Silk

by Heidi McLaughlin

  “That’s Carissa,” she said, shaking her head.

  “Caribbean Barbie’s name is Carissa?” I snorted. “Of course, it is.”

  She laughed. “You named her Caribbean Barbie? That’s awesome. I’m sure that’s who it was, though. She’s Adam’s ex.”

  “The one that you said did a real number on him?” It was what I’d suspected. Maybe they were trying to reconcile. The thought sucked the air out of my lungs and gave me a case of dry mouth. I took a drink of my wine.

  “The one and only,” she said. “God, she’s a mess. But freaking gorgeous, right?”

  She wasn’t making me feel any better. I’d spent the last 48 hours crafting an inferiority complex around the girl, and now Carly was confirming that I was right to do so. A guy could put up with a lot of crap from a girl that looked like Carissa. And, clearly, Adam wasn’t done putting up with crap from her. Instead, he was still buying her coffee on random Thursday afternoons.

  “Okay, so he walks in with her and then what?” she asked.

  I went on to describe Ethan’s evil plot to make Adam jealous.

  “Hold up,” she said, interrupting me again. “Who is this Ethan?”

  “Ethan’s been my best friend for years. We met in undergrad and then went to law school together. Now we work together.”

  She looked at me suspiciously. Usually, I found Carly’s protective, momma bear attitude toward Adam to be endearing, but tonight I wanted her to be on my side.

  “I promise,” I said, crossing my finger across my chest. “Just friends.”

  “Well, did Adam notice you holding hands with Just-Friends-Ethan?”

  “Yeah, he did. On his way out the door. But he didn’t say anything. He just looked at me and walked out. He got in his car and left. With her.”

  “His car? Really? He had Eleanor out?” she asked, smiling. “He hardly ever drives it.”

  “By the way, what’s up with that?” I asked, taking another sip of wine. “Who keeps a car in the city?”

  “He loves the thing. Drove it up from Texas and pays a small fortune to park it in a garage near his apartment. I bet he only drives it once a month. But every now and then we take it on a road trip.”

  This would be a good time to ask Carly if she knew about the source of Adam’s money. But I definitely didn’t want it getting back to him that I was asking around about the few details of his life that he’d divulged to me. He would tell me some day when he was ready. That is, he would tell me if we were still together. Besides, I needed to know more about Caribbean Barbie Carissa.

  “So what’s the deal with Carissa? Are you sure that she is still an ex?”

  “Oh, I’m sure. He’d set her on fire before he’d get back together with her. I don’t know why they were together when you saw them, but I’m sure that it had everything to do with her. She’s a manipulative bitch.”

  Carly leaned in like she was divulging the secrets of the universe. “So here’s the story,” she began. “They met freshman year on like the first day of school or something. She has that whole exotic thing going so, of course, he thought she was hot. But she pursued him endlessly. I don’t know if you’ve figured this out yet, but Adam doesn’t do easy. He likes a girl that makes him work for it.”

  I took a mental time out. If he liked girls that played hard to get, then why did he like me? I’d gone home with him on the first night. Of course, he hadn’t actually gotten any action that night, but I was sure that the evening hadn’t gone as either of us had intended. The first time I saw him at the grocery store, I’d turned down his invitation for dinner. I’d kicked myself over that one, but I was glad now that I’d been reluctant to get involved with him.

  Carly was still talking. “So he pretty much ignored her for the first year. She was relentless though, and eventually she just wore him down. And then it was on, and those two were hot and heavy. I mean, they couldn’t keep their hands off each other. No one could stand to be in the same room with them.”

  Ugh. The thought of him with his hands all over that girl made my blood boil a little.

  My face must have reflected my thoughts because Carly looked at me apologetically. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have said that. It’s just that they were so disgusting. Doing it in public bathrooms, the school library ... what Starbucks were you at?”

  My jaw dropped.

  She slapped herself on the forehead. “Oops, I’m doing it again. Sorry.”

  “Anyway, everything was going great. They were practically living together. But then she started pushing him for more. Last Christmas, she put the full court press on him. He was going home, and she wanted to go with him ... meet his mom and do the whole home-for-the-holidays thing. If you ask me, she was trying to position herself to get a ring on that bony finger of hers. But Adam wasn’t there yet. He’s fiercely protective of his family and barely even talks to Burke about them.”

  I nodded. I knew that to be true. I’d hung out with him a lot over the past two months and the sum total of what I had learned about him was that he’d given up six years of his life to take care of his sick mom. I wouldn’t even know that he was from Texas if I hadn’t snooped through his wallet.

  “He always had trouble telling her no though. So he just left without her. Told her that he was going to the gym and went to the airport instead. God, she was furious,” Carly said, laughing. Apparently, she really didn’t like the girl.

  “Eventually, he felt bad about it though. So he came back early to surprise her on New Year’s Eve. I think he went straight from Newark to her apartment. He let himself in and BAM! He was the one that got the surprise. She was all heels to the heavens, if you know what I mean.”

  I stared at her blankly. “Huh?”

  She raised her eyebrows suggestively. “She was sprawled out on the couch with her ankles around her ears while Brian ... yes, Brian ... was rounding third base with home in sight.”

  My jaw dropped for the second time. “Brian ... as in Brian-from-the-band Brian?” I asked.

  “Right,” she said like that was beside the point. “Anyway, that was the end for him.”

  “That’s understandable,” I said. “But he and Brian seem okay.”

  “They are. Guys are weird. Bros before ho’s and all that,” she said with a shrug. “Besides, I think he realized that Brian did him a favor. He really dodged a bullet with that one. No one liked her ... except Adam.”

  “And Brian,” I said, with a snort.

  “Nah. Brian thinks that she is batshit crazy. He would have never gone there in the first place if she hadn’t plied him with alcohol.” She paused and settled back into the couch.

  “So that’s the story ... but you didn’t get it from me ...,” she ended conspiratorially.

  Damn. Using Ethan to make him jealous really seemed like a bad idea now. Sure, we’d never talked about whether we were seeing other people, but until I’d seen him with Carissa, I’d just assumed that he wasn’t seeing anyone else. He’d probably assumed the same. Now, I’d stupidly given him reason to think that I was also with Ethan.

  I groaned.

  “What?” Carly asked.

  “Well, now he thinks that I’m seeing Ethan on the side.”

  “Look, it’s not like you guys are exclusive, right? At least, it’s never been actually confirmed that you are. So it’s not like you Carissa’d his ass. Besides, you are both happy with what you have going on,” she said.

  And just like that, a light went off. Or maybe a light went on. Whatever. It was suddenly clear. I wasn’t happy with things the way they were. Ethan was right. I’d fallen for Adam.

  I was a lost cause for the man.

  I shouldn’t really be surprised. He was the first thing that I thought about when I woke up in the morning and the last thing I thought about before going to bed. And that included the days when he wasn’t lying right beside me.

  He was ridiculously hot. Just thinking about him made my pulse race and my head
swim. If I allowed myself to also think about the way those expert hands of his could play me like a fiddle, it would be hours before I’d recover.

  But he was more than just physical perfection. He was dark and mysterious, untelling and unreadable. Yet there was a tenderness that surfaced every so often. It pulled at me, leaving me wanting to know what had left him bruised. So many times I’d felt like he was on the verge of revealing himself.

  He was good for me, too. When I was with him, I wasn’t all wrapped up in the past that I’d let dictate my future for so long. It was nice to just enjoy the present. I knew better than to think that there was a fairytale happily ever after in store for me, but it was nice to not feel like an emotional abyss.

  It helped that he had his own issues to deal with. We were two broken people, but maybe, between the two of us, we could come up with a whole person.

  Carly was watching me closely. I’d been silent for too long. “I guess maybe I have a problem,” I said. “I don’t think I want to be a Saturday night special any more.”

  “I can see that,” she said, chewing her food slowly. “What are you going to do about it? Burke thinks he really likes you, but Adam is like a racehorse. Easily spooked. If he runs, you won’t ever catch him. Have you talked to him?”

  “No,” I said, shaking my head glumly. “He didn’t meet me at the gym yesterday. He said he was sick.”

  “Hmmm. Well, he’s not sick tonight. He went to Brooklyn with the boys. That place is going to be a henhouse, too. We need to make sure that he doesn’t do anything that you are going to regret,” she said tapping her finger on her chin.

  Her eyes widened, and she snapped her fingers. “I know. You need to send him a sext.”

  I shook my head. “No way!” I gasped. “I can’t do that.” I wasn’t a prude, but that was something I’d never done. I was pretty sure that there was an afterschool special dedicated to all the ways a sext could end badly. “Say it, forget it; write it, regret it,” my mother had always said.

  “You can. And you should,” she said, nodding her head vehemently. “Seriously. I do it all the time.”

  “You do?” I asked incredulously.

  “Absolutely. I can’t make it to all of Burke’s gigs. I work too much. So I have to make sure that when all those whore groupies are throwing themselves at him, I’m the one he’s thinking about. Little reminders of what’s waiting for him at home. In fact, I’ll probably send him one tonight,” she said, winking at me.

  She clapped her hands together and grabbed my phone off the coffee table. Thrusting it at me, she said, “Do it now! He will think it’s awesome and come running with his tongue hanging out. I guarantee it.”

  I took the phone from her and looked at it reluctantly. “What part do I send?”

  She rolled her eyes at me. “Baby steps, Alexis. Go into your room and take a picture of those big boobies. Don’t think about it. Just do it.”

  “Should I include my head, too? Or just boobs?” I asked. I really needed a step-by-step instruction manual for this.

  “Whatever you want. You have creative liberties here. I promise you, it doesn’t even have to be a good picture. You are money as long as he can tell what it is.”

  “I can’t believe I’m letting you talk me into this,” I said. I stood up and started walking toward my room. After a few steps, I whirled back around and retrieved my glass of wine from the coffee table. I tipped it back and downed the rest of the glass. “Liquid courage,” I said as I refilled it.

  Carly laughed at me. “Just make sure that you don’t send it to your dad by accident. Or your boss,” she called after me.

  Right. I couldn’t imagine what would happen if a picture of my boobs ever surfaced at my office. It would either be professional suicide or result in a raise. It was hard to know. The partners in my office were a bunch of old horny bastards. Either way, it wasn’t something that I wanted to find out firsthand.

  I took off my sweatshirt and broken bra, and perched myself on the side of the bed. Even though she’d said it didn’t have to be good, Adam was a film student. He was probably a pretty tough critic of the arts. If I was going to do this, I wanted to do it right.

  I took probably 20 shots before I got one that was acceptable. Because I didn’t trust having those pictures on my phone for even a few minutes, I deleted each rejected picture before I took the next one. Finally, I got the angle I wanted. The shot included a boob and a half, my shoulders, and the lower half of my face. I didn’t look too pale, moley, or fat. In fact, it was actually pretty flattering and even a little on the artsy side.

  I opened the text app on my phone and tapped on Adam’s name. I checked and then double checked to make sure that it was Adam and only Adam who was included on the text. I attached the photo and typed in the message: Wish you were here. I probably could’ve come up with something a little more suggestive, but I was already completely out of my element. I needed to get the deed done before I chickened out. My heart was pounding in my chest when I pushed send. I’d never done anything so irresponsible in my entire life.

  I giggled and patted myself on the back. Way to go, Allie.

  ***

  Carly left just after 2:00 in the morning. I didn’t really want her wandering the streets of New York at that hour, but she’d promised to get a cab.

  We’d found a Julia Roberts movie marathon on TV and had spent the past six hours wading through Mystic Pizza, Pretty Woman, My Best Friend’s Wedding, and almost two bottles of wine.

  Adam hadn’t responded to my text, and his lack of response was pushing me into the red zone. As I was trying to decide if The Runaway Bride was worth losing another two hours of sleep, I heard a soft knock on my door.

  I smiled at the sight on the other side of the peephole and opened the door. Adam wrapped an arm around my waist and pulled me against him. A familiar electric buzz shot through me as the temperature in my apartment spiked by at least 20 degrees. Remembering my epiphany from earlier in the evening, my heart thumped heavily in my chest. I waited for it to stroke out on me.

  “Good. You’re still up,” he said huskily, just before his lips met mine.

  My body was pressed into his and was rapidly turning into liquid. He smelled like beer and musky spices. It was oddly delicious. “I see that you are, too.”

  “Mmmm. You said you wished I was here. Well, here I am.” He stepped forward, moving me with him. Once we’d cleared the door, he swung it shut behind him. He kept walking me backwards toward the bedroom.

  “It’s okay, right? That I’m here?” He glanced around like maybe he wasn’t sure if I was alone.

  “Of course, it is,” I said. I slid my hands up his chest and around the back of his neck and continued our waltz toward the bed.

  When we reached our destination, he lowered me gently down and hovered over me. “Good, because I’ve been thinking about you all night. But that’s what you were going for, right?” he asked with a sexy smirk.

  A hand slid down the outside of my thigh and settled behind my knee before pulling my leg up along the side of his hip. “Had I known it would be so effective, I would have done it a long time ago,” I said between kisses. “I’ll have to remember this method for getting your attention.”

  “Oh, you have my attention,” he said. “Now, let’s see what I can do to get yours.”

  If only he knew. But I wasn’t going to tell him just how much of my undivided attention that he had. I wasn’t afraid to show him though.

  ***

  When I came to a stoplight, I looked skyward. Dark clouds were rolling across the oppressive grey sky from west to east. Until just a few minutes ago, it had been a beautiful and unusually warm day after a very cold spring, but the weather in northern Texas could be very unpredictable. The rumble of thunder signaled that the storm was closing in. The smart thing to do would be to stop and put the convertible top up on my little car, but if I hurried, I could probably beat the rain.

  I leaned forward, gr
ipping the steering wheel with both hands. The sky had that eerie yellow hue that promised that something bad was on the horizon. Though tornadoes weren’t common this far south, they certainly weren’t unheard of, and March was definitely tornado season. As a child, I’d been so terrified of tornadoes that the first sign of a storm would send me running into my parents’ room at all hours of the night.

  The cheer clinic had run late, and I was rushing home to change my clothes. I reached over and tuned the XM receiver to the MTV channel, and No Doubt’s ‘Hella Good’ blasted through the speakers. I sang aloud in an effort to drown out the fast approaching storm.

  The car had been a birthday present from my parents two summers ago. The shiny red BMW Z3 Roadster was fast and fun. The satellite radio was an add-on that I’d insisted on despite my parents’ objections. My dad hadn’t understood why a car that came standard with both a radio and CD player needed an additional hundred stations. But, since practically every one of my equally privileged friends already had XM radio by the time my birthday rolled around, I hadn’t been willing to compromise. When he presented me the key to my new ride, it included every station available under the sun.

  A crack of lightning shot across the sky, and a single fat raindrop smacked me in the forehead. Annoyed, I wiped it away with the back of my hand.

  I was driving too fast and knew I should slow down, but then another half dozen raindrops smattered against my windshield. Another clap of thunder was so close that my car seemed to shake. It almost drowned out the chirp of my phone. I knew with certainty that it was Brittany. Even though I’d just seen her 10 minutes ago in the school parking lot and would see her again in less than an hour, I needed to talk to her.

  It rang a second time. I reached into my bag and blindly fished through it as it rang again. I tapped the brake. My fingertips brushed the smooth surface just as my foot slipped and hit the gas pedal. Hard. The engine revved, and the little car lurched forward and jumped the curb.