by Paige North
Almost anything.
While I work from home all day, I can hear Bailey having a tough time with Olivia. Those teeth are coming in something fierce, and the little thing can scream her head off. After she finally falls asleep, I come prowling around Bailey’s room. The first few days of this ongoing sex streak, she comes looking for me, all gung-ho into it. But lately, it’s been me seeking her out.
I knock and open the door. She’s wrapped in a towel. “You look hot.”
She smirks, no smile. Instead, she walks around the room, throwing a brush here, tossing a hair clip there. “I can’t find my fucking round brush for blow-drying.”
Bailey, cursing? Doesn’t happen often. “Why do you need it? You look sexy as fuck just like that with your hair all wet.”
Another smirk from her.
A red flag goes up. Maybe it’s that time of the month. “You okay, sweetheart?”
She sinks into the edge of the bed and crosses her arms and legs. Serious shit’s coming. I can feel it. And this is how the honeymoon phase begins to end. “Why do you call me sweetheart?” she asks, a seemingly innocent question—but somehow it makes the earth vibrate beneath my feet.
“Because it’s my name for you, and you love it. You don’t want me calling you sweetheart anymore? Fine, sourheart. Better?” I laugh, but she doesn’t think it’s funny.
“I used to love it,” she says, her foot shaking violently up and down. “I don’t know why it bothers me now.”
“Fine, then I’ll stop.” I walk up to her and brush her hair back behind her neck. She takes my hand, waits a moment while she decides what the hell’s bothering her, then lo and behold…shoves my hand away like it’s a snake about to bite her. “What the fuck, Bailey?”
“What the fuck, Zayden?” She stands and begins pacing. “What the fuck is that we’ve been doing this every night for what? Almost three weeks now? And I don’t know…”
“You don’t know? What is it you don’t know?”
“I don’t know what we’re doing. I mean, is this all there is? You come to my room at night, take what you want, then rinse and repeat?”
“You take just as much from me,” I reply. “Nobody’s forcing you to be with me, Bailey. If you don’t want me coming anymore, I won’t. End of story.” I head out of the room. I don’t need this shit, and this is why I don’t do relationships—complication.
“No, that’s not it. That’s what you don’t understand,” she says, moving toward me. “I do love us spending time together, but we only see each other at night, in private, and that’s it.”
I turn and face her, my patience waning. “What do you want from me? I’m a busy man.”
She scoffs. “Yeah. Okay.”
“You don’t believe me?”
“Remember when you started working from home? Remember the day we went out shopping and spent the day together?” Her eyes plead with me to remember. I do. I’m just trying to forget the happiness I felt that day. It was most certainly only temporary. “Why can’t we do that again?” she asks.
“So you want to go shopping again? This is about shopping.”
Her face contorts. “Jesus, Zayden, you don’t get it! Didn’t you love that day? Don’t you want to go out again?” She paces again and then she stops, facing me. “I’m starting to feel that you’re just using me.”
“I’m not and you know it.”
“Do I?” she scoffs. “How should I know it? When all the signs point to you using me for sex. You know how I know? Because I won’t tell my parents about you, about us. For weeks, I’ve been wanting to tell them that we’re involved with each other, that I think I’ve met a great guy. Then I stop and think, no I haven’t.”
“Nice. Very nice. Stick a knife in my belly while you’re at it.”
“Truth hurts, Zayden. We haven’t even gone out on a single date. This…you, me…it’s nothing. This nightly thing we’re doing might be fun, but it amounts to nothing in the grand scheme of things.”
I knew it’d come to this. It always does. It’s a shame because I really like Bailey. I run a hand through my hair. Because I know I can’t give her what she wants. She wants a boyfriend. “What you’re asking from me, it’s not possibly.”
“Why not? What’s so bad about going out and getting to know each other—and I mean knowing something besides what turns you on? We fall asleep afterwards. We never talk. That’s not how I was raised, Zayden. I love making love to you, but I need more. I deserve more.”
“That’s not my problem,” I say flatly.
Her mouth hangs open. Yeah, I sound like a dick, but I never told her I was open to “more.” I don’t do “more.” She knew that from the beginning. Why is this such a shock to her? “You know what you were getting with me, Bailey.”
Her eyes are watery now. “That may be true, but I thought maybe things were changing. Don’t you feel them changing? The last few times we’ve been in bed have been…I don’t know…different. You told me two months ago that you don’t make love. That you ‘fuck.’ Well, that’s changed, Zayden. Tell me your feelings haven’t changed. If you tell me they haven’t, then I won’t bring this up ever again.”
They have changed.
Absolutely. And that’s why I didn’t want to get involved. Now, I feel like I’m falling for her, a dangerous result, one I’d warned myself about a dozen times. “What do you want from me?” I ask again. I want to hear it clearly.
“I don’t want to be your dirty little secret anymore,” she says. “That’s how I feel. You come here at night, we do things, and then in the morning, the ladies come to the house, and I’m just a nanny again. Every night, you make me Cinderella. And every night, my carriage turns back into a pumpkin. For just once, I wish we’d go for a wild ride in that damn carriage.”
I thought she was going to say for once, she’d like the slipper put on her foot and have a happily ever after. That, I can’t do. Commitment from me is out of the question. But I can take her on the wild ride. I don’t have a problem with anyone seeing us together. My friends are used to seeing me with different women anyway. I’m allowed to like some more than others.
“Then, there’s Olivia,” she adds before I can get in another word.
“What about her?”
“I want…” She hesitates. “I want you to consider keeping her. She’s your daughter and she’s grown to love you so much. Don’t you see it in her eyes whenever you—”
“No.” This is where I put my foot down. Courting her, taking her on dates is one thing, but turning me into a family man is not something I will ever bend to. I stand at the window staring into the Upper West Side. “I won’t do it.”
Even behind me, I can hear her sigh. “I can’t stand this cold side of you, Zayden. I don’t know why you do this.”
“Well, get used to it,” I say, spinning around and heading for the door. This whole conversation has ruined my mood. “Look,” I tell her, pausing at the door. “You’re not my dirty secret. Let’s take it public, I’m fine with that. But I’m warning you, that’s as far as I’ll go.”
She crosses her arms. “Honestly, with an attitude like that, I’m not sure I even want you to take me out anymore. You’re being a dick again.”
“I’d rather be a dick than a liar. Plenty of guys lie straight to your face then act different the moment you turn around. Look, a few weeks ago, you asked me on the roof if something ever happened to me. I never answered. But you need to understand that some people are fucked up for life, okay? And I’m one of them.”
She stands in the middle of the room hugging herself in the chilly draft. “Whatever you’ve been through can be overcome. People do it all the time. They learn to love and move on.”
“Not everyone. And not me.”
“Will you ever tell me what happened?” she asks, her tone softening.
“Not today. Get to sleep. Tomorrow we have a big day ahead of us.”
“Where are we going?”
“It’s
a surprise.” And she’s going to love it.
Bailey
I’m standing on a tarmac. About to get on a small jet plane—a G7.
Had Zayden told me ahead of time that he’d be taking me on a plane ride, I would’ve locked myself in Olivia’s room, handcuffed myself to her crib. When I said I wanted him to take me on dates, I meant like The Cheesecake Factory or a Mets game. I didn’t think we’d board a private jet piloted by Zayden Hawthorn himself and fly over the Hudson River Valley.
“Since when do you know how to fly?” I follow him up the aluminum steps. Toward impending doom. I’m going to die today. It was nice knowing everyone.
“I didn’t think I should open a private jet rental business without actually knowing how to fly.”
“Make sense.” I swallow hard, my stomach twisting with anxiety.
He leads me into the cockpit where he turns on a few switches. “I’ve had a license for eight years now, Bailey. You can relax.” The panel has a bunch of controls, buttons, levers, switches, and my stomach starts to hurt. Seatbelts too, which strikes me as funny, because if the plane goes down, I’m not sure how the seatbelt is supposed to help. “Come on, let me show you the back.”
He leads me out of the cockpit and into the fuselage. “Holy hell, it’s the Ritz Carlton in plane form.” My eyeballs nearly fall out. There’s leather seats, coffee tables, sinks, sofas, flowers in a vase, and… “Is that champagne?”
“Yes, it is. Would you like some?” He begins unwrapping the bottle and uncorks it like a pro. I cover my ears and shriek like a total girl, as he pours champagne into a glass that probably costs more than my old laptop.
I sip it, enjoying the tickly bubbles under my nose. I’m grateful that Zayden isn’t having any himself, considering he’s going to be piloting this hunk of metal through the air. “Is this a typical plane you rent out in your business?” I don’t know anything about planes, but this one is gorgeous—sleek and sexy. If I was a famous rock star and I was late to my concert in LA, I’d want someone to take me there in this baby.
“Yes, we have G6s and G7s, and some bigger planes for larger groups. Did you want to lounge back here for a while or come with me where the action happens?” he asks. “In the cockpit, I mean.”
My eyes widen even more.
“Do you want to watch me pilot?” he clarifies once and for all. “Come on, dirty girl.” He squeezes my waist, wrapping his arms around me, and kisses my cheek. His warm breath so near my ear makes me wish someone else were piloting so we could fool around in the back and join the Mile High Club.
But considering I nearly accused him of using me only for sex last night, it makes sense that today he’s focused on showing me around. I’m grateful for it, and by the time we sit, put our headsets on, and Zayden says all the things he’s supposed to say to the air traffic controllers to get him ready for takeoff, I’m no longer mad at him.
I’m in awe.
Seeing him outside of the home, in control of this aircraft, really changes things. I’ve been living inside of a bubble for two months now, and sometimes I forget that Zayden has a life outside that bubble. In his nice shirt, jeans, wearing that sexy watch and pushing all those buttons, he’s a man in charge. My life is in his hands.
His hand reaches over and rests on my knee. “Bailey…it’s okay. You’re safe with me.”
I nod. “I know.”
Finally, it’s take-off, and the engines scream, revving up that potential energy you feel right before you race down the runway on a commercial flight. My nerves are in my throat. I’ve never liked flying, but I have to push out of my comfort zone and try new things. How many people can say that their boyfriends fly a private jet? Not many. Every so often, I steal glances at Zayden, so handsome and sexy, hands on the controls, eyes vigilant as he controls the aircraft.
Is he my boyfriend?
The status still isn’t clear, but at least we’re out together.
We soar over the countryside and Hudson River, the hum of the engines a steady ambient white noise. He switches between talking to the air traffic controllers and talking to me, and he tells me when we can speak to each other through the headsets.
“So?” he asks.
“It’s amazing. Really amazing. Look at all those houses. Those cars look like little ants.”
He nods. “You know my favorite part?” he asks, like a child with a glint in his eyes. “Going through the clouds. It blows my mind every time, that we’re that high up, close enough to touch them.”
“Please don’t touch them,” I say, gripping the armrests. “Please keep your hands on the steering wheel.”
“On the control wheel,” he corrects. “Here, see this? This is the altitude indicator. And this, these are the navigation controls. This is your radar, this is the throttle, and these are the rudder/brake pedals.”
“What’s this?” I point to a panel in the middle displaying a bunch of graph lines.
“That shows you how hot you think I am. See how the needle keeps going up?” He gives me a slight arrogant smirk. “Damn, slow down, Bailey, or you’re going to start melting.”
“Ah, thanks for clarifying. I thought that was your bullshit meter,” I say with a straight face. “Watch out. It’s going off the charts!”
Suddenly, the plane dips and rights itself again. I shriek, my nails digging into Zayden’s jeans. “What’d you do that for? Please, don’t. Please don’t do that.”
“Let’s not forget who’s in control here.”
Yes, it’s hard to forget. He pretty much runs the show. My life is in his hands, I get it. He gets to decide if he’s going to keep Olivia, he gets to decide if he’s going to fire me or keep me at my job, and he gets to decide how far we go in this relationship. What happens if his decisions don’t suit me? Do I want to keep having sex with Zayden night after night without delving deeper into a more serious relationship?
How far do we go before I start demanding more again?
I don’t want to ask about that now while we’re having a good time, but if things get more serious, I’ll need to know. I can deal with him not being Olivia’s primary caretaker if and when her mother gets out of prison, but I can’t deal with him not taking an active part in her life. I don’t just mean sending her money either. I mean having a visitation schedule, seeing her regularly, and fighting the courts for more access to his daughter.
This relationship is twisted and unhealthy in some ways, but I can’t stop the way I feel about him. Those emotions aren’t just physical either. There’s something between us that neither of us can fathom or understand. If I tell my friends about Zayden and me now, they’ll only say I feel that way because he’s my first. They’ll say that being Olivia’s nanny and being with her father in the same house pretending as though we were a family is dangerous. That I’m only setting myself up for hurt.
Maybe I am.
But that doesn’t mean I can just flip a switch and stop either.
About halfway to our destination near Bear Mountain, Zayden says, “Put your hands on the controls like this. You’re going to fly.”
“What? No way, Zayden!”
“Just do it, Bailey. Nothing’s gonna happen. Come on. Like this. Look at my hands.” He shows me how to hold the controls and then dips it forward and back again ever so slightly. “Do that and you’ll feel the pull.”
“Oh, my God, I hate you right now,” I say, putting my hands where he tells me and following his instructions. Warm hands rest over mine, showing me how to push forward on the controls. I feel the plane dip then he pulls back again.
“See? You’re flying. Still hate me?”
“No. Oh, my God, I can’t believe I’m doing this.” But I do, and the more I do it, it gets easier and less scary, and besides, it only lasts a couple of minutes. My heart pounds inside my chest but I feel amazing.
When we land, immediately there’s a fancy black sports convertible waiting for us. We drive around, ending up at a small town called Cold S
pring where we have lunch and walk around. For once, there’s no baby between us in public. Just us, buying hot chocolate and checking out a bunch of antique stores along the way. Zayden holds my hand, and for a day at least, it feels like I have a boyfriend.
Dare I say it feels normal? Like we’ve known each other our whole lives?
How did I live before meeting Zayden? I almost can’t remember.
With a guy like Zayden, I’d never get bored. We’d always find some new place to fly off to, have new experiences, and find new things to talk about. I’m usually cautious with relationships and putting myself out there. It’s the reason I haven’t had a boyfriend yet. But damn, I have to say…if this is how it is? I could get used to it.
When we finally arrive back home after a long day of plane rides, car rides, and more car rides back to the city, it’s nearly midnight, and I’m officially bushed. The babysitter says goodbye, tells us that Olivia’s first tooth came in, and that she had a good day. I’m jealous that I wasn’t here to see her first tooth come through, then I remember I’m not her mother and don’t need to be the first to see her milestones. I’m a caretaker, just like the babysitter.
So why do I feel so envious?
I feel like I should’ve been the first to see my little girl’s tooth come in.
“Let’s go see her,” I tell Zayden, running up the stairs that are beginning to feel like home to me.
“You can see her. Tell her I say hi.”
“Zayden, come on, you’re her daddy. It’s not going to kill you to check in on her. We’ve had a great day. Come on, let’s end it with some cuteness viewing.” I enter Olivia’s pretty bedroom and find the chunky monkey asleep in her crib on her side, her cute little mouth slightly open.
To my surprise, Zayden actually listened. He came into the room with me and now stands by my side, hands in pockets, staring down at her like he’s not sure what to think.
I can tell he wants to hold her. I know Zayden more now, and he can be a sweet guy. There’s no way he can look at such a gorgeous little baby that’s half him and not want to hug her. She’s not even mine 1% and I want to. “She loves you, you know,” I whisper. “I see it when she looks at you.”
