One And Done

by Cynthia Sax

  Edward is also the reason I can’t attend the class. “I’m busy tomorrow night.”

  “The class is held every Tuesday.” A zipper rasps. “I should go, supervise the redesign. Send me your list.”

  “I will.” I end the call and gaze into the darkness.

  What I did with Smoke wasn’t cheating. I didn’t touch him.

  Edward can’t say the same about Chelsea. I close my eyes, remembering the smudge of red lipstick on his black dress pants.

  Chapter Seven

  Tuesday morning, as soon as I arrive at the office, I reserve a small meeting room for my phone call with Edward.

  I rearrange my list of erotic challenges, placing ‘Have phone sex’ at the top, and I cross that off as completed.

  The bulk of the list is lifted from Chelsea’s messages to Edward. That’s what he likes. I should attempt those.

  I’ve also added some of my own ideas, prompted by the open discussions I’ve had with Azure and other friends about sex, things I’ve read in erotic romance novels and scenes from movies like Fifty Shades of Grey.

  The blindfold and restraint scenes excite me. The other things…not-so-much. I’m not into pain. If that’s Edward’s kink, I’ll try it but I’m not volunteering to be flogged.

  I’m also not sticking a curling iron up my ass, heated or not. Hell, no.

  I send my list to Smoke and return to obsessing over the phone call with my beloved lawyer.

  Should I start with small talk? Ask him how he is? Discuss the wonderful weather we’ve been having?

  Should I be businesslike, tell him right away that I found the tablet? Does he want to pick it up?

  Or should I follow his lead…assuming he takes control? Usually I direct our conversations and organize our dates. He’s always preoccupied with work.

  Though it seems, by Chelsea’s messages, he has more excess time than I thought.

  I watch the clock on my screen, counting down to noon, the time I’ve chosen to make my call. My stomach churns. I’m one worry away from upchucking into the wire wastebasket by my desk.

  I will not vomit. I’m a grown woman. I can handle a phone call.

  I can.

  I enter the small meeting room, close the door and stare at the phone on the tiny wooden table. Oh my God. I’m a mess. My hands are shaking. Acid crawls up my throat. I can’t call Edward like this.

  I scroll through my phone, find Smoke’s number, press it.

  “Yeah.” His deep voice spreads like a blanket over my nerves, pushing the fear downward.

  “You sound semi-human.” I summon a smile as I pace around the room.

  “The club was closed last night.” Smoke reminds me. “And I slept the dreamless sleep of the sexually sated, thanks to you, baby.”

  My shoulders straighten. “I pleased you.”

  “Very much.”

  If I can please Smoke, a self-professed player, I can please Edward, my less-worldly man. “It’s been two days. I’m calling Edward.”

  I pause.

  Smoke doesn’t respond.

  “What should I say?”

  He sighs. “You say as little as possible. He fucked up. He should chase you.”

  “And if he doesn’t chase me?” I express my greatest fear.

  “He will. Maybe not today, Eddy might not yet realize what he’s lost, but he will and then he’ll come after you.”

  “How can you be so certain?” I place one of my palms on my fluttering stomach.

  “Because that’s what any sane man would do.” There’s a stretch of silence. “You have magnificent tits, the best pair I’ve ever seen. He’d be a fool to walk away from them.”

  My lips twitch. “I’m much more than a pair of magnificent tits.”

  “True.” Humor lightens Smoke’s voice. “You’ve got a great ass too, wide and round, perfect for plowing a cock into.”

  I laugh. “You’re a disgusting pig.” And I like it. His crudeness relaxes me. “There’s a phone in this room. Should I use it or—”

  “Call from your own phone.” Smoke answers my question before I finish it. “Anything else looks staged, like you’ve been worrying about this conversation.”

  “I have been,” I admit.

  “I know a great cure for nerves.”

  “Let me guess.” My smile returns. “It’s sex.”

  “You’re halfway there.” He chuckles. “It’s a fantastic fuck with an appreciative club owner, a man who doesn’t want or expect more than one multi-orgasmic casual encounter.”

  “I’ll pass on that most generous offer.” Joy climbs up my face, creasing the skin around my lips and eyes. “Thank you, Smoke. I needed this.”

  “Anytime.” He doesn’t qualify this with ‘preferably after two in the afternoon.’

  I end the call, breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out. This mini-meditation, combined with my talk with Smoke, calms my nerves.

  I press Edward’s number. It rings once, twice, three times.

  Please let it not go to voicemail. I can’t handle going through this again.

  “Edward Langston.” Damn. His voice sounds good.

  “Hi Edward.” My one and only love. “It’s Jenella.” Your future wife. “I—” Remembering Smoke’s advice to say as little as possible, I abruptly stop talking.

  “Jenella.” Edward rolls my name on his tongue as though he’s forgotten who I am. “Ah, the tablet. Did you find it?”

  “Yes.” This isn’t how I imagined this conversation would go. He doesn’t confess to missing me, doesn’t ask me how I am, doesn’t express any caring at all.

  “Good.” Papers rustle. “I’ll send one of the interns to collect it tonight. You’ll be home around seven?”

  “Excuse me?” I must have misheard him. He can’t be sending an intern to pick up the tablet. He’ll want to retrieve it himself, using this excuse to see me.

  I’ll show him I’ve changed. He’ll fall in love with me again. That’s the plan.

  “Will you be home at seven o’clock?” Edward repeats louder. “I don’t care about wasting their time. They’re interns. But if you’re not there, they’ll call me, ask me what to do next, and it’s date night. We don’t want that.”

  Yes, we wouldn’t want him to be interrupted while he’s balls deep inside Chelsea, pumping his scrawny ass between her freckled thighs. I fold the fingers of my left hand into a tight fist. “No.” I manage to say through the pain.

  “No…what? No, you won’t be home? It’s Tuesday.”

  His assumption that I don’t have a life spirals my agony skyward. “You won’t be home.”

  “I have a date.” He points out, as though I’d ever forget this hurtful fact. “You don’t.”

  “Don’t I?” Smoke is right. Edward thinks no one else wants me. He believes I’ll sit at home, waiting for him to come to his senses.

  There’s a long stretch of awkward silence. I resist the urge to fill it, to carry the conversation as I always do.

  “Good. I’m glad you’re dating,” Edward finally says.

  “You’re glad?” I don’t know what I expected his reaction to be. It wasn’t this calm acceptance, this lack of caring.

  “I’m very glad.” His voice warms with approval, approval of me moving on, and my pain intensifies. “I like you, Jenella. You deserve to find happiness with someone else.”

  He’s glad. He likes me. He doesn’t mind that I’m seeing, perhaps fucking, another man. There’s no hint of jealousy, no tinge of possessiveness in his reply.

  Because he’s completely and irrevocably over me.

  I close my eyes, trapping the tears that are threatening to spill, every part of me aching. Smoke was wrong. Edward isn’t coming back to me. He’s gone, lost to me forever.

  It doesn’t matter how much I change. He’s never returning.

  “Why don’t we have dinner tomorrow night, the four of us?” Edward’s eagerness grates on my skin and shreds my heart. “ I’ll make reservations at
Paros for six o’clock.”

  “Edward.”

  “Do this for me.” He uses that tone I can never refuse. “I want us to be friends. I’ve missed talking to you.”

  Friends. He’s the love of my life and he wants to be my friend.

  “Jenella, say yes.”

  “Yes,” I answer without thinking of the consequences. My brain, heart, soul are numb, my pain breaching my tolerance threshold.

  “Chelsea and I will see you then.” Edward ends the call.

  That’s it. We’re done. I stare bleakly at the far wall. What am I going to do?

  I gaze into space. The hour I booked the meeting room for expires. Kirsten, the CFO’s assistant opens the door, says something my brain can’t decipher. I bare my teeth at her and she goes away.

  She must have gone to Azure for help because moments later, my friend arrives. I’m folded into warmth, into softness, my hair, back, shoulders petted.

  Azure pushes a marijuana-scented scarf into one of my hands. I should refuse her unspoken offer, her scarf will be destroyed, but I can’t. The emotion is welling in my throat and I have to release it.

  I stuff the hemp square into my mouth and fall apart, howling with grief, with sorrow, my stomach heaving with the effort, the makeshift gag muffling the sound.

  I cry until there’s nothing left, until my sadness has been washed away in a torrent of tears. Then I stare into space for a couple more moments.

  I expect the grief to return. When Grandma Whyte died, I howled for a week. Surely this should hurt as badly.

  I feel nothing. Nothing.

  I remove the scarf. The material is damp.

  “You should go back to work.” My voice is flat.

  “I should comfort you.” Azure hugs me to her big bosom. “The corporate overlords can wait. Your happiness comes first.”

  “I’m okay.”

  “No, you’re not.” She doesn’t believe my bullshit.

  “No, I’m not.” I’m hollow, completely empty. “He wants to be friends.”

  I’ve already told her this fourteen or fifteen times, having spilled everything from our meeting at the club to my snooping in his text messages to the word-by-word recap of our phone call.

  Azure is a good friend and she gives me yet another sympathy wince.

  Because we both know what ‘wants to be friends’ means. Edward isn’t attracted to me. He doesn’t think I’m sexy, fuckable.

  “We had sex three weeks ago.” I turn my palms upward, struggling to understand this. “He didn’t view me as a friend then.”

  “He’s a guy.” Azure sits on the table and plunks her Birkenstock-clad feet on a chair seat. “Guys will have sex with anyone and that’s the right policy to have. Monogamy isn’t natural. It’s a man-made construct. Some guy figured out that if he forced the women he fucked to be faithful, perhaps by threatening to stone them if they weren’t, he’d be assured their children were his. The idea became popular and—”

  “I should have sex with more men.” I interrupt her down-with-monogamy speech, having heard it dozens of times. “I haven’t tried half the things Chelsea, Edward’s new girlfriend, has. Hell, I don’t even know if what I’m doing is correct.”

  I assumed coming meant a guy was satisfied and, clearly, Edward wasn’t.

  “You could find a skilled teacher.” Azure grins. “Tarun is rumored to be extremely good in the sack and against the wall and over a couch and—”

  “I’m not ready for that step right now.” My heart is fractured into sharp stabby pieces. Those could puncture a man’s fragile ego. “So don’t say anything to Tarun.”

  Azure crosses her fingers.

  I don’t know what that means. I hope it’s agreement. “First, I need a date for tomorrow.” I don’t want to show up alone, don’t want Edward to think no one wants me.

  “Tarun isn’t the right man for that,” Azure admits. “He’s on a very regimented diet and has no patience for lawyers or bullshit or anything else Eddy stands for.”

  “There’s someone else I can ask.” Smoke knows Edward, knows my situation. “I’ll do that tonight.” I’ll ask him after the stripper class.

  ***

  I don’t return to work. I slip out of the building. Needing new exercise clothes, I stop at a plus-size boutique in the mall.

  I buy stretchy black capris and a top with an empire waistline and three-quarter-length sleeves. This top is white so I can wear it to Azure’s meditation lunches, the lunches Tarun might attend.

  I also pick up a huge white bath sheet, not knowing if the stripper class supplies towels. The salesgirl must earn commissions on the sales because she fusses over me, stuffing the shopping bag with coupons and flyers.

  This attention, and the plan I’ve crafted for my future, make me feel semi-human again. Someone cares for me… or, at least, for my credit card.

  Retail therapy really does work.

  Not wishing to arrive early at the club, I waste more time at the mall, wandering from store to store. I don’t call Smoke. Instead, I decide to surprise him.

  This childish attempt to prove to myself that I’m spontaneous backfires. He’s not at his club.

  A man built like an elevator door, dressed in the black-and-gray uniform, directs me to a small private room in the back of the building. There, a very fit and bouncy blonde takes my money and points me to the women’s dressing room.

  I don’t know why a club has a women’s dressing room. If Smoke were here, I’d ask him.

  But he isn’t here.

  I know no one. Women of all shapes, sizes, and ages chat while they dress. This doesn’t take them very long. Their outfits consist of tiny tops or, in the case of a seventy-year-old silver vixen, sparkly red pasties, and bottoms I wouldn’t even wear as panties. I feel as prissy as a nun in my new workout gear.

  They ignore me, laughing and joking and slapping asses as we exit the dressing room. This isn’t anyone’s first class…except mine.

  The other strippers-in-training know the routine, moving before Cupcake, the instructor, a middle-aged woman with gravity-defying fake boobs, purrs instructions.

  I stand at the back of the room and try not to crash into people, the emphasis on try. Thank God we’re not wearing shoes or the Amazon positioned beside me would have a couple of broken toes.

  We bend over, sweeping our fingers along the mats. This motion causes the woman in front of me, a majestic red-haired creature twice my size, to experience several wardrobe malfunctions at once. Her big breasts escape her tube top and her fluorescent green G-string disappears between her dimpled ass cheeks.

  With a casual pull here and there, coordinated to the pumping beat, she puts her barely existing outfit to rights and manages to make the adjustment look sexy, as though it was part of the show.

  I feel as graceful as a stampeding elephant.

  After making several attempts to help me, Cupcake tells me to ignore the routine and work on my grinding.

  Grind up. Grind up. She shows me how to do this once, twice, three times and then gives up, returning her focus to the rest of the class.

  Imaginary clothing is unzipped, unbuttoned, and otherwise shed. Sweat-covered bodies writhe around me, a primal display of sexuality at its rawest.

  I can’t even figure out how to move my hips to the tempo. I always seem to be one second behind the beat.

  This is why Edward left me. I swallow a sob. I’m not sensual. At all. Other people dance in bed, their bodies flowing, gyrating. When I try, as I’m doing now, I fumble and bumble, putting knees in groins and elbows in stomachs.

  I’m hopeless, wasting the instructor’s time, endangering everyone. I should give up, leave, concede victory to Chelsea. That would—

  Hands clasp my hips and I jerk. My skull connects with a chin, the smack loud.

  “Fuck.”

  I’d recognize that foul mouth anywhere. “Back away slowly and you won’t get hurt.” I warn Smoke. “I’m a disaster on the dance floor.”


  “I noticed.” He tightens his grip on me. “But I’m not going anywhere.” He rocks with me…or tries to. His hips bump against my ass. His chest knocks into my back.

  “I’m not very sexy,” I admit.

  “Baby, if you were any more sexy, I’d come in my pants.” Smoke presses his cheek against mine, his skin hot and slightly scruffy. “You have no rhythm. That’s the problem.”

  “Oh.” My shoulders slump. He owns a club and I can’t dance.

  “It’s like you’re listening to an entirely different song than the rest of us.” He sounds more bemused than upset. “Lean into me.”

  “I’ll squish you.”

  “You won’t squish me.” He chuckles, the sound rolling down my neck. “I can take anything you give me.” How does he manage to make every sentence sexual?

  “Ummm…”

  “Trust me.” He pulls me backward.

  “I trust you.” I allow myself to fall and he catches me, his form surprisingly hard. Edward was thin and bony. Smoke is firm and dangerous.

  One long, thick part of his body is especially rigid. I wiggle. He didn’t lie when he said he was close to coming.

  His unabashed erection restores my self-confidence. I wiggle again.

  “Behave.” Smoke squeezes my hips. “Let me guide you.” He wraps his arms around my waist and moves against me. I place my hands over his and attempt to follow his lead.

  I fail miserably.

  “I’m hopeless.” I’ll never learn this, never learn how to please a man.

  “You’re thinking too hard.” He splays his fingers over my stomach. “Close your eyes.”

  I comply. The darkness amplifies our connection, the heat of him against my back, ass, upper thighs.

  “One, two, three. One, two, three.” His counting helps. The gaps between his actions and my reactions lessen more and more until we flow as one, in sync. “That’s it, baby. Feel the beat.”

  The music pulses through him into me. I stop thinking, stop worrying. Safe in his arms, I listen to his stream of words, inhale his spicy-rosemary and woodsy-nutmeg scent, my body instinctively chasing his.

  Songs end. New ones begin. I don’t know how long we undulate, my softness layered over Smoke’s muscle. He swivels his hips. I do the same. He rolls his shoulders. My shoulders move also, my breasts lifting and falling. These actions no longer feel awkward. They feel natural, right.