“Ice cream?” I gasped. She looked up surprised when she saw me.
“I was just coming to get you. It was supposed to be a surprise.”
“It still is. When did you even get this?”
“After we got back from the shop and you were in your room.”
She swirled a huge dollop of whipped cream into both bowls of ice cream, and I nearly screamed out for her to stop on her behalf.
“Miriam, are you really going to eat trans fats for me?” I choked out, pretending to get emotional. She put a spoon in each bowl and walked them to the dining room table. We ate all our meals there whether we were alone or together.
“Don’t worry, everything in here is dairy-free,” she said, sliding the bowl in front of me. Of course it was.
“What would I do without you Mimi,” I said, sitting and shoveling a big spoon of ice cream into my mouth.
“Probably be a hell of a lot fatter,” she said smiling. “How are you feeling?”
“Okay…” I covered the spoon in whipped cream and licked.
“Now that that lie is out of the way tell me how you really feel.” I looked up and saw Mimi’s eyes piercing mine.
“I feel like an idiot Mimi. The stupidest stupid girl you could imagine.”
“He walked in that bathroom after you, Day.”
“Yes, but I’m the one whose been here holed up like I just got out of a damn marriage or something. He’s probably out there with Leopard Print, or anybody else, fucking and having a good time which is what I should have been doing too dammit.” I shoveled more ice cream into my face.
“You know good and damn well that that would have just made you feel worse.”
I sighed.
“I know, but it would have been less pathetic than this.”
“I guess it’s a good thing that you don’t have to see him again then, isn’t it?”
The spark of joy warmed me for but a second before I realized the facts.
“He still has Janie.”
“He can drop the car off here without seeing you. I could talk to him.”
“He goes by Dad’s house all the time.”
“Stay here then.”
I looked at her, unimpressed.
“With you and Anthony?”
“Fine, fine,” she said rolling her eyes. “Just call before going to your dad’s to make sure he’s not over there. See. Easy. No need to move across the country or get a different job.”
“Oh, speaking of moving across the country, I want to head up to LA for a bit in a little while.”
She froze with the spoon halfway to her lips.
“Oh?” she asked. “What for? Any legal stuff?”
“No, nothing like that. I just want to see my mom and Frank. Jaden. His girlfriend.”
She watched me from across the table waiting for me to spill it.
“I sort of miss the shopping. You know… the culture.”
All lies and she knew it. She kept watching me. I never won this game.
“I’m just… I just want to get away for a little bit. The bookstore is nearly done. I can be back with plenty of time to prepare and stock shelves before the grand opening.”
“You don’t have to run away Dana. This guy isn’t chasing you.”
I hung my head a little. She was right. This one wasn’t chasing me… but I wanted him to. I had wanted him to say it then, on my bed when he was on top of me at Dad’s. How hard would it have been to concede to one date? Did he really not want to know anything about me besides whether my pubic hair was waxed or not? I hated thinking that that was all I had to offer because it wasn’t, goddammit. Fuck, I wanted him so much it made me want to scream.
“Am I a total loser because I still want him?” I asked my ice cream quietly. I heard Mimi’s chair scrape across the floor and soon after felt her embrace me into her chest like Iyanla Vanzant. I hugged her back.
“You aren’t a loser Dana. You just have a crush.”
“This one isn’t a crush Mimi. I’ve had crushes before and this guy… this guy knocks me on my ass; I don’t know what to do when I’m around him. I want him to do all those dirty things to me that you don’t like to hear.”
She looked down at me.
“Can you concede to the type of relationship he wants from you?”
“If I had to—”
“No, Day. Can you see this guy again knowing that he is as interested in you for as long as you are sexually available to him?”
“God, you make it sound so awful Mimi.” I dropped my arms and had some more ice cream.
“Am I lying, though? Isn’t that what he told you in more or less the same words?”
I shrugged.
“Okay, look at it like this,” she said, sitting down across from me again. “You obviously want him. If you see him again, you’ll have him but only as far as your genitals are concerned.” That got an amused smile out of me. “If you find you can deal with having only that part of him then knock yourself out. Go wild.”
“What about if we start something together, and then I find out along the way I can’t have a relationship with him that only extends that far?”
“Then you come running back here so we can eat some more ice cream.”
Deciding on who to call to tell them that I was coming back to LA for a visit was a much harder decision to make than it needed to be. I could call my mom and be put through the ordeal that was calling my mom. I could call Frank and have a nice, casual conversation followed by my question, which he would answer with a swift and generous ‘yes.’ The question, of course, being whether I could stay there for the duration of the visit.
I sighed; thinking about this was another situation in which I was asking someone to do something for me. Sure they were my parents. Sure they probably wanted me there. Sure considering what had happened, they would rather have me there than anywhere else, but nothing quite made me feel less powerful than calling my parents to ask them for something.
The phone rang a couple of times before Frank picked up.
“Dana,” he said gladly. I smiled.
“Hi, Frank. How are you?”
“Better now that you’ve called. What’s going on?”
Frank had never had children of his own, or rather he no longer had children of his own. He had had a child who had died in their teens, drunk driving. I had never asked him about it, but during the time I was spending at their house directly after the incident, we had gotten to talk about his personal life a little. It was only when I found that out that I realized why Mom had had us take his last name.
Because I only knew my mom and dad in the contexts of ‘Mom’ and ‘Dad,’ it was easier to see Frank as an entire person, outside of his relationship with me. He was an exceedingly patient man, evidenced by the fact that he had married my mother about fifteen years prior, and they were still together.
“Nothing much. Uh, I deposited the final payment for the bookstore. Just a couple weeks now before the grand opening.”
“That’s fantastic.” I heard the muffled sound of my mother in the background. She must have asked who it was because I heard him say it was me. “Dana, just a minute, your mom wants to talk to you.”
There was some shuffling before Mom’s voice rang down the line.
“Dana dear. When were you going to tell me that you talked to your brother?”
“Mom that happened just this morning. I was going to tell Frank during this phone call.”
“When were you going to tell us that you were coming up for a visit? Were you going to come and not see us?”
I rolled my eyes.
“Mom. I was just about to tell Frank that I was planning a visit. Can you give him the phone back so I can tell him?”
“I’ve made the most gorgeous changes to your room sweetheart; when do you get here? I can call Jaden, and we can have family dinner like we used to… he can bring Chloe. Oh…
… can you bring someone along too, honey?”
&n
bsp; 12
Dana
Was it as bad to be treated like a piece of ass if you were the one submitting yourself to that treatment?
Dana Weinstein. Asking the important questions since 1990.
I had rolled Mimi’s advice around in my head and come up with this; Adam and I could be together as long as all I wanted to do with and to him was fuck. If at any point I wanted more, I would have to stop because there was no more. It ended at sex.
That was easy enough to rationalize.
He couldn’t date me, or love me, or respect me as a human being with interesting things to say and love to give, but he could fuck me. What was one out of four? Better than zero, right?
Right.
Absolutely right.
I told myself that as I climbed into the Uber and told the driver—a woman—to take me to the auto shop. At the very least I wanted to talk to him. Tell him I was sorry for having a breakdown in front of him and exposing him to my crying face. Sorry for casting these irrational expectations on him, those which we had already established I could not cast, and sorry for Mimi casting him away like a pariah at the door when he came to apologize, something she came and admitted to me after the fact. I was mortified.
The garage seemed deserted. It was a Sunday afternoon—of course it was deserted. Walking through the shop, I realized with some dismay that there was probably no way Janie would be ready to take me to LA that week. I would have to get a rental. Hadn’t he said that I could always get a ride on his hog? Probably not to Los Angeles though. Besides, I was coming to claim that ride tonight.
I had resolved to come to the shop because a phone call to my father had told me that he was not at his house with him. This was maybe a bad idea. I had weighed the pros and cons extensively, and my desire had beaten out my reason. Who said he was even there? Dad. Dad had said he was most probably there. He must have heard me before I saw him because his face suddenly appeared from around the raised hood of a car he was looking at.
There was an instant where he looked surprised, but then the look on his face quickly morphed into a knowing smirk.
“You came looking for me, huh? Couldn’t stay away?” Adam walked towards me. He was pulling the oil-stained automotive gloves from his hands, and the front of his coveralls was open. He was shirtless underneath.
“I wanted to know how my car was doing,” I said lamely.
“Don’t worry about your wheels. Your car will be good to go in the next few days.”
“Th-thank you for doing this for me,” I said, stammering. The smile on his face told me that he sensed my discomfort. “I also wanted to apologize for Mimi when you came over… she told me you came over and she—”
“Ripped me a new one? Yeah.”
“I’m sorry. She was just mad.”
“Were you mad? Are you mad?”
“A little.” There was at least a good yard between us, but I could swear I could feel the fizzle of sexual tension. Nobody else was around. Our conversation escalating into something else warmed my cheeks and stung the pit of my stomach.
“You want an apology from me too?”
“I wouldn’t say no to one.”
“I’m not one for long talking. I prefer to act rather than speak.” He moved closer to me. Panicking, I walked past him and turned around, so I was facing the exit. Just in case I had to make a run for it. He turned and faced me, moving closer.
“You’re going to show me how sorry you are?”
“I’m going to show you how I intend to mend our relationship, going forward.” He took a couple of steps forward, and I matched them, taking two backward.
“Uh… is there anything you want to tell me to pass onto my dad, I’m going there now,” I ventured. I wasn’t going anywhere now. I wasn’t even going there after this. I was going home to reflect on the shambles of my love life. My resolve was dissipating. I had had my back straight and chest puffed out, ready to face him when I got there but looking into his eyes, feeling his presence, realizing what I wanted to happen was likely just about to happen, I turned yellow real quick.
“You don’t have to make up excuses to see me, Dana. Just tell me what you want.” He placed the gloves on a stand that held a bunch of tools I couldn’t name and advanced, closing the space between us. I backed up until the back of my thighs met the bumper of a car behind me. He loomed over me. Close enough to touch, I rested a palm gently on his chest. I ran it under the fabric of his coveralls and across his shoulders, over his tattooed skin. His skin was warm, the tattooed sections feeling slightly raised under my fingers.
“Mimi told me I need to stay away from you,” I whispered like it was a secret. His chest was covered with a light dusting of hair.
“Is that so?”
“Mm-hmm. She hates you. She thinks you’re a troublemaker. She said Anthony’s told her stories, and all you want is my body.”
“That’s good advice, and all true. You should take it,” he said. His hands closed around my waist and pulled our bodies together.
“I don’t want to take it,” I said. I looked up at him. Mimi had piercing blue eyes, but the ones looking down at me gave hers a run for their money. They were intense, searching and stormy with desire. He knew exactly why I had come to find him, and he was going to make my trip and effort worthwhile.
“What do you want?”
“You—”
His mouth was covering mine in a rough kiss before I finished getting the word out. He had lifted me in his strong arms and set me down on the hood of the car and was kissing me like I had made him angry. Large, calloused hands raised my legs around his body, spreading them apart so he could press himself against me. The skirt of my dress bunched at my hips. Erotic heat pooled between my legs. I did want Adam Holloway. Maybe it was against my better judgment, but maybe that was all it was; want.
Maybe all I wanted was his body too. It wasn’t even like anything else was on offer. If he was going to use me, I was going to use him. He wanted to fuck me and fuck it; I wanted him to. I felt my breathing quicken as he dropped his coveralls to his knees. He grabbed his erection through his underwear roughly.
“I don’t have a condom,” he growled.
“I don’t want you to use one. Just don’t come inside,” I said. He kissed me again like he was mad at me, holding the back of my head and lightly pulling a handful of my hair. I moaned, despite myself. I could feel his long, thick cock pressing against me. I reached down and slid my hand underneath the waistband of his underwear, pulling it down low enough for his throbbing erection to spring free. I ran my hand up and down its length, jerking him off. His member was rock hard but smooth, and hot under my fingers. The size of him scared me. As Mimi had reminded me, it had been a minute. His hand reached down, pulling my panties out of the way before he let me guide the head of his cock into my slick opening.
“Adam,” I whispered desperately as he began to slide into me. I pressed my eyes shut, feeling unadulterated bliss rush through me. It was a tight fit, but I could feel every generous inch. He pushed me back onto the hood, both his hands on my hips, guiding me to match his movements. Every one of his thrusts shot through me like a blow. They were long and hard. I panted like I had just run a marathon. I reached out to touch him longing to feel his hard muscles working under his skin as he fucked me. Wrapping my legs around him, I held him close to me. I wanted to sit up. I wanted to be able to feel him. He pressed one hand flat on my tummy as if gently restraining me, stopping me from getting close to him.
My walls clenched as I climaxed, arching my back off the car. I felt his hands tighten on my hips, and his strokes become shallower and faster. He was close.
“Where do you want it?” he grunted. I sat up and slid off the car, squatting in front of him. I closed my lips around his throbbing head before swallowing his entire length, breathing slowly through my nose, trying not to gag. He held my hair, keeping my head steady as he fucked my mouth. He cursed and moaned as he came, shooting his load all t
he way down my throat. He braced himself against the hood of the car with one hand. I rose slowly, smoothing my dress over my thighs. Adam was doing the same, pulling the top of his coveralls back over his shoulders.
For a moment I felt completely out of place. It was like a bucket of water had just been thrown over a raging hot inferno inside me. I wanted to run. We had done it. Now that we had finally crossed that line that I had been stopping us from crossing… what was next? My head spun. Nothing. There was no way anything could come of this. My doubts and fears came flooding back, falling hard into the pit of my stomach. They obviously weren’t gone, just backed into a corner of my mind, and what Adam and I had just done had clearly dislodged them so they could drive me crazy again.
What did he want from me besides sex? What was sex anyway? He certainly had no lack of women trying to give it to him. I cleared my throat as angry tears threatened to spill from my eyes. What did you do Dana? What the fuck did you just do?
“Give me a call to pick the car up when it’s ready,” I choked out. I took a deep breath, preparing to walk away. I couldn’t cry in front of him again—not like at the club. If he saw that he would never want to see me again. His hand around my arm pulling me back stopped me. I turned to face him. His lips met mine in a kiss that was soft… almost sweet. His hands rested on my waist.
“I’ll bring it by your house Thursday afternoon.”
“I won’t be home Thursday afternoon.”
“You will be if you want your car.”
“I’ll come by Friday morning.”
“Thursday afternoon Dana. Listen to me.” I froze as his eyes locked onto mine. “Wait for me.”
Thursday afternoon? I was planning on leaving for LA Tuesday morning and being back by the end of the week. Would I… no. I couldn’t. What kind of person rescheduled trips to accommodate booty calls? There was no other reason why he would want me to be home other than to give me a repeat performance of our activity tonight.
ADAM: A Bad Boy Romance (The ALPHAbet Collection Book 1) Page 9
