by Nora Flite
Logic fled; I brushed my lips on his. He kissed me back, holding me tight. Strength cradled me to him, his arms making me feel smaller than a whisper.
My lashes fluttered—when I leaned away, his smirk was back full force.
“Go ahead,” he said. “Ask me when you can see me again.”
Heat rolled up to my neck. I moved his hand off my ass and slid into the driver’s seat, scowling. Had I really thought he was tender? I was insane.
“I’ll email you tonight,” I said. When Simon arched an eyebrow at me, I added, “Promise.”
But I guess that wasn’t enough for that cocky bastard. He stood there for a moment longer as I grabbed my parking ticket and started rifling through my pockets for some cash to give the attendant. I found my phone and some credit cards, but my change purse was nowhere to be found. I glanced toward the exit, and the sleepy guard waiting there. I knew from countless work lunches with Riley that the garage only took cash. I had no way to pay, no way to leave.
“Fuck,” I muttered. I got up out of the driver’s seat, my soft body brushing against Simon’s carved chest as I did.
He caught the frantic look on my face, because his voice softened then. “What’s wrong?”
“I left my change purse in the mall. It must be in the bathroom, or the food court . . .” The truth was, I had no idea where it was. I held my hands up over my eyes. “Fuck.”
“Tazzy,” he said, his voice still soft. He brought up his strong hand and gently tugged mine down. In a voice that was more kind than cruel, he said, “You can't be so careless.”
I watched as he took his wallet out of his back pocket. Then he unrolled a few clean bills. He offered them to me, but I shook my head.
“Paying me for my services?” I asked wryly.
“Let me help you,” he said, and pressed the money into my hands. But then something hardened behind his voice. That old self-righteous smirk returned. “I can’t let you go all the way back to the mall. You can hardly walk after the way that I fucked—”
“Thank you, Simon,” I said, grabbing the money out of his hand. I sat down in the driver’s seat again in a huff, slamming the door behind me.
I turned on my car and gunned it toward the exit. Simon was still standing there in the dark parking garage, his expression self-assured, frozen amusement. I resisted the urge to flip him off. Instead, I paid quickly, and sped away from the mall. I couldn’t wait to get away from that place, and everything that happened there. The amazing bathroom fuck. Everything he said to me, and worse:
His generosity, which was most baffling of all.
That night, I stopped by my dad’s place on the way home from work. I needed to clear my head, to distract myself from this crazy bet and everything it had done to me. To distract myself from Simon. Good old dad would be a wholesome palate cleanser. And besides, he was always begging me to come over and make him dinner.
If Simon thought I was careless, he hadn’t seen my father. Don’t get me wrong. My dad is the sweetest guy on Earth. But he’d never even done his own laundry until mom moved out, and sometimes it felt like he was barely managing adulthood on his own at all. Sure, he’d made some recent improvements. Sold his bike, for one thing, even though I missed being able to go for rides on the back like we had when I was little. He’d also gotten a better job and moved into a decent two-bedroom apartment downtown after years in a cramped studio. That had been two months ago though, and he still hadn’t managed to unpack. I went over there, fully intending on getting his space livable.
“I swear to god, Dad,” I told him as I opened a box that was a jumble of bathroom stuff and kitchen stuff and old Kung Fu DVDs, “you’d fall apart without me.”
My dad smiled a little bit. He was sitting at his kitchen table, reading the newspaper as I organized his pots and pans. He seemed to have dozens of lids but only two pots.
“Eh, I’m not that bad. What’s a fifteen-letter word for undesirable?”
“Persona non grata. See? Can’t even solve the crossword without me!” I grinned. We’d been doing the Sunday crossword together since I was nine. I had no idea when I’d outstripped his word finding ability.
“Well,” he said. “You’ve always been so good at taking care of me.” And then his tone turned serious. “I’m sorry for that. You shouldn’t have had to—”
“Dad, stop,” I said quickly. I hopped up. The spaghetti water was boiling anyway. I paused a moment to stir the sauce. It was homemade. Not at all the way my mom used to make it—actually way better. “You know I never minded.”
“Maybe not,” he said. “My Tazzy. Always so generous.”
I smiled at that. Maybe in a way, my weekends with my dad had set the tone of everything that was to come in my dating life. For years, I took care of him. Then I found one hot mess boy after another who needed to be taken care of, too. Gotta admit, it got old after a while. As much as I loved my dad, I really did want to spend sometime with grown-ups . You know, people who could boil their own pasta water.
I stirred the sauce, thinking about it. If I could say anything for Simon, he was definitely an adult. I thought about his clean, modern apartment, his expensive motorcycle. I thought about the way that he made me feel, like he could take care of himself and me, too.
Sexually, at least. I still wasn’t sure about the rest of it. I let out a sigh.
“Hey, Dad,” I said to him, lowering the heat on the sauce and popping a lid over it. “Can you watch this for a minute? I want to go open a few more boxes.”
“Sure, Tazzy,” my dad said easily. And it was easy for him. He was a sweet guy. A good guy. Nothing like Simon, and everything like every guy I’d ever dated before. I was out of my depth with Peacock87, and I knew it. I suddenly needed to get out of that tiny kitchen. Unpacking, at least, would get my mind on something else.
“Thanks, Dad,” I said, giving him a quick kiss. Once I retreated into the living room, I grabbed a box cutter, and opened up another box. I was ready to sort his socks and underwear and make my dad’s little apartment feel like home.
But I froze at what I found there instead. Photo albums. Old ones, too, from back before my parents’ divorce. I sat down on the sofa and pulled the one on the top of the stack out. The photos started back around my sixth birthday. In them, my parents were kissing as I blew out the candles on my cake. I’d always thought their love would last forever, that I’d get to watch them dance together on their fiftieth anniversary. But it had all faded. I turned the pages, watching as I got older.
My first day of second grade. Summer trips to the beach. Dad was everywhere in those pictures, the same steady smile plastered over his face. But Mom hardly appeared, and when she did, her expression was changing, growing unhappier and more distant. I remembered how it felt when I was a kid, like she was leaving both me and Dad behind. But I pushed those feelings away as I set the photo album down on Dad’s coffee table. No use dwelling on unhappy memories.
I returned to the box of keepsakes, riffling through. There were Dad’s bowling trophies, and a few of my art awards from school. Then my hand fell on something. A slender book, Lisa Frank kittens on the cover, all locked up with a tiny brass lock. “KEEP OUT!!!!” I’d written in marker on the front, but surely I hadn’t meant my future self? I sat down on the sofa again, grabbed a bobby pin from my hair, and picked the lock open.
It sprang open with a click. I’d started the diary around fourth grade, not long after the divorce, but you wouldn’t know it from my writing. In my big, sloppy cursive, I’d mostly written about sleepovers and fights with friends. Katie had stolen my pencil case, and there had been big, big drama about it that year. Two weeks without talking to one another at all before she apologized and returned those precious pencils. As the years passed, and I moved on to the marble high school notebooks hidden at the bottom of the box, my cursive got tighter. I quit dotting my i’s with hearts. But it was really mostly the same old stuff. Birthday parties and Olympic play-by-plays and crus
hes on Jonathan Taylor Thomas. “I <3 JTT!!!” I’d written over and over again, like somehow I could have conjured him in front of me if I just put our initials together in the right combination enough times.
But by the time high school was around, I’d given up on JTT entirely. I started dating real live boys. First one boy—Todd Sandrock was his name, and he was sweet, but he hadn’t lasted long. Then another, then another. I was never quite as crazy about them as I’d been for Tim the Toolman Taylor’s television son. I didn’t fantasize about our weddings, or our children, and I didn't doodle our combined monograms in the margins of my book.
“I AM SO OVER LOVE!” I’d written at the top of one entry, after a disastrous date with Ted Calloway where he’d taken me to his parents’ basement, forced me to watch videos of himself playing football in 9th grade, and then tried to finger me on the dirty sofa. I’d dumped him immediately. Seemed to me like I was a sharp decision maker at sixteen. I hadn’t shed any tears over Ted. I hadn’t even loved him. Love. Even now, it didn’t seem like it would be worth the work.
I thought of Simon and how electric our connection had felt. I thought about the things that he’d said to me, and how my heart had raced.
It’s just for fun, I told myself, reaching for the phone that was in the pocket of my jeans. Todd had been fun and Ted had been fun and so had all the guys who had followed, even if it hadn’t worked out with any of them. I needed to remember that. The bet with Riley was supposed to be fun, and Simon was, too. If I kept things light and breezy—if I was sexy and sensual and didn’t take myself too seriously—then maybe he’d rise to the occasion. I could still win that motorcycle, and maybe have a few laughs in the process. I started typing out an email to him.
I need to see you soon.
My phone buzzed almost instantly.
You dirty girl, he’d written me back. Can't get enough of me? But I’m going to make you wait for it. Don’t message me again until you hear back from me. And don’t change your panties until then, either.
I frowned at my phone. Crap. Well, Simon didn’t know that I had less than a week to turn him from fling to serious. But when I thought about it that way, my heart seized up. Fun or money... Were any of those things really the reason to keep seeing someone? Simon was leaving me lost. Did I really even want him to fall for me? Yeah, his life seemed together, but he had a foul mouth and was all about sex, sex and more sex.
Not a guy I could really fall for... right?
And even so... fuck, what was I doing with myself? This wasn't light anymore. It wasn't just fun. But I needed it to be. I had to stop acting like all the girls in dumb movies who get fog-headed and angsty over the men they like.
Because I did like him. But I was smart enough to know that meant nothing.
“Tazzy?”
I jumped. There was my dad, looking dopey and innocent standing in the doorway. I quickly hid my phone under my journal, doing my best not to blush. No need for dear old dad to know that his daughter was leading someone on to win a bet.
“What are you doing?” he asked. I forced a smile, but I’m not sure it was convincing.
“Nothing,” I said. But the truth was... I didn't know.
“I wanted to talk to you . . .” he began, but then his gaze fell on my journals, and the photo albums spread out across the table. “But it looks like you’re busy taking a walk down memory lane.”
I locked my journal back up, nodding to him. “Yeah, just remembering my younger, more attractive days.”
“What are you talking about?” my dad said. “You’re beautiful.”
My heart warmed at that. I flashed him a smile, but then my brow furrowed. “Do you smell that?” I asked, then leaped up from the sofa. When I ran into the kitchen, I saw that the sauce was burning on the stove.
“Dad, you were supposed to watch the pots!” I said. My father laughed sheepishly at himself.
“I’m sorry, Tazzy. You know I’ve never been good in the kitchen.”
I turned off all the burners, and started trying to scrape the sauce off of the bottom of the pot.
“I know, I know,” I told him, then turned back around to see him standing helplessly in all that mess.
I went to my dad and gave him a big hug. He hugged me back, and I was grateful for it. But in the back of my mind I couldn’t help but think of my mom, the divorce, all of it. He’d known love once, and a fat lot of good it did him. I felt sure, in that moment, that I didn’t need it either.
“Come on, Dad,” I said gently. “Let’s go order some take-out.”
6
The next day, I was sitting at work, knees crossed tightly, feeling self conscious in yesterday’s underpants. I still hadn’t heard back from Simon. At this rate, I wondered if I ever would. I definitely hoped I would. And not just because I had a lot of money on it.
I’d touched myself dozens of times since I’d seen him. I was going around, half electrified from the constant blood rush to my pussy.
“Tazzy?”
I jumped a little bit at the voice in the doorway to my cube. It was Travis, my boss; a millionaire, and great at what he did.
He could have hired out his work to some corporate consultant, but he liked to keep a finger in the pot. After all, he’d once been a programmer, the inventor of the algorithm behind our site. Total genius, and total control freak. I pressed my knees together as I spun in my chair, and gave him my blandest, most professional smile.
“Hey, Travis,” I told him.
“I just wanted to make sure you’re on track for that presentation for our investors on Friday. You know, the Valentine’s Dinner is a big deal for us. They’re all going to be there.”
My face fell. Shit, it was already Tuesday. I’d forgotten all about the dinner and the flashy marketing presentation I was supposed to have ready for the investors. And Travis was right—this was a big, big deal. If I couldn’t convince the investors that we had our shit together after the controversy with the senator, our company was going to be toast. My heart racing, I forced my smoothest, most professional smile.
“Of course it will be ready, Travis. You know me. Have I ever let you down before?”
“Never,” Travis said firmly, and it was true. I’d been employee of the month four times last year. I’d never disappointed our investors, much less Travis. And he knew it. He smiled at me, even if there was a little bit of wariness behind the smile.
“Okay, Tazzy,” he said, “Just make sure you send me the draft on Thursday night.”
“You’ve got it, boss,” I said, and gave him an encouraging nod. He shrugged his shoulders doubtfully and left me there, panicked in my cube.
I brought up the project file on my desktop. I’d hardly worked on it in the last few days. I’d hardly worked on anything except, well, Simon. God, it was infuriating how he could fuck up my life even when he wasn’t here. I used to always be on top of a deadline, a complete overachiever. Now all I could think about was that stupid man and his even stupider cock.
I clicked through the graphics, not really focusing on any of them. Simon had infected me. And he thought he could make me sit around and wait for him? Please. This limbo was ending now. I brought up my email and started typing in his address. But then I shook my head. I needed to work. I needed to focus. I needed . . .
I stood up in my seat, looking over the edge of the cube.
“Hey Jim!” I said cheerfully. “Want to join me for lunch?”
My coworker eased off his headphones and glanced up at me in disbelief. I figured it might get me in the right mindset to focus on the presentation I needed to give.
“Sure!” he said, grinning.
We didn’t bother with the mall. I told him I didn’t have any change for the parking garage, which was technically true. But I also didn’t want to face my memories of Simon, or my anxiety over when I’d hear from him next. I went as far as to leave my phone in my desk drawer before taking off toward the elevator, even though it took every ounce of
self control in my body do it. I needed to focus, to be in a work mindset. I forced a smile as Jim and I rode the elevator to the cafeteria in silence.
After we grabbed our sandwiches and bags of chips, we headed to a table in back. I hated the cafeteria—it reminded me of my early days at Perfect Click before Riley and I became pals. It was a claustrophobic room of concrete walls and fluorescent lighting and zero windows, and muffled gossip bounced off the walls like grown-ups in a Charlie Brown cartoon. Jim popped open his Pepsi and looked at me awkwardly.
“So . . .” he began slowly. But I had this covered.
“Tell me what you’re thinking for the presentation,” I said. A look of relief washed over his face. If we were talking about work, we wouldn’t have to talk about ourselves, or acknowledge the fact that we were practically strangers.
“Charts!” Jim said, eyes bright with excitement. “Lots of charts. Dozens of charts. Binders of them!”
I laughed. He did too. By the time I was mostly through with my bag of chips, we’d started sketching pictures on the back of a napkin of how the presentation would look.
Despite Riley’s hatred of him, Jim wasn’t such a bad guy. He knew his job, for one thing. He’d been there almost as long as Travis, through his own wedding and engagement and the birth of his first kid. He could have rested on his laurels, made things hard for the rest of us, but instead, he knew his stuff. I appreciated that.
Funny, I thought, examining his expression, the type of people who were drawn to this work. There was Jim, the old married guy, and Riley, who was completely anti-man. And then me. I liked to think I was someplace in the middle. I believed in love. I just didn't make a big deal out of it. Hadn't I loved, in some way, all the guys I'd dated? I'd thought so... until recently.
I bit my lip, thinking of Simon. Never in my life had I obsessed over someone. I was turning into someone I didn't even know. Fuck, if it weren't for the bet, I wouldn't have ever met the man and my world would be way less confusing. This was all thanks to my big mouth and Riley.
