by Lauren Layne
Despite the fact that I was the better student and the more dedicated job seeker coming out of college, Ben had gotten twice the number of job offers as me.
Not because his grades were stellar, not because he had any sort of specialized skill set, but because the guy can talk.
To anyone, about anything.
I’m pretty sure he could convince a baby it didn’t need milk and a dog it didn’t like meat if he cared to.
But me? An effortless presentation took effort. I could fake it just fine when I practiced and when I was on my A game.
Today, I am not on my A game.
He glances over at me when I don’t respond. “You okay?”
His voice is casual, but his eyes are concerned. Probably because I cried all over his shoulder on Saturday, got wasted, then spent all of yesterday locked in my room, opening it only to accept the crackers he brought me.
It’s not exactly my typical Parker’s so together routine.
But Ben knows me. And he knows that if he’s too nice, I’ll start to cry again.
“I’m good,” I say, turning my head to face the window.
He nods. “So you won’t have a breakdown when I tell you you have white stuff all over your shirt?”
I glance down and swear as I see the rather elaborate pattern of deodorant smeared all over my black top.
“Invisible solid my ass,” I mutter, as I futilely wipe at it with my hand.
He nods his head toward the backseat. “There’s a towel in my gym bag.”
I give him a suspicious look.
“Clean,” he clarifies.
“Probably thanks to me and my laundry addiction,” I mutter, shifting around and unbuckling my seat belt so that I can reach into the back and dig through his bag.
The first thing my fingers find is small, square, and made of foil. I shake the condom in his face. “Really?”
Ben shrugs. “You never know.”
“See, this is what I meant when I said I need to be more like you,” I say, turning back around and dropping the condom into his bag. “Ready for sex anytime, anywhere. Even the gym, apparently.”
“The gym’s sort of the best place, sweetie,” he says.
I pull back again. “Really?”
He nods, keeping his eyes on the road. “Are you kidding? All that sweat and blood pumping? You’re telling me you’ve never been horny after a good workout?”
“Well, sure,” I say, finally finding the towel and plopping back into my seat. “But where do you do it?”
“What?”
“You know,” I say, gesturing with the towel, which thankfully, does seem to be clean. “You’re off pumping iron, or whatever. Some hot thing on the elliptical catches your eye…then what?”
He grimaces. “Do we have to talk about this?”
“Yes!” I shake the towel. “I told you, I’m going to start doing what you do. Casual sex.”
“Okay, first of all, the people that call it casual sex are absolutely the ones who should not be doing it. Second of all, I was sort of hoping that you either didn’t remember your insane declaration from Saturday night, or would at least acknowledge that it was a wine-motivated bad idea.”
I rub furiously at the deodorant spot. “It’s not a bad idea.”
“It is.”
“You do it.”
“Yeah, but I’m…”
He breaks off, but I glance up, eyes narrowed. “You’re what?”
“Nothing,” he mutters.
“Were you just going to say that you’re a guy?”
My memory of the other night is fuzzy, but I seem to remember him playing at the same double-standard shit then, too, and it pisses me off. Ben isn’t a chauvinistic pig or anything, but I’m definitely getting the feeling that he thinks it’s okay for him to play the field, but not for me to follow suit.
“Finish your sentence,” I demand.
“Um, no,” he says. “You’re looking for a fight.”
I purse my lips. “You’re probably right.”
“I’m definitely right,” he says as he pulls onto the campus where we both work. We work in different buildings, and he pulls up in front of mine to drop me off.
“Girls like sex, too, you know,” I say, making one last swipe at the deodorant mark that has more or less faded, and then gather up my purse and work bag.
Ben rolls his eyes. “Yes, Blanton, I’m aware that you’re a modern woman. You’re allowed to have sex wherever you want to.”
“Even the gym?” I ask.
“Even the gym.”
I pounce. “Okay, seriously, where? I mean…there’s nowhere private. Is there? I guess there’s the bathroom, but nobody would ever—”
I break off as I see his wince that he tries to hide and fails.
“No!” I say, scandalized. “You do it in the bathroom?”
“Trust me, it’s not as weird or unusual as you think.”
“But—”
He shook his head. “No way. We’ll talk about it later. Go to work. I’ll tell you about the ins and outs of gym sex later. If you’re good, I can even explain how to do it in the shower.”
“Oh my God,” I mutter, opening the car door. “I bet you have athlete’s foot and don’t even know it.”
He motions impatiently for me to shut the door, and I do, turning toward the front door of my building. I dig out my security badge as he drives away.
Minutes later, I’m settling into my cube, my mind pulled in two directions, although, unfortunately, neither is the presentation that I have to give in forty minutes.
Instead, I’m torn between contemplating the logistics of sex in the gym and wanting to wallow in the fact that I’m in my second day of singledom, and not of my own doing.
A tall, thin blonde appears at the entrance of my cube and holds out a paper cup. “Coffee. My treat.”
“You shouldn’t have,” I say, gratefully accepting the cup of completely mediocre coffee that’s free to all employees. I hold out a hand, and she drops two creamers and a sugar packet into my palm.
“You’re good people, Bowman,” I say, adding the creamer and sugar to the cute polka-dot Kate Spade mug Lance got me when I first landed this job. For a second, I debate throwing the mug in the trash, but even getting dumped isn’t a good enough reason to defile Kate Spade.
I pour the coffee on top of the creamer before finally turning to face my friend, who’s flipping through something on her phone, too used to my morning coffee routine to bother watching it.
Lori Bowman is my best work friend, but not in the We’re only friends because we work together kind of way. The girl is legit. Snarky as hell, but also the first person to give you a hug when you realize after you’ve come out of a meeting with your boss’s boss that you have major pit stains.
“Huh. I just now realized I have a lot of armpit problems,” I say to her, taking a sip of my coffee.
“Huh?” she says, glancing up.
I point to my shirt. “Deodorant.”
“You should get the invisible kind.”
“I did get the invisible kind. Although it apparently doesn’t work because remember last week when I had big old wet spots under my arms like a homeless person?”
“Maybe you just forgot to put deodorant on that day,” she said.
I point at her. “See? That’s what I mean. My deodorant is either on my shirt, not working, or, apparently, not even applied at all. Armpit problems.”
Lori watches me, taking a sip of her own coffee, which she’s drinking from the provided paper cup because she’s not a weirdo about having it in her own mug like me.
“Help me out here, Parks, because it’s Monday morning, and I had a Sunday Fun-Day yesterday with too many mimosas, and I’m having a hard time following…. When you say armpit problems, are you really talking about armpits? Or is it a code word for something else?”
Just like that, I deflate. “Lance and I broke up.”
Her eyes bug out. “No. You guy
s were like…or you used to be like…no.”
“Yup.”
“Sweetie.” She makes a pained sound and reaches out to stroke my head like I’m a dog, but it’s actually kind of nice. No wonder dogs like it.
“What happened?” she asks.
I swallow and look down at my coffee. You know how it’s really easy not to cry right up until the second you’re expected to talk about it? Yeah, that.
Lori understands immediately. “Don’t say another word. Not until after the meeting. You’re looking fabulous, and red eyes and streaked makeup will ruin that.”
I nod.
“We’ll talk about something else,” she muses. “How about this…the guy I went out with on Friday?”
I jump at the change of topic. “The one who made reservations at El Gaucho?”
Lori and I had been marveling at the fact that her blind date was taking her to one of the most expensive steakhouses in the city—perhaps the most expensive. She’d been looking forward to it for days, and we’d spent a ridiculous amount of time planning her outfit.
“Yup,” she says, sitting on my desk. “That’s the one. Get this. He ‘forgot’ his wallet.”
My jaw drops. “No way.”
“Yep. Doesn’t ‘realize’ until the end of the meal after he’d ordered a freaking porterhouse with a lobster tail side.”
My hand covers my mouth and a laugh bubbles up. “What did you do?”
She sighs dramatically. “What could I do? I paid. I think my credit card was actually sweating.”
“You think he did it on purpose?”
She shrugs. “I’m not sure. He seemed super apologetic, and told me, like, a million times he’d pay me back ‘next time,’ but even if there is a next time, I don’t know that I’d jump at the chance to go out with him. Nice enough guy, minus the wallet forgetfulness, but I didn’t really feel anything.”
I groan. “You’re not giving me much hope for the dating scene.”
“I’m not going to lie to you, Blanton. It’s a rough world out there. I hate being that girl that wants a boyfriend, but I haven’t been in a serious relationship in over a year, and I miss it, you know?”
I look away, and she slaps her forehead. “Sorry. Sorry. I’m such a bitch. Okay, no more talk about guys. Let’s go get the conference room set up and talk about how many passive-aggressive comments Eryn will make during the presentation, ’kay?”
An hour and a half later, the presentation is done, two more mugs of coffee have been consumed, and despite the fact that both Lori and another friend (who I’d texted about the breakup during yesterday’s wallowing hangover) have been texting me nonstop, trying to distract me with non-guy-related topics, I can’t stop my brain from going there.
But, oddly, not in an I miss Lance so much kind of way.
Perhaps that will come later. And not in the hurt-pride kind of way of the weekend, either.
I find myself thinking about sex.
I’d been mostly kidding in my interrogation of Ben about gym hookups, because I don’t care how turned on I am by some six-packed hottie, I’m just not the type of girl to do it in the gym shower or wherever else Ben and his gym rats go at it.
But I hadn’t been kidding about my foray into playing the field. I mean, I don’t need to sleep with the whole town or anything, but I’m in my twenties. My libido is plenty healthy.
I should be getting some.
I want some.
I save the spreadsheet I’ve been staring at blindly for the past fifteen minutes and make my way over toward Lori’s cube on the far side of the office.
“Parker!”
My footsteps slow slightly, and I silently scold myself as I realize my mistake in not walking the other way to Lori’s cube.
I fix a smile on my face and pause outside my coworker’s cube. “What’s up?”
I’m sure Eryn Grading is a nice person.
She just hardly ever shows it. At least at work. Oh, sure, she can be sugary sweet when she wants to be, usually when our boss is around. But sometimes she says these things, and all you can do is stare at her and silently wonder if that’s really what she wanted to say.
Eryn is sitting at her desk, so I’m towering over her, but then I tower over her even when she’s standing. Not because I’m particularly tall at five foot six, but because she’s barely five foot.
“Hey there, how’s it going?” she asks.
“Fine!” I chirp, patiently waiting for the real reason she stopped me.
“Good job on your presentation today,” she says, twirling a strand of her super-long hair around her finger.
“Thanks.” I shift my weight, wondering where the but is.
“But…”
There it is.
“I just thought you’d want to know that your slide on the first-quarter projections was a little bit crammed. I had a hard time reading it from the back of the room. I’m sure Michelle was a little disappointed, seeing as the senior VP showed up.”
Michelle is our boss, and considering she already told me the presentation was flawless, I’m not even remotely worried.
“I hope you don’t take that the wrong way,” she says.
“Oh, gosh no, it was super nice of you to let me know,” I say, already moving away. “Since we’re exchanging advice with no hard feelings, maybe sit in the front of the room next time? It sounds like possibly you’re a bit nearsighted.”
I move away before she can think up some sort of passive-aggressive comeback and make a beeline for Lori’s desk.
She’s on the phone with a vendor, so I hop up on her desk, waiting patiently for her to finish.
“We should go out tonight,” I say, the second she hangs up.
Lori’s blond eyebrows creep upward. “It’s Monday.”
“And that’s stopped you when?”
“I’m not the problem here, babycakes. You’re the one who likes to be tucked in by nine p.m. with your Ovaltine on weeknights.”
I hold up a finger. “Lance’s girlfriend didn’t go out on weeknights. But single Parker could definitely go for a couple cocktails.”
“Count me in,” she says, her voice slightly wary. “Is there an agenda?”
“Picking up boys,” I say, kicking my heels slightly against her desk drawer.
“Damn, Rebound Parker moves fast,” she says approvingly.
Rebound Parker. I like that.
“But, sweetie,” she says, flicking my knee with her fingers. “You’re not going to go dive-bombing into another relationship, right? You need time.”
“Fret not, dear friend. My needs are more…carnal.”
Her blue eyes go wide at that. “You’re looking to get laid?”
“Definitely. Well, eventually,” I amend. “But I’ve been out of the game awhile. I figure I need a few practice rounds, remember what it was like to flirt.”
“Honey, with looks like ours, we don’t need to flirt. A bit of lip gloss and a tight shirt, and they’ll be begging to take us home.”
I smile at Lori’s immodesty. I’ve always thought of myself as decent-looking, but Lori’s gorgeous and she knows it. She’s got long silky blond hair and these super-light-blue eyes that she accentuates with perfectly applied dark eye makeup. Adding insult to injury, she’s tall and lean and has amazing fashion sense.
“How about Whitehall Tavern?” I ask.
She purses her lips and considers. “A good training ground.”
“Training ground?” I ask, not at all liking the sound of it.
“Hey, you’re the one who said you need practice. And who better to show you the ropes than the Dating Huntress of Portland?”
I snort. “I thought you said just this morning that you want a steady boyfriend?”
“I do. Doesn’t mean I’m not really good at playing the field. Stick with me, my young apprentice.”
“That’s my plan,” I say, hopping off her desk. “Meet at seven?”
“Perfect,” she says. “Hey, you br
inging Ben?”
I give her a look. “I thought we were over this.”
She gives me an innocent look. “Well, I’m just thinking that a guy’s perspective can’t hurt here.”
“I’m aware,” I say dryly. “And I have every intention of him being my other wingman. But not unless you promise me that you’re not still harboring your crush.”
“I don’t have a crush.”
I lift an eyebrow, and she groans. “It’s just that he’s gorgeous, Parks. You don’t see it, because you two have that weird blindness-to-each-other thing, but trust me. Ben Olsen is exactly the type of man that every woman should have in her bed at least once.”
I point a finger at her. “No. Promise me. No hitting on Ben.”
Lori’s lips move into a pout that somehow works for her. “But why?”
“Because despite all your Huntress of Dating babbling, I know you want something real,” I tell her, keeping my voice gentle. “And I love Ben to death, but the guy is not cut out for commitment.”
“Maybe he just hasn’t met the right girl.”
“I mean this with love, but I don’t think you’re the first girl to think that.”
Lori sighs.
“I just don’t want you to get hurt,” I say.
“And if I just want to use him for his beautiful body?”
“Don’t be gross. And I’ve seen the way you laugh way too loud at his jokes. You’re halfway to a full crush, and not just on his biceps.”
“And yet he never makes a move,” she says, tapping her lip. “Am I not his type?”
I roll my eyes. Lori is definitely Ben’s type. Lori is every guy’s type. But I’ve given him this exact same warning. Not just about Lori, but all of my friends. It’s one of my house rules:
Don’t hit on my friends.
It’s not that I think every girl falls head over heels in love with Ben or anything, but if one of them does and gets hurt, I’m terrified of having to take sides. Of losing a friend.
“Seven o’clock,” I repeat, backing away from her. “I’ll bring Ben if you promise not to cop a feel.”
“I promise. But only because tonight is about getting your lady parts juiced up. Not mine.”
