by Parker Swift
I gripped his hand to stop him from moving. “Don’t get distracted.”
He sighed again. “Fine, but we need to get you waxed again soon.”
“Dylan!”
“Fine! I don’t know,” he said, his eyes flashing closed for a moment with what emotion? Was it embarrassment?
“What?”
“I didn’t exactly keep a tally, Lydia.”
“Guess.”
“All right,” he said, sighing in resignation and looked to the ceiling of the car, as though the answers were written there. “Well, it’s been seven years since Caroline. And it was about two months after our breakup that I started sleeping with other people, and that was June, so we’re talking almost exactly seven years until I met you. I’d say I was having sex about two or three times a week, and there are fifty-two weeks a year. I only did repeats occasionally, so I’d say somewhere between…” He started to try to do the math in this head, but I beat him to it.
“Over a thousand women,” I said, astonished.
“That’s not possible.”
“Well, if it was three times a week, and no repeats.”
“But if it was two times a week, with some repeats—” he objected.
“That’s still over seven hundred women!”
“I did go on holiday with my family. Occasionally. It couldn’t have been all fifty-two weeks of the year,” he protested, but I looked at him with a skeptical look of shame.
“Fuck me,” he finally admitted.
“Apparently,” I scoffed, pushing myself off his lap.
“No. Get back here,” he said, pulling me so I was straddling him, my dress gathered between us. We’d been parked outside my house for a few minutes, but I knew he wouldn’t let us out of the car until we’d sorted this out. He firmly planted his arms around me, wrapping me, pulling me into him. I rested my forehead against his shoulder, and I could feel his lips in my hair. I hit him in the arm.
“Ow,” he huffed, but he knew he had to take it. “How many men?”
“Dylan—” What was the point of even asking?
“Just answer me. How many men?”
I sighed in defeat. “Three before you.”
He breathed into my hair, kissed my head, and pulled me even tighter into him.
“The best I can offer,” he continued, “is to tell you that none of them meant a thing to me, as evidenced by the fact that I didn’t even remember Jemma’s name when I saw her. It wasn’t me who was with any of them—in fact, being with them helped me avoid being me, to protect myself from the utter chaos of being a real person with anyone.”
I scoffed again audibly, but he continued, “You know, in a way I’m grateful for those years.”
“What? Why?” I asked, lifting my head to look at him.
“I wasn’t ready to be myself with anyone. This probably makes me an asshole, but I was using them. I can only hope they were also using me.” He paused for a moment and started to loosen the pins holding back my hair. “Plus,” he continued, “by the time you came along, I knew well enough how to make you come in under a minute.” I couldn’t stop my small smile. He was right. He could. “And if that had anything to do with my being able to trick you into loving me back, then how on earth could I regret it?”
I rolled my eyes. “You are so annoying.” I pushed against his chest.
“Who? Me?”
“I’m not supposed to get stupidly jealous about how many hundreds of women you’ve been with only to have you commandeer the conversation and turn it into some kind of sweet profession of love…and have it work. You’re too good at this.” He held my face in his hands, his fingertips weaving into my loosened hair, and he placed a long slow kiss on my lips.
“I’m taking you inside now,” he said, no room for arguing. “I’m going to bring you upstairs into your frigid bedroom and bury you under the covers. When I have you nice and warm”—he kept talking, now rubbing his hands up and down my bare arms and across my bare back—“I’m going to make sure you fully comprehend that no woman before you meant a thing. And I’m sure as fuck going to drive the memories of those three other men so far into oblivion that you won’t be able to remember their names either.”
With that, my legs wrapped around his waist, my arms wrapped around his neck, he carried me inside. All thoughts of previous lovers, his and mine, disintegrated into the cool night air.
Chapter 7
By eleven thirty the next morning, Dylan had proved two more times that he could fuck the memories of other men right out of my brain. We’d taken breaks for coffee and croissants while sitting in front of the fire in my living room, and I’d proved to Dylan that his girlfriend could beat him at Scrabble. In fact, he had yet to beat me, even if I was six years younger and hadn’t gone to Cambridge.
While I leaned back against his chest, our legs spread out on the floor in front of us, and his hand playing with my hair, I tried to remember the last time we had just lounged together, doing nothing other than reveling in each other. We had all day, and I was in a state of complete and utter euphoria at the prospect of those hours.
Until his phone rang, and he got up to get it.
I could tell immediately, based on his facial expression alone, before he even said his formal “Yes, Mum,” that it was his mother.
“No, today won’t work. I haven’t seen Lydia all week, and I’m spending the day with her.”
Silence. Dylan pursing his lips.
“Mother, you have no idea what my weeks are like, and I assure you I’m not gallivanting around town. Just ask father. He’s the one who has me at the HS offices about six times more often than I agreed to.” He was curt, frustrated. The second he’d picked up the phone, his whole body had become rigid with tension.
And now he was pacing.
“What on earth are you going on about?” he asked her, his hand tense on his hip.
“Yes, we were there, but—” he said in a skeptical tone and reached for my laptop, bringing up something on the screen, clearly something to which his mother was referring. He stopped cold. What was it?
“Mum…Yes, I understand…You hardly need to tell me—”
Silence and possibly the most pissed off expression I’d ever seen on Dylan’s face. I half expected steam to come out of his ears.
“She had nothing to do with it, and I won’t have you implying that she set this up—” He was actually gritting his teeth. “That’s exactly what you were implying.”
I stood and came up behind Dylan and wrapped my arms around him, wanting to comfort him. I had no idea what was going on, but I wanted to be part of what made him feel better. And then I saw it, over his shoulder.
The website for HELLO! magazine.
Two pictures of me, side by side.
In the first photo I was walking into 42 Park Lane, dressed in my red silk blouse and trim skirt, hair neat and tidy, folder under my arm—I could still summon the anxiety, the anticipation of making my pitch to Giles Cabot as I walked into the lobby. And in the second, I was standing in Dylan’s arms, his lips were on mine, and I was wearing the same skirt, but my hair was askew, and I had on what was very clearly a men’s dress shirt. The headline read:
DYLAN HALE HAS A QUICKIE IN MIDST OF UNREST AT HALE SHIPPING
It was bad enough that they were right—we had been having sex in that hotel. It was worse that Hannah would also now know that I had been having sex with my boyfriend when I told her I’d been running errands. And the worst thing about this was that apparently Dylan was coping with problems at his family’s company, and this media attention possibly made those problems worse. I suddenly felt lost, like I didn’t have the map I needed to navigate all of this.
I was no longer listening to Dylan’s conversation with his mother. I was scanning the article for whatever I could see. I caught the words sordid fling and different shirt. I’d have to read it later to see how they were spinning this, but I could at least tell that none of it felt accurate, except f
or, you know, the fact we had indeed had a quickie.
“I told you. No. I’m spending the day here,” he continued into the phone, then listened. More listening. A gruff, throaty, complain-y sound. “Fine…Hello, Father…” Dylan sighed deeply then said, almost shouting, “Fine. I’ll come. No. I’ll be there at two, no sooner.” He hung up his phone and closed his eyes in frustration. Then he called Lloyd, telling him to bring a bag of clothes—presumably wearing his rumpled suit from yesterday wouldn’t work for an afternoon with his parents.
When he hung up for the second time, Dylan turned towards me. I was in a partially catatonic state and barely registered that he was pulling me towards the sofa in front of the fire and hauling me onto his lap. I was wearing one of his button-down shirts, not dissimilar to the one in the photograph, and nothing else, and he arranged me so I was straddling him, his hands across my lower back. I didn’t feel like dealing with this. The trouble these photos seemed to be causing made me feel like the ground was shifting beneath me.
“That photo looks bad. I need to get smarter about this,” I said, feeling unsteady about the whole thing. I felt naïve, like such a rookie, like Dylan was dragging around a girlfriend who had no idea how to do the things she needed to know how to do in order to be his girlfriend. It was like that first day of college, when you reveal that you don’t know what the mascot is or where the library is—your every action reveals just how new you are, how far you have to go before you belong. Then again, he’d been at the hotel too. In fact, he was the one who’d gotten curry on my shirt.
“You have nothing to be sorry for, baby,” he said, reading my mind, reassuringly running his fingers through my hair and pulling my head up, so I was forced to look him in the eye. “Look at me. Are you okay?” He searched my face, as though the article might have physically scarred me.
“I’m fine,” I said. “I mean, I don’t love that your mother thinks I did this. On purpose. That I am some fame-seeking whore or something.”
“Lydia, my mother is a full-on lunatic. She was angry with me, baby. As was my father. She’s furious that she can’t control me. But the important thing here is that you are all right.” The tension was clear on his face, wrinkling his brow, and he ran his hand through his own hair as he looked slightly panicked. “I can stay here if you want. I don’t need to go to see my parents.”
Why was he so worried about me? Where was this panic coming from? And then it dawned on me—this was what had happened with Grace.
I put my hands against his bare chest. “I’m okay. Sure, I don’t like this. I hate those pictures.” I crossed my arms against my chest as I spoke. “I hate that, even if just for a minute, I was part of something that might hurt Hale Architecture and Design or make things with your family worse. I hate that apparently, at any minute, without my knowing, someone can add ‘spin’ to my life,” I continued. “But I’m okay.”
“Damsel.” He rubbed his hands up and down my arms. “This shit is going to happen—I can’t stop it.” I could tell by the way he was saying it just how much he wished he could. “My parents have a point—I should have known better. I should have thought about your shirt—it should have occurred to me. I’m used to this, and I need to look out for you better.”
“Dylan,” I said, looking squarely into his eyes, “I’m okay.” The worry was still there, etched firmly in the wrinkles of his brow, but after a moment of staring at me, obviously looking for signs of freaking out, he calmed.
The truth was that I was a little freaked out, but I didn’t need Dylan acting any more protective or worried than he already was. As much as I knew this was a mutual fail, I couldn’t help but feel like I’d let him down. I’d thought I knew what I was doing. I’d thought I had a handle on it. I hadn’t really believed the paparazzi were a thing, not one that would affect us, anyway. So I hadn’t thought twice about how I behaved in public, about how I skipped into his arms or reached for his hand. But I realized now that I was going to have to be much more careful going forward. For both our sakes.
“We were only outside the hotel for a second,” I said, wondering aloud at how easily this could happen.
“A second is all it takes.” He leaned forward and kissed my neck.
“The worst part is that I loved that afternoon, and now it’s ruined.”
He cupped my chin with his palm. “No. Don’t let them taint things. Once you let them take what’s perfect, what’s ours, and change it, we’re doomed. So no. It’s still our afternoon, understand?”
I nodded, still uncertain, and he moved his palms to my thighs.
“I still licked this pretty pussy,” he said as he pried my legs even farther apart, looking down appreciatively. My shirt was entirely unbuttoned and now I was spread before him, completely open.
“I still toyed with these gorgeous tits,” he added, moving his thumbs to my nipples, stroking them. Suddenly, in one fluid effortless movement, he had me on all fours on the couch, and he was behind me.
“And if I recall, I still fucked this marvelous cunt from behind.” He ran his finger through my opening. He loomed over me, taking control, blanketing me.
“So no, baby, that afternoon. This afternoon. It’s all still ours, and you keep it that way. Understand me, sweet girl?”
I nodded, biting my lip.
He hovered, kissing my back, stroking my arm. He was trying to coax me back, but in that moment there was a wedge. My anxiety over the photos, maybe his frustration with his parents, his worry over me. He wanted to bring me back into his fold, regain control of this situation, but I couldn’t quite get there.
“Baby?” he asked quietly after several minutes, and I could hear the resignation in his voice, like he knew I might need more than a minute to digest this. “At least there’s one good thing about HELLO! printing that story.”
I turned my head and looked at him, questioning.
“Now every lame fucking wanker out there who thinks he ever stood a chance with you, who might have pathetically convinced himself that we weren’t real or that I didn’t own every inch of your perfect ass, can shut down any pipe dream they ever had about you. You’re mine, and any article that makes that even the tiniest bit clearer, is fit to print.”
I smiled and flipped onto my back. I looked up at him, leaning over me. Using all of my strength and a little kick to his leg to make him lose balance, I pulled him down on top of me. I whispered into his ear as he tried to prop himself on his elbows to relieve me of having to bear his weight, “You’re all mine.” And for the third time that morning, he made love to me to try to make me forget, only this time it wasn’t so easy.
* * *
“I’m sorry about this,” Dylan said, and to be fair he really did look apologetic. “I was looking forward to today.” He was pulling a shirt over his head, and it struck me as cruel to show me that toned torso only to cover it so efficiently with his worn-in T-shirt.
“It’s okay,” I said, slipping on some underwear and sitting cross-legged in the chair. I was disappointed—I wanted the day I had been promised. But if there was any chance that time with his dad might resolve some of the stress between them, then I was glad he was going. I still didn’t know what was going on between them, and I was curious, but I also knew Dylan was private. I figured he’d tell me if it was important. Or I hoped.
“How about a late dinner at Will’s tonight?” he asked. Will was Dylan’s best friend from childhood and the head chef at the restaurant they owned together. Dylan looked at me expectantly as he pulled on the jeans from the bag Lloyd had brought. While I was free to spend the day in his shirt, he had to get dressed if he was going to spend the afternoon, however reluctantly, with his parents. Whenever he went to his childhood home, he always seemed to dress in preparation for a long walk. Jeans were fastened, and up next would be thick socks, followed by a crazy-sexy chunky-knit cream sweater.
“Sure. What time will you be back?” I said as, sure enough, he pulled the socks out of the bag.
“I can collect you at nine or so.”
I nodded. “Who do you walk with when you go to your parents’ house?” I asked.
“Humboldt Park.”
“Who?” I asked.
“That’s what the house is called. Humboldt Park.”
“Oh.”
“I’d like to take you there. If my father wasn’t determined to serve me my arse and discuss the business, I’d take you today, but—”
“Um, yeah. I have a feeling today isn’t the day for me to make a good impression.” I had finished his thought.
“I was going to say that they don’t like surprises,” he said. “I do want you to see it, though.” He paused for a moment, and I could see his mind drift to a more pleasant place. “There are these woods behind the house, and there’s this small lake where deer often congregate…It’s really quite stunning this time of year. Next weekend, perhaps?”
I smiled, imagining him there in the woods. “I don’t know, Dylan. I mean, I don’t get the sense your parents are exactly over the moon that the first girl you’ve chosen to date publicly—”
“At all. Date at all.”
“Fine, at all, is an American commoner.” He looked at me sharply. “I know I’m technically British too—”
“That’s not what I was going to say. I don’t care if you were raised by kangaroos on Mount Kilimanjaro—”
“I don’t think kangaroos live on Kilimanjaro—” I objected, but Dylan swooped in and shut me up with a kiss to my lips.
“Will you let me finish a thought for once?” he asked, half smiling, half scolding. “What I meant was that their disapproval means nothing to me, and your provenance will mean nothing to them once they get to know you.”
