by Amy Brent
Her eyes locked with mine.
She started walking toward me. She let her gaze fall to the floor as she walked. So she was just as nervous as I had thought she would be.
Each step she took was slow. It was as if she was trying to put off the inevitable for as long as she could. Her leisurely approach gave me the time to soak in more of her.
She was wearing a form-fitting black skirt that hugged her hips and thighs. Beneath that were black nylons. They were somewhat sheer, and I wondered if they were the kind that ended mid-thigh with a band of lace. Her shoes were simple black heels, not too high, but just enough to show off the curve of her calf. The calf that had rested on my shoulder while I fucked her.
Her top was a form-fitting black turtleneck that made the dangling earrings she wore sparkle against her dark hair and the even darker fabric of the sweater. Tight clothes had always been the best kinds of clothes for Allie.
She was beautiful—more beautiful than I ever remembered her being. Maybe it was because I felt like I couldn’t have her anymore. As she drew closer, I thought of running my hand up her thigh, pushing her skirt up, and seeing whether or not my suspicions about those nylons were accurate.
God damn it man, focus.
She arrived at the table, tight-lipped and anxious. Her fingers were knotted together in front of her, and she stood like she was waiting for an invitation to sit. So I gestured at the seat across from me.
She lowered herself into it and still refused to meet my eyes.
“You look gorgeous,” I told her, watching for the slightest curve of her lips that might betray a smile. No such thing happened.
“Thank you,” she said quietly, her eyes fixed on her lap below the table.
“I’m glad you came,” I said. “I appreciate it.”
Finally, she looked up at me. Her eyes were glassy. I knew this was a sign that tears were being held at bay. “Of course, I came,” she said. “Thanks for calling. I’ve been. Well, it doesn’t matter how I’ve been.”
We sat in awkward silence for a moment. The waitress returned, and Allie ordered herself a glass of water. The waitress tried to encourage me to order something from the drink menu, but I cut her off and ordered our meals instead. Allie and I sat in tense silence until our food arrived. Once we were done eating, I stopped putting off the conversation we had both come here to have.
“I have some questions, Allie. I don’t want to accuse you of anything. I don’t want this to turn into a fight. I only want answers so I can try to make sense of this.”
“I understand,” she said, nodding slowly. “Ask me anything you want.”
It took me a moment to remember the first thing I wanted to ask her. Her bright, sad eyes were too distracting. I didn’t want her looking at me that way. I didn’t want her feeling as broken as I felt. But it was what it was. There was no going back; no rewriting the last few days.
“You never would have told me,” I started, unable to look at her as her bottom lip trembled. “Would you? Had we not hooked up. You would have been able to keep your mouth shut forever.”
“I’d like to tell you I wouldn’t, but yes. I would have kept it from you for as long as I could. Until I died, I imagine.” Each word seemed to take a physical toll on her. It was like she was pulling teeth with each syllable.
“Why?”
She looked down at her hands. She blinked away tears and looked up at the ceiling. Once she had herself under control, she met my gaze and took a deep breath. “I didn’t know how you would react. I didn’t want to jeopardize our friendship over something that meant nothing. Over a stupid decision I made when I was a sixteen-year-old girl.”
“I can see why you wouldn’t tell me at the time,” Steven said. “Believe me. I get it. Things would have been confusing. But a year or two later? Or when we were in college? I thought we knew everything about each other. I trusted you with everything. And now I find out that all along you’ve been keeping this big thing buried. You fucked my brother Allie,” I said under my breath, leaning closer to her. “You fucked him, and you guys thought you were pregnant. How could you not tell me that?”
“I know,” she said, her voice cracking.
“It’s fucked up.”
“I know,” she said again, leaning forward and resting her forehead in her hands so I couldn’t see her face. “I should have told you a long time ago. I know that now, Steven. Believe me, I do. I wish I could take it all back. I’ve wished I could do that since the night it happened. So did Andrew. This isn’t what we wanted. None of it was what we wanted.”
“Well, what you wanted doesn’t really matter anymore, does it?” I asked bitterly.
Her tear-filled eyes peeked up at me from between her fingers. She shook her head, her dark curls bouncing around her cheeks. “No.”
“And to make things worse,” I said, heat rising up the back of my neck, “you were only sixteen. Andrew was twenty-two. He took advantage of you. He never should have.”
“I know that Steven,” Allie said. “I know. But it wasn’t like that. It wasn’t. I swear. He was good to me. Please believe me. I’m so sorry Steven. I’m so, so sorry.”
“Yeah,” I said, tossing my napkin over my finished plate of food. “So am I. Excuse me. I need to use the restroom.”
I slid out of the booth and headed for the bathroom. It was a small single room with a urinal, toilet, and sink. The Italian Corner was a quaint place, and they only had three restrooms. One was seemingly always out of order.
Before I was able to lock the door behind me, someone pushed it open. I started to tell them it was occupied, but when I turned around, I saw Allie standing there. She pushed the door closed by leaning up against it. Then her hand wandered behind her back, and I heard the lock click into place.
“Allie, what the hell are you doing?” I asked.
“I know you’re mad at me,” she whispered, stepping away from the door and reaching out to take my shirt in her hands. She tugged upward, pulling it out from the waistband of my pants. “But please, I need you. Fuck me. Right here. It doesn’t have to mean anything.”
She was looking up at me with those eyes. Her lips were full and parted. One of her knees pressed between my legs, and her hand began to caress my cock over my pants.
“Allie,” I breathed, wanting nothing more than to take her right then and there. “This won’t make things easier.”
“No,” she whispered. “It won’t. I don’t care.”
“Fine,” I said, and I crushed my mouth against hers.
She ran her fingers through my hair before grabbing hold of my shoulders. She braced herself against me as I undid my pants and let them fall around my ankles. Then I took the hem of her skirt and yanked it up over her ass.
I had been right about the nylons. Holy fuck, she was sexy.
I pushed her backward until she was pressed up against the door. I hooked one arm beneath her knee and forced her leg up. I pinned her there, one leg lifted up against her side and draped over my arm, while I pulled myself free of my boxers. I stroked my cock a couple times before arching my hips toward her.
She clutched at my shoulders tighter and pulled me down to her. She kissed me again, greedily, filling my mouth with her tongue while I filled her pussy with my cock. She moaned into my mouth as I thrust in and out of her.
“Fuck me, Steven,” she cooed. “Come on. Fuck me harder.”
I did. The door rattled behind her. Neither of us cared. She moaned and writhed until I was bucking against her, burying myself inside the tightness of her wet pussy. My free hand rubbed her clit. Her leg began to shake. I knew I was about to make her come.
We came together. She cried out, and I covered her mouth with my hand. I didn’t stop, even after she was dripping with my semen. I continued fucking her like it was therapy. All the anger in me had an outlet. She took it all, clinging to me desperately, as I kept my hand clamped over her mouth and banged her until she couldn’t stand on the one leg.
I slid myself into her again. She moaned softly, and her fingers appeared on either side of my cock. She stroked herself and my shaft as I fucked her. I held on to her hips, pulling her up against me with every thrust. My thighs slapped against hers, and I was sure that some of the tables in the restaurant would be able to hear us.
It didn’t matter.
This was it. I was making sure I made it count.
I exploded inside her again. She looked back at me over her shoulder. Her cheeks were flushed, and her hair had come half undone.
I pulled out and stepped away. She straightened, watching me like she was watching a predatory animal. I went to the sink and cleaned myself up before putting my pants back on. Then I turned to her.
“I’m going to pay the bill. Then I’m going home. You were right. This didn’t mean anything.”
She blinked, and a tear rolled down her cheek.
“I could have forgiven you for what you and Andrew did. But I can’t forgive the lie. And I can’t trust you after all this. Tonight gave me clarity.” I dried my hands with the paper towel and went to the door. I unlocked it and looked back at her. “Good luck with everything, Allie.”
When her tears started to flow freely, I opened the door and left. If people were looking up from their meals to stare at me, I didn’t notice. I went straight to our table and dropped enough cash to cover our meals and the tip. Then I went outside and around back to the parking lot, where I got into my car and did everything I could to forget the look on Allie’s face when I had left her in that bathroom.
Chapter 16
Allie
I stood from my desk and tucked my chair in. I flattened my skirt out as I walked down the hall to the lunch room. No one was there because it was an hour later than when everyone usually took their break. I intentionally waited to eat so that I could sit in peace and quiet and avoid James, who always liked to invite me to his office to have lunch together. The last three months had been filled with daily visits to his office, where he told me how pretty I was and tried to convince me to start wearing lower cut blouses to work.
Did he somehow know that I was alone? That I hadn’t had sex for three months because the man I loved wasn’t speaking to me anymore?
I opened the communal fridge and grabbed the container with my name on it. Inside was some chopped-up veggies with hummus and half an egg salad sandwich. I stared at it, scrunched up my nose, and concluded that I was going to treat myself to a better lunch. Melissa and I had made plans to meet that afternoon, but she had called me the night before to tell me she couldn’t make it. So I had thrown together a last-minute meal, and now there wasn’t a single part of me that wanted to eat it. I wanted something cozy with all the cold weather that had settled in.
Now burdened with a craving for chili, I donned my jacket and slipped out of the office. I made my way down the block to a small diner that had the best homemade chili around, slid into a booth, and placed my order.
The diner looked empty. A month and a half ago it had been filled with cheerful Christmas lights, and the windows had all been painted with images of Santa and candy canes. Now it felt somber.
My chili arrived quickly. I leaned over it, the steam wafting up into my nose. When I opened my eyes, I was looking across the room.
To my surprise, I found a familiar pair of eyes staring back at me.
Steven was sitting at a booth, alone, on the other side of the diner. He had a small smile playing on his lips, and I suspected he had been watching me for a while. I smiled back and gave him a little wave.
He stood up, collected his winter jacket from the seat across from him, and made his way over to me. He stopped when he stood above me. “Well, hey there stranger,” he said.
“Hey there,” I said, rubbing my palms over my thighs anxiously.
“Can I join you?” he asked, nodding at the empty seat across from me.
“Please,” I said.
He slid into the booth and folded his arms over the table. “You look good,” he said. “I like the new haircut.”
I had cut some of the length off my hair earlier that month. It was still long, but shorter than it had been the last time he saw me at the Italian restaurant. That had been three months ago now.
I swallowed. “You look good, too.” I wasn’t lying. His jaw was darkened with stubble that had never been there before. It gave a rugged, handsome look to his dark features that suited him. His hair was styled differently, too. I was used to seeing an unruly dark mess atop his head; now it was slicked back and shorter on the sides.
“What have you been up to?” he asked, his eyes flicking back and forth between mine. He seemed genuinely interested. It didn’t feel like he was forcing himself to talk to me just because he had run into me. Maybe some of the anger he felt toward me had started to ebb away with the passing of time.
“Oh, you know, the same old stuff. I’m keeping busy with work.”
“James still being a perv?”
“Yes,” I said, almost laughing. Almost. “What about you? How are things? The scruff suits you, by the way.”
Steven scratched his chin almost self-consciously. “Yeah? Well, you know, gotta try new things every now and then. I’ve been alright. Things with the app have really taken off. It’s in the beta testing stage right now, and most reviews are positive. A couple more rounds of adjustments and it should be released to the public. Keep an eye out for our advertising campaign,” he winked.
How dare he wink. He should have known what it did to me. All those feelings for him, all that desire and need came rushing back. “I miss you,” I blurted out. I clapped my hands over my mouth like I could catch the words and stuff them back in before he heard them.
That smile of his that I loved so much appeared. His teeth looked whiter than ever against the contrast of his dark facial hair. “I’ve missed you too, Allie. It’s been weird not having you around.”
“Yeah,” I said, picking absently at a peeling part of the booth beside me. “Same.”
Things were quiet for a while after that. The waitress arrived, and Steven ordered some chili. I waited for her to bring it to him before I dug into mine. We ate quietly together. Neither of us knowing what to say, or neither of us willing to be the one to speak first.
The food was good and warmed me up. I started to dread going back to work, so I wracked my brain for any potential conversation starters. It was more than awkward sitting together with the heavy and very full silence hanging between us. There was a lot that we should be saying, but were unwilling to voice.
“Are you seeing anyone?” I asked when we finished eating.
Steven chuckled and leaned back in the booth. “Seeing anyone? Come on, it’s been three months. But you know me better than that.”
“So, that’s a no?”
“That’s a no,” he nodded.
“Right. Well, you never know. Stranger things have happened,” I said.
“True. Like my best friend hooking up with my brother,” Steven said. There was still a hint of amusement in his eyes, but it was faint.
I bit my lip and looked away from him. “Yeah.”
“What about you?” he asked, crossing his arms over his chest. “You seeing anyone?”
“No, definitely not,” I said, wishing painfully that I was so I would have something to talk about. “How’s Chance?”
“He’s good. Doing the same old stuff, too. You know how it is. He still busts my ass about you and I not talking. Drives him a bit crazy.”
I smiled. Chance was one of the good ones. He and I always got along. I missed him, too. “Well, Chance always has been more invested in other people’s lives than his own. It’s a blessing and a curse.”
Steven chuckled again. “I suppose you
could look at it that way. How’s your sister? She still working her ass off? Pedal to the metal?”
“Yes,” I said, feeling a bit lighter now. “She’s keeping busy. She asks about you a lot. I took a breath to continue but didn’t say anything.
“Yes?” Steven asked, sensing my hesitation.
“She knows how much I miss you. The last few months haven’t been easy, Steven. Not at all. I have a lot of regrets. A lot of guilt. I still feel terrible. I think I always will. I’m so sorry.”
Steven was looking at me like he wasn’t sure what to say. Some of that anger I had seen in him that night at The Italian Corner resurfaced in his dark eyes. Then he shrugged, and it was gone. “Well, there’s nothing we can do about it now, right?”
I nodded and nudged the salt and pepper shakers around on the table. Conversation between Steven and I used to flow so effortlessly. Now there was this big elephant in the room.
I reminded myself that I was lucky to even be talking to him. Yesterday, and all the days over the last three months, I never would have believed I would be sitting down with Steven today. I was sure that I would never talk to him again; and I was positive that if I ever saw him in passing, he would turn away from me.
