by Marr, Maggie
She cleaned me out of sixty dollars at the pool table. She’s a fucking shark with a smile.
“See you’ve been getting your grocery money at Taggert’s.”
She bumps her hip against mine and laughs. “My grandfather used to say a good pool player was the sign of a wasted youth.”
“Grew up in pool halls and dive bars, did you?”
She smiles and lifts an eyebrow. “I’ve seen my share.”
There’s a story here. One that piques my interest. I want details, and yet I don’t ask, because I can’t. Details lead to interest, interest leads to expectations, expectations mean there’s a relationship, and I don’t want that. We turn the corner to our building.
There is a wall.
A wall in the form of a man.
A man who could be me five years ago.
McDouche.
“We need to talk.” Rings under his eyes, his skin the pallor of death, hair a wreck. The scent of desperation rolls off him, and desperation isn’t a good smell on any man. The clothes he wears are possibly the ones he wore to work two days ago. Bad call, dude. That only brings back the memory of what she walked in on. His gaze rolls from her to me.
He recognizes me. Guesses that I know. Assesses whether I’m moving in for the rebound. The muscle in his jaw flinches and my core tenses. He may have twenty pounds on me, but damn, I’m certain I can drop him like a rock.
Tara’s face is ashen. Her mouth opens, and the sparkle in her eyes goes out. I stop. I wait. Not moving until I get the okay, because as of now Tara hasn’t said a damn word about what she wants.
“I don’t have anything to say.” Her head tilts higher and her chin takes on an angle that any man with half a brain recognizes. When he sees that chin angle? He’d best call for a retreat. There is no forward advancement possible when a woman’s jaw takes on that tilt. Tara steps forward to get past her ex, and I move with her. His hand juts out and grabs her arm.
I stop.
Tara stops.
I look at her. She looks at me. Her eyes close briefly with resignation and defeat. This I-don’t-know-what-the-fuck-to-do look. She glances down at his hand and back up at his eyes. “Let go of me.” She starts to pull away. His grip tightens.
“Not until we talk.”
I stand still as stone. Except for my fists. My fingertips curl up and into my palm. There’s a tingle in my toes as adrenaline starts to pound through my body. My gut tightens.
“Let go,” Tara says one more time and pulls her arm from Greg’s grip. She starts to walk by, and his hand reaches out a second time.
There won’t be a third.
“She said no.”
Both of them turn to me. I’d become nearly invisible in this emotional tug-of-war they’re waging. Greg’s gaze snaps to me. He’s fucking thrilled. I get it. He’s angry, he’s scared, he has completely fucked up and lost what he now realizes is the best thing he will ever have, and he’s pissed at himself but now . . . now . . . there’s a guy in the mix and McDouchey has a place to direct all his rage.
Bring it, asshole.
He takes a step toward me. I said twenty pounds more? Maybe more like thirty-five. “This isn’t any of your business.”
Oh yeah. He says it low and mean and with a dare behind the words, because the unspoken part I hear, the unspoken part every guy with adrenaline pounding through his body and standing beside a woman that he feels he needs to protect hears, is: What are you going to do about it, asshole?
“Really?” I’ve got absolutely nothing to fear and not much to live for. “Because I think right now, tonight, it is my business.”
I stare at this motherfucker, knowing we are two beats away from throwing down. Tara is like a fucking doe in the sniper’s crosshairs. Suddenly she’s out of her trance. “Hey, Greg, this is ridiculous, I don’t want to talk now, please just go—” She grabs his arm, but he rips it free, yanking hard enough that she falls back and stumbles to the ground.
I smile. Oh yeah. This asshole is going down.
My fist smashes his jaw. The flash of pain through my hand is like a hot starburst. Fuck. Yes. For a split second he takes it like maybe he deserves it and wants the pain, because we’re all fuckers undeserving of the women we love and he’s just let his cock do some stupid-ass shit. Really, he wants me to beat the shit out of him, he needs me to beat the shit out of him, he will actually enjoy me beating the shit out of him, and I’m happy to comply. Because as much as Greg hates himself right now and thinks he’s a piece of shit for what he’s done, well, I’ve been wallowing in my own grief, my own misdeeds, my own loss for nearly six fucking years, and I know how good this shit is going to feel.
His hand pulls back and I see it, like fucking slow motion, I see the punch coming and I step into that motherfucker because I’m going to let this asshole land one punch and then I’m going to beat the ever-loving shit out of him. That one fucking punch, as it connects with my jaw and my head jerks back like a tetherball on a rope, makes me fucking mad. That mad feeling digs deep into my soul and grabs onto the rage that lives just below the surface. The rage from Susie, the rage for every bad fucking thing I’ve done or had done to me—that beast rises up and takes over and is there like a living breathing thing. As I swear to fucking God, once Greg hits me I breathe fucking fire and see red.
My fists are hammers and I start pounding. One. Two. Three. He drops and is up. One. Two Three. In the distance I hear a scream and a yell and then a siren. I hit Greg again and I’m on top of this motherfucker when I feel hands grab me from behind and lift and spin me. My chin meets metal, my wrists meet cuffs, and my ass meets—not for the first time—the backseat of a police car.
* * *
L.A. County Jail smells like forty men took a piss on a two-foot shag rug, put the rug in a car in a July, and then wet that rug down and rubbed that fucker along every inch of the wall in lockup.
I sit in a corner and wait.
“Reynolds, you’re up.” A cop pulls open the bars and I hop to my feet. Two other guys eye me from the far side of lockup. They’ve been in here a while.
I roll out of the cell and the cop eyes me. “Could’ve told me your sister’s a judge in criminal.”
“Like I want to be that asshole,” I say, walking beside him. He nods, maybe thinking at least I have standards, even if I am rolling out of lockup after a street fight.
Rachel stands just past the door to lockup. She wears a long coat over her clothes, her hands shoved deep in the pockets. She stands beside a cop who’s obviously important, based on the way the other cops look at him. He nods at me and the officer who just brought me out.
“Good night, Judge Reynolds.”
“Thank you,” she says.
He turns and walks down the hall. Damn. Most of these cops probably appear in Rachel’s courtroom on a regular basis. My need to beat the crap out of Douchey has put her in an embarrassing position.
She reaches her hand out and touches the bottom of my chin. “I hope the other guy looks worse.”
We silently walk down the hall to the property window, where they hand me a giant envelope with my stuff. I dump it onto the counter.
“Since when do you have a flip phone?” She picks up my Wonderfuck phone. I pluck it from her fingertips and shove it into my front pocket, put my iPhone into my back pocket, and grab my wallet. “And a Patek Philippe?” Her eyes widen at the watch that cost more than her entire salary for a year. “Investments must be good,” she mumbles and we walk toward the lobby and out the front door. Before we reach the stairs down to the sidewalk, Rachel stops and turns to me.
“I have a five-year-old, a mother with Alzheimer’s, and a full-time job. I have a docket that starts at eight a.m. tomorrow. I just burned through a dozen favors to get your ass out.” She crosses her arms over her chest. “Would you please tell me if we’re heading back to the abyss that we visited five and a half years ago? Because if we are, I need to line up child care.”
“No,”
I sigh. “I . . . honestly . . . I was protecting a woman.”
“So I hear. Why do you think I came?” She glances down the front steps and across the walkway. I follow her gaze.
Tara stands on the sidewalk. Her arms crossed. Wearing a jacket. Her hair still in that messy ponytail. That’s how Rachel found out. That’s who called my sister.
Tara.
Fuck.
The tiny pieces of my heart that refuse to die vibrate with warmth.
Then my brain kicks in.
Fuck.
“She wanted to come too. She told me what happened.” Rachel takes a deep breath. “I . . . I would’ve wanted someone to do that for me when . . . when that happened.” She dug the toe of her shoe against the pavement. “I get it. I do. But does she?”
“No.”
“Then you’ve got to decide. Do you want her to understand or not?”
My eyes meet Rachel’s, and I know she’s sad for me. Her lips do that thin line thing they do when she isn’t happy about something I’ve said or done, or when another neuron in Mom’s mind has obviously shut down. No, Rachel’s not happy with me, but that’s okay. She’s got Lily and a career, and some day when she’s ready she’ll have a man. But tonight she’s worried about me, her fucked-up little brother who hides an entire life from his big sis. While she doesn’t know the details, my sister is smart enough to know that I’m hiding something. She just hopes I’m not a drug runner, a serial killer, or something worse.
And I’m not. Because Wonderfuck isn’t any of those things. Wonderfuck is simply the alter ego I need to skirt the edges of the black hole that threatens to suck away all that remains of my soul.
Tara stands beside a palm tree, waiting for me. Her presence here tells me that I don’t have to go to my place and be alone. I’m the knight in shining armor who beat the shit out of the asshole who broke her heart. I can tell by the look on Tara’s face that she thinks I’m her prince charming.
I’m not. I won’t let Tara get close to the edge I walk. I’ve given up on love. Wonderfuck is the only thing that saves me and makes me feel whole. I can’t let go of Wonderfuck, and I can’t be Wonderfuck and have a lover as Jake.
I can’t.
I won’t.
But I will ride home.
“You okay?” I ask Rachel.
“I got an entire building full of cops and I’m parked right there.” She points to her car, which has the premiere spot next to the front door. “There are perks to being a judge. You two want a ride?”
“No. We’ll uber.”
“She—” Rachel nods her head toward where Tara stands. “I like her. She’s smart. You know that, right? But it’s too soon . . . for her. You know that too.”
I nod. I know it all.
Rachel pulls me in for a hug. “I love you, dumbass,” she whispers in my ear. Her voice cracks, and she pulls me even closer.
When you’ve lost people you love, you realize just how fragile the connections are, just how quickly they can disappear.
“I love you too. Thank you,” I say. “I didn’t want to pull you into this, I know it’s my—”
“Shut up,” she says, shaking her head. She smiles that big sis smile, the one that says my problems will always be her problems because she’s my older sister. She backs toward her car. “Call me tomorrow. Don’t forget dinner on Wednesday.”
I nod. I watch while she climbs into her car. Just to be sure. Probably the safest place in all of Los Angeles at two a.m., but still, I love her. “Text me when you get home,” I call after her. She waves.
I turn away as she pulls from the parking lot.
Tara.
She stands with her arms crossed, rolling forward and back on the balls of her feet. What to do about a problem like Tara? And she is a problem. Obviously.
“You have my sister’s number?”
“Gave it to me the first time you asked me to pick up your mail.” The sparkly tipsy buzz is gone. Understandably. It’s been hours since my street fight.
She leans in and stares at my chin.
“How’s it look?”
“Not too bad. Broke the skin and you’ve got a bruise.” She steps back and her blue eyes meet mine. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I wish I’d handled that better. I should’ve just talked to him, I should’ve—”
“Stop. There’s nothing you could’ve done.”
Tara squints at me and says nothing.
“He was past reason. I was past reason. This isn’t your fault,” I add. I pull out my phone and order an Uber.
“Okay,” she says, not really buying what I’m telling her. “But if I’d just talked to him—”
“Maybe,” I say, “but I think he wanted the fight.” I glance at my phone. “Three minutes.” I look up. She has her head tilted like she’s waiting for me to explain.
“Look he just fucked up the best thing he’ll ever have, okay? And he knows it. He may be an idiot, but he’s not so stupid that he doesn’t realize he fucked up. He knows. And now, what he did is sinking in . . . what he actually did and how badly he’s fucked up his life. He’s pissed at himself. And when a guy gets pissed at himself, most guys anyway, they want to fuck or fight.”
“Fuck or fight?”
“Kind of flight or fight, only with more rage.”
“So the only way I could’ve stopped the fight is if I fucked him?”
“No, but if you would’ve talked to him, then he still would’ve had the hope of eventually fucking. But you didn’t talk to him, so he knew there wasn’t going to be any fucking, and there I was—”
“So there was the potential for fighting,” she finishes my sentence. She seems interested in what I’m saying, curious, as though a specific thought is forming in her mind.
“Right. So he got a fight.” I don’t add how I was down to fight as well because I’d already decided there wouldn’t be any fucking, at least not with Tara, and even though it was my decision, it kind of made me mad at myself.
“And what about you? You seemed eager to fight, does that mean—”
The Uber BLACK glides to a stop in front of us. “Here’s our car,” I say, avoiding Tara’s question. I’ve got the answer, but based on how close she’s standing and how she’s looking at me, my answer isn’t the answer she wants to hear. Not now and, most likely, not ever.
Chapter 10
Do you want to come in for a drink or something to eat?”
Yes, I want to go to Tara’s. I want to run my hands down her body and press my lips to her mouth. I want to have her lying beneath me, whispering my name as I slowly slide into her. I want to fuck away any insecurity she might feel because of Douchey-McDouche-Face. I want it all.
But I can’t have any of it. To walk into Tara’s home, to put my lips on hers and make love to her, is to involve her in my madness.
Two identities, one man.
One version of my life feels good physically and soothes my soul after the pain of Susie, and the other is a guy who lives across the hall from Tara.
“Sorry.” My gaze locks to Tara’s blue eyes. “I’m beat. I . . .” I want to kiss you and fuck you and maybe even hang out with you . . . “I need to shower and get some sleep.”
The corners of her lush mouth twitch downward and disappointment flickers in her eyes, but only for a millisecond. Then it vanishes. I guess telegraphing your emotions isn’t helpful when you’re an investigative journalist.
“No problem.” She doesn’t turn toward her door or shift away from me. She just remains in the hallway, looking into my eyes and waiting.
I want Tara as much as she wants me.
“Good night,” I step forward and press my lips to her forehead. The clean scent of lavender.
She gasps.
I pull back. Her eyes are closed and the pulse in her neck flutters. I feel the desire too. The heat only makes me want to pull her into my arms and kiss her. A whine from the other side of the door and then a bark.
“She knows we’re
home.” Tara steps away from me.
“Thank you for the help tonight,” I say.
“Thanks for protecting me.”
I turn toward my door and walk inside. I look through my apartment to the view. The magnificent view. The balcony . . . that balcony.
My heart spasms. I drop my gaze and walk down the hall to my bedroom and the comfort of sleep.
* * *
“Does anyone know who you are?”
I run my hand over Celia’s bare hip and press my lips to her belly. I don’t answer. She doesn’t want me to. Not really.
“Do you know who you are?”
I pause. I pull my lips from her skin and glance across her naked flesh toward her eyes. I spread open her legs, her thighs, and look up at her, my eyes just above her glorious mound.
“I know I’m the man who can make you come.”
Her scent fills me and my cock is hard, so fucking hard. I press my tongue to her clit. Her eyes close. Her mouth stops asking questions and forms an O.
“Oh yes,” she moans. I pull her into my mouth. The glorious taste of pussy. Sharp and earthy and female. My tongue circles out letters on her clit. Her hips buck up and roll beneath me. I clasp her hip with my hand. God yes. Fucking amazing pussy.
My eyes close and the face, that face, enters my mind. The face isn’t Celia’s. I don’t see Cheryl or Natasha or Leslie or Debbie or Peggy or Caitlyn or Pamela or Maria or any of the women I’ve made feel sexual and sensual and amazing.
The face isn’t even Susie’s.
There is one face that bursts into my mind like a bullet through hot butter. Her hair lush and deep brown, her eyes blue, her breasts full and round. Hips that flare and legs that go on forever, with a full ass a man can grab onto.
Celia shrieks. She grasps my head and sits up, her body shaking. She pulls my mind back to now, to her, to this instant where she orgasms.
Chapter 11
I successfully avoid Tara for over a week. Or maybe she avoids me. I pull my mail from my box in the lobby of our building and wave to Del, our concierge, as I walk to the elevator. I rifle through the stack of ads and bills. I pause at the envelope with my name in handwritten calligraphy on it and tear it open.
