Fraud: I got fucked at the used car lot.
Ignorance: Fucked if I know.
Trouble: I guess I am fucked now!
Aggression: Fuck you!
Displeasure: What the fuck is going on here?
Difficulty: I can’t understand this fucking job.
Incompetence: He is a fuck-off.
Suspicion: What the fuck are you doing?
Enjoyment: I had a fucking good time.
Request: Get the fuck out of here!
Hostility: I am going to knock your fucking head off!
Greeting: How the fuck are you?
Apathy: Who gives a fuck?
Innovation: Get a bigger fucking hammer.
Surprise: Fuck! You scared the shit out of me!
Anxiety: Today is really fucked.
- Osho(1980)
Mimi
“OH, MAXIMUS! YOU’RE SO FUCKING BIG! OHHHH…. YESSSS, YESSSS, YESSSS.”
I opened my eyes.
Seriously? At the crack of dawn? Didn’t these people need to sleep? At all?
What kind of name was Maximus, anyway?
I punched my pillow aggressively and burrowed under it while the screamer moved into the high-pitched segment of her climax. It really was quite incredible how thin these walls were.
Although, I hadn’t noticed as much bedroom activity next door when all my other neighbors were still living here. I used to hear TVs, radios, doors slamming shut, children screaming, and the odd domestic squabble, but since the Great Exodus started nine months ago, the corridors had slowly fallen silent. Sometimes, I imagined myself as a survivor of some apocalyptic event. The only girl in the world, living on her own.
Well, not entirely on her own.
I had one other holdout on my floor. The only other person unwilling to give in to the sight of dollar signs. I didn’t know how much the neighbors who left were offered for their homes, but they were practically jumping out their windows into their moving trucks. One by one, I’d watched them go. Until only two of us were left.
Me and Sex God.
My one-bedroom apartment was just slightly bigger than a chocolate box, but it was as cute as a button, and in the ridiculously expensive housing market of New York, there was nothing not to like about it.
The noises from next door had stopped so I dug myself out from under my pillows. The room was filled with sunlight. It was not quite the crack of dawn, after all. I was not a morning person. I like my sleep in the mornings, every goddamned second of it. I squinted at the alarm clock. It was not due to ring for another half-an-hour. It felt as if my eyelids had just started to drift down again when the damn thing rang.
I slammed my hand down on it.
Muttering curses at my neighbor for ruining my sleep, I dragged myself away from my lovely bed. And my bed was a very lovely place. Silk sheets from Italy, Siberian goose down-filled duvet and pillows, antique damask bedspread from England. Yeah, my bed was my greatest indulgence.
I stumbled to the bathroom and landed on the toilet seat. As I reach for the roll of toilet paper, I heard flushing from my neighbor’s apartment. Probably flushing down used condoms, at least five, I thought sourly.
By the time I had brushed my teeth; my fury at my neighbor’s nocturnal activities stealing my sleep had abated. At this time of the morning, there was only one thing on my mind: coffee.
I was passing through the living room on my way to the kitchen when my gaze fell on an envelope lying on the floor next to my front door. The insignia on the envelope and the large PRIVATE & CONFIDENTIAL stamp was unmistakable. It was another letter from the law firm of Noble, Noble, and Flaherty. Since all mail was dropped off downstairs they must have sent one of their little minions by to hand-deliver it.
First thing in the morning and before coffee! I felt my anger and resentment rise again. The persistence and nerve of these people. Thinking that everyone had their price.
Wondering what the new offer would be, I snatched it off the floor and tore it open. When I caught sight of the amount my mind went blank.
“Son of a bitch,” I whispered. My knees were suddenly so weak I had to sink down on the piano stool by the door. Holy crap. Wow, ripping out small apartments and converting them into luxury homes and penthouses for super-rich big shots must be a really profitable business.
I was staring at a figure that had to be twice what my apartment was worth—no, probably more than that. With that amount of money, I could find an even bigger place, go on vacation, buy that dreamy bed from Liberty, add to my collection of pillows…
I turned on the stool I was sitting on until I faced the upright piano. I ran my fingers over the keys. Having absolutely no musical talent I never could master the instrument, but I could play a couple of old tunes.
My two index fingers met in the middle and began to tap furiously. Chopsticks. I remembered my grandmother laughing. The sound of her laughter was like an echo from the past. All the hours I’d spent sitting on that stool with her came back to me. Even though she knew I didn’t have a musical bone in my body she never stopped believing in me.
Mimi
When I was a kid, this apartment belonged to my grandmother. When things turned sour between my parents, I’d come here rather than spend the weekends in our home, where all my parents seemed to do was fight and snipe at each other.
My grandmother must have known I was coming to her to escape my parents’ bickering, but she always behaved as if my arrival was the best surprise on the planet. She was beyond thrilled to have me, no matter how many times I showed up at her door. Eventually, I even had my own set of keys.
Then, when she was dying in the hospital she told me she had willed her home to me, even though my mother was her rightful heir. When I tried to tell her that she would be hurting her own daughter, she firmly told me it was her last wish and I must respect it.
No, I wouldn’t give this place up for anything. I didn’t need a handcrafted bed from Liberty to be happy. And I already had a dozen unused pillows stuffed away in my cupboards. Who needs vacations when my whole life at the moment felt like a vacation? No, this apartment meant more to me than all the money in the world.
I had already written two long letters telling those blood-sucking lawyers representing those faceless, soulless corporations that, but obviously, they either didn’t get the message or didn’t want to get it. They almost had enough to buy out almost an entire building full of hardworking people, but not quite. Me and Sex God next door, we couldn’t be bought.
Since polite replies stating that the apartment was mine legally and I would never let it go, didn’t work, I grabbed a pen and scribbled across the signature area:
KISS MY ASS!
And look, they were thoughtful enough to include a return envelope, stamped and everything. I took a little too much pleasure in sealing my response inside. Feeling like I’d fought a battle and won, I slid the envelope into my purse to be mailed on my way to work and went to the kitchen to make myself a strong mug of coffee.
I showered in my large, claw foot tub. I mean, come on. Who wouldn’t kill for that? I was extraordinarily blessed and lucky. I laughed a little as I shampooed my hair. The developers were welcome to keep on trying; I would never give up my home. Why would I? Actually, I was secretly glad the idiots had to keep paying their obviously expensive lawyers to send me their offer letters. It would be interesting to see what figure they would go to before they finally gave up and built their fancy apartments around me?
Draped in a fluffy towel, I padded back into my pretty blue and white bedroom. I pulled out a pink blouse and paired it with a sexy, charcoal wraparound skirt. Sitting at my vanity, I curled my chocolatey hair into big, bouncy curls that fell all around my face and neck. I added mascara and slicked on a layer of strawberry flavored gloss. I pointed the gloss wand at my reflection. “You’re pretty fabulous, Mimi Young. Don’t you forget it.”
I threw open my shoe cupboard and sighed with pleasure. It was more like a shrine to th
e top shoe designers in the world than a shoe cupboard. Rows and rows of beautiful shoes. One-hundred and ninety-eight to be exact. The best ones were on the top three shelves. Other people invested in art; I invested in shoes. From the middle of the shelf, I picked up a pair of skin-toned, three-inch high pumps. I slipped into them and immediately felt like a million dollars.
Walking to the full-length mirror, I blew myself a kiss before hurrying out the door. Of course, I was running late. My little trip down memory lane at the piano had taken too much time. I stepped out into the empty hallway, walked briskly down to the elevator and jammed my finger against the button. The car carriage began its ascent upwards. I looked around me. It was like living in the middle of a ghost town. I was almost always alone. Almost.
I heard a door opening and a woman laugh.
Mimi
Shit! The shag-fest next door must be over. My neighbor and his screamer were on their walk of shame. I looked up at the lighted numbers above the elevator doors as the lift slowly chugged its way up to the top floor.
Behind me, the woman giggled.
Come on, I silently urged. If the elevator arrived in the next few seconds, I could nip in and close the doors before they got here.
But of course, the old, decrepit thing refused to play ball. I must have been downwind, or something because I could smell Sex God’s aftershave as he approached. I tried to calm myself, but meanwhile, heat rose through me and my palms started to sweat.
I might have forgotten to mention earlier that Sex God was also almost supernaturally gorgeous. In the past year, I’d seen him about half a dozen times and each time he looked like he’d just walked out of someone’s sex dream.
Tall, broad-shouldered, with dark hair, that he would occasionally brush back off his forehead. He also had sensual lips that I once saw him licking, an unbearably sexy chin dimple, and piercing gray eyes that could hypnotize a cobra. He wore tailored suits the way women wore lingerie, knowing it made him look edible. He could have been a model.
Maybe he was, for all I knew, since I choked up and became unable to utter a single word whenever he was around. For his part, he barely looked in my direction. Made sense. Square-jawed, super-hot guys were generally stuck-up assholes. They didn’t need to be sweet or friendly to get laid. He seemed to fit the bill nicely.
The first time I saw him, was maybe a year earlier when he first moved into the largest apartment on my floor. Poor hunk, I naively thought, just as he settled in. Those monsters from Noble, Noble, and Flaherty were trying to edge him out. But like me, he held fast. I was glad that he’d told them where to put their offer. Since we were in the same boat, I thought I would introduce myself. Stupid me, thinking we had something in common.
I smiled at him the next time I saw him and he looked me up and down with the sort of expression people usually had when they smelled something bad. It was almost enough to make me take a sniff of myself, just in case. But no. It wasn’t me. It was him being a raging jerk. One little nod, then he turned away. I bit my tongue before I could ask him what the hell his problem was.
A tanned hand reached out to hit the button for the underground parking garage, and my eyes were drawn by a strange magnetic power upward along his immaculately tailored sleeve past those wonderful pecs and golden throat to his face. Since he seemed to be entranced by the lighted numbers above the doors, I couldn’t help it. My gaze took a trip down to his crotch. Yes, there was definitely something very big down there.
The screamer’s response to my eye flick was instantaneous.
She laid her claim by moving closer to him and draping her hand over his arm. Our eyes met. Hers were smug. She was what you’d expect, blonde, beautiful, and skinny, although the word I prefer is ‘bitch’. I calmly shifted my gaze to the lighted numbers and refrained from telling her that Sex God preferred quantity over quality. I doubted she would be coming around again.
The lift doors opened with laborious slowness.
Gray eyes trained on me. “After you.”
His gravelly, deep voice melted its way down my back. I stepped into the lift and stared straight ahead as they came in and the doors closed. The journey down was a bit of an ordeal. No one spoke. The shrew threw me dirty looks and I fought the urge not to fidget.
Finally, after what seemed like hours later, the torture ended. The lift jerked and doors slowly creaked open at ground level. I was in such a rush I nearly tumbled out. I didn’t hang around long enough to hear the doors close behind me. The pair could have carried on down to the depths of hell for all I cared.
Mimi
I picked up an egg white sandwich and a skinny soy latte from my local café and rushed through the revolving doors of Jett & Stone Investments. Flying through the glass, chrome, and granite foyer I just managed to squeeze into the lift before it closed.
My boss, Josh wouldn’t be around this morning. He was meeting some clients. A smile came to my lips as I thought of him. After two years of working here, we became a ‘thing’ last month.
Yeah, I know. I was sleeping with the boss.
Not officially, obviously, because of office gossip and uncomfortable situations, but we were both going at it like rabbits. It started one day while we were working late. He turned his head and suddenly kissed me.
The earth didn’t move, or anything like that, but it was more than nice, and it made me realize how long it had been since I had been with a man. Josh was quite good-looking with a slim athletic body. His fingernails were always clean and he didn’t live too far away from me. Not a bad catch.
The lift doors opened at floor fourteen and I walked briskly into the Private Equity department. The good thing about showing up late on a Monday morning was not being the only one. I could sort of blend in with the rest of the shifty-eyed latecomers and get to my desk without too much notice.
Nobody blinked an eye as I made my way down the narrow glass corridor and slipped into my cubicle. I booted up my computer, and to make it look like I’d been there for a while I placed my sandwich and latte on my desk and strategically scattered some paperwork around them.
By the time my computer came on, it looked like I’d been there for ages. The first thing I always did on Monday morning was to tackle my inbox. It would be full of a weekend’s worth of emails from clients, both happy and less-than, and if I didn’t clear them, piles of new emails would get dumped on top of them, which I hated, but since I had the unenviable task of preparing for a status meeting at half-past twelve I decided to do it after I finished my notes for the meeting.
I worked on my notes for two hours solid then started on my emails.
We’d recently launched a new version of our online access portal. It was supposed to allow clients to get into their statements day or night. Most of my emails appeared to be from clients requesting help accessing their accounts.
I sighed and opened the first one. The email icon blinked at the top left-hand corner of my screen and I smiled. Josh. He must be back if he was sending me an email. I looked around to be sure nobody was looking over my shoulder before opening it.
Guess what I thought about all weekend long? The way you taste. Your smell, and those little mewing, kitten sounds you make when I eat you out.
I grinned and craned my neck to see into his office. He had his shirt sleeves rolled up and was talking to Drake from Accounting. I dropped my eyes back to the screen.
I wish I had been with you this weekend instead of with my parents. All I did was walk around trying to hide a hard-on because I couldn’t stop thinking about your pussy.
I can’t wait to devour you tonight.
The whole time I was pretending to listen to those asses downtown, I was imagining you under my desk sucking me off.
Hope you’re wearing your red thong!
Josh xx
I blew out a long, slow breath. Oh, Josh, you dirty dog you, but in fact, I was wearing a red thong. Once I knew it was his thing—he liked tearing it off with his teeth—I ordered
two dozen from the internet. I pictured him between my legs, humming to himself as he ate me out, and started to feel warm and tingly. Yes, Josh sure knew what I wanted, and how I wanted it.
I enjoyed my relationship with Josh. Maybe it was because we had worked with each other for so long I felt I really knew him. Unlike my manwhore neighbor, he could be completely trusted.
Of course, my bestie, Megan, was dead set against the idea of me and Josh. In her books, sleeping with the boss was always a recipe for disaster, but I told her it would be all right since he wasn’t exactly my direct boss. I quoted one of my grandmother’s favorite sayings to her: stop buying trouble before it goes on sale.
I reread his dirty email. We hadn’t been together since Thursday night at my place. That’s three days without sex while Josh visited his parents in Schenectady. I was just as eager to be devoured by him as he was to devour me.
I hit “Reply,” then typed:
Dear Josh,
If absolutely necessary I can tentatively pencil you into my diary for a good sucking under the desk after lunch. Please confirm a time that would suit you.
Best regards.
Mimi xx
Smiling to myself, I hit ‘Send’.
Mimi
At the precise instant I clicked send, another email titled URGENT from someone called Lillian Taylor appeared at the top left-hand corner of my screen. Later I would marvel at what strange coincidence it was, but at that moment I had no idea who she was. I just thought she was a client or a prospect. The word urgent made me open it.
Without warning my safe little world with its little plan of illicit oral sex under Josh’s desk crumbled into dust. My whole body went cold. I read the all-caps message in a state of blank shock.
HAVE YOU BEEN HAVING FUN FUCKING MY MAN?
Kissing Booth Page 17
