe Dyson. There is only dust and suckage now where the feelings for him used to be.

  “Tarek?” Liam’s mouth falls open when he catches sight of Tarek on the couch. I close the door, and Tarek stands up. My eyes go to his crotch. Is he still sporting a semi?

  Liam glances from Tarek to me, his eyes back on my chest. I want to laugh at his expression. Yes, Liam, I’m making out with the guy who told you to dump me. You were stupid enough to listen.

  “Am I interrupting?” Liam puts his hands in his pockets and raises his eyebrows with a slight smile. He thinks he’s charming, it occurs to me, and I marvel that I don’t agree.

  “Yes!” Tarek folds his arms and answers almost before Liam has finished asking.

  I wave Tarek off. I’m fascinated by Liam, this man I used to love. There were answers I’d wanted from him once. “Have a seat, Liam.”

  I sit in the chair and cross my legs. Ironically, I might be the most emotionally comfortable person in the room right now. I get the sudden urge to giggle. And I want to call Kya to tell her to get her butt over here because there’s no way she’d believe this situation without seeing it.

  Liam shuffles to the couch, and Tarek sits back down on it. Liam’s shoe catches on something, and he bends to pick it up. My bra. He dangles it in his fingers and holds it out to me. “So you two are…” he trails off as he rubs the black satiny fabric between his fingers.

  I start to get up, but Tarek snatches my bra from him before I can. He tosses it in my lap without taking his eyes off Liam. I don’t answer Liam’s half-spoken question. I don’t have to. I don’t owe him any explanations and the expression on his face says he has already made an assumption.

  When the assumption slides home, Liam pivots toward Tarek, and it’s like a bomb goes off. He lunges two steps and punches Tarek in the face.

  Tarek crumples against the sofa and holds his hand to his jaw. “What the hell, man?”

  “You told me!” His face flushed crimson, Liam is panting like he just ran a 5K, and his hands are fisted at his sides.

  “Told you what?”

  “Told me I should take a chance, not be tied down to Marissa my whole life!”

  Okay, maybe some of those words cut through my emotional numbness. I feel a little something now. A very little something.

  “So? You didn’t have to listen.” Tarek skewers him with a look, and his voice is arctic. “If you were a better man, you wouldn’t have.”

  Liam hits Tarek again. This time in his gut, and Tarek strikes out and buries a punch of his own deep into Liam’s side.

  Liam sinks to his knees. “Does she know you told me to leave her?” His voice is a strangled croak.

  “She knows,” I say, digging my fingers into the armrests of my chair. “She doesn’t care.”

  “Then you tricked me,” he throws at Tarek. “So you could have her.”

  A hearty laugh bubbles out of me at the idea. Tarek doesn’t have feelings. Certainly not for me. And not at all, really. Not yet, anyway. He will when he has truly fallen for Giselle. But the last thing he’d have is feelings for me that would have him telling Liam to leave me for a stripper. He did that because he’s the manipulator he’s always been. In spite of what just happened on the couch, I’m not confused on this point like Liam apparently is.

  I step into the middle of the testosterone challenge and help Liam to his feet. “Tarek,” I say to him over my shoulder. “Will you please excuse us? I believe Liam and I have some catching up to do.”

  Tarek gets up with a grunt and backs toward the door, his eyes narrowed on the interloper like he’s reluctant to leave me alone with Liam.

  I turn. “Liam, will you please sit down? I’ll be back in a sec.”

  He hangs his head and ambles to the now vacant sofa. I see Tarek out and walk him into the hallway, pulling the door closed—but not locked—behind me.

  Angling my head at him, I try to think of what to say. In the closet and then again tonight we unearthed a heap of sexual chemistry. There was nothing medium spicy about it. I enjoyed myself—both times—and feel no regret.

  Also, I know Tarek showing up here—and the resulting physicality—doesn’t mean anything. He must have enjoyed our closet interlude last night, too, and come over this evening to close the deal we couldn’t complete at the resta
urant.

  Strangely, I’m okay with that. Even really, really looking forward to that, if I’m honest. As myself, I can just enjoy the Tarek sexual carnival ride without having to school him in love and humanity.

  Giselle is doing that for me.

  Tarek rakes his hand through his hair. He shakes his head then pulls me to him and kisses me roughly on the mouth.

  I’m surprised at first, but I kiss him back, enjoying the crush of his firm body against mine, the smell of citrus and bergamot warm in my nose, the delicious taste of his lips on mine. But I pull away before he does, anxious to go back inside and hear what Liam could possibly have to say for himself after almost two months of domestic bliss with someone who isn’t me. I pull away.

  “Don’t do it.” Tarek’s whispered voice breaks, and his hand is still on my arm, keeping me with him.

  “What?”

  He shakes his head and plants his hand on the wall beside me, blocking my exit to the door. “Don’t take him back.”

  I laugh. I don’t know why he’s pretending he cares, but he’s cracking me up.

  He furrows his brow, and his sea-green eyes darken with intensity. “I’m serious. Don’t take him back.”

  “Oh, okay,” I say lightly, smiling.

  “Promise me.”

  I let go of my smile and step out of the circle he’s corralled me in. “Why are you being so weird?”

  His expression looks startled, haunted. When he speaks he sounds like he’s been punched in the gut again, surprised and pained. “I…have no idea.”

  I laugh again and swat him on the arm. He looks miserable.

  But I leave him in the hallway and go back inside.

  When I reenter my apartment, Liam isn’t where I left him. Seeing the empty couch, my heart leaps past several beats with the feeling that he’s left me again.

  I guess I do feel something.

  The sounds of ice cubes falling into a glass and water following tell me Liam has helped himself to a glass of water in my kitchen without asking me. A blaze of fury flashes though me. He used prior knowledge—where the glasses are kept, how hard to press the ice dispenser button, that the water on the fridge door is filtered and delicious—knowledge he obtained when we were together to acquire this glass of water. We are not together now. I have an almost overwhelming urge to knock the glass out of his hand and watch it shatter on the floor.

  He must guess some of my thoughts from the look on my face because the second he steps into the living room he says, “Marissa, I’m sorry,” and sounds like he means it.

  I squeeze my hands into fists. “Are you sorry for leaving me, punching Tarek, or stealing that glass of water?”

  He looks at the glass in his hand with confusion but grabs a coaster and sets it down anyway. “All of it.” He clears his throat and stands up straighter. “All the reasons.”

  I nod, thinking, and hug my arms to my stomach. I start to pace, and Liam stands uncertainly at the edge of the living room.

  “I thought you had a new girlfriend. Does she care that you’re visiting your ex-fiancée?”

  Liam folds his arms and doesn’t quite meet my eyes.

  “We broke up.”

  I pace to the farthest corner of the room. “How sad for you. What would that be like?”

  He doesn’t mistake my tone for sincerity. “Listen, Marissa, I’m sorry.”

  I stop my pacing. “So you said.”

  He takes a step toward me, but I warn him away with a look, and he freezes. “What can I do?”

  “What can you do? Are you crazy? You can go back in time and not wreck us. Not tear my heart to pieces with zero explanation. Not throw away my love like it was nothing.”

  I feel the claw of tears on the back of my throat, but I will not give in to them. I will not let Liam see he has broken me. I saw how happy he was with his stripper in the kitchen of his house. Let him believe Tarek and I are a thing. Maybe he’ll feel a speck of the pain that I have felt.

  Remorse breaks across his face. “Marissa, I’m sorry.” His words are choked and low.

  I sink down on the couch, exhausted. “Why did you break up with her?”

  His lips press into a straight line. He doesn’t want to answer. I start to get up. I’m not interested in anything but the whole truth from him.

  He sits in the chair and digs his fingers into the armrests. “She left me.”

  “She left you?” I snort, and he winces. A beat goes by with neither of us saying anything.

  “I heard you were happy. Blaire saw you at a Mexican restaurant and said the two of you were happy together.” I don’t tell him I saw the evidence of it myself from his backyard.

  “I thought we were. I was wrong.” His mouth pulls downward, and of course I wonder if the only reason he is here at all is because she left him.

  I nod and pull my feet up onto the couch. I’d been wrong too. I’d thought he loved me. Now we are both broken.

  He clears his throat and steeples his fingers. “So are you with Tarek now?” His eyes stray to my bra that’s now draped across the coffee table.

  “Sort of.” I have no desire to define Tarek’s and my brief physical relationship to Liam.

  He shakes his head. “That’s a mistake, Rissa.”

  “No.”

  “No what?”

  “You don’t get to call me that. And you don’t get to tell me who I can sleep with.”

  His expression is pained. His eyes blink longer than necessary. “Sorry. But I care about you, and it’s a mistake to be with Tarek. We both know what a player he is. The man will use you and throw you away. You know this. You know how he is.”

  I nod. “Yes. I know how he is. And I also thought I knew how you were.”

  He scoots forward and his voice picks up volume. “The whole reason I did what I did”—he struggles over saying the words—“is that Tarek made me.”

  I snort a laugh for the second time in the same conversation. “Tarek the Devil made you do it? That’s your defense? Tarek didn’t make you do anything. And if whatever he said to you really did make you leave me, then that’s even worse. It means you’re a weak man who’d leave his fiancée at the altar because somebody else told him to.”

  Even though I’m punishing Tarek for exactly that reason, Liam deserves blame too. He’s the one who actually did the leaving. He’s the one who broke us. He’s the one who had sex with a stripper on what would’ve been our wedding day.

  I’ve had enough. “Get out.” I stand up.

  He doesn’t move. “Marissa, wait.”

  I stomp over to him. “I said get out. Do I have to call my boyfriend, Tarek, back to come kick you out?”

  Liam stands and blanches. “He’s your boyfriend?”

  “Not exclusively—I’m dating a guy named Brandon too. I’m keeping my options open. I learned something last time about not committing too fully.” I tilt my chin and silently dare him to criticize me. He looks away first, and I shepherd him toward the door. “Just go.”

  He holds a hand out to me, stalling. “Take me back.”

  “No.”

  “Give me another chance. Make me one of your options.”

  “No. You had all the chances.” As the truth of that hits me, I feel a lump in my throat for what we once were. I miss him. I miss how safe I felt when I was with him. I miss the security of him, even if it was only ever in my mind.

  “I know. And I don’t deserve another chance, but one date. Give me just one date, and we’ll go from there. We have so much more to talk about.”

  I pause with my hand on the door, and he seizes on my hesitation.

  “It’ll be worth it.” His voice is low, and his eyes are pleading. My hardened ice-encrusted heart melts just enough.

  “Okay. One date.”

  He grins at me, and I see a trace of the man I loved. “Wonderful. Thank you.” Before I can duck, he kisses my cheek and is out the door.

  I lock it behind him and slide down to the familiar f
loor.

  Liam is here. And begging for me to take him back. For some reason I’m not half as happy about it as I thought I’d be.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Tarek Oliver

  What is love?

  Whoa. Enterprising start. I rub my hands together. “Giselle” is starting to pay off.

  Giselle Bisset

  I think it’s when you can’t imagine living your life without the other person in it.

  Tarek Oliver

  Have you ever been in love?

  Giselle Bisset

  Far too many times.

  Tarek Oliver

  What do you do to solve it?

  Solve it? Oh, this man has no clue. I mean, I knew he had no clue as to any real feeling or sensitivity in his own life, but hasn’t he watched a movie? A classic romantic comedy? Does he know who Tom Hanks is? Surely he knows what love is supposed to be.

  Giselle Bisset

  Solve it?

  Tarek Oliver

  Yeah. To get over it. Get it out of your system so you can go back to being normal.

  Oh, this is going so much better than I thought. He’s talking like a lovesick teenager. A clueless lovesick teenager. He’s developed real, actual feelings for Giselle and doesn’t know how to handle them, so he’s asking her for advice. Or, even better, he’s telling her indirectly how he already feels. And this is what I want. It really is. The make-out sessions in the closet and on the couch were just physical. The same stuff Tarek always does. It has nothing to do with who we are and what we want for our own lives, our own separate futures.