Indecent Proposal (Boys of Bishop)

by Molly O'Keefe

After his shower he couldn’t face putting on his clothes again, so wrapping a thin Snoopy towel around his waist he gathered up his dirty stuff and walked over to the second door on the right. The pale wooden door covered in an elaborate piano practice and performance schedule was closed, and he sincerely hoped he had the right room and wasn’t about to see Wes again.

  Heart in hand, he eased the door open and to his relief, his wife’s scent curled out around him. Like a cartoon, it circled his head and coalesced into a finger beckoning him forward. He stepped into the shadows of the room and saw in the light from the open door his wife’s body on the bed, covered in blankets, her dark hair on the white pillow.

  His hands got damp at the sight of her, and his stomach, already fragile and unhappy, squeezed itself into a tiny space behind his liver.

  He was nervous. Nervous like he had never been before.

  And he didn’t know what to do. Getting into bed with her seemed like a presumption of the worst kind. But going back downstairs in a towel was ludicrous.

  “You coming in?” she asked, lifting her head from the pillow, her eyes glittery in the half-dark.

  “I didn’t … do you want me to?”

  “You’re letting in cold air, so come in or leave.”

  Not quite a welcome, but after the scene in the hotel suite, he knew she wasn’t going to make this easy. And he didn’t deserve to have it made easy.

  He closed the door behind him and tossed his dirty stuff in the corner. The room was tiny, the double bed taking up most of it, so he climbed into it from the foot, until he was lying down next to Ryan. The pillows were thin little pancakes and he doubled them up under his head.

  “Hi,” he said, unable to help smiling. Because she was here. And she was pretty with her frown and the messy hair and the crease from the sheet over her face. And he’d missed her.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked, making it very clear she was not happy to see him.

  He shifted on the bed, lying on his side, propping his head up on his hand, and her eyes followed the movement. Stroked over his arms, his bare chest, down his stomach.

  The desire was unmistakable.

  Well, well, he thought, maybe she’s not as mad as I thought.

  “I wanted to apologize, for all the stuff I said in the hotel room.”

  “All the stuff?” she said, her tone cold. Mocking. He should have come up with prettier words, but he was in ruins. Hung over, exhausted. A dog relegated to a doghouse.

  “I never wanted to hurt you.”

  “It seemed to me like for most of our relationship that’s all you’ve wanted to do.”

  “I’m sorry … I’m sorry it seems that way. In the beginning,” he said.

  “And then again, at the end.”

  “No.” He shook his head, sure in that at least. “I was mad, but not at you. For you, yes.”

  She snorted like she didn’t believe him, and he was all out of pretense.

  “I want to start over again. I want a chance to make it work, to try and see if what we have is real.”

  “You don’t know? You can’t figure out what feelings are real and which ones are fake? You’re a bigger mess than I thought.”

  “That’s not what I meant—”

  “Then what do you mean?”

  He took his life in his hands to touch the side of her face, the fall of hair over her shoulder. A small study in softness, delicate variances between velvet and silk.

  “No contracts. No agreements. Just you and me. I don’t want you to feel like you have to do something because of a piece of paper and I don’t want to feel like I’m taking advantage—”

  Her open-mouthed kiss silenced him.

  Stunned him.

  Made him glad he’d used the toothbrush he recognized as hers in the bathroom.

  We are kissing now. We were fighting and now we’re kissing.

  “What—”

  “Shut up.”

  She was giving him no time to process it. She licked at him. Sucked at him. His lips, his tongue. Her hands slid down his body, over his belly to his cock beneath the towel.

  Now or never, her touch said.

  And he absolutely wanted now.

  Again, his brain was kind of primordial goo, but he figured if they were having sex that had to be a good sign. Relieved and ecstatic, his arms swept around her, hauling her body up against his. He pulled down the blankets she was under and tugged her tank top up over her head, revealing her beautiful breasts, the swell of her stomach, and he fell on her like a man whose execution had been stayed. He kissed her skin, sucked on her nipples, and cupped her flesh in his hands with more gratitude than he thought he was capable of feeling.

  It is going to be okay. We are going to be okay.

  That was how he translated her exigency.

  She kicked her legs free from the blankets and rolled over onto her back and he followed her, not done with his gratitude or her breasts.

  Her fingers ran through his damp hair, sending cold drops of water onto his shoulders. He was surprised they didn’t sizzle against his skin.

  And then she pushed on his head. The instructions were clear and he was more than happy to comply, and he kissed his way down over her stomach, rubbed his cheeks against the curve of her belly, and felt a flutter of something there against his cheek. And then another, a solid thump against the taut flesh of her abdomen. His heart tripped over itself and blood flooded his body, prickly and hot.

  “Is that—”

  “Shhh,” she said, and kept pushing him down.

  Later, he thought, they would talk about it later. Because this urgency of hers, this command, it was so fucking exciting. She owned him right now; down to his bones he was hers.

  He slid down, pushing her legs out wide with his body. She curled one long, smooth leg over his back and he felt utterly surrounded by her. Cocooned in her softness and her scent and her sleepy warmth. It was sexy and real and home in a way.

  In a basic, elemental way.

  I belong here. Right here. All my life this is what I’ve been missing. This is what I’ve wanted.

  “Lick me,” she breathed, and he opened her with his fingers, spread the pink lips, breathing over the revealed flesh until she twitched and groaned and arched toward him. “Now.”

  He chuckled as he set his mouth on her. Careful and reverent, trying to let her in on his feelings by the way his tongue circled the hood of her clit.

  “Harder,” she whispered, arching into his mouth, lifting her hips into his face. “Suck me.”

  Oh God. He sucked her into his mouth, worked his tongue over her clit. She didn’t want soft. She wanted hard. Fierce.

  And he felt the answer rise up his blood.

  “Use your fingers.”

  He slid his hand between them, easing a finger into the damp, clinging heat of her body where he could feel the twitch of her muscles.

  “More.”

  He groaned against her skin, sliding another finger into her. She arched against the bed, her muscles strung taut. His mouth, his fingers, they were tools put to her use and he fucked her, sucked her, until she was gripping his hair in her fingers, licks of pain radiating down his skull, across his neck, his back, down to his hips and around to his cock until he felt like he was made of her electricity.

  “God … yes!” she cried and groaned and shook, and he held himself still against her. Still so he could feel all of it, every twitch and pulse.

  She let go of his hair and he crawled up over her body, nosed away the arms she’d thrown over her face. Her cheeks were pink, sweat rolled down the side of her face, and when her eyes blinked open he smiled down at her, feeling this moment blend into every future moment between them.

  “Hi,” he breathed and leaned down to kiss her, but she ducked sideways and then pushed against his shoulder, until he rolled away from her.

  His brain was slow and muddy and his body electrified and single-minded, so it took him a second of watching her
pull on clothes from her bag at the side of the bed before he caught on that she was leaving.

  “Ryan?”

  “You were always so worried about taking advantage of me.”

  He leaned up to kiss her neck, to cup his hand over her shoulder, but she shrugged away and stood.

  “You know what makes what we have not taking advantage?”

  She waited for him to answer, but he didn’t say anything until she turned around. Something was happening, some tidal shift, and he had no control over it. And he could see the anger in her eyes, hot and mean, and he braced himself for what was going to come.

  Ryan was going to tear him apart.

  This is how she felt, he thought with stabbing premonition, in that hotel suite.

  “Love,” she spat. “Love makes it all right. It makes everything we’ve done a gift freely given and joyfully received. And I could have freely given you everything I had, but you couldn’t have received it as a gift. Because you don’t know how to do that. You took advantage of me, Harrison, because you don’t love me.”

  He got up on his knees in the bed and reached for her. Luckily, the room was so small she had nowhere to go and he had her hands in his before she could maneuver around the bed.

  “Ryan—”

  “Now I’ve taken advantage of you. We’re even.” She didn’t have to pull her hands too hard; he let her go. The stack of his clothes he’d set by the dresser got picked up and flung in his face. “Get dressed and go.”

  Chapter 28

  Ryan sat at the kitchen table, in her old spot. Her ass had left an impression on the red cushion of the seat. But her ass didn’t fit in it like it used to. Nothing fit her like it used to.

  This is not my home anymore.

  That man upstairs, he is not my home anymore either.

  It’s just me.

  The baby rolled, as if putting up its hand to be counted.

  You and me, kid, she thought. That’s all we need.

  She took another sip of orange juice and waited to hear the squeal of the back steps as Harrison came down.

  How strange to feel so cold. So … strangely solid, where for so long she’d just felt liquid and weak, as if her center of gravity was constantly shifting, constantly causing her to fall in and out of her own balance.

  She pushed away the juice because Nora always bought the kind with a ton of pulp and she hated drinking through her teeth, and she started to work on her to-do list.

  Divorce.

  Figure out where to live.

  Get back to school.

  But where? she wondered. She had no interest in going back to New York or in staying too long in Philly.

  Which left the rest of the world.

  Or Atlanta.

  Georgia Tech and the Food Bank.

  Atlanta is a big city, she thought. And she didn’t have to be exiled from what she wanted in fear of bumping into him on the street.

  She was tougher than that.

  Good lord, what she did upstairs just proved that, didn’t it?

  She shook her head, astonished at her own audacity.

  The front door opened and then slammed shut and the jangle of keys hit the table in front of the window, and it was the sound of Nora coming home. It had been the same sound since Nora got a set of house keys after Mom died and Daddy started driving the night route.

  “Anyone home?” Nora asked.

  “In …” She cleared her throat. “In here.”

  Nora arrived in the doorway.

  Her top was different, a scrub shirt covered in yellow suns and puppies with sunglasses—which while ridiculous on its own, seemed like a terrible sign of a world out of order when worn by Nora. There was something splattered across the front of her blue scrub pants. Mud. Or worse. The morning’s makeup was gone. Her hair, wet or greasy, hung around her face. No sign of the barrette.

  “Are you okay?” she asked, knowing there was a good chance her words would get thrown back at her. But there was no way she couldn’t ask.

  For a long moment Nora’s face was blank, as if she didn’t understand or hadn’t heard the question, and then she shook, her whole body, just one sharp, short shake. The kind of thing that used to make their mom say “a ghost just walked over my grave.”

  And then she smiled. Wan and weak, but a smile all the same.

  “Fine. Long day. You alone?” Nora asked.

  “Olivia is at school and Daddy’s gone hunting.”

  “Hunting,” Nora laughed. “That’ll be interesting.”

  Nora hung up her coat on the rack by the back door and poured herself a cup of coffee from the pot.

  “It’s cold,” Ryan said, trying to make nice. “You might want to nuke it.”

  Nora drank it cold like it was a testament to her orneriness and sat down in her old seat across from her.

  “Are you sure you’re okay? You seem …”

  Nora glanced sideways at the bathroom door in the corner, her bottom lip caught under her teeth, and Ryan realized Nora was barely holding it together. She pushed aside her coffee cup and reached for her sister’s hands.

  At the touch of her fingers Nora gasped. She gasped like she’d been holding her breath all day.

  “My whole life is about managing,” she whispered. “Manage doctors, manage patients, manage other people’s grief and anger. And then I come home—” She stopped, shook her head, and yanked back her hands.

  “Come home and what?”

  “I’ve hated you for a long time, Ryan,” she breathed. “And it wasn’t about Paul, or even the money or hurting Daddy. It was because you left. I spent so long imagining you in New York City, living this glamorous life far away from this place.”

  “It wasn’t glamorous,” she said. “It was a studio apartment that smelled like cabbage rolls and a string of jobs I got because of my boobs. And being lonely. Lots and lots of being lonely. Don’t … don’t envy that. You were here. And a part of a family.”

  Nora’s lips twisted, the old indication that she was trying not to cry. “I never got a job because of my boobs.”

  “It’s because you were hired for your brain. And your boobs are tiny.”

  That brought Nora’s head up, her mouth open, the laughter running out before she could stop it.

  “I love Daddy and Olivia and I wouldn’t change that … but sometimes it feels like I don’t have anything of my own. I just stepped into Mom’s shoes.”

  “Nora, I’m sorry. I’m sorry I was such a shitty sister. I should have been here to help.”

  “I didn’t win any prizes either. And look at you, Ry.”

  She laughed. “Pregnant and alone and back in the Burg?”

  “But you won’t stay.” Nora shook her head. “It’s obvious. You’re moving on.”

  That wasn’t Nora kicking her out again; it was her sister realizing she’d changed. That Ryan was different, and it was about the biggest compliment she’d ever gotten from her sister.

  “Where’s your husband?” Nora asked, blinking her eyes until the sheen of tears went away.

  “Upstairs,” she said, wondering what was happening in her sister’s head. What kind of trauma she’d seen to make her so vulnerable. “Getting dressed, and then I imagine he’s leaving.”

  “You’re really gonna split?”

  “It wasn’t a real marriage.”

  “You’re pregnant, Ryan. That makes it pretty real.”

  The memory of his face when he’d felt the baby moving against her belly. Those small popcorn pops she still hadn’t gotten used to. He’d been transformed by delight. By excitement.

  Leaving would deny him any more of those moments. And deny her the joy of sharing those moments.

  “He circles back around me when things fall apart,” she said. “I don’t know what kind of marriage we can make out of that.”

  Nora laughed. “Helping each other through the bad times? I’ll take that kind of marriage. Does he treat you bad when things are good?”

&nb
sp; She thought of that partnership, the way he held her hand in front of reporters. Asked her opinion in all those meetings.

  “No,” she whispered. “I just don’t know if any of the good times were real for him. In fact, I don’t know what was real between us.”

  “Well, he’s here now. Nothing more real than this place.” Nora made a low noise in her throat and finished her coffee. “Want me to get rid of him for you?”

  Ryan laughed. “No, I think at thirty-two years old, I can fight my own battles.”

  “You love him?”

  She nodded, because it was true. The truest thing she had in her life besides the baby. “Not that it matters; I don’t think he’s got it in him to love me.”

  “Then the asshole doesn’t deserve you.”

  “Simple as that?” Ryan whispered through a throat made thin by emotion.

  “Simple. As. That.”

  Ryan’s smile gave way to laughter, and the laughter opened her heart up to something so powerful and painful she could barely stand it.

  She’d been alone and without love for such a long time her body had gone numb, but it came flooding back.

  “I think … we, you, me, and Wes, we got real good at hiding all the things that make us lovable,” Nora said. “All the softness and all the … sweetness, because it hurt when Mom died. Because being soft and sweet wouldn’t put food on the table. We hid those things so well we forgot where we put them. But you got plenty in you that’s lovable, Ryan. I’m sorry I, or Paul or anyone, made you feel different.”

  Ryan grabbed her sister’s hand again, clung to it across the old table.

  The silence between them was broken by the squeal of the back steps as Harrison made his appearance, wearing his suit pants and bourbon-stained white shirt. He was scruffy and bloodshot and coming down the steps of her childhood home, where she’d dreamed vivid dreams about love and Prince Charming, and her solid and cold heart was not impervious.

  It wanted him. Her stupid heart. Her stupid body—both wanted him. Thank God her brain knew better and was driving this ship.

  I am my own damn Prince Charming.

  She’d used him in her bedroom. Used him the way she’d felt used. And she’d tossed him away like he’d tossed her away.