by J. L. Mac
“I’ve been asking myself the same question.” He was the picture of haunted and I wanted to know what was behind those dark eyes. I wanted to know what he was up against—what I was up against—and at the same time, I was scared out of my mind that the nagging feeling I’d been battling was spot on. Sex had distracted the both of us but the moment it was over; we both seemed to have plenty on our minds.
Ignorance is bliss. For now.
“I wish you’d tell me,” I whispered with my forehead pressed against his. “I want to help.” I knew he’d know I was talking about whatever it was that had him holding back. I wanted full disclosure. I wanted to know his secrets and I wanted him to know mine. I wanted it all out on the table.
“There’s no help for me,” he whispered with a rueful smile on his lips.
“Let me try,” I pleaded.
“I am.” His hands brushed my hair back off my shoulders.
I slept in his arms until a soundless dream of Elle roused me from sleep. She smiled that little toddler grin. Her bright blue eyes broke my heart. I reached for her but she drifted away from me into the failing light of the day.
My eyes fluttered open and I felt listless. I slipped from Graham’s mammoth bed, pulled his tee shirt on and tiptoed from his room. I made my way into his kitchen and wandered around, picking things up to look at them and setting them back in their place. I was bored and unsettled by my dream. It had been so long since Elle passed away and when I dreamed of her, I always woke feeling like something was being pulled from me. I felt like the memory of her face was crumbling and it would only be a matter of time before I found it difficult to conjure a mental image of her.
I walked quietly to Graham’s great room and sat down on his couch. Gray suede material felt lush against the backs of my thighs. I leaned back and closed my eyes, trying my best to picture sweet little Elle.
“Hey,” Graham said quietly from a few feet behind me. I hadn’t even heard him enter the room.
“Hey.” I smiled.
“Is something wrong?”
“No. Just had a dream.” I shrugged.
“Tell me,” he said as he carefully transferred his big frame from his chair to the couch. He settled beside me and waited for me to decide whether or not to open up to him.
I hadn’t indicated much about the hurt that contended with. But I knew he had recognized it in me as I had recognized it in him. Like a mirror, Graham and I reflected each other. I took a deep breath and committed to telling him before I backed down. He was brave enough to share with me. The least I could do was reciprocate and I wanted him to know. I wanted him to know my secrets and share the weight of my burdens in hopes that it would further solidify our budding relationship.
“I was four. Elle was two. We used to play in the garage a lot. My brother would ride his bike and play with his friends and stuff like that, so it was usually just me and Elle. My dad was a drunk. That’s not even a good way to describe him. I’m talking sloppy, nasty, reckless, selfish drunk.” I glanced at Graham and noted the serious look in his eyes. “There was an accident. It, uh, it was my fault.” Tears snaked down my cheeks. I was glad my vision had gone blurry because I couldn’t bear to look Graham in his eyes.
“Oh my God, baby,” Graham pulled me against him, tucking me up against his big frame as my hurt washed out of me one guttural sob after another. His arm draped over me and I felt truly safe. Safe enough to let go of something I’d held in for a very, very long time.
“Graham, I can barely remember her face and it kills me,” I cried, wrapped in his arms and his understanding.
“I know it does, baby. It’s okay. I’m here, and I’m not leaving.”
“Graham,” I sniffled. So much emotion pooled inside my chest. In that moment I felt more love for this man than I knew I was capable of. I wanted him to know, I needed him to know, but the words wouldn’t come. I turned in his arms to face him. I lifted my hand to rest my palm against his face.
“I know,” he whispered, then leaned forward and kissed me as though I’d never been kissed before and in truth, the way his lips moved against mine, soft and sweet and so very sincere, I felt like it was my very first and very last kiss rolled into one perfect moment.
It had been a week since Graham agreed to stay at his penthouse instead of Tommy’s apartment, and I felt a little victorious for having convinced him to stay in his own home. I had left him alone this morning to run errands. I needed to check my mail and go by Social She to get the last of my things from my desk. My time there was officially over but I felt okay with it. I still got the sympathetic stares as I left, the reluctant farewells too, but I think I took them all in stride. Change was good. Change wasn’t a bad thing, right? Moving along in life sometimes meant letting go of things and even people, and that was all okay. At least, that’s the private conversation that I kept having with myself.
I stopped by my place for the mail. I sorted the stack between me and Matt and tossed his mail on his bed. I opened an envelope addressed to me and realized very quickly that my recent professional change came with money. Lots of it. My Goliath had some explaining to do.
“Graham! Graham!” I called as I searched the penthouse for him.
“Hmm?” He hummed from his office as I came to a stop in the doorframe.
“What is this?” I held up the check Con had sent to my apartment. I still felt faint from seeing the amount in the little box on the right.
“What’s what, baby?” He looked up at me and smiled.
“This,” I said, waving the check out in front of me. Graham shrugged.
“That would be your paycheck, I assume.”
“Yeah, if I’m some top executive of some Fortune 500 company!” My eyes found the numbers in the little box again and I gaped at him.
“What’s your point, baby?” He asked, opening his drawer and rifling through its contents for god only knew what.
“This—this is insane! This is more than half my annual salary at the magazine!” I squeaked with wide eyes.
“And you deserve every penny.” He nodded.
“Would you stop and look at me?”
“Yes. I love looking at you.” His dark eyes found mine and it was obvious that he was enjoying how scandalized I must have looked.
“Graham, I’m serious. This is too much,” I said, hurrying to his desk to shove the check at him.
“I’m sorry, but I won’t take that back, and I encourage you to deposit the check into your account.”
“I won’t.” I slapped the check down on his desk and folded my arms. I wasn’t going to lose this battle with him.
“Sure you will.” The way he remained so calm and collected unnerved me further. The man really knew how to get under my skin.
“Goliath,” I warned.
“Flor,” he mocked me.
“Why are you so damn stubborn?”
“Why are you?”
“That’s… This… There’s… I’m not the one on trial here!” I struggled to organize my thoughts with him sitting shirtless in his office chair looking mouthwateringly good.
“Flor, please,” he urged. I took a deep breath and rolled my eyes upward.
“I can’t believe you,” I muttered, turning on my heels. “I’m doing more work then! I like knowing that I’ve earned my pay!” I shouted as I left him in his office.
“Oh, you’ll earn it, baby.”
“I heard that! Your deep voice carries, Goliath!” He was nuts if he thought I was going to take his money without feeling as though I had earned it. I stood in the middle of his great room and looked around at the space. It was immaculate. I marched to his refrigerator and peered inside.
Food. He needs food. I can do food.
“I’m getting dressed and going to the store. You need food. And I suddenly have thousands of extra dollars to spend!” I shouted dryly as I made my way to the bathroom to locate my discarded clothes. I looked down on the floor to the small heap of clothes.
&
nbsp; Laundry. I can do laundry too.
I bent down and began collecting his clothes.
“Stop!”
“What?” I jumped. “You scared me!” I threw his sweat pants at him and he clutched them to his chest and looked…relieved?
“Don’t want me doing your laundry?”
“No. I’m sorry. I was only joking with you.” He stuffed his abandoned clothes beside him in his chair.
“You really are a two year old.”
He shrugged and smiled, displaying his dimples. I died. I really was addicted to those dimples. I didn’t see them all the time so when I did get a glimpse of them, I was enamored.
“You don’t need to mess with my clothes. Or yours for that matter. I have a laundry service.”
“Oh? You going to pay someone to come to my apartment and gather up my dirty clothes?”
“Nope. Your dirty clothes will be here.”
“Graham, I am not hauling my dirty laundry to your penthouse every week.”
“You won’t have to haul them anywhere. Stay here. Every day. And your dirty clothes will be here.” He shrugged his big shoulders as though it was the simplest, most practical thing in the world but my mouth had gone dry.
As much as I wanted to, I couldn’t force the words to move from my brain to my mouth. I stared at him like a fool.
“Keep your place if you want. I just want you here. All the time.”
“Graham, that’s moving pretty fast,” I whispered.
“Just think about it, okay?”
I swallowed hard and nodded my head but found my legs moving, carrying me right to my Goliath. I carefully slid into his lap. He wrapped his arms around me and kissed my forehead. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t do anything except close my eyes and revel in my amazing man.
Emotion bubbled up in me and I couldn’t say where it came from. It was anyone’s guess. I was caught up in a whirlwind romance with a man who had stolen my heart completely. In fact, he kicked down the door to my heart and hijacked it without me even knowing it, but he’d done it all the same. I was glad he did, though.
I think I love you.
I didn’t say it out loud. I kept it inside. I’d said it just for me. I admitted to myself, my greatest critic, that I had fallen in love with the boy next door and god how I loved him already.
I leaned back and looked into those impossibly dark eyes and noted how tender they appeared.
Yeah, I could look at that every single day.
“I hate this chair,” he muttered.
“Why?”
“Because I like holding that little body of yours standing up.”
“Barbara said one more week. That’s all.”
“One more week.” He sighed.
Graham
Netflix And Chill
Two weeks had come and gone with Flor at my penthouse every day, and sometimes I felt like I really had something rare and beautiful and full of potential with Flor, but reality kept rearing its hideous face in my direction to remind me that I was living in a fleeting bubble of happiness.
She waited expectantly for me to give her what she knew I was hiding. I caught her leading conversations in the direction where she thought there might be something to confess. I wished I could give her that much. I wished I could reveal my ugly truth to her. I wanted her to know and I loathed the day she discovered the severity of my depravity. Every time I buried my cock in that silken heat, I felt like a thief. I had no right to her. She’d given herself to the man she thought I was. She never would have given herself to the real me. I was a recovering alcoholic, a careless asshole who wasn’t there for his brother when he needed me most, and now, a liar.
Every time I indulged in her sweetness, half of me fell for her a little more, and the other half of me felt sick and repulsed by the grave I kept digging for myself.
What will she say when she finds out? What will she think?
There was this hour glass somewhere in the back of my mind and sand kept right on slipping through my fingers despite how much I tried to capture it and hold it captive. Our routine was the same just about every day. Flor came over every morning, if she hadn’t stayed the night. She shared breakfast with me, usually something she tossed together in my kitchen. I loved seeing her in there. She was so natural and comfortable and at home. It gutted me. The blunt-tipped knife of reality and impending doom gouged deeper by the day, slowly carving me out.
Carrying on day to day this way was taxing. It was more than taxing. Alcohol had never been so tempting and simultaneously vulgar. The hardware holding my tibia and fibula in place wasn’t helping either. I was more than ready to have the fucking thing removed. I’d been to the doctor and the infection that had settled in one of my pin sites had been resolved by antibiotics, thankfully, but x-rays indicated that the fixator needed to stay put for a while longer. I never imagined I would say it, but I couldn’t wait for a normal cast to be applied.
Martin wasn’t helping my predicament either. He’d expressed worry over my mood as of late and I hated that he knew me so well. I hated that he had wisdom from firsthand experience with some of my demons—demons that we had in common. He had an uncanny ability to read my moods and body language. It always left me feeling exposed. Instead of capitalizing on my loyalty and wisdom, I’d been hiding from him. He’d invited me out for lunch and dinner multiple times. Each time, I declined citing various reasons. He and his wife invited me to his annual sobriety party and I had yet to RSVP. I didn’t want to go. I didn’t feel up to it. I felt inextricably trapped by my own thoughts. Flor was both my angel and my hellhound. She saved me and she showed up like a bounty hunter coming for a convict. Halley tried getting me out, though her tactics were classic Halley. She reminded me that we had multiple businesses to run and oversee the management of and I was a dead weight on her. She’d threatened and snapped and snarled and I smiled and nodded, which only pissed her off further. Cheap entertainment. Con gave it a shot too. I bought him two season passes to the Yankees game for his fifth year working for me. He wanted to go to a game. I gave it a moment’s thought but declined in the end. Flor mentioned her father’s birthday party, which was tomorrow, Saturday. If there was any one person I’d do anything for, it was her. I wasn’t thrilled about going but then again, I was. I would have a night with the woman I had fallen for. The idea of meeting her father set me on edge, though.
“Hey, handsome.” Flor breezed into my office with a garment bag slung over her shoulder, the garment within.
“Hey to you, too. What do you have there?” I asked, pulling myself up from my office chair and braced myself on my crutches.
“A dress,” she replied with a teasing glimmer in her gray eyes.
“Can I see it?”
“You will tomorrow.”
I rolled my lip out in protest and she laughed a sweet, melodic noise that I was so very addicted to. I tried to ignore the growing feeling that I’d soon be without that sound.
“Did Conrad get your tux from the cleaners? The tailor altered the one leg. He sewed in Velcro. He promised me it wouldn’t even be noticeable.”
“Yes, though I think I’m going to look like an idiot with only half a pant leg hanging open, flapping in the wind on one side,” I said looking down at the dreaded contraption that I was more than tired of lugging around.
“No, you won’t. You know you don’t have to go if you don’t feel up to it.”
“Do you want to go alone?”
“No. Of course not. I just mean, if you don’t want to stuff yourself into a tux and walk around on your crutches, then you don’t have to.”
“I’ll go. I want to see you in whatever’s in that garment bag.”
“We won’t stay long. Just an appearance.”
I nodded and smiled but it wasn’t sincere.
“Come here,” I ordered as I sat back down in my office chair. I was eager to distract myself from the train of thought that had been gnawing at me all day. Flor draped her dress ove
r the back of the chair in front of my desk and dropped her bag in the seat. “We should Netflix and chill soon. Want to Netflix and chill?”
“I’d love to watch Netflix and chill. Your stupid list is exhausting.”
“What should we watch?” she asked, though I knew she hoped it would be a chick flick from her list. I much preferred a comedy or an action movie, but I knew well I’d watch whatever she wanted because I didn’t plan on watching at all.
“It doesn’t matter, we will be Netflix-ing and chilling.” A roguish grin spread across my lips and the light bulb came on. Her gray eyes widened and her mouth popped open.
“Wait! What does that mean? Netflix and chill,” she asked, pulling away from me.
“Let me show you. Step by step. See it starts like this…” I pulled her forward until her body was flush against mine. “Then, the next step is this.” My fingers curled around the back of her neck and tangled in her silky hair. “Then you…do…this…” I tugged her hair gently, tilting her face upward. I leaned forward, my lips covered her soft mouth and she melted under my touch. My mouth moved against hers in a gentle but demanding kiss and she fell instep with me. I broke away from her and kissed her softly once more.
“I didn’t know that’s what that meant,” she whispered in a hushed voice.
“Still want to Netflix and chill, baby?” I asked as my hand slipped down her back and cupped her perfect ass.
“How’d you know what that meant?”
“Facebook,” I confessed as I leaned in and claimed her mouth with mine again.
“Of course.” Wrapping her arms around me, she buried her face in my neck and I inhaled the scent of her.
Flor
One In The Same
As I spent more and more time with Graham, I spent less and less time at my own apartment. It was just as well though. Matt hadn’t been around much either. He and Cal were really starting to get pretty serious—pretty committed. I loved the fact that my best friend had finally found someone who seemed to keep his attention and his heart. I also loved the fact that neither one of us felt guilty for not being around to hang out. It was a win-win.
