The Love Coupon

by Ainslie Paton

  “It’s only three nights.”

  “He’s—” She was going to say something inane like he’s your dad, and Tom thankfully cut her off.

  “Stone. I don’t remember him being any other way. I always forget how bad he is until there’s someone else around. I can’t imagine Mom marrying him. Gram says he was different when Mom was alive. Not so impenetrable, not such a hard-ass.”

  She brought two glasses of milk into the living room and sat on the table facing Tom in his surprisingly comfortable-looking makeshift bed.

  “I’m a lot like him.”

  He didn’t sound pleased about that. “Physically, yes. The O’Connells are handsome men.” She handed him the glass and he came up on his elbow to take it. In the dark, she couldn’t see his face, but he worried about this in the same way she was worried about not being like Elsie. “You have the same body type and build. You’ll keep your hair.” She would’ve ruffled his but the moment wasn’t right. “There’s a certain rigid, ‘stay away, don’t mess with me’ thing you both have going on. And you got his authority and take-no-shit attitude down.”

  “It could be worse, I guess.” He drank the milk and reached over to put the glass on the table. “I get to keep my hair.”

  She caught his empty hand in both of hers. “You have your mom’s eyes, I’m betting, because they’re not like your dad’s. His have that soldier’s faraway, seen-a-lot-of-bad-stuff look in them. Yours are always one poke in the side away from mischief. You have a sense of humor, Tom, and that makes all the difference.”

  He yanked on her hand and she moved to sit on the sectional by his hip. “When he’s around I fall back into this pattern of acting like him. I don’t like myself that way, but it’s a fight to change. I feel like I’ve been in a war with him my whole life. He wanted me to join up. I’ve been less than he wanted me to be since I chose college and business. He got angry about the promotion before we got to the restaurant, blamed me for not playing the politics. He’s right about that. I should’ve been in Beau Rendel’s ear, making sure there was no back door for Harry. He took one look at you and figured I’d let a woman get in my way.”

  A parent who was impossible to please. A woman who was leaving. “Parents have a special talent to make us feel like we don’t measure up.”

  “I haven’t grown up enough to stop wanting him to respect me.”

  She put her open palm on his chest. Through the sheet and T-shirt he was warm, he smelled like soap and laundry detergent. If she climbed in beside him, they could fool around. “I don’t have any advice for you. My relationship with my folks is all about distrust, guilt and entitlement. I do know you’re a good man, Tom. You are real and honorable and kind, and if you’re sometimes a little frosty and forbidding, it’s because you’re protecting yourself and we all have to do that the best way we know how.”

  He rubbed her thigh. “You’re good for my ego, Flick.”

  “But not for your sleep pattern. I’m sorry I woke you again.” Not that sorry. She’d gotten him to herself.

  “I’d invite you in, but if you get under this sheet with me, I will want to do things to you and there’d be nothing more mortifying than being caught out by Dad. He gets up early.”

  “I won’t run away if he’s mean to you. Not like your date.”

  He squeezed her thigh. “Yeah you will. You’re going to Washington, aren’t you?”

  Ah. This needed to be said. “I am. It’s where I’m supposed to be. It would be a mistake to let the job go. Drew doesn’t need me. I was flattering myself thinking if I stuck around I could make a difference somehow. I’m going to make a difference at Coalition for Humanity. And that’s what Drew needs for me to do, and it’s what I need to do for me. Thank you for the offer of staying longer. I’ll be gone the day after your birthday.”

  He pushed upright and now their faces were close. “How do you know what date my birthday is?”

  “I have my sources.”

  “You didn’t get it from Dad.”

  “Wren. Girl is quick on a text response.”

  “She’s fired.”

  There it was. Anyone who knew Tom knew that was a joke even though it was delivered deadpan. “I hope you’ll get the job or find a great new roommate who doesn’t leave things everywhere or eat you out of house and home.”

  “You set a high standard.”

  He put his hand to her shoulder, fanned it around the back of her neck. What could they have had if she was staying? She rocked forward and kissed his cheek.

  His hand went to the back of her head and he held her there while they found each other’s lips. He should come with her. There was nothing holding him here. They could have more of this, all of this.

  “You could come.” He groaned and she realized her mistake. “I mean come with me to Washington.”

  Tom’s hand came away. “I have a job and a home here.”

  Right. She’d jumped a few steps; they weren’t that kind of a thing. They were roommates who occasionally fucked and mostly because she pushed the issue by getting in his face or falling apart in front of him. Friends who would soon be long-distance. His father thought she was the reason he’d lost out on his promotion. And she’d been the one to initiate sex every time.

  “Sorry. If you didn’t already get it, I’m addicted to your body, to having sex with you. That was the sex we’re not currently having talking.”

  “He gets up early.”

  Throwing herself at Tom wasn’t high on her to-do list. “I’m going.”

  She was almost to the hall when he said, “Flick, I might be addicted to your body, to having sex with you, but I don’t know that it helps either of us out here. You’re leaving and I need to focus on what comes next for me.”

  It wasn’t race-you-to-the-bed, first-one-there-be-naked, but she could work with it.

  Chapter Fifteen

  The evening Tom got back from dropping Dad off at the airport, Flick was out, but there was ample evidence she’d been in.

  There was a gym bag outside her bedroom door and an umbrella drying on the balcony, a long string of knobbly blue-gray pearls on a silver chain was on the coffee table and there was a pair of black shoes with weapon-like heels under a stool.

  Added to that were shiny blue specks in the sink and on cupboard handles. There were tiny silvery stars on the countertop and little pieces of colored curled ribbon on the floor with confetti holes from a puncher.

  He half expected to find party food leftovers in the refrigerator.

  The specks didn’t want to wash away. He spent a few minutes licking his index finger and trying to pick up the stars before he gave up and went to the gym for a run.

  Flick was home when he got back. There was more of her scattered around the place, as if her Dad-enforced confinement conclusion had to be celebrated by spilling her stuff everywhere.

  The woman herself was wearing her “I’m at home and comfortable” yoga pants and a tent-like T-shirt, and sat on a kitchen stool swinging her bare feet.

  She threw her arms open when he came in. “Alone at last.”

  It was a close thing. He very nearly went to her and dragged her into his arms and didn’t waste words on pleasantries.

  There was nothing stopping him from moving to Washington. It was a blinding flash of realization. But really, what were the two of them if you took the sex out of the equation?

  The sex was the whole equation. They were otherwise opposites and too different to sustain anything real. So what to do about that? Have all the sex while it was on offer was the smart answer. Because the sex, oh man, he really liked the sex. Didn’t matter whether Flick was tempting him by dancing or making him ache to comfort her by crying. It ended up in the same place—extreme pleasure and a raging appetite for more.

  Flick’s arms slapped down by her sides. “What’s wrong?”
She winced. “I’ll clean up. And I’ve eaten so you don’t need to worry about me.”

  Oh hell. All the sex would probably wreck him. He wasn’t made for affairs that went deeper than one night in a hotel room and he’d already gone deeper with Flick than with anyone he’d had sex with in a long time. Right now they were roommates, friends. The smart idea was leaving it at that.

  “You’re looking at me like I’m a leftover splinter,” she said.

  He shook his head. It wasn’t an inaccurate definition; she was under his skin. “I need a shower.”

  She laughed. “I think you look cute.”

  That was confusing. He was a disgusting, scowling sweat ball. He didn’t get it till he looked at himself in the bathroom mirror. Blue specks in his hair, all over his neck and two silver stars on his cheek. Christ. He’d been at the gym with other people looking like he was the clown at a kid’s party.

  Flick was outside the bathroom door. “It’ll wash off eventually.”

  He picked the stars off his cheek and one of them fell to his chest and stuck there. He opened the door to glare at her. “Why am I covered in shiny stuff?”

  She was leaning against the doorjamb and looked up at him with a sideshow-alley grin. “Have your shower and I’ll tell you.”

  Under the grin, she looked tired, and under the tired she looked strong. She would take her grief and use it for fuel to take Washington. Under the glitter, he was still as confused as fuck about what to do with her. He shut the door in her face and ran the water hotter than was sensible, trying to scald the indecision out. It didn’t get all the glitter.

  Flick had used the time to clean up after herself. She had music playing when he got back to the living room. At least it was someone he recognized, Chris Martin, fronting Coldplay, some song about superheroes and risk and fairy-tale bliss. About wanting something just like this.

  She’d lured him with glitter and now she’d ambushed him with a song.

  “We have a problem,” she said. She sat on the sectional and patted a place beside her.

  “We do.” That came out sounding like his father. He stayed standing where he was.

  “We have this sex thing we both want. But it’s layered in guilt and obligation and the roommate business and the fact I’m leaving. I don’t want to be something you regret.”

  “I won’t—”

  “You might. You’re standing all the way over there. I keep seducing you or giving you a reason to feel like you need to comfort me and you argued with your dad about me. You’re not a casual hookup guy, Tom.”

  He frowned. They had a sex thing and his father didn’t have anything to do with it. It wasn’t a guilt thing, it was a focus thing.

  “So I have a plan.”

  “That’s the scariest phrase to ever come out of your mouth.”

  She patted the sectional again. “That reaction is exactly why we need a plan.”

  He crossed his arms. Whatever she had up her sleeve, he could now see was partly hidden behind her back.

  “Oh, stop being such a ’fraidy Tom Cat.” She brought her hand out in front. In it was the source of the glitter. “I have a birthday present for you.”

  It looked like a party trick. Like something he’d hate. “It’s not my birthday for a month.”

  “Thirty days. I leave the day after your birthday.”

  He relented and went to sit by her. There was glitter all over her arms and some in her brow and over her nose. She held a palmful of handmade cardboard tags seasoned liberally with blue specks, covered in stars, and tied together at the corner with curling ribbon.

  “I didn’t know what to get you for your birthday and I want us to be friends, and lovers too if you want, but we’ve had trouble negotiating those definitions, so I made us a roadmap.”

  The thing in her hand did not have maplike qualities and now there was glitter on the rug and the sectional.

  “There are thirty coupons there. One for every day we have left as roommates. Every coupon entitles you to one activity we do together. You get to choose the coupon of the day in any order you like. Whatever you choose, I agree to do, with the only caveat being that some activities need more time than others so would be better for weekends, and some might need thinking ahead.”

  She’d thrust a coupon at him when she’d been trying to get Jack Haley to herself. “You made me a book of coupons.”

  “Thirty birthday activities I thought you’d like, one for every day we’re still roommates.”

  He took the coupon book from her hand. The cover said, These coupons are a birthday gift entitling Tom O’Connell to indulge in one guilt-and obligation-free activity with Flick Dalgetty for thirty days. At the bottom in smaller print she’d written the terms. Flick Dalgetty’s participation guaranteed. One coupon per day. Can be used in any order. No refunds. No rain checks. No cash exchange. Nontransferable. Unused coupons are void. All hookups are fully consensual. Offer expires at the end of Flick’s tenancy.

  She jumped up, agitated, her hands going to her head. “You hate it.”

  “I’m frequently speechless with you. This is a whole other level of gobsmacked.”

  Her hands went to her hips. “I guess I have just made myself your servant for a month.”

  “Servant!” He almost dropped the coupon book, only the thought of more glitter on the rug made him catch it.

  “God, Tom, it’s meant to be fun.” She sat on the table and glared at him. “You remember fun. I thought it would be good for both of us.”

  He opened the booklet and was greeted by the first coupon. It said, Bowling. Bowling! The second one said Binge-Watch Show of Your Choice. After that there was Make You a New Playlist, which made him smile, then Movie of Your Choice and Hike and Massage.

  It was deceptively innocent. He kept paging and got a series of meal-based coupons where Flick volunteered to cook—she could cook?—or pay for food eaten out, and then it veered from sweet to flaming. Starting with Bubble Bath and careering through Dress Me for Bed, Afternoon Delight, Sixty-Nine, Head, Tie Me Up for Sex, to Kama Sutra Position of Your Choice. His face was itchy-hot before he got to the last coupon. It said, Tear My Clothes Off Before You Fuck Me.

  “Too much?” she said.

  Too something. “You want to do all of these things with me?”

  “There’s nothing in there I don’t want to do. And that’s in the fine print.”

  He flipped to the one that said Servant for a Day. “I could turn this into anything.” He could turn her into his cleaner or have her on her knees all day.

  “You could. I’ll risk it.” She leaned over and kissed his cheek. “I trust you.”

  Some guy who wasn’t Chris Martin was singing about being pulled in enough to keep guessing, about having his inhibitions torn up and having nothing holding him back. The singer had it right, Flick had planned a perfect mix of simple activities and the sex they both craved and given him an out at every turn.

  “If I want this song on the playlist.”

  “Shawn Mendes, ‘There’s Nothing Holdin’ Me Back.’ You get it.”

  “You cook?”

  “Not as well as you do and I don’t enjoy it, but yes, I cook. You didn’t really want me mucking around in your kitchen, so it was easy to stay out.”

  He still wasn’t sure he wanted her mucking around in his kitchen or his head. “If I can’t take your cooking?”

  “I’m not that terrible.”

  “I’ll have to trust you too.” He turned his head and bumped his nose on hers. The first coupon she’d given him was a desperate measure. This had taken a great deal of thought, not to mention the craft—don’t think about the glitter. It was cute and funny, a personal behind-the-scenes invitation to the fun fair, and more than a little exciting. “Happy birthday to me.”

  She made him pick his first coupon. He took
the ribbon off the booklet and spread the thirty coupons out on the table in their groups: food, fun and sex. A few of the activities had Friday night or weekend stamped on them because of the time they’d require: a hike together, the binge watch. He set aside Friends for Dinner, because that required planning.

  He bundled all the sex acts together in a pile; they’d also take some thinking about. She wanted him to tie her up and tear her clothes off. Holy fuck, that was hot. There were eleven sex coupons and eighteen in the other categories. This wasn’t all about the sex, it was also about building a friendship. It was friends and lovers by coupon, redeemable on demand. Only Flick would think of something like this.

  She poked him in the side. “Choose one at random.”

  “Hello, have you met me?”

  She shoulder-charged him, her laughter so throaty he was tempted to pick from the sex pile. There wasn’t going to be anything random about this except what happened when they were in the activity together. What would it be like to hike with Flick by his side, to soak in a bubble bath with her?

  He tapped a finger on a bright orange card with a bowling ball drawn on it. It looked safe. Fun, even. “Tomorrow night.”

  “I bowl well, so you know.”

  “Really. What’s in it for the winner?”

  “Honor, truth, justice and whatever side bet you want to lay.”

  There was the agenda set by the coupons and then there was whatever they negotiated on top. It was going to be an interesting month.

  “You volunteered to tell me a secret.”

  She nodded. It was one of the more open-ended coupons. Like Massage, it could mean anything from silly to sexy. “One coupon at a time,” she said.

  “Starting tomorrow.”

  He’d like to kiss her now. Take his time with it. “For the next thirty days.”

  “And then I’m gone.”

  Thirty coupons and then she was gone. He needed to pace himself or he might not make it. “But not forgotten.”

  He’d like to kiss her and not stop because his father was down the hall or because Flick was desperately sad and wanting to forget, and enjoying her made him feel guilty, or because she provoked him into it.