by Alex Lucian
Which was why I took my time gently curling my hair so that soft waves spilled down my back, and why I redid my lipstick when my lips looked the littlest bit uneven. Even though I was solidly booked for the next thirty days, I still needed to present myself as completely perfect to Lenore.
After one final skim with the lint roller over my black and white patterned dress, I set off to hail a cab to a small restaurant Lenore favored in the summer, one that had patio seating so Lenore could scrutinize us in the daylight.
I arrived with minutes to spare, which caused me to lightly break out in sweat. Lenore wasn’t only a stickler about how we presented ourselves, but she was very strict about being on time. And to her, on time meant ten minutes early.
I cursed under my breath as I made my way to the table on the patio, where Lenore was already sitting with everyone she managed except for me.
“I’m sorry,” I said to her with what I hoped to be a contrite expression. I gave a smile to Stella, one of the girls I was closest to, and slid into the empty seat between Lenore and Stella.
“Did you get lost?” Lenore asked, with a tone that bordered on apathetic as she surveyed the menu.
“No, I overslept.” As soon as I’d said it, I wished to suck the words back in my mouth.
“Overslept? Are you ill?” Lenore was more in tune with our daily schedules than most managers would be, but it enabled her to be a solid manager, someone who could detect when something was off with any one of us.
“No, my phone died last night and I didn’t set an alarm.” The lie slid as easily from my lips as the admission of my oversleeping had. “I’m fine.” I gave her a smile, which she looked at with scrunched eyes for a moment before she turned to the rest of the group.
“What’s everyone ordering?”
Lunch was always Lenore’s treat, but I said that lightly because she always made sure we were eating balanced meals. Not too much fat, because it would affect our skin. Each girl took their turn telling her about the salad they’d selected from the menu, something which made me curl my lip a little. Lenore knew my penchant for eating steak and always ordering dessert, something she didn’t approve of, but had said very little to me about because I went to the gym enough to keep myself slender.
When it was Stella’s turn, I held my breath.
“I’m eyeballing the Croque Monsieur, with some hashbrowns on the side.”
Lenore turned her head to Stella so slowly that I swore I could hear her neck creaking. “Really, Stella?”
I elbowed Stella, whose favorite thing was this—antagonizing Lenore to the point where her temper was tested. She was, as Lenore coined her, the quintessential New York girl, which wasn’t necessarily a compliment. But she fit the bill for men who weren’t married but didn’t want someone obnoxiously out of place to accompany them to events. Her accent wasn’t cultured or smooth, like the rest of us, and her manners reflected that too.
“Calm your tits, Lenore, I was just eyeballing it.” She discreetly elbowed me back. “I’ll get the tomato-gruyere omelette.” When Lenore raised an eyebrow, Stella added, “With the berry salad as the side.”
To anyone else, Stella telling Lenore to calm her tits may have sounded radical, but Stella was Lenore’s first girl and still looked barely legal; she could get away with this stuff. The rest of us had to keep our manners in check. Every group had its wild card, and Stella was ours.
After the waiter took our orders, Lenore pulled out her tablet and a notebook, laying them on the table. She put eyeglasses on and as she studied her notes, she looked the picture of a successful businesswoman. I’d never asked about her age, but I guessed she was in her early forties. Not that she showed wrinkles—no, wrinkles were abhorrent to Lenore. From her trim black suit to the black hair she wore, pixie style, she was just … compact. That was the best word to describe her.
“Jessica, you have two clients next week and one the week after.” She peered at Jessica, a young blonde who was the quietest of us all. As Jessica smiled, Lenore asked, “Have you been to a dentist recently?”
Jessica quickly lost her smile and Lenore added, “See if you can be fit in for a cleaning,” before she turned back to her notes. “Ana, you have three clients next week. And two clients the following week. One of them,” she paused and I could tell she was waiting for the blowback, “is Mr. Peters.”
“Yikes,” Stella said under her breath at the same time that Ana groaned.
“Mr. Peters?” Ana asked. “Fish hands, Mr. Peters?”
I shuddered in sympathy for Ana. Though I’d never had the misfortune of spending time with him, I knew he’d “tried out” most of the girls. He was in his sixties, widowed for the last ten years, and a very frequent customer. And, from what the girls had concluded, his hands were always wet and slippery. Like he routinely squirted them with lube.
“Can you swap?” Ana begged Lenore. “Please?”
Lenore raised one perfectly groomed eyebrow at Ana. Such a request was a bit unorthodox, especially at our lunches. But before she could say anything, Stella spoke up.
“I can take one for the team,” she said. “Give me Mr. Peters next week.”
Lenore turned that raised eyebrow to Stella. “I’m afraid he requested Ana. Your particular … style … was a little overwhelming for him. Besides, you have three clients next week already, four the week after and, according to the schedule you provided me, you won’t have room for another.” She wrote something on her notepad before flipping to another page on her tablet and turning to the last remaining girl, Brienne.
“You have four clients next week. Three are back to back.” She paused. “Your Friday is married and requested you be as discreet as possible.”
Brienne pulled up her phone and made a note. “Got it. Mens deodorant on Friday.”
“And no lipstick,” Lenore added, marking a check next to something she’d written. “The following week, I have you off for your family reunion.” She gave a look to Brienne. “I hope I don’t have to remind you to be careful around the potato salad.” Brienne nodded her understanding and sipped a big glass of water. Then Lenore placed the tablet and notepad back into her oversized purse and said, “That’s all for next week.”
“Whoa,” Stella said, “What about Rubes?”
“I wish you wouldn’t call her that,” Lenore said with a sigh.
“Why?”
“Because it sounds like Pubes,” Ana said with a giggle.
“Or Lubes,” Stella said thoughtfully, tapping her chin with her pointer finger. “Rubes Lubes. Could be good marketing material, Lenore. You’re welcome.”
Lenore gave her a look of annoyance before saying, “Ruby has a client for the next month.”
There was silence around the table as all their gazes fell upon me.
“The same John. For the whole month?” Stella asked.
“Precisely.” Lenore gave me a smile that bordered on pride, an emotion she showed so rarely. “You could learn a thing or two from Ruby.”
“What kind of voodoo magic did you do with your vag, Ruby?” Stella asked before I gave her a look, one that I hoped relayed to her I wasn’t in the mood to talk about it. She merely raised an eyebrow at me, indicating that we’d be catching up after lunch.
After everyone had eaten and Lenore had paid the check, the table slowly began to clear. When it was just Stella and me, she turned with a fork pointed at my face. “Spill it.”
I tilted my head to the left for a stretch. “There’s nothing to spill. We had one night, and then we met again. I think he kind of had a trial interview for me in mind and I must have passed. That’s literally all the information I have.”
Stella looked at me like she was trying to figure out if I was being honest or not.
“Trust me, I’m sure I’ll have more for you as the month goes on, but right now I’ve got nothing.”
“Is he hot?”
“He is.” I nibbled on the inside of my lip to keep from smiling. “And he
’s got a big dick, too.”
“Oh, fuck off,” Stella said, but there was no heat in her words. “You would get that lucky. Men flock to you like you’ve got some neon blinking sign pointing to your pussy.”
“And what would that sign say?” I asked before sipping my ice water.
“Best Cock Trap in the Five Boroughs.”
I rolled my eyes. “That’s a little dramatic.” But it made me think of the text from Nicholas, and I found myself staring intently at my water as condensation dripped down the side of the glass. “But speaking of men flocking, guess who texted me?”
“Who?”
“Nicholas.”
Stella scoffed. “What does that fuck face want?”
“He said he wanted to meet up.”
“And you said?”
“Nothing. I deleted it.” The thought of his text had made me look at my phone cautiously every time a text beeped through.
“Good. Don’t give him the time of day.”
I wasn’t planning on it. But I still couldn’t shake the unease that stuck to my skin.
Chapter Eight
“Are you sure you don’t want more salad, sweetie?” my mom asked from across the table, holding up the white china serving bowl like the contents would singlehandedly make my life better.
Also, file ‘sweetie’ under the worst term of endearment possible for a man in his mid-thirties. The sheer, unadulterated feeling of emasculation behind it was staggering. I almost cupped myself under their twelve-person dining room table to make sure all my equipment was still there. But I didn’t say anything, because the biggest lesson I’d learned when it came to dealing with my parents in the years after Diana’s death was that I had a well of patience so deep that I’d yet to find the bottom.
And my mom only called me things like that when she was in a good mood, so I’d shut my mouth and take another helping of the bland salad.
“Sure, thanks.” I tried to hide my smile when she filled half my plate with the wilted, underdressed salad. “Why didn’t you replace Martha when she retired?”
“I’m perfectly capable of functioning without a cook, Elias,” my mom admonished. “And it’s not a necessary expense considering that anyone cooking for us is only doing it for two people. Waste of money, if you ask me. We kept Martha on because she’d been with us for so long.”
I shoveled in a bite of salad with a grimace. She had. Martha had baked me and Diana cinnamon cookies after school, and given the overcooked pork chop that I’d pushed around my plate before my extra helping of salad, I would have given my left testicle for one of her meals just then.
My dad must have been thinking the same thing, because he lifted his fork and stared at the piece of pork chop like it had done him personal injury.
“You know,” my mom said, pretending like she didn’t see what my dad was doing, “you could always bring someone with you when you come for dinner.”
As subtle comments went, it was fairly reserved for my mother. It had started slowly, only about six months earlier. Apparently Nathan had decided it was time to face my parents and they’d succeeded in reaching some sort of a tenuous truce after years of tension between them. He was … happy now. Happy with Adele, a woman so opposite of my sister that it seemed unbelievable that they’d worked out their issues last winter. And my parents, for their part, seemed content to let him be that way.
Or, as content as they were capable of, at least.
My mom was still prone to outbursts of tears, my dad long silences while he stared at one of her pictures. The one he favored was from her college graduation. She was flanked by me and mom, her bright smile wide and unaffected. I had my arm around her shoulders, and my mom, an arm around her waist. I had the same photo in a simple frame, but I kept it in a box, unwilling to pull it out unless I was feeling depressed.
Lately though, I’d seen a few more cautious smiles, warm conversations and the occasional guilt-trip about my somewhat nomadic lifestyle. If I remembered correctly, the first had been a quiet comment about how difficult it would be to maintain a serious relationship with all the traveling I did. The next had been an innocently posed question about whether the guest bedroom upstairs would make a nice nursery, just in case they ever had grandkids who needed to sleepover.
“I know I could bring someone along, Mom,” I said patiently, grimacing when my fork made a horrible screeching sound against my plate. “But I’d need to have someone to ask.”
“Whether it’s a woman,” my dad spoke up, then darted his eyes away from me, “or a man. We don’t judge.”
My eyes fell shut, the distinct beginnings of a headache forming at the base of my skull. “I know you don’t judge, but if I was gay, I would tell you.”
“Not all kids do,” my mom said, an excited gleam in her eyes. “Mona down the street didn’t know her daughter was a lesbian for four years, can you imagine? Now she’s got a wife and little black baby that they adopted. Cutest thing I’ve ever seen. You could adopt one too!”
I set my fork down, giving them a long look before speaking. “I’m not gay and I’m not adopting a little black baby. Any color baby, as a matter of fact. If I’m ever in the kind of relationship where those kinds of discussions need to happen, with a woman I might add, you’ll be the very first to know.”
“That’s all we ask,” my mom sighed. She was sad now, it was apparent in the downward curve of her mouth. Diana had been their shot, their gimme at being a grandparent considering she and Nathan had been married for almost four years at the time of her death. And that shot was gone now. They were starting from scratch with a son who avoided relationships like they carried the Plague with them. So I couldn’t fault her interest.
“I’m sorry I’m a relationship delinquent.” I attempted a smile when I said it, and she clucked her tongue while she patted me on the forearm.
“Nonsense. You’re a smart boy. You’ll figure it out.” Then she shared a look with my dad. “Hopefully before we’re dead.”
Instead of answering, I shoved another bite of salad in my mouth, willing the hands on the clock to move faster so I could be on my way home to call my paid escort about the dinner she’d be joining me at in a few days. I almost laughed, thinking about my parents’ faces if I were to tell them that. My mom thought I was smiling at her, and the slight look of happiness on her face was worth the nagging I had to endure. Almost.
“Hello, Elias,” Ruby greeted me, the smile in her voice drawing one of my own.
“If I ask you what you’re wearing, does that make me a cliché?”
When she laughed under her breath, I settled back against the massive headboard of my king sized bed. The mattress was still so new that it barely budged underneath my considerable weight.
“Maybe I’m wearing nothing.”
I closed my eyes and inhaled slowly, flipping through the mental pictures that I had of her naked body. “I’m sure you say that to all the men who call.”
She made a thoughtful noise, and I could hear the shuffle of papers in the background. “You know, I don’t have many phone conversations for … work.”
“You’d make a killing if you switched to phone sex,” I told her honestly. Just the sound of her voice in my ear had me semi-hard.
“Oh, but then I couldn’t have fun with men like you. That would make for a sad Ruby.”
“We wouldn’t want that,” I said with a smile.
“Is that why you called? To convince me to change my career?”
I clicked the screen of my phone so that she was on speaker and fisted my shirt behind my neck so I could take it off. “No, I’m calling about Friday night. There’s a black tie thing that I’d like you to accompany me to.”
“Thing?”
“Yeah, it’s for a publishing house that I worked with on something. Same place Randall works. You met him and his wife the other night.”
“Ahh. Yes, they seemed nice.” She paused and I could hear her walking around. “What time on Frid
ay?”
I squinted, at the invitation in my hand. Fuck, I needed glasses. “Seven. Do you want me to send a car for you?”
“No,” she said quickly. “Thank you, though. If you text me the address, I’ll meet you there a bit before seven.”
“Sounds good.” We lapsed into silence and I closed my eyes, trying to picture where she might be sitting, what her place would look like. “Are you really wearing nothing?”
Ruby laughed. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? If the sound of your voice just made my clothes simply disappear.”
“I’d never stop talking. Your body is … God, Ruby. It’s fucking incredible.”
She hummed, and my scalp tightened like she’d just run her hands over it. “Thank you. So is yours. How you know just exactly what to do with it, too.”
I pulled in a slow breath through my nose, hardening fully when I thought about how it felt to slide inside of her with her long legs flush up against my chest.
“You trying to tease me, Ruby?” I unzipped my jeans and reached my hand down to grip myself. “Because I’m going to need you to finish me off if you are. You told me you’re off limits this week, and that means I’ll have all sorts of shit pent up when I see you Friday night.”
“Are you hard?” she asked quietly.
“What the fuck do you think?” I chuckled, the sound dark and devious. “Just thinking about you gets me this way.”
“Good. I’m already thinking about how I want you take me when you see me.”
I tightened my fist and lifted my hips so I could use my other hand to lower my jeans down my ass. “Yeah? I’ve got a few ideas of my own.”
“Tell me,” she demanded.
“Fuck,” I groaned, twisting my hand with a slow jerk, from root to tip, feeling a bead of precum slide out of the angry, red head of my cock. “From behind again, maybe in the bathroom mirror so I can watch your fucking perfect tits bounce when I thrust in.”
