by J. J. Murray
“Are you as excited as I am?” I ask.
“Yes.” He buttons up my shirt in a flash. “I don’t want you to catch cold.”
That will never happen as long as he’s around, but my skin was just getting its happy on. “Why’d you do that?”
“I just got an idea, and if I keep feeling your skin, I’ll forget my idea.”
Okay. My skin scrambles his brain. That’s good. “What’s your idea?”
“While I was taking pictures of you and while I was, um, putting my hands all over you, I got an idea. I looked at your skin, and I looked at my skin while I was touching your skin, and well ...” He locks my eyes with his baby browns. “Why don’t we do everything in black and white?”
I blink. I practically do a lap dance on the man, and this is the idea he comes up with?
“We can do the entire campaign in black and white,” he says. “Old school all the way. Nostalgia. I’ll show you what I mean.” He scoots the chair closer to my computer and loads up the picture of Carl. He tinkers with the shading until... “What do you think?”
Fantastic. Oh. Look at all those shadows! “Do another one.”
The next picture looks just as crisp, just as sharp. The Internet hardly has any black-and-white banners, so they’re sure to stand out.
I can’t stop smiling. “If during the Q&A Mr. Peterson asks me why we went with black-and-white, what will I tell him?”
“The truth?” Tom says.
That I was massaging my man with my front in plain view in a window overlooking downtown Brooklyn? “Mr. Peterson will have a heart attack. All those rib eyes.”
“We can just say we were inspired by the night sky of downtown Brooklyn.”
Better. “But you know I’ll be thinking of what we just did when you say it.” I put my hand in his. Those are some sweet contrasts, too. I turn into him, grinding my booty on his package. “I’ll repeat the question. Are we going to pull an all-nighter?”
“Shari Nance?”
Is this ... no. This is just horny talk. “Yes?”
“Shari Nance, would you care to watch the sunrise with me?”
That was sweet and sexy. “I’d love to watch the sunrise with you.” I focus on his eyes, so soft, so open, so uncluttered. “I love you, Tom. I really, really love you.”
“Thank you, Shari.” He holds me close. “I love you, too.”
He carries me to the bedroom and lays me on my side of the bed. “I think we’re going to need the ‘wall’ back up tonight,” he says.
I shake my head. “No.” My heart is about to escape my body and go bouncing through the window into downtown Brooklyn. “I don’t want a wall to come between me and my best friend.”
He blinks. “Are you sure, Shari?”
I sit up and remove my shirt and bra. “I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life.” I slide out of my pants, my underwear going along for the ride.
He wriggles out of his jeans and boxers. “You’re so beautiful,” he whispers.
I start to tear up. “I’ve never felt so beautiful, man. Come here.”
And then we ... make ... love. It’s quiet, slow, controlled, and even peaceful. Our lovemaking has a rhythm, slow, steady, and passionate. And when he hums in my ear, I whisper in his. When he nibbles on my ears, I chew on his shoulders. When he sighs, I giggle and groan. But when he drives deeply into me, I have to hold his hips from going too far. But eventually, I can’t stop him anymore, and I don’t want to stop him. I have to possess his entire body.
That’s when we stop making love and commence to knocking some serious boots, we start some furious banging, and we rattle the headboard. Trixie and Bubbles have nothing on us. This man, this beautiful, muscular, intense man drives me home again, and again, and again till I dig my heels into his booty and let him completely become one with me as I shout so loud I swear the windowpane wobbles.
“Best friends for life,” he whispers as I curl up on his chest afterward.
“For life,” I whisper, watching my hand disappear into his.
And we’re still one when the sun rises.
This, too, all of this, will be part of my morning routine until the day I die.
Chapter 28
Although it’s only twenty-one miles to Great Neck, we are not in a place to get there quickly if we want to use public transit. I go online and find that it would take two hours to get to Great Neck if we used the subway, buses, and the Long Island Railroad.
Tom shrugs it off. “Carl will be here in a few minutes.”
“How does Carl know to be here this morning?” I ask.
“I told him yesterday to be here this morning.”
I tug on his belt loops. “So I was going to Great Neck no matter what today.”
He nods. “Yep.”
When Carl arrives, we exchange pleasantries, though Carl still doesn’t smile at me. We load the bike into the backseat and take off.
And I fall completely asleep on Tom’s shoulder until we get to Shorecliff Place and Tom’s little bungalow that isn’t a bungalow at all. It’s a two-story white house with black shutters and a nice view of Little Neck Bay. Old, tall oak trees, colorful leaves everywhere, lots of privacy, a somewhat flat yard.
A house.
Carl offers his cheek to me this time, and he half-smiles. “See you soon,” he says.
I stand with Tom looking up the sidewalk to the front porch. “You said it was a bungalow.”
“It’s a pretty small house for around here,” he says. “Only four bedrooms and two baths.”
Only. I’ll bet the kitchen is as big as my entire apartment.
He opens the two-car garage first, and I see a golden ’65 Mustang without a speck of rust on it.
“And you have a sixty-five Mustang coupe,” I say. “What color is that?”
“Prairie bronze,” he says. “How’d you know it was a sixty-five?”
Bryan kept me well-informed about cars. “I know cars, all right?” I run my hand over the roof, nodding and smiling. A muscle car for a muscular man. “A classic.”
“And a gas guzzler,” he adds.
I look inside. “All original?”
He nods. “And it’s how we’ll travel from now on.”
Except for two Peterson bikes up on racks and various yard equipment including a weed eater and a lawn mower, the garage is spotless. Tom’s no gear head.
He pauses at a door. “Don’t, um, go crazy about what I’ve done with the place, and remember that I’m rarely here.”
“So it’s a work in progress,” I say.
“Something like that.”
He opens the door to a kitchen bigger than my apartment, a circular oak table surrounded by six matching oak chairs, tile flooring, all the appliances, at least fifty cabinets, and a refrigerator the size of a Volkswagen. Very nice.
We step into what should be a living room, but it’s completely empty. “I won’t ask,” I say.
“Thanks,” he says.
We enter another huge room—I’m guessing it’s the family room—and find more empty space. Except for one chocolate sectional sofa in front of the fireplace, there’s nothing but carpet, and I have yet to see anything on the walls except paint.
I can’t resist. “Um, don’t you live here?”
“Not much,” he says.
“It’s so unfinished,” I say.
“Basement, too. Nothing but boxes down there.”
Hmm. This place is a blank canvas. It just needs an artist like me to fill it in. I sit on the couch, and it’s nice and comfy—and wide. Yeah, this is a Tom-size couch. But there isn’t a speck of dust or ash in the fireplace. “Don’t you ever have a fire?”
“I think we will have a fire soon.”
I like the sound of that.
He takes my hand and leads me up some shiny wooden stairs to the second floor. He opens the first door we come to—a serviceable bathroom. Blue and white tile. Nothing fancy. It, too, doesn’t look used. No towels on the
racks, no toiletries, no goo or hair in the sink.
“I never use this one,” he says. “There’s another bathroom connected to the master bedroom.”
I nod.
He opens the next door, and I see his studio. This is where he spends his money. The average Radio Shack has less stuff. Some people buy furniture. Tom buys electronics.
I recognize four large flat-screen monitors and four computers and a server, but there are other machines I cannot identify. In one section, he has an entire recording studio complete with hanging, shielded microphones and a soundboard. I sit in one of the two circular rolling chairs and slide across the hardwood floor.
“Welcome to Methuselah’s Breezy Hiccup,” he says.
I spin in a circle. “I won’t touch anything.”
He sits in the other chair. “I expect you to touch everything.” He looks at his setup. “We have just about everything we need to produce just about anything.”
What could be missing? It looks like the cockpit of a really wide airplane.
And I’m going to be his copilot.
We leave the studio, and he opens another door. Ah, the workout room, a single Bowflex machine in the middle of the floor, a fancy treadmill facing the only window, which looks out at Little Neck Bay. That’s how he maintains his abs, shoulders, biceps, legs, and booty. If I spend any time in here, I will weigh ninety-five pounds in no time. I may have to work out just to keep up with him.
He skips another door—“Empty room,” he says—and we enter the master bedroom. I only see a king-sized bed without a headboard, a nightstand without a lamp, and a dresser without a mirror.
This is a bachelor house.
He shows me the view from the huge bedroom window. “You can sometimes see Queens on a clear day.”
“Why would I want to see Queens?” I ask.
He stares at me. “Why, indeed?” He squeezes my booty. “Unless someone out there has a telescope, and we’re getting, um, involved.”
He thinks he can out-nasty me. “We’ll need a mirror somewhere.” I look up at the ceiling over the bed.
“I’ll get us one.”
He earns a kiss for that.
“And when will all this be paid for?” I ask.
He squints at the ceiling. “In about fifteen, sixteen years.”
That’s not too bad. “You mind my asking how much you paid?”
He flops onto the bed. I like how this man thinks. “When the housing market tanked, I got it for a little over eight hundred thousand.”
I crawl onto the bed and hold on to one of his legs. “You have that kind of money?”
“Hairy Ads pays well when you win. They give out ridiculous bonuses for ‘winners.’ I haven’t always gotten them. But thanks to you and ‘just ... go,’ my bonus this year should cover the yearly taxes on this place.”
“Where’s my half of the bonus?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “Haven’t gotten it yet, but when I do, I’ll have to deduct your half of the camera costs.”
I push his leg away. “Uh-uh. I get it. In cash. I need new clothes.” I crawl onto him. I would make a seriously bad blanket for this man. I prop my chin up on my hands and stare into his eyes. “Tom, why haven’t you done more with this place?”
“I’m never here.”
“No, really.”
He smiles. “I was afraid that I would put the wrong furniture in it.”
Huh? Furniture is furniture. “You better explain that one.”
He rubs my back. “Well, up until two years ago, this place was even emptier. I only had the furniture in this room, the kitchen set, the Bowflex, and some of the studio equipment.”
I shake my head. “So why’d you buy a four-bedroom house?”
“An investment for the future mainly.” He frowns. “I was also trying to impress, um, Corrine.”
“You poor, deluded man,” I say. “Don’t you know that is impossible?” Wait. He said up until two years ago. Hmm. “Corrine didn’t like it, huh?”
“No. I can even safely say she hated it. She said, ‘This is not what I expected of a man who works at Harrison Hersey and Boulder.’”
It’s not what I expected either, but an almost half paid-for, secluded house with so much space? “I love it, especially the couch.”
He kisses me. “Thank you.”
“For loving the house or liking the couch?”
“Both.” He plays with my hair. “I bought the couch for you last year.”
He is continually losing me. “What?”
“I bought it for you.”
I’m still lost. “How could you buy a couch for me last year?”
“Well, I, um ... Hmm. Remember when I told you I was sort of following you?”
I nod. “You weren’t sort of doing anything.”
“Yeah, well, I, um, I memorized your skin color, and, well, that couch is your color.”
He bought a couch based on the color of my skin? That is a dark couch. “It was summer, wasn’t it?”
He nods. “And now that I know that you’re really made up of a million shades of brown, I was afraid you wouldn’t like it.”
I smile. “We’ll break it in soon in front of the fire.”
He hugs me. “You were the first person ever to sit on it.”
“Just now?”
He nods. “What else does this house need?”
Me! “Some new carpet.” I feel a draft. “And some new windows. It’s drafty in here.”
He holds me. “I’ll keep you warm.”
I look at the bare walls. “And something on the walls. You need some art. You’re an artist, aren’t you? And more furniture, lots of that.”
He smiles broadly.
“What?”
“Are you saying that this place needs a woman’s touch?” he asks.
“No, I’m saying it needs my touch.” I stare at the wall. “It needs major touch-ups, too. Look at the paint! I’ll bet it’s full of lead. And everything is so bland. What is that, off-off-off-white?”
He smiles. “So you like it.”
“I just said I love it.” I jump up and bounce on the bed, trying to touch the ceiling and missing by at least six inches. “I mean, I can jump up and down on a bed and not bother the people downstairs.” I leap off the bed, take off my boots, and run down the hallway, sliding all the way to the top of the stairs. “I can also go skating.”
Tom catches up to me, but I slip away and fly down the stairs to the kitchen.
“Where’s the basement door?” I ask.
He points at a door in the kitchen, I open the door, and I go down to ... wow. He wasn’t kidding. There has to be a thousand square feet of nothing down here, boxes stacked neatly in a far corner. We could have a bowling alley down here. We could ride bikes in the winter down here. Our kids could ride bikes and go skating and play down here. This place is so uncluttered. There’s that word again.
I go back upstairs to open spaces, light, room, and warmth. I drag Tom back to the bedroom and throw myself onto the bed. “I’ll get lost in all this bed.”
“I’ll find you.”
I lie on my back, imagining what I’ll see when Tom puts up that mirror, deciding that I’d have to be on top if I’m to be seen at all. “How come there’s no TV in here?”
“There are several in the studio.”
“I know that,” I say. “We’ll need to put one in here. I like to surf commercials.”
He chuckles. “So do I. I thought I was the only person on earth who liked to do that.”
“They should have an all-commercial channel,” I say, “but not like those infomercial stations. Just twenty-four hours of commercials from around the world. Man, you’d never get me out of bed.” And he wouldn’t.
“I will have to put a TV in this room immediately.”
I kiss him. “This place has possibilities.” We are so not living at the apartment, not with all this space to play with. “You know what else it needs?”
“What?”
“Children.” I turn my head to look out the window. “You have such a nice yard. You’ll have to move that Bowflex to the basement, though. We’ll need two bedrooms, right?” I roll off him and pull him on top of me, looking up at the ceiling. If I keep my head to the side of his head and peek over his shoulder, I’ll be able to see everything. “I could move my entire apartment into this room alone.”
“So you’re rethinking your apartment and whether we should keep it.”
I roll my eyes. “I’m rethinking it, yes.” I don’t think I ever want to go there again. Hmm. Maybe we’ll keep it till my lease runs out for some more fun in the window. “It does have its uses, doesn’t it? We may even get a telescope.”
“Indeed.”
“Yes!” I shout, and Tom snaps his eyes shut.
“What was that for?” he asks, carefully opening his eyes.
I smile. “I just wanted to hear the echo. Can the neighbors hear us?”
“I doubt it,” he says.
“Yes!” I shout again.
He rolls off me and the bed in a flash. “You know I like it when you shout, but we have some work to do.”
Oh yeah. Work. “Go on. I’ll be there in a minute.”
This place is amazing. Oh, it’s not quite ready for me to live in it yet. There’s so much to do. It isn’t easy turning a house into a home, darling. I’ll have to paint everything first. Vivid colors. Nothing drab. Tia can help me choosing all the right colors. I’ll really enjoy tearing up all the carpet and replacing it with something from this century. The floors are okay, but I’m sure they could use some refinishing. The windows have to be replaced. Aluminum frames? Please.
I go into the master bathroom expecting a garden tub, separate shower, and a double sink. All I see is puke green tile, a puke green toilet, and a puke green bathtub. Who decided puke green would be a good color for a bathroom? This bathroom has to be destroyed and rebuilt with ... mirrors. Yes. Lots of mirrors.
I leave the bathroom and open the sliding closet door. Whoa. There must be fifty suits, all of them blue, gray, or black. Expensive but hideous. Tom will have to donate these to charity. Five pairs of very nice black dress shoes, though, and a few more pairs of boots, all Chippewa boots. Oh, look at the jeans! There must be twenty pairs. Ha! Flannel shirts, too!
