The Love Coupon

by Ainslie Paton

  No argument with that. She wrestled his shirt off. He kissed her face, her neck and then a slow line from her jaw down her throat and between her breasts. His hand was at her back, fingers feeling and not finding what he wanted. He growled against the swell of her breast.

  “It’s at the front.”

  No time lost finding the clasp, undoing it and sliding the bra off her shoulders. A lot of time spent nuzzling, licking, sucking, tiny bites that thrilled more than threatened, and a slow grind of their bodies that built and built until Tom pushed the elastic of her panties to one side and eased inside her.

  She was so wet and so full. His forehead dropped to her shoulder. “So good, Flick, I don’t want to move.”

  He would, or she’d make him, but for the moment, she held on tight to this tenderness, knowing that when they moved it would explode her world. She should tell him, tell him what she felt and let him decide what it meant. She should tell him, and she’d know if she could afford to cling or needed to steel herself to say goodbye.

  This thing they had shifted from friendship in high gear once they’d hit the sheets, and with each coupon the revs went higher, the connection intensified. She knew Tom was as mad for the sex as she was, she knew he cared for her, loved their time together. They would never be strangers again, but that might be all he felt and before she spun out of control she had to know.

  She was still trying to connect thought to reason, reason to words, to explain what she felt, when he claimed her mouth, her tongue, seconds before he lifted her, still joined to him, and brought her down on her back on the lounge.

  With an experimental thrust he shuddered, eyes on where their bodies locked. He’d get extra friction from the elastic leg of her panties. “If we ruin these we’ll buy more,” he said.

  On his knees, he ran a hand down her thigh to her calf over the stocking. She still had her heels on. “Leave these. My God, you’re so hot.” A hand to her stomach, a caress. “Your body, what it does to me—” He lowered over her, lip to lip. “The way your brain works. Excites me more than I have words for. I can’t keep up with you. I had a fantasy scene all picked out, saved that coupon, but after this, I know it’s not enough for you. I’m not enough.”

  No, no, no. Compliments and love sentiments wrapped in a version of reality she didn’t share with him. “You’re enough, Tom. More than enough.” These games and fantasies worked because of him, because he was easy to please and willing to let her lead, and played along so nicely.

  He thrust and she brought her knees up, taking him deeper, the elastic biting into her hip, grazing meanly along that soft line of flesh inside her thigh where her leg met her body, but she didn’t want to stop, give him any opportunity to doubt. He thrust again and the panties gave with a ripping sound, and she gasped as the sharp discomfort flipped into shocking pleasure. Tom was lost inside his desire and the drive to come, and she was there with him, shuddering, bucking, breathing in snatches, clenching and urging him on with everything she had, and hitting her peak with his name thudding in her heart, screaming in her mind, and loud from her lips.

  They ran overtime and someone did knock on the door to hurry them along. Her panties were shredded. They’d fucked the lounge several feet across the room and she’d gouged an angry seam down Tom’s hip and butt with her heel.

  She saw it when he stood to fix his pants, reaching out to trace it. “I gave you a sex wound.”

  He twisted around to look and then grinned at her. “Only fair we both lose some skin in this game. I think they heard you shout my name in Pittsburgh.”

  Game? A turn of speech or an insight into his thinking? She studied his face. He was happy and that’s what this coupon was about. It was what all of them were about, an excuse for them to come together, an agenda to keep them focused. A pattern Tom would recognize, a commitment, a calendar event. It was so much more for her, but for him?

  At the service counter a sassy hostess called him by his first name when he paid for new panties in several colors, and he blushed, going pink from the collar of his T-shirt to his hairline.

  “She’s looking at your credit card,” Flick whispered, loving his reaction.

  He shook his head and turned his card so she could see it said Mr. T. M. O’Connell.

  She shrugged, trying not to laugh. “Lucky guess.”

  He pinched her ass and then pulled her into his arms, but did nothing more than stare down at her with a puzzled expression that was unsettling. The game, if that’s all it was, had hit the final quarter, eleven coupons remaining and overdue for analysis.

  The hostess coughed.

  “Creeping everyone out,” Flick said.

  He frowned and released her. “Can’t have that.”

  On the walk home, she tried to coax him into opening up. She made a poor can opener. Not his fault—he kept up his end, but her questions were fumbled and fell halfway between an interrogation and flirtation and it confused him. It frustrated her. She ended up making ridiculous guesses at his middle name. Melvin, Montgomery, Murgatroyd, Maximilian, Maverick. It was Michael, and she’d figured it would be. Why was that so easy and speaking her mind so difficult?

  She had to give clients advice that was far more complex, with serious ramifications, every day. In Washington, she’d be selling an unpopular agenda to people in power who had every reason to consider her an irrelevant interruption and she’d get them to listen, but she couldn’t tell the man who held her hand she was in love with him. All of him. The take-charge career guy, and the more socially reticent one. The man who liked his disciplined routine, and the one who would willingly experiment with her, even when it sometimes made him feel uncomfortable.

  Once they were inside the apartment he retreated to the kitchen and moved the conversation on to safer ground, and she let the topic rest.

  It weighed on her. Like anything else in her life that was unresolved, it kept her awake, long after Tom was asleep. She stayed in bed, not wanting to wake him and have him follow her out to the kitchen again, but close to dawn she broke.

  Tom had left the remaining coupons lined up in order on the coffee table. As they’d neared the end, he’d shuffled the cardboard tags around less, satisfied with their order and the narrative between them they created. The next coupon in line was a sixty-nine.

  A complete circle. It was a sign of how thoroughly dumb it was she was tolerating this imperfect knowledge. She wasn’t losing any more sleep over it, wallowing around in indecision of her own making. She snatched the I Tell You a Secret coupon up and went back to the bedroom. She woke him with kisses to his prickly jaw, well before the alarm was due to go off.

  Before he could weigh her down with long arms she loved, with returned kisses she craved, she sat over his legs and slapped the coupon on his chest. “We need to do this one.”

  He picked it up and squinted at it. “Okay, but you’re sure you don’t want to tell me your secret while we’re lying in the dark with time on our hands, not about to get organized for work?”

  “I love you.”

  “We could...” His words died, and he sat up and took her shoulders in his hands.

  “I love you. Fell in love with you. Am in love with you. There it is. I don’t know if that’s a secret to you or something you worked out, but it needed to be said.”

  “Ah.” He screwed up his eyes; his mouth was a flat line of disapproval and he held a hand to his head. “It’s early.”

  It was almost twelve weeks of getting to know each other, living together. It might be early for Tom, but not for Flick.

  “It’s, ah. I’m not awake.”

  It would be fair, if she believed that. Fair of him to react so flatly if she’d ambushed him, and sure, she’d sprung the coupon and the announcement, but it wasn’t like he didn’t have ample warning, and he was an intuitive guy. He either felt the same way as she did, or he didn’t. T
here was no gray area in this.

  “Flick, give me a chance to...”

  She didn’t hear the rest of his sentence. It was a variation of wake up, get dressed, think about it and I’ll get back to you.

  She rocked forward and kissed his cheekbone. “It’s fine.” Now she knew. “I’m going to the gym.”

  He didn’t stop her, and when she got back from making herself sick on the treadmill, he was gone.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Tom let the scheduled call from Beau’s office go through to his voice mail. He had no headspace for Beau, no surety he’d have it in him to play the politics required. He’d hashed it through with Josh—there was a tone to take, a set of words to say that kept all the doors open and gave him the most leverage.

  He should’ve talked to Josh about Flick. But he’d avoided it, written her off as sex on tap. Lift, hold and drop. He’d been patronizing, a fucking jerk, and Josh didn’t call him on it. And now he felt like a complete dickhead. He sent an email to Beau’s assistant to reschedule quoting a nonexistent client emergency. The emergency was all Flick.

  He loved Flick, his head was full of her, his body primed to be with her, but she’d knocked him sideways with her secret confession this morning because he didn’t know that’s how she felt. Worse, he should’ve put that together, should’ve been ready. He was the planner, the strategist, the general. She was the pop-up event, the random occurrence, the black-swan rare incident, and he simply hadn’t factored for her.

  And like a goddamn scorpion he’d stung her with his no-comment response.

  He rubbed the spot on his chest where she’d slapped the coupon. He felt branded by it and by his failure to know what to do next. There’d be glitter in his bed, but he’d killed the sparkle of what he had with Flick.

  He’d taken the thirty coupons at face value, considered them a game, the Tetris of Flick’s tenancy, when he should’ve read them as her version of a love letter.

  He didn’t know what being in love with Flick meant. She’d taken over his life when he’d been ripe for rebellion, at least what passed as rebellion for him. But he’d known it was temporary and that acted like a fail-safe. He could do anything and everything with Flick because it wasn’t permanent. They weren’t in a relationship, they were roommates with benefits. It wasn’t a commitment, just a short-term hookup. Unlimited possibilities on a vacation timeline.

  She would leave. He’d screw his head back on and deal with his career choices.

  Except that thinking showed a superior lack of foresight. It didn’t allow for contingencies. He didn’t know he could feel this way, and the all-time, gold-class fuckup, he didn’t know what it meant.

  He loved her. That was clear. She meant more to him than he ever expected. He loved Wren and Josh and Gram and his difficult goddamn father, but he didn’t want to change his life for them. He’d have to change his life for Flick, become someone other than he was. Someone who enjoyed the roller coaster, didn’t mind the wild weather and said hang the mess.

  When Wren appeared in his doorway, he welcomed the distraction. “Do you come bearing a crisis?”

  “No. Why?”

  “You’ve got sensible shoes on.”

  She lifted a foot and waggled it. “If you were wearing them you might not think so.” And wasn’t that the cherry on top; his shoe detector rationale didn’t hold either.

  Wren lofted PRWeek at him, the magazine skidding off the desk onto his lap. “Page fifty-two.”

  He expected a puff piece on Harry to reinforce his continued leadership of Rendel. He got Flick’s smiling face and the headline “Lobbyist Ups Stakes.”

  “Good pic,” Wren said.

  Flick looking brushed and polished in a navy pinstripe suit, smiling into the camera with a riot of amusement in her eyes. He scanned the story, the lines “tackle new challenges,” “inimitable negotiating style” and “force to be reckoned with” jumping out. Flick was all that, and she was brazenly honest as she knelt over him and opened her heart.

  “What are you going to do about it?”

  He looked up. “By do, you mean?”

  “Oh, Tom.” Wren jammed a hand on her hip. “Seriously, I could slap you.”

  He looked down at the magazine. “Yeah, well, get in line.” What could he do about it? He couldn’t ask Flick to stay. It was a big deal to quit and go with her, and Denise hadn’t turned up any new job opportunities, warning him it would take time and to sit tight, reminding him his best opportunity was probably to stay right where he was.

  By the time he got done reading, Wren was gone, and he knew if nothing else he owed Flick his honesty, even if it meant presenting her with his confusion.

  The story about Harry was on page thirteen. No confusion there.

  Not knowing how to talk to Flick became a reason to work late. Like old times he was last out of the office, spending most of the day trying to convince a new client their business strategy was unfocused and doomed not to deliver the results they wanted.

  The condo was distressingly dark and quiet when he got in. But it was nearly midnight and it wasn’t like Flick would be in the mood to wait up for him. There was a horrible moment that hit him like the shock of vertigo when he realized she might’ve moved out, until he turned a light on and discovered one of her scarves draped over the sectional, her black killer-heel shoes under a stool and her tablet charging by the TV.

  Of course she wouldn’t leave. She didn’t have a mean streak and she wasn’t a coward. Unlike himself. He should’ve gone after her this morning, should’ve called her today, dragged her out for lunch, at a minimum come home early and cooked for her. Instead he’d spent the whole day showing her how little she meant to him and it wasn’t an accident.

  It was a decision. Like avoiding Beau’s call.

  Or at least a very bad default position by a man who didn’t know what to do with his career and hadn’t planned on falling in love by coupon.

  He went out to the balcony to stare at the city when every fiber in his body urged him to go to Flick, but he’d given up the privilege of being in the same bed with her uninvited. Sleep would be a long time coming, and if he stayed out here too long he might meet Flick on one of her thinking-too-hard fridge raids and that would be another awful piece of planning.

  She muted her phone when she went to bed, so he knew he could message her without waking her and she’d see it first thing in the morning. But what to say? What happened wasn’t a missed connection, a matter of right and wrong. It couldn’t be covered by an apology—it was more complex.

  He brought up Messenger and stared at his keyboard, hoping the act of looking at the letters would prompt his brain. Nothing. In disgust for his lack of eloquence he typed, I’m sorry about how I reacted today. Can we talk?

  He’d pocketed his phone when it buzzed. Flick. I’m awake, but it’s too late to talk. You don’t need to apologize.

  He let go an audible sigh that was weighed down with all the reasons why Wren had wanted to slap him earlier. He wanted to slap himself. Did I wake you? Compounding my missteps.

  No, and it wasn’t a misstep. I knew I was taking a risk. That’s life. Don’t beat yourself up.

  Classic Flick. But he’d be happier if he could see her face. Forgiving me for being a brick wall is a brilliant strategy if you want me to feel lower than freezing. I got today so wrong.

  I’m not unhappy with that outcome.

  She ended the line with a snowflake plus a snow-topped mountain emoji, and it made him grunt with the irony. She hadn’t wanted to talk but she kept answering his messages. According to PRWeek, manipulating favorable outcomes is one of your strengths.

  Don’t believe everything you read.

  This is my problem—knowing what to believe.

  He stared at his screen watching for an indication she was typing a reply. There was
a long break before the three dots appeared, long enough for him to contemplate throwing his phone off the balcony. He almost did when he got her reply.

  I don’t want to talk about us.

  She might talk about something else, and it felt critical to him to keep that lifeline with her open. Can you give me some advice?

  Go to bed.

  Not come to bed. He deserved that. He typed, About a client. They’d talked work issues through often; this wasn’t such a reach if it kept her with him.

  What have you got?

  Medical devices company. Can’t decide which market position to take. The company had to pick a direction before Tom could help them. He was powerless to make a difference for them until they did.

  Why is the decision so difficult?

  No clear-cut view of the upside long-term.

  Flip a coin.

  That’s not your advice, is it?

  Yeah. No clear upside means the downside is not making any decision, or doing something half-baked and losing momentum. If a thorough analysis doesn’t show a reliable defined benefit, pick a side and focus your energies on making that decision the best outcome.

  He knew it. He’d been saying that in different ways all day. What about post-decision conflict? Blame game.

  No place for it. Don’t look back. The conditions will likely have changed.

  Right.

  Wait. He watched the three little dots for the rest of her words and then heard them. “There’s no device company. We’ve been talking about you.”

  He turned toward the sound of her voice. Havischam Medical was a real client with a real market dilemma, but she was right. He’d told his own story in the guise of the client’s problem and he hadn’t seen the parallel until now. “Ah, Flick, I didn’t realize. I’ve fucked this up again.”

  She walked into the ambient light from the lamp he’d lit, hair wild around her face and shoulders, sleep shorts and a bleach-stained T-shirt. A long way from the sea-green nightdress but equally as beautiful. “No, you haven’t. I understand.”