by E. J. Noyes
As I stepped out of the elevator, she was already standing in her doorway. Cue instant nerves. She was clearly standing there so she could block me from coming in to her apartment. But why let me up instead of telling me to fuck off? Audrey grabbed my arm as soon as I was in range, bending to kiss the corner of my mouth softly. “Hey. Come in.”
Her unexpected greeting made me pause a moment. I stepped into her apartment but made no move to remove my coat. “I’m sorry, I know we weren’t going to see each other tonight.”
“It’s fine, Iz. How are you?”
“I’m good. You?”
“I’m good too. So that’s good. Can I take your coat?”
“I wasn’t planning on staying.” Yet I’d let the driver go.
Both eyebrows rose. “No? Why’s that?”
“I wasn’t sure if you’d want me to,” I said softly.
Her smile was uncertain. “Why wouldn’t I want you to stay?” She held out her hand for my coat.
I hesitated a moment then slipped out of it and passed it to her. “Thanks.”
She wasn’t to be deflected. “Why would you think I wouldn’t want you to stay?”
My heart raced like I’d just run a hundred meter sprint. “Because of yesterday. Audrey, I came here to apologize. For what I did, and said. I wish I could say it was just a bad day but truthfully, that’s not really all there is to it.”
“I see. Come sit down. Do you want a drink?”
Apparently I had no say in what I wanted, my body made decisions for itself. My feet took themselves to her couch and my mouth said yes to her offer of a drink. After she handed me a glass of white I had to apologize again. It sounded even more pathetic, made worse by her gentle patting of my knee.
Audrey shrugged as if she couldn’t care less, but still managed to make me feel like what I was saying wasn’t being dismissed. “I get it, I really do. I know it wasn’t directed at me.” She smiled and upended her beer.
“It makes me feel horrible, but I just get so urgh!” I shot her an embarrassed look. “You know. Like I have a mini-Hulk out and can’t stop myself.”
She laughed. “Everyone deals with stress differently. Personally, I prefer a more naked approach.” Seductive eyes looked in my direction. “But, whatever works for you.”
I grinned, relaxing some. “Well that is one way. Maybe next time you could drag me under the jet and we can try the naked method?”
“Maybe I will.” She raised a sly eyebrow for a moment before her expression grew serious. “Why exactly do you care if I witness you being angry with someone?”
“I’m kind of…I don’t know.” I didn’t want her to think badly of me, but it seemed stupid for me to be thinking that. Stupider for me to verbalize it. For some reason it was important that she thought well of me as a person, not just as a lover. It’s not like I went after people for sport. I had standards to uphold, and hated being treated like I didn’t matter. I’d spent years in New York trying to build myself up as a woman respected for her ability, but one offhand comment could tear it all down like a house of cards.
I took a calming breath. “I was worried you’d think I might lose my temper at you.” Good enough. That explanation worked. The truth was right there but I just couldn’t get it out of my mouth—I care about you.
Audrey wore her thoughtful face. Eyes downcast, right eyebrow dipped. “No,” she said finally. “I’m not concerned about that. I don’t think you would.”
I scrunched my toes up inside my boots. “I’m relieved to hear you say that. It’s important to me that I treat my employees well.”
She reached for my free hand, holding it between both of hers. “I know, and I’ve not heard anyone say anything otherwise, Iz. Honestly. I mean, apart from Mr. Hall, I only really see Georgia or Penny and sometimes Schwartz but they’re always talking about how kind you are.”
Evidently Georgia missed my tantrum yesterday. There was a weird stinging sensation in my nose. One that didn’t go away when I rubbed it. “I feel really stupid coming here to tell you this.”
“I’m glad you did.” Audrey ran her tongue along her lower lip. “I know this is just casual, but I’m glad you thought this important enough to be open with me.”
“You really don’t seem bothered by it.”
“If your little outburst had been directed at me, then I’d be hurt but it wasn’t. So I’m not.” She shifted fractionally, seeming suddenly uncomfortable. “My father had a temper, Iz. I got good at defusing it after a while.”
I chewed the inside of my lip, the word defuse playing over in my head. “I don’t want you to feel like you should have to defuse me. Like I’m a fucking explosive device. I mean, I am. But I’m not.”
“That’s not what I meant. I just meant it doesn’t concern me. I’m not afraid of you opening the steam valve here and there. I trust you.” Audrey’s eyebrows came together. “Like I said, I’ve known one or two tigers in my time, Iz. You’re just a housecat hissing because someone petted you the wrong way. It’s justified and you’re serious about it, but you’re not going to scratch anyone.”
I smiled at her cat analogy and rested the wineglass on my knee. “I don’t mean to dissect it and go over and over what happened. I just felt like I had to explain myself.”
“You don’t owe me any explanations. We’re not in that place, the place where we need to justify and explain or tell each other exactly what we’re thinking.” She fiddled with the label on her beer bottle, picking at its edge.
For some reason, her statement bothered me. We weren’t in that place. Where were we then? I took a sip of wine, swallowing quickly. “It’ll no doubt happen again, though hopefully not around you.”
She was silent, still peeling off the label. When she spoke again, she was calm. Gentle. “Isabelle, I know you care deeply about what people think of you. As a person. A boss. A professional. But, I’d rather you were honest with me rather than holding it in.”
I nodded slowly, teeth clamped around my lower lip until I was ready to speak. “I hate being treated like Mark’s secretary, just because I’m just a woman and he’s the guy. It frustrates me that I get frustrated.” I laughed at the absurdity of my statement.
“I get it, really I do. And you’re right, it sucks. When I first started out, I had so much shit heaped on me by the guys. I thought it’d go away but it was always there in the background, wearing me down.” She looked up and caught my eye. “It’s part of the reason I left the commercial industry.”
“Really? You don’t…seem like that sort of thing would bother you.”
Audrey seemed surprised. “It does. And it bothers me that it’s happening to you.”
I leaned over and kissed her quickly. “You’re so sweet and perfect, why hasn’t someone snapped you up yet?”
She shrugged, smiling. “Just wait a little longer and you’ll see how not perfect I am. I mean, you know I laugh at inappropriate things and can be really messy. Sometimes I get pushy, or upset about things I shouldn’t. I jump into the deep end and don’t think things through, especially not important things. I get caught up in weird thoughts. I mean, the other day I spent an hour online researching how refrigerators work. Everyone has their shit.”
“Mmm.”
“I guess what I’m trying to say is that you don’t deserve it, and it’s bullshit. From where I sit, I see someone who works hard and gives freely. Someone who earns respect and is well-liked and trusted. Someone who’s beyond capable and deserves her success.”
My words echoed in the wine glass as I lifted it to my mouth. “From where you sit, all you see is sky.” I had to make a joke about it or I might cry at her gentle affirmation.
Audrey grinned. “Funny. You think you’re so damned funny.” She took my hand and kissed each one of my knuckles. “Stay the night with me, or else I’m not going to see you for a couple of days. I’ve missed you.”
As I murmured my agreement, my stomach growled audibly. Lunch was an apple almost
six hours ago between constant phone meetings. Audrey clambered over me to kiss my stomach through my top. “First, let me make you dinner. Let me take care of you.” She scrambled off the couch before I could protest.
Chapter Ten
A few days later, Audrey arrived with sushi right in the middle of a phone argument Mark and I were having about some of his clients’ portfolios. I gestured that she should get a drink and start eating without me, and moved out onto the balcony. The city sounds below rushed up, tunneling through my brain and hammering at the ache behind my eyes.
“When you ask for my advice, Mark and then practically do the opposite, it really pisses me off. Especially when it turns out to be a bad buy.”
“Belle, quit riding me about it.” He was almost whining.
“If you were doing what you should, I wouldn’t be fucking nagging you. You’re making me feel like my mama.”
“I don’t need to be babysat.” I could feel him pouting, even through the phone.
“Yeah, maybe you do. I hate to say it—”
“No you don’t,” he countered.
I drove over the top of him like I was a tank. “Honey, I don’t know what’s going on, but you seem distracted.” For the past few weeks he’d been ducking out of the office at odd times, and had long periods where he was completely uncontactable. I’d overheard someone in the ladies’ room asking if he was all right because “he seemed so weird.”
“Isabelle.” His tone was a notch below a warning.
“I’m worried about you. That’s all.” I turned to look back into the house, watching Audrey bent over in my fridge. She turned around, caught me staring and grinned. I grinned back. Guilty as charged.
Mark exhaled. “I know. But you’re my best friend, not my wife. Or my mom.”
“I’m the closest thing you’ve got to a wife, darlin’.”
“I can’t even begin to express how depressing that is.”
“I’m bringing this up as your friend but more importantly as your business partner, Mark.” There was no way I could word it that wasn’t accusatory. “I feel like you’ve been missing things you shouldn’t. And then that trouble with the auditor. Things are dragging on your end, and for someone so concerned about our image, your…ineptitude makes us look bad.”
There was a long pause. So long that I had to ask if he was still there.
“I’m here.” The sound of a lighter sparking came over the line. His deep inhalation. “I told you the auditor stuff was just a fuck up of a report I sent, and I sent an amended one through.”
“Yes. A fuck up,” I said pointedly. “You were late sending the figures through last quarter too, and I had to chase you up.”
“Goddammit, can’t I just relax for once and enjoy the fruits of my labors, Belle?”
“Of course you can, but if you’re not careful you’re going to end up cutting down the fruit tree. And then we’re both screwed.” I slid the balcony door open and stepped inside. “Just think about it?” I decided to leave it there, sensing that mentioning more of his mistakes now would tip him right over the edge.
“I will.”
“Good. I’ve got to go. I’ll see you in the morning.”
“Yeah okay. Bye.”
I tossed my phone onto the counter, stretching over to kiss Audrey. “Hi. You smell amazing.” The knot of tension in my shoulders relaxed a fraction.
“Hi yourself.” Despite my indicating she should start, she’d waited.
Standing a few feet away from her, a familiar feeling came over me. The one I had when we were looking at one another, still slick and panting as we came down from our climax. Or when she calmly fixed the toothpaste in her bathroom after I’d used it because she squeezed from the bottom of the tube and I didn’t. The feeling I got when she’d tell me about something of her day, something I would have found annoying but she would laugh about.
Looking at her, I knew what the feeling was and it frightened the shit out of me. Comfort. I stuffed it down where I wouldn’t think about it. Audrey extracted sushi and a bottle of white from the fridge and we moved around the kitchen in a routine we’d perfected. Wine glass filled for me, plates and cutlery set out, a second beer for her. When I winced, she brushed her fingers over my cheek. “Is everything all right?”
“Yeah, all fine. Give me a moment?”
“Sure.”
Upstairs in my bathroom, I tossed two Advil into my mouth, then rushed back down and swallowed them with a gulp of wine. I started chopsticking sushi onto a plate. Audrey stepped behind me, massaging my shoulders. “Sure you’re okay, Iz?”
“Mhmm.” I turned to face her. “You don’t need to do that.”
“Do what?”
“Dig into what’s up, try to help me.” Buzzwords: defense mechanism. I wanted to tell her why I was feeling out of sorts but it wasn’t appropriate. It had only been a little over two months. With our work dynamic, the conflict of me telling her about my issues with Mark was landmine territory. But I wanted to share, and the dilemma confused me.
“Sure thing. Then I won’t.” There was no defensiveness in her statement, just quiet acknowledgement.
Contrition flushed my cheeks. “I’m sorry, that came out bitchily. I’m just tired.” Whenever I said that, I often wondered why nobody ever countered with you’re always tired. I smiled tightly. “You know what? That’s a lie.”
“It is?”
“I’m tired but I’m not that tired.” I pushed my plate across the counter. “What I really am is confused.”
“What about?” Her question was relaxed, inviting me to share.
“I’m confused about us.” Tapping the end of my chopsticks on my marble counter, I elaborated, “Dinner and movies. Spending time together. It’s confusing for me because of what we said in the beginning.”
Audrey’s gaze was steady, dark eyes locked to mine. “I know.”
“I like it, don’t get me wrong but I don’t know what it is,” I admitted.
“What it is? I assumed it’s two people spending time together. Like friends would.”
“Friends.” The word tasted strange in my mouth. It tasted wrong, like it wasn’t going to satisfy my hunger.
“Mhmm.” A flicker of unease crossed her normally calm face. “It’s not unreasonable to consider us friends? With benefits of course.”
I grinned. “No. I don’t think that’s unreasonable.”
“Good.” She placed a hand on the side of my face and kissed my temple. “Come on, let’s eat.”
After dinner, as we slouched watching a movie on my L-shaped couch, I pulled her legs up onto my lap and began to massage her tight calves. My earlier frustration and anxiety had dissipated, evaporating like steam. It was her. Her gentle humor and sweet words. Her presence. She settled me in a way I’d never felt before.
Audrey’s default state was calm amusement, along with an almost feline laziness as if nothing was particularly important. I envied and admired her for it. The only time she got frazzled was when we were making love and she was excited but I denied her. Then she would become frantic as though she thought I might disappear before she could do what she wanted to.
There I was, bitching and basically telling her to butt out, yet she somehow snuck up behind me and managed to change my mood anyway. She handled me expertly but I never felt handled. In our short time together, she’d become a master Isabelle Rhodes wrangler. I glanced at her, then back to the television.
Audrey wiggled her toes. “What?”
“Seriously, why aren’t you bothered by my moods?”
“Where’d that question come from?”
I held onto her legs and bent forward to retrieve the remote from beside her. Brad Pitt paused midsentence. He looked surprisingly unattractive, possibly for the first time in his life. When I didn’t speak, Audrey continued, “We’ve talked about this. What’s going on? Really.”
I took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. “I guess I’m worried you’ll get sick of it.
Sick of me.”
Her leg tensed ever so slightly. “No. I don’t think that’s going to happen.”
I exhaled. Again, the words were right there, filling my mouth and threatening to choke me. I care about you. I think I’m falling in love with you.
Our silence became the silence that feels like it should be awkward but is really the most natural thing. With others I’d have felt the need to grin, or do something to turn the feeling from seriousness to light. Not with her. She broke first. “I don’t want to be anywhere else, Iz.”
My response was barely above a whisper. “Me either.” I carefully extricated myself from under her legs and climbed over to straddle them. She sat perfectly still as I slid her shirt up and bent to press my lips against the firm, tanned skin of her belly. I ran my nose over her bellybutton, inhaling the sweetness of her. Underneath me, her legs were moving, sliding her feet along the fabric of the couch.
I slid my tongue in an experimental lick along her hip bone and she tensed. I did it again, feeling the jerk of her knee under my ass. We hadn’t said anything, nor had she touched me since I’d moved. I looked up. Her arm was slung over the couch, expression soft but desire shining clearly from those dark eyes. I pushed hair from my face. “You’re awfully subdued.” My fingers took the initiative and unbuttoned her jeans, sliding her zipper down as slowly as I could.
“I’m enjoying watching you work,” she murmured.
“Oh, I haven’t even clocked in yet.”
“Will you be putting in overtime?”
“Absolutely.” I slid backward, still pressing kisses over her stomach. When I hooked my fingers in her jeans, Audrey lifted herself to let me tug them down to midthigh, exposing her dark blue boyleg underwear. The woman had no underwear loyalty, and undressing her was like unwrapping a gift. Sometimes she wore boyshorts, sometimes a thong and other times something scant and lacy. She did whatever made her feel good and comfortable and I envied her ability to be so at peace with her self-image.
Her breathing caught when I dropped my nose against her, inhaling the unmistakable scent of her arousal. My throat tightened. Saliva welled. I wanted to taste her so badly. Instead, I crawled back up, slipped my leg between her thighs and pressed myself against her.
