At Your Beck & Call

by Jane Harvey-Berrick

  By the time she arrived, I’d been left alone with Carl and the asshole for company. Darren was sitting on the sidewalk, and Carl was only just vertical. Everyone else on the Boulevard gave us a wide berth.

  “You weren’t exaggerating,” laughed Laura, being an annoyingly perky sober person.

  “Nope,” I grunted, hefting Darren’s considerable weight and dumping him onto the backseat of her Beamer.

  Then I hauled Carl around to the front and stuffed him into the passenger seat. Laura raised her eyebrows.

  “Trust me, it’s better if I sit in the back. That idiot is gonna barf before we get them home. I want to make sure I throw him out of your car first.”

  “Good plan,” she smirked.

  “You’re beautiful,” slurred Carl. “I’m him … his … him my friend.”

  “Nice to meet you,” smiled Laura.

  Carl fell asleep, but I was right about the dickhead. At least I stopped him from spraying the inside of Laura’s car. I tossed him out onto the curb where he heaved for nearly 10 minutes.

  Eventually, we reached Carl and Tessa’s house.

  I managed to find Carl’s key, but before I could use it, the door swung open, with a furious Tessa standing there in an unflattering robe, her hair all mussed.

  “I might have known!” she hissed.

  “Hello, Tessa.”

  “What the hell have you done to him?”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “He’s safe. He had a good time.”

  “I love you, bro,” Carl mumbled, earning him the evil-eye from Tessa.

  “Your brother is passed out on the backseat. I’ll go get him.”

  “Who’s driving?” she snapped.

  “A friend,” I replied, coolly.

  I dragged Darren out, stepping back as he hurled again, spattering whiskey-smelling vomit across Tessa’s front yard.

  “You want me to get him inside?” I asked.

  “You’ve done enough already!”

  I shrugged and let Darren go. He immediately fell to the grass and started snoring.

  Tessa bit her lip. She desperately didn’t want to ask for my help.

  “Seriously, Tessa? You want me to leave your brother passed out here just to prove a point?”

  “Bring him in,” she muttered, reluctantly.

  I pulled him up under his arms, and dragged him through the door.

  I’d never been in Carl’s house before. It was nice—not really Carl’s style, not that he had one. Tessa was obviously the home decorator in the family. At least, I couldn’t imagine it had been Carl who’d hung flowery wallpaper in the hall. It was hurting my eyes—or maybe that was the bright ceiling light.

  With Darren situated on the couch, I helped Carl, dragging him up the stairs and leaving him on their bed, snoring loudly. If that was marital bliss, you could keep it.

  Tessa managed a curt, “Thank you.”

  I nodded. “See you at the wedding.”

  As I turned to leave, she suddenly said, “Carl says you’re bringing a date.”

  I looked at her evenly.

  “Yes.”

  “Not … not one of your … clients.”

  “For fuck’s sake, Tessa, no!”

  “So, what … you’re dating now?”

  “Is that so unbelievable?”

  “Yes, frankly. I can’t imagine what sort of woman would allow her boyfriend to sleep with other women.”

  At that moment Laura stepped out of the car.

  “Hello. I’m Laura,” and she held out her hand.

  Tessa shook it reluctantly, eyeing Laura warily.

  “You must be looking forward to the wedding,” she said, her voice friendly. “I think those two will have sobered up by then.”

  Tessa nodded tightly.

  “Well, if you’ll forgive us, I think I should get Hallen home,” Laura said calmly, ignoring Tessa’s barely polite behavior. “He hasn’t had that much less to drink,” and she hooked her arm around my waist, smiling up at me.

  God, I wanted to kiss her.

  Tessa blinked, surprise written all across her face.

  As we settled ourselves back in the car, Laura shook her head.

  “Wow, she really doesn’t like you!”

  “I know,” I sighed. “I don’t think I’ll get to see Carl that much after the wedding.”

  “She’ll come around.”

  “You think?”

  “Yes, as soon as she sees what a good influence I am on you.”

  “I was kind of hoping you’d be a bad influence on me,” and I ran my hand under her skirt, up her bare thigh.

  She laughed as she swatted me away.

  “Let’s get you home, Romeo.”

  I leaned back in the seat, smiling to myself, stealing glances at her every few seconds.

  “What?” she asked.

  I shook my head.

  “What?” she insisted.

  How could I explain? How could I tell her the simple joy I felt of having someone look after me like this? No one had really cared that I was living and breathing since I was 12 years old.

  “I want to make love to you.”

  She smiled. “You’re drunk.”

  “True, but not that drunk. I want to hear you scream my name when you come.”

  Her mouth dropped open in surprise.

  “Hallen…”

  “Stay with me tonight, Laura, please.”

  She was silent for a moment.

  “Okay,” she breathed out, at last.

  The ride home seemed interminable and it was a relief when the lights of my house were in sight.

  I was out of the car in seconds, the alcohol firing through my body.

  What I felt for her wasn’t soft and easy: it scorched and burned. I needed her. I physically needed her touch.

  I pinned her against the car, devouring her mouth fiercely.

  She pushed back against my chest and dragged us inside, tearing off my jacket and tugging on my shirt.

  With stumbling, hurried steps, we fled upstairs, my body blazing with desire as her fingers scrabbled at my zipper.

  The sensation of her hands around my dick nearly sent me over the edge.

  I tried to take off her shirt, but she shook her head, determination flickering behind her eyes.

  She shoved me hard so I landed backwards on the bed, her body falling with me.

  I grabbed her hips and rolled her off me, pressing her into the mattress, my tongue in her mouth, punishing her with kisses.

  When my teeth bit into her neck, she whimpered.

  “Oh God!”

  Then she scored her fingernails down my back and over my ass, making me arch away from her.

  Staring into her eyes, panting hard, I saw shock and lust burying the softer emotions.

  “God, yes!” she gasped.

  She pulled her skirt up over her hips and tugged brutally on my dick, a hiss of pain escaping me.

  “I need this,” she grunted.

  I kneeled up and kicked off the rest of my clothes, stopping only to collect a condom from the bedside drawer, while Laura shimmied out of her skirt, exposing her pale blue panties.

  “Take them off,” I ordered.

  “Make me.”

  I crawled up the bed and bit into the material. I’d intended to drag them off with my teeth, but the sheer fabric shredded easily.

  “Turn over,” I commanded.

  “No, I want to see your face.”

  “Not tonight.”

  “Yes, tonight, Hallen. Tonight and every night.”

  I paused, half my brain on fire, my body begging me to take her now.

  “Do you mean that? Don’t say it if you don’t mean it, Laura.”

  She hesitated and a spike of pain pulsed in my chest.

  “Make love to me, Hallen.”

  Shaking my head, not hearing the words I needed from her, I rolled on the condom anyway. Without asking again, I grabbed her ankles and twisted her onto her hands an
d knees, entering her hard. I couldn’t stop myself, couldn’t hold back, and she endured a rapid pounding before a muffled voice in my head reminded me that this was supposed to be love, not sex. Even as I felt my body getting ready to release, I leaned forward to rub and pinch her swollen clit.

  She cried out wildly and her body fisted around me, forcing an instant climax.

  We collapsed together, and I pulled out more carefully than I’d entered her, not sorry that my behavior would have made her sore. Some stupid, caveman mentality wanted to mark her as mine.

  Because she wouldn’t say the words.

  Because even now, she couldn’t make that final commitment.

  Eloise had been scathing when I’d told her I was taking Laura as my wedding date.

  “An exercise in outdated, middle-class morality; mere patriarchal parsimony.”

  I laughed, because I’d heard Eloise’s views on marriage before.

  “You don’t believe in love, Ellie?”

  “Oh, please, Hallen! Of course I believe in love. I believe one may fall in love many times during one’s life and enjoy many great loves. Marriage is a death sentence to love.”

  “A lot of people would disagree with you.”

  She pinned me with a glare. “Un sot trouve toujours un plus sot qui l’admire.”

  “You’re quoting Boileau at me? ‘A fool can always find an even bigger fool to admire him.’ I don’t think it’s possible to find a greater cynic. Besides, you must have thought marriage was worth something once—after all, you got married.”

  “My reason is that I was 17. It is also my excuse.” Then she frowned at me. “Is this a roundabout way of telling me that you and Laura…?”

  I laughed uncomfortably because the truth was it had crossed my mind.

  “No. I think she’s kind of off marriage.”

  “Very wise,” said Eloise. “And yet you’re taking her to the wedding of your little friend whose fiancée despises you, whose brother-in-law looks down on you, whose sister-in-law you fucked repeatedly throughout one lonely Christmas, and because why? You think it will be romantic?”

  “Hell, Ellie! When you say it like that—no! Not really!”

  She let it go, but it did make me wonder what I was doing. And potentially, what I was going to put Laura through. But the greater part of me wanted to do something public as a couple. It was one thing to pick her up from her book club and have a quick hello-goodbye; I just wanted her to acknowledge that she was with me.

  I was disgusted at how needy and pathetic I was being, but I was proud of having such an amazing woman in my life. I just wished she felt the same. Sometimes I thought she did, like whenever we talked about art, or my upcoming exhibit with Magda, but at other times, her discomfort at being seen with me was obvious. And I didn’t entirely buy Eloise’s explanation that it was all about the age difference.

  I was back at the Fairmont Miramar—the hotel where I’d had my first ever appointment as an escort.

  Everything looked the same, even down to the gnarled old fig tree, growing greedily across the chamomile lawn.

  Was I the same? I didn’t think so. I was shit scared that love was about to kick the crap out of me.

  And I could tie a bow tie.

  Laura looked beautiful. The silver-gray cocktail dress embellished with tiny pink roses was very simple, very chic, molded to her body, matched with a short jacket. Her mahogany hair was twisted up into an elegant French pleat, with a spray of tiny orchids pressed into the folds.

  She was poised, perfect, and I wanted to worship her like the goddess she was—I also wanted to rip her clothes off and fuck her until her flesh was raw.

  I shook my head, slightly appalled and a lot turned on by the barbaric thoughts I was having.

  “What are you thinking?” she asked, holding onto my arm as we strolled across the grass.

  I glanced at her sideways. “You wouldn’t want to know.”

  She slapped my arm lightly. “It’s 11 o’clock in the morning and we’re at a wedding—you can’t be thinking about sex now!”

  I shrugged. “I’m not supposed to think about sex at a wedding? I kind of thought that was the point of getting married.”

  “Which only makes it obvious that you’ve never been married,” she said, dryly.

  “So you and Jack…?”

  “Hallen! I am not talking about this with you. Besides, how many of your clients…” she hissed the word. “How many of your clients were married?”

  “Not all of them,” I said coldly, her words killing my semi.

  She glanced at me, easily sensing the shift in my mood, but her expression was defiant.

  “Oh my goodness!” cried a woman’s voice. “Hallen! We haven’t seen you since graduation. And just as handsome as ever. How are you?”

  Carl’s mother was bearing down on us, a huge smile cracking her heavily applied makeup. I dropped Laura’s hand and hugged Mrs. Hennessy gently.

  “I’m so glad you’re here!” she cried, again. “You’ve always been such a good influence on Carl. I’m sure he’d never have finished college if you hadn’t been roommates.”

  I could see Laura’s eyebrows rising at this new piece of information. I’m not sure how true it was—maybe a little. I’d had to be careful about partying too much when I was a student—I didn’t have fond parents to fall back on if I was short rent money.

  “Mrs. Hennessy, I’d like to introduce my girlfriend Laura Anderson.”

  “Oh, I’m very pleased to meet you, dear,” she said, squeezing Laura’s hand. “I don’t know why some lucky girl hasn’t snapped Hallen up before now.” Then she glanced behind us. “Oh, there’s the Waldens. I’ll talk to you later, dear.”

  And she hurried away.

  “So, you were a good influence on Carl?” Laura smiled.

  “Hard to believe, isn’t it?” I said, tightly. “Who’d expect standards from a whore?”

  Her face paled.

  You’ve got game, Jansen. See if you can piss her off even more. My rational brain screamed at me.

  I rubbed my head tiredly. “Just … never mind. We can talk later.”

  She whispered a kiss across my lips.

  “Later,” she said.

  We took our places in the large wedding tent as more and more people filed in. I nodded at some of the guys I recognized from Carl’s bachelor party.

  When Mr. and Mrs. Hennessy took their seats, the easy chatter began to die away.

  Carl was standing next to Darren, fidgeting and glancing up the aisle. He grinned when he saw me and I walked over to give him a man hug.

  “Thank fuck you’re here, man,” he whispered. “The dickhead is driving me crazy.”

  “Want some liquid courage?” I smiled at him.

  “Dude! You’re a life saver!”

  I passed him the small silver hipflask I’d brought with me, having assumed I’d need something to get me through the tedious-as-fuck ceremony.

  Darren was appalled as Carl took a long swig, and shot me a furious look. I grinned back at him, which irritated him even more, and he tugged on Carl’s arm.

  Reluctantly, Carl passed me back the flask, promising to catch up later.

  I sat down again and Laura eyed me steadily.

  “What?”

  “Aren’t you going to offer any to me?”

  “You feeling the need for bourbon, as well?”

  She smirked. “Oddly enough, yes.”

  I passed her the flask, hiding a smile as she coughed discreetly, my good mood resurfacing.

  As I slipped the flask back into my pocket, Laura gazed at me, her expression serious.

  “I’m trying hard to come to terms with your past,” she said, quietly. “I’m just not sure that you have. I don’t think you’re a whore. I never have. I wish you’d believe that.”

  “What else would you call it?” I asked, bitterly.

  She didn’t answer immediately. What could she say?

  Pachelbel’s �
��Canon in D’ began playing from loud speakers hidden behind banks of flowers. Laura reached for my hand as I stared ahead, grim faced.

  Feeling her warm, soft skin against mine, I forced myself to pull my head out of my ass, and managed a small smile.

  Then I saw Paige walking up the aisle, holding hands with a young girl who carried a basket of rose petals.

  I was shocked to see her. And it wasn’t the vivid, floor-length cerise dress she was wearing. She’d had her boobs done, with puffy lips to match. What had been a pair of very nice 34 Cs, had risen beyond the rate of inflation to something that looked like FFs. They threatened to leap out of the tightly fitting dress if she so much as breathed.

  “Is that Paige?” whispered Laura.

  “Yeah,” I whispered back. “She’s … changed.”

  Paige’s natural beauty had morphed into something Barbie-esque. She’d have fit right in at a porn studio. Holy shit, those tits were huge. I wondered if she’d gotten them before or after getting married.

  The ceremony was long, boring and traditional. Carl sounded nervous and fluffed his lines twice, earning him a hard stare from Tessa. Jeez, I hoped he knew what he was getting himself into—although if he didn’t know by now…

  But when the priest said, “You may kiss the bride,” Carl had the biggest smile on his face, and so did Tessa. I guess that’s the thing about love—it comes in 57 varieties, and all flavors.

  The day turned out to be better than I’d expected. Tessa—or Carl—had seated us with some of the guys I’d met at the bachelor party, and away from Paige and Darren.

  Jerry shook hands, introducing us to his wife, April, who was very pregnant.

  “Do you know if it’s going to be a boy or girl?” Laura asked, smiling warmly while we took our seats.

  As the women started talking, Jerry leaned across to me.

  “You were right about your girlfriend being hot.”

  I grinned back. “I know.”

  April interrupted us with a pointed look at her husband.

  I congratulated her politely, hoping she wasn’t going to go into too many details about their forthcoming parenthood.

  “Do you want children, Hallen?” asked April.

  “Only if Laura does,” I replied, absentmindedly.

  Laura’s mouth popped open and she stared at me.

  Oh crap.