by Lane, Nina
It’s not enough. The material is too soft, too giving. With a muffled groan, I shove the pillow aside and press my hand between my legs. I keep the material of Dean’s T-shirt between my fingers and my sex, as if that will somehow bring him closer to me. I rub the cotton against my clit and gasp as a wave of electricity jolts my nerves.
I close my eyes again, and there he is behind me, gazing at my ass. He’s only wearing his boxers, and he shoves them off to grasp his erection. I can see it, the thick shaft pulsing in his hand, the way he strokes himself with such slick ease from the base to the head.
My body fills with urgency. He grips my hips, pulling me upward so he can push the pillow beneath my stomach. He puts his hands between my thighs to spread me open, then trails one long finger over my folds.
I twitch and moan, pressing my own finger into my body. Dean positions himself behind me, his knees pushing my legs wider. He puts one hand flat on my lower back as he rubs the head of his cock over my slit. I gasp, every part of me aflame, aching for him to impale me with one fierce thrust.
Instead, he teases me, sliding the tight knob in and out of me and over my throbbing clit. I hear his breathing, heavy and deep, feel the tension radiating from his muscular body.
“Dean!”
With a half-laugh, half-groan, he sinks into me, filling me, stretching me. I let out a cry of pleasure and shove my hips upward so he can thrust even deeper. I bury my face into the pillow and surrender, letting him stroke his cock in and out of me, his thighs pushing my legs apart, his flat stomach slamming against my ass. It’s raw and hard, a fuck stripped of tenderness in the drive toward release.
I work my hand frantically between my legs, my mind filling with images of Dean sweaty and hot behind me. The intense pressure snaps the second I imagine him grabbing my hips and plunging so deep my entire body trembles.
He groans and comes inside me, the flood of semen slick and warm. Explosions fire through my blood, and I bite down on a corner of the pillow as the vibrations peak and surge.
With a gasp, I sink onto my stomach. It’s a few minutes before the images begin to fade, and I become aware that I’m lying half-naked on the bed with my hand still between my legs. I push the T-shirt over my hips to cover myself and stumble to the bathroom.
I stare at myself in the mirror. My hair is a mess and my eyes look too dark, almost haunted, my skin too pale.
I splash water on my face and crawl back into bed, pulling Dean’s pillow against my body. I don’t sleep well, my dreams snarled and chaotic with memories of my childhood and the ever-present longing for my husband.
After I wake from my broken sleep, the dreams fade. I take a shower and let the hot water wash away the lingering threads of unpleasantness as I think about what I’m going to do with the money.
A sudden decision spins through me, diluting the fear and uncertainty of the previous night. I call Allie and ask her to come over before the Happy Booker opens.
I get an old VCR out of our apartment storage closet and hook it up to the TV just before Allie arrives with a bag of croissants. She pours herself a cup of coffee while I get a VHS tape from a box in the closet. I’m both nervous and excited.
“You okay?” Allie takes a sip of coffee and eyes me over the rim of the mug. “You seem a little weird.”
“I want to show you something.” I push the tape into the VCR and hit the play button.
A fuzzy image appears onscreen of a young girl with straight dark hair tied into red ribbons. There’s a Christmas tree in the background. A woman appears in the frame—long, blond hair; fine, elegant features. She adjusts one of the girl’s crooked ribbons, then smiles and waves at the camera.
I can feel Allie looking at me.
“That’s you?” she asks.
“And my mother. That was… that was the Christmas before we left my dad. I was six.”
“Oh.”
The scene shifts to a birthday party, my seventh. I’m wearing a pink party hat and eating cake. My mother is standing beside me, waving at the camera. We would be gone two months later.
“You were a really cute kid,” Allie offers.
I fast-forward to the part of the tape I’d been looking for. A grainy image appears of a cherubic blonde girl sitting at a table with a bowl and spoon, a cereal box prominently displayed beside her. The kitchen is spotless and generic. A male voice booms over the scene.
“For a great start to your child’s day, serve Honey Puffs cereal all the way! These crunchy puffs are packed with vitamins and dipped in honey for a breakfast that’s both nutritious and deeeelicious! Amy, how do you like your Honey Puffs cereal?”
The girl picks up her spoon, takes a bite of cereal, then gives the camera a big smile and a thumbs-up.
Jingly music filters from the speakers along with a chorus of, “Honey Puffs cereal, crispy and sweet, full of vitamins and a tasty treat!”
There’s another shot of Amy enthusiastically eating more cereal as the camera fades into a full-screen image of the Honey Puffs cereal box.
I switch off the TV.
“Honey Puffs cereal?” Allie asks.
“That was my mother, Crystal, when she was five years old.”
“Really?” Allie glances at the TV and back to me again. “That’s pretty cool. She was the Honey Puffs cereal girl?”
“Just for that one commercial.” I toss the remote onto the coffee table. “Apparently they offered to contract her for more, but her mother wanted more money and the producers wouldn’t negotiate. I guess there was a big fight about it, and in the end they withdrew the offer.” I shrug. “So that was the end of her Honey Puffs cereal career.”
“Too bad.” Allie seems a little confused. “So… is she still in show business?”
“No. Rumors about her mother spread… you know, stage mother, difficult to work with. Crystal still auditioned a lot, but didn’t get any other big offers. She was in a lot of local theater productions and beauty pageants, school plays, that kind of thing. Then she got pregnant with me when she was seventeen.”
“Oh.”
“Her parents were furious… their perfect little girl, pregnant. They disowned her, kicked her out, so she had to drop out of high school and move in with her boyfriend.”
“Wow. Harsh.”
“Yeah.”
I’ve gone through all this with two therapists, so I understand it—the compliments heaped on my mother as a child, her parents’ high expectations for her to succeed, the constant praise of her beauty and talent. All of that was ripped away when she got pregnant with me.
Replaced by a bad relationship. Fighting. Regrets. Then when Crystal was rejected for another woman, she retaliated by taking me away from my father.
She’s spent all these years searching for the approval she had as a child—through sexual relationships with men and a twisted relationship with me. I was the one who had to give her the right praise and approval, to validate her, while she never stopped resenting me for being the cause of her downfall.
I get it on an intellectual, psychological level.
Emotionally, it still hurts like a bad burn.
“I haven’t watched that video in ages,” I admit. “But I wanted you to see it so you’ll understand where this is all coming from. I’ve always felt that my life has been shadowed by my mother, even though she hasn’t been part of my life since I was thirteen.”
“When was the last time you saw her?”
“Right after I married Dean.” I glance at Allie. “My father died when I was eleven. I’ve never known my mother’s parents or any of her family. But yesterday, I got a letter from a lawyer who told me my grandmother died and he’s handling the distribution of her estate.”
I tell her the whole story, ending with, “So I want to invest the money in the bookstore.”
Allie’s eyes widen behi
nd her purple-framed glasses. “Oh, Liv.”
“You know I’ve been wanting to help you, to be a partner.” Excitement rises inside me. “Now I can, Allie. I actually have the money to do it. We don’t need to take out a loan anymore or worry about borrowing the money from Dean or your father.”
I jump up and start to pace. “I mean, I don’t have the check yet, but I’m signing the paperwork, and the lawyer is going to send it via courier next week. That gives us a few days to talk to the landlord and distributors, see if we can work out a payment schedule for—”
“Liv, no.”
“What?”
Allie shakes her head, looking dismayed. “You’re not investing your inheritance in the bookstore.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t want you to.”
I stare at her. “But you said you’d love for me to be a partner.”
“I would, but not like this. I don’t want you to use your money to save a business that’ll probably still fail anyway.”
“You were fine with me applying for a business loan.”
“Because I was doing it with you, Liv. And because then, there was still a chance we could succeed. But with the rent hike on the building and losing our lease…” She shakes her head again. “The business is gone. It would be a waste of money to try and salvage it now.”
“But we can come up with a whole new business plan.” I spread my hands out. “We’ve talked about adding a café, establishing a membership, holding workshops. Now we have the capital to actually implement all of that.”
“I don’t want to, Liv.”
I can only look at her in disbelief. “Allie, we can save the bookstore.”
“No. We can try to save the bookstore, but it would be a huge risk. I don’t want you to lose your money, Liv. No way.”
This is so not the reaction I expected that I don’t know what to do. “But—”
“Liv, I love you to death. I’m so touched that you’d want to do this, but I just can’t let you. And honestly, I’m done with the bookstore anyway. It’s been such a struggle these past couple of years. It’s time for me to do something else.”
To my utter shock, tears sting my eyes. I hadn’t known until this moment how much I’d been looking forward to this—not only finally being able to help a friend, but also becoming a legitimate business owner.
“Don’t be upset, Liv.” Allie leaps off the sofa and hurries over to hug me. “There are so many other things you can do with the money.”
“I love the bookstore, Allie. You love the bookstore. How can you just give up?”
“I’m not giving up. Sometimes things have to end.”
My stomach tightens. “What if you don’t want them to end?”
“Then you try and start again,” Allie says. “Fall seven times, get up eight, right?”
“But you don’t even know what you’re going to do next.”
“I’ll find something.” She squeezes my arm. “You will too. Thank you for the offer, really. It means the world to me that you’d even consider doing such a thing. And you know I’d do anything for you, too.”
She blows me a kiss and heads out the door. I take the tape out of the VCR and toss it onto a table, then go to finish getting ready for the day. I walk to the Historical Museum, battling back the disappointment over Allie’s refusal.
Now what?
I can invest all the money in mutual funds, but even that wouldn’t put me on a path toward actually working for something of my own.
I glance at my watch, quickening my pace when I realize I’m almost late for my shift. As I turn on Emerald Street the door of a coffeehouse opens and a woman steps onto the sidewalk.
I stop. So does she. We stare at each other.
Then rage floods my chest. I tighten my hands into fists to prevent myself from clawing her eyes out.
She ducks her head and turns away.
“Maggie.” My voice is like barbed wire.
She hesitates, then turns to face me again. Even through my anger, I’m struck by how she looks both young and old at the same time—her hair is thick and curly, her skin unlined, but there’s an ancient weariness in her eyes, as if life has already stripped her of youth and innocence.
My fingernails dig into my palms. “Why?”
She averts her gaze. “I’m telling the truth.”
“You’re not. You’re lying. We both know it.”
“Look, Mrs. West, you don’t know what’s been going on.” Maggie lifts her chin, her eyes hardening. “I won’t let your husband get away with ruining my life anymore.”
“So you’re going to try and ruin his by threatening him with a false charge?”
“A false charge?” she snaps. “You, of all people, should know it’s not false.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Think about it,” she retorts. “I’m not supposed to talk to you about this.”
“Why not? What am I going to do—run to the Office of Judicial Affairs and tell them you’re lying? My husband has been telling them that since we first heard about this. How do you think screwing up his life is going to help you?”
Her jaw clenches. “By getting me out of King’s University. Either the administration will accelerate my graduation to avoid a scandal, or I’ll sue them for not protecting me from a lecherous professor. Either way, I’ll get out and be done with it all.”
“And you’ll still have your father’s money.”
“You don’t know what my father is like,” Maggie snaps. “But you should have helped me when I asked you to talk to your husband about my thesis. Now it’s too late.”
“It’s not too late for you to do the right thing.”
She shakes her head, her shoulders hunching as she hurries away.
I watch her go, not knowing if I just made things worse.
CHAPTER FOUR
Olivia
March 17
ve stopped researching information about sexual harassment cases at universities because they never seem to end well. The professors often end up resigning, and if they don’t, their reputations are tainted by the allegation.
Even if they’re innocent of the charge, their names are splashed all over the Internet, attached to news stories about the case. Some of the professors are not innocent, I know, and their accusers are right to pursue justice, but that sure as hell isn’t the situation with Maggie Hamilton.
“If you see her again, don’t talk to her, Liv,” Dean says, after I’ve told him about my encounter with Maggie. “I don’t want Edward Hamilton giving us a bunch of BS about stalking again.”
I promise him I won’t, but worries hover around me like a cloud in the days following my encounter with Maggie. My inheritance check arrives via courier, and I deposit it one afternoon before my shift at the bookstore.
After leaving the bank, I stop halfway down Poppy Street, across from a sage-green Victorian building with painted white shutters. The windows are shaded by the interior curtains. The wooden Matilda’s Teapot sign, hanging from a post by the fence, has been replaced by a For Lease sign.
I cross the street and approach the house. I’ve passed by several times since the tearoom closed a few weeks ago, but I haven’t paid much attention to it aside from wishing it was still open so I could stop in for a plate of chocolate crepes and a pot of Darjeeling tea.
A vinyl banner with the word Closed hangs over the windows. I walk up to the porch and peer into one of the first-floor windows.
“May I help you?”
I turn to see a robust woman in her mid-fifties climbing the front steps. She has a broad, friendly face and brown hair streaked with gray.
“Are you Matilda?” I ask, recognizing her from my visits to the tearoom.
“Matilda was my mother.”
“Oh.” I gesture to the window. “I wasn’t snooping. Well, not much anyway. It’s just that I used to love your place.”
“That’s nice to hear.” She reaches to unhook the banner from the window. “My mother opened the tearoom years ago, and I took over after she retired.”
“The crepes were amazing,” I tell her. “I’m sorry you had to close.”
“Well, my husband died a couple of years ago and it just got to be too much work for one person,” she explains. “I won’t miss all the paperwork and headaches, but I will miss the customers. Could you get that corner? I can’t quite reach it. I’m Marianne, by the way.”
“Olivia. Everyone calls me Liv.” I put my satchel down, pull a narrow bench over to the window, and step onto it to unfasten the banner.
“What’s going to happen to the building?” I ask.
“I don’t know yet. It’s coded for retail and food service, so I’m hoping someone will put it to a similar use.” She glances at me as we lower the banner to the porch. “Why? Are you interested in leasing it?”
The question catches me off guard. “Uh, no.”
“Oh.” Marianne almost seems disappointed.
“I’m not… it’s just that I don’t know anything about owning a—”
I stop and give myself a swift mental kick in the ass. So what if I don’t know anything about owning a business? I can learn.
I don’t know anything about being a mother either, but I’ve started to believe that someday, I could be a good one. I’d certainly give it everything I have.
“Well, I could… I suppose I’d consider it,” I finally say.
Marianne looks up at the second floor of the building. “I’m afraid I wouldn’t recommend reopening the tearoom. Business was going downhill a bit, and we had a reputation for catering to senior citizens, so we weren’t popular with younger people. Would you like to come inside?”
