by Audrey Dacey
“I was just letting you finish your meal. It looked like it would be difficult to eat and converse. Are you done?”
“Yeah, I’m done. And for the record, I’m pretty good at doing two things at once. It may be something you’ll want to work on.”
Ryan said nothing and instead grabbed her tray from the middle of the table and slid his to where hers once was.
“Are you kidding me?”
“It's a waste.” He stuffed several fries into his mouth.
“How can you eat like this? Look at you. You're as chiseled as Michelangelo's David, but you eat like your goal in life is to have a heart attack by the time you’re forty.”
He finished her burger in a couple of bites, and she nearly hissed at him with the anger that was boiling in her.
“Well, I guess now that the meal is over I'll be going.” Alexis stood up and jiggled a bit to get her long black pants back to where they were supposed to be and smoothed her sleeveless black, cream, and tan silk top.
When she came to the restaurant, she knew that she should have worn something else, but she hadn’t had much time after leaving her aunt’s office. Everyone else looked sloppy, but normal, in their baggy jeans and t-shirts. She hadn't been in a McDonald's since college in New York City, and she immediately felt out of place. That feeling rarely stopped her though, and she was just glad to know that she looked nice. Over the last week she’d been adorned with cotton shorts and t-shirts all day every day because she didn’t have a reason to leave the house, and if she did, it was to get take-out or groceries, which was hardly worth putting on silk for, but she figured her aunt wouldn’t take her seriously in her lay-about clothes. Plus, if she was going to meet someone for dinner, regardless of the location, she might as well look hot. Especially when it meant that he had to suffer because he knew that she was no longer an option for him.
Ryan also didn't get the message about the casual atmosphere of McDonald’s. The only thing missing from his expensive black business suit was a tie running through the collar of his aqua, black, and white striped dress shirt. They looked like they should be at a five-star restaurant. She didn't quite understand why he was dressed up, but she had to admit he knew how to look good, and he didn’t know that she didn’t get all dolled up for him. Despite the location, they both looked like they had prepared for a date.
She had to get out of there.
Alexis reached down to grab her purse hanging from the back of the plastic and aluminum chair and felt Ryan's long fingers wrap around her wrist. She turned her head and looked into his pleading light blue eyes.
“A little longer,” he said, but she could barely hear him. Her skin had caught fire with his touch. It radiated through her, and without any thought about what she was doing, she sat back down. Alexis bit the inside of her bottom lip to try and regain control of her body's sensations, but Ryan was still holding her wrist, and she could only concentrate on the gentle, fairly insignificant touch.
After a few moments, she shook his grasp away and was able to pull herself back together. She said the only thing that was on her mind. “This is a bad idea.”
“What is?” he questioned innocently.
“You and me. Getting to know each other. It's a very bad idea.”
“Why?” His innocence was driving her crazy.
“Because we had sex. I liked having sex with you, and I can only imagine it would be great to go for another round, but it was supposed to stop at sex last Saturday. I don't want a relationship.” She managed to omit how much she wanted to drag him into the bathroom, lock the door, and tear him out of his suit. She took a deep breath and continued kindly. “I don't want to know who you are, and I don't want you to know who I am. It's weird, and it feels like a relationship.”
“I don't want a relationship either.”
“Then what the hell are we doing here? Maybe we should just ignore one another while you're in town.” she considered aloud.
Ryan sighed audibly and leaned back against the hard plastic of his booth seat. He ran his fingers through his messy hair, and it flopped back into its original position like he’d never touched it.
“That was the plan, but you have a nasty habit of popping up wherever I happen to be.”
“I live here. You're the one who pops.” Alexis pointed at him accusingly and then dropped her tan hand on the table, her bracelets making a loud clunk on the table as she did.
“I probably want to be here less than you do, but I was dared. My plan was to never see you again.”
Embarrassingly, Alexis's mouth had fallen open, and she clamped it shut as she cocked her head to the side, giving him a suspicious glare. “Wait a second. What do you mean you were dared?”
His low laughter startled her. “Most women would care more about the fact that I never wanted to see them again.”
“That feeling is mutual. What I want to know is why we are here.”
“My friend Daniel, the guy you met in the stairwell on Monday, dared me to ask you out if I saw you again. He wouldn't let it go, so I agreed. Apparently, I need to get laid.”
Alexis crossed her arms under her breasts again and said, “You got plenty laid. Why didn't you just tell him that?”
“I don't kiss and tell.”
“You'd rather subject us both to something we don't want to do than brag about something that was what I consider excellent.”
He grinned at her comment. “You don't hold back at all do you?”
Alexis took a deep breath and let it out through her nose. This was him getting to know her, and she hated it.
“I don't like to be led on, so I provide the same courtesy to others. Speaking of which, I think we know too much about each other already. I fear that if I don't leave soon we'll turn into acquaintances.”
“But I am just getting good.”
“Good at what?”
“Talking to you.” He flashed a gorgeous white smile that warmed her to the bone.
Damn it. He did it. He reeled her in and now she kind of liked him as more than just a breathing dildo. “You jerk.” Ryan looked taken aback by her comment and gave her a “what-did-I-do” look. “Fine. I'll stay, but I can't have sex with you ever again.”
His smile returned. “Were you planning on it? Because if you were…”
She interrupted him. “I can't say I was planning anything, but I have an obvious sexual attraction to you. If I'm going to respect you as a real person, then I can't have sex with you. Those are the rules.” She crossed her legs, tucked them under the chair, and swung her top foot back and forth while she watched him contemplate what she had just said.
Ryan had charmed her with his awkwardness, and while she liked him, she was not happy about it. It would end the same as every other relationship she had with a man since Frank. They would be friends, he would want sex, she would say no, he would get crazy, and finally she would kick him to the curb. Why did men have to be such little girls? The best thing she could do was tell him up front what she expected and hope he would comply, but his next question proved to her that it wasn’t going to be that easy.
“Why would we deny ourselves if we have great sex and like each other?”
“Because that is a relationship, and neither of us wants a relationship. Remember?” She wanted to call the whole thing off right then. This was a bad idea, and she knew it. She couldn't. There was something about this strong, handsome, socially-inept man that drew her closer. It was scary, but she realized it wouldn’t be easy to just pull herself away.
“Right, but I'm leaving soon. So, why not?”
“It's a bad idea. Think back to all of the things that I have told you before. Since the night we met.”
He considered her for a moment, so she considered him right back.
“Have you ever been married?” he asked flatly.
“Just because I like you doesn't mean I'm going to tell you my life story,” she answered, annoyed. She didn't really care if people knew about Frank,
but she didn't like talking about it. She was also annoyed because she could feel her carefully constructed wall being hit with a sledge hammer and crumbling in the middle.
Alexis liked to keep people at arm's length. She wasn't sure why, but he wanted to get closer, and she wanted to let him. “I thought you didn't want to be here either. Maybe we should just call it a night.”
“I didn't, but you’re very interesting. I don’t like most women, but you're different. Honest. I want to know why.”
She hesitated only for a moment with a deep breath. She had to take the leap at some point—he was insistent—so it might as well be in a McDonald’s with cheeseburger breath. That was probably the least intimate it could get.
“Once upon a time I was like other women. I believed in relationships, love and marriage, but I learned the hard way that that’s not how life actually works. That it’s all an illusion created by society so it can feel better about life sucking. It was especially engrained in me because I grew up like a princess. I got whatever I wanted when I wanted it. It was kind of awesome.” And in many ways it was terrible. “But that’s not how life actually works.
“As a princess, I believed what the movies said about love. I went to college believing in a fairy tale, and within the first semester I was dating Francis Carello. Frank was working his way through college in the student union. He wasn’t like me or my family, and I liked that about him. He was the Cinderella and I was Prince Charming. I fell in love.” Alexis lifted her hands and made air quotes when she said the last word.
“We dated all through my time at Columbia. In the fall of my senior year, he asked me to marry him, and I—way too enthusiastically—said yes. I planned the wedding in Weston at my parent’s house. The wedding planner told me it was going to be magical; a wedding people would talk about for years.
“We were going to get married a week after graduation. Two weeks before the wedding Frank got an offer to work in Rome for some defense company. It was the chance he’d been working for his whole life, and I was excited to go with him.
“Frank finished his finals before me, so he went to stay with his parents to get ready for the wedding, at least that’s what he told me. While I was working on my last final, I got an email from Frank calling off the engagement. Some crap about not being able to live his life to the fullest being tied down. I don’t remember the exact words. I read the email once and deleted it. It wasn’t important enough to keep.” She didn’t have the heart to read it more than once. It had crushed her completely.
“So, I don’t lie, not much anyway. I am straightforward with men because that’s what I want. I don’t want anyone to have false hope for something I can’t give him.” Alexis thought of Richard for a moment and shook her head. “It doesn’t always work, but no one can actually blame me. In many ways I’m grateful to Frank. Without him I’d be another sucker with unrealistic expectations. I’m just trying to give as many people that reality check as I can. It’s my calling in life.”
She wasn’t sure she wanted to continue. He had listened to every word carefully, and she hoped that she wasn’t giving him any wild fantasies of commitment because she was telling him the details of her life. Despite how many times she told a man that she didn’t want love and marriage, he always thought he was the one that could change her mind. She doubted Ryan would be different, but he didn’t show any reaction one way or the other, and she found it comforting.
There was more to the story though. More reasons many considered her cynical when she knew that she was just being realistic. “I pined for a while. I was angry and bitter—I still am in some parts of my life.” Alexis thought about her failure to write that morning, and every morning before that for seven years. “I sent him a bill for the hundreds of thousands of dollars in non-refundable deposits at one point. I didn’t care about the money. Neither did my parents. In fact they were happy to pay if he stayed away from me for good.” She cupped her hand next to her mouth and whispered, “They never really like him. If he’d asked my father for my hand, my father would have refused. They thought I was too good for him, but I didn’t believe them.”
“It turns out that you are, though,” Ryan said before taking a long draw off his soda. “What do they think of your current endeavors to save the world from the myth of love?”
Alexis took a deep breath through her nose and clenched her teeth. She tried to push away the sting that was building in the corners of her eyes. This was stupid. She was over it; she had been for years, but talking about it was never easy.
“Eight months after Frank broke off the engagement, my parents were driving home from a benefit and slid on some black ice. They hit a tree at 50 miles per hour. So, they don’t know how I live my life. But I have it on good authority that my extended family thinks I am a harlot.”
“I’m sorry.”
Alexis was unable to read his face. There were none of the tell-tale signs of how he was reacting to her life story, but she got the sense that he was sorry but didn’t pity her.
She waved her hand dismissively at him. “Whatever. I’m mostly over it. It woke me out of the stupor that I had been in since Frank left. I realized life sucks unless you have fun. I live a life of few commitments. I only have one major commitment and that is to my sister. We’re eleven years apart, and I am her guardian for a few more months. Most of the time, she is at a boarding school, but she’s staying with me for the summer, which is why you may notice a slight twitch in my eye. It’s not easy to live with a seventeen-year-old.”
Ryan placed his arms on the table and looked into Alexis’s eyes. “Sounds like a tough life for a rich girl.” Alexis had never considered her life tough. It was what it was. Even if it wasn’t what she planned or wanted.
“My life is pretty simple, and it will be even simpler when Riley turns eighteen and becomes responsible for herself. I have more money than I could ever use. I give big chunks to charities every year, but my broker keeps me filthy rich anyway. So, I go out, have sex, and enjoy myself more than one should. You should try it sometime.”
Ryan kneaded his eyebrows together in concern. “Why don’t you get a job? Work can get your mind off such things.”
Alexis couldn’t help but laugh. “First of all, I don’t really consider these things most of the time. It’s not something that my mind is on unless someone reminds me.” She crossed her arms under her breasts, jokingly glaring at Ryan, and leaned back in her chair, realizing she had been sitting up straight for the entirety of her story. “Secondly, it doesn’t work for me. As hard as I try, I just can’t do it.”
“Work?”
She shifted her gaze to the floor. “Write. And beyond that I don’t have much of a skill set that wouldn’t lead to some form of prostitution.” Not being able to write was the one shame in her life, and she couldn’t face his concerned stare, especially when it was the only thing that really concerned her.
“Why not?”
The muscles tensed in her arms, through her back and down her legs. Her gaze shot up to the ice blue eyes. “I blame Frank for that. The final I was working on when I read the email was for my senior creative writing course. I deleted everything I had and started over. I wrote for hours and then emailed it to my teacher without reading it. Despite the typos, I got an A and a ‘this is the best thing you’ve ever written.’ She sent a copyedited version to a friend of hers, and it was published in a freshman comp textbook. But it was like a wish from a genie that had a catch: I haven’t written anything since that day. It was my passion, and Frank took it from me, and I will never forgive him for that.”
Alexis realized that she had raised her voice and was talking too much for someone who was supposedly trying to help someone else work on their conversational skills. She took a long sip of her room-temperature tea to wet the back of her throat and waited.
“Sounds like a problem.” Ryan looked at his watch. “I probably work too much. Speaking of which, I need to get going. Construction starts
early, and I need to make sure I am showered and breakfasted before the guys get to the house. I’m glad we talked, Alexis.” With that he grabbed the trays on the table, kissed her on the forehead, dumped the trash in a colorful bin, and exited through a set of glass doors.
Alexis was stunned. The wet spot on her forehead burned through her skin. How could he just leave? She just gave him everything she had, and he gave her nothing. Absolutely nothing.
Untappable was emotionally plugged.
Maybe he wasn’t as bad as she thought.
Chapter 9
Riley sat on the chaise in the living room, staring out the window and waiting for Jimmy to arrive. He was already an hour late, and she was starting to get worried that something was wrong. She kneaded her hands anxiously. He has a bad habit of being late, she reminded herself. Time was “a restraint placed on society by the man” that he wouldn’t take part in. It was part of his charm, sort of. She loved that he didn’t have a care in the world other than her and his music.
Things were going great with Jimmy. Better than great. He listened to her, went the places she liked without complaint, and snuck her into bars to see him play. His touch sent a rush through her that brought every cell in her body to life, and his kiss was delicious. She licked her lips and remembered the kiss they shared the night before.
It was everything she imagined love to be: a whirlwind of fun, aching, and need. Jimmy didn’t know it yet, but she was going to give herself to him completely. She just had to find the right moment.
The clunking of the junky Daewoo brought Riley’s thoughts back to the present, and she jumped out of the seat and ran to the door. She waited for him to ring the bell and waited several seconds before opening it.
When he saw her, he smiled. Riley was trying to look nonchalant, but he could melt her with that smile. All of the hairs on her arms rose off her skin.
“Hey, babe,” he said and kissed her on the cheek as she let him pass her into the house.
