by Piper Lennox
“Chill,” she laughs, when I just stare at her for so long, my contact lenses dry out. “I was flipping through your sketchbook and saw the one you did of that Ewan guy. Did you meet him at Benedict House?”
I’m moderately ashamed I got so distracted from my afternoon with Wes, I completely forgot about Ewan until just now.
Mostly, I’m just so damn relieved that’s who Georgia’s talking about. I wonder if the nail tech feels my leg go deadweight in her hands, tension vanished.
“I, uh...I met him this morning,” I tell her, once again absurdly careful with my words. Misdirection, not lies. Like a good magic act.
“He’s super cute. Maybe I should start volunteering, find a Hot Samaritan of my own.”
“What about Rylan?” I wince. Whatever lotion the woman’s slathering on my calves stings like hell. “I thought he was taking you on his family vacation.”
She waves her hand. “It’s way too soon for that. I can’t believe he even asked me.”
“Maybe he asked because you told him you’ve always wanted to go to Greece? And because he really likes you?” More than “like,” I’m sure. Rylan is so smitten by my sister, I’m surprised his feet still touch the ground when he trails after her.
“I want to go to Greece with you. We always said we would.”
“You and I have been plenty of places together. One won’t kill us.”
Georgia sighs. “He just likes me so much, it freaks me out. We’ve only been exclusive for...what, six months? Seven? That’s nothing.”
“Not to him,” I point out. “He wasn’t dating anyone else, from the minute you two met. In his head, you guys have been a couple for over a year.”
“I know, I know.”
“Have you told him you don’t want to go?”
“Not yet.”
“Good. Don’t. You should go.” Now that the woman has my feet out of the water, the footbath gargling down the drain, I roll the cuffs of my leggings back down to my ankles. Finally, the stares stop.
“The last time we went out, he said he’s falling for me.” Georgia lets her jaw go slack, as though Rylan told her he’s part frog. “Falling? Six months in?”
“A year.”
“It’s. Too. Soon.” She slaps her palms on the armrests, then wilts. “Don’t get me wrong, I really like him.”
“Could’ve fooled me.”
My joke earns me a subtle middle finger. Georgia does like Rylan, more than any guy she’s dated before. But she also likes her freedom. Playing the field, exploring her options.
Or so she says.
“Is this really about Rylan?” I ask, staring at the sparkling pink polish getting swiped on my nails, instead of looking Georgia in the eye. “Because it sounds like commitment phobia, if you ask me.”
“God, don’t do this again. I’m not scared of commitment. I just don’t understand why everyone is in such a hurry to throw rings on shit and put up picket fences in their twenties.” Georgia motions to my bag on the floor, where my sketchbook resides. “Back to this Ewan guy.”
“We just met,” I remind her. “So if you’re looking for details, sorry: I don’t have many.” While I placate her with what little info I have on him so far, I feel that fluttery, schoolgirl-crush feeling in my stomach again.
Granted...it’s not the aching burn that engulfed my entire body on the beach last year. But there’s always time for that to develop. I refuse to believe Wes Durham in a mask is the peak of my romantic life.
“Invite him over! I want to meet him.”
“Seriously, we talked for maybe forty-five minutes—that’s it. It’s too soon to even text him, let alone invite him anywhere.”
“Okay, I’ll give you the invitation thing, but not the texting one. He gave you his number, right? He wants you to contact him. I bet he’s staring at his phone right now, pining away.”
With our nails finished, we heel-walk to the drying station and sit across from each other.
“I’ll text him hello. That’s it.” While I dig my phone and sketchbook from my bag, my sister claps and bounces as though a proposal’s at hand. “But only if you promise to take the trip with Rylan.”
“Fine,” she huffs, “I’ll go to Greece with my boyfriend and fuck in some fancy hotel overlooking a sparkling sea. But I’m making that sacrifice for you. Just so we’re clear.”
I laugh as my thumbs craft a simple, breezy message to the number in my sketchbook I’d already halfway memorized. “I appreciate it.”
Twelve
“You’re late.”
Clara’s brow furrows as she squeezes past me into the apartment. “What are you gonna do, fire me over it?”
“We both know you don’t really want that.”
She sighs as she bends down to scratch Bowie’s ears. I sigh, too, deep in my chest as I watch her skirt flip up at the edge. The bottom of her ass looks like it was made for me to fit my hands underneath it.
God, have some control. I adjust myself through my jeans when she’s distracted with the leash and decide to blame the dream I had this morning—Clara, totally naked in my bed except for dishwashing gloves. I woke up with an erection I couldn’t get rid of without a cold shower, and an irrational fear I suddenly had a fetish for nitrile rubber. Once I remembered us cleaning together yesterday, I relaxed. But not enough.
As soon as she stands, I pull my eyes to hers and hide my impure thoughts like the Boy Scout I never was.
“Why were you late?”
Something’s seriously wrong with me: her glare gets me hard again.
“Georgia was trying to...tag along.” The redness in her face makes her eye shadow—bright blue, today—stand out even more. “It took me a while to convince her not to.”
The mention of her sister disperses all the blood from my cock in one fell swoop. Guess Georgia is good for something, after all.
“Your sister wanted to ‘tag along’ to my place? You sure she’s got enough Holy Water to stay in the same room as me?”
Clara gives the smile you’d give to a crude but hilarious joke during a funeral. “Yeah, you’re not her favorite person.”
“You can tell her the feeling’s more than mutual.” As I swing the door open for her, Bowie already charging into the hall, she winces. “Wait. You haven’t told her?”
Clara untangles herself from the leash by doing a double-spin, which I find so cute it just confirms something’s definitely wrong with me. Clara isn’t cute; she’s annoying. When did I let myself forget that?
Problem is...I’ve never actually disliked Clara. At least, not for any personal reasons. It’s her sister that drives me up a wall. Clara just always had the unfortunate luck of being right next to her while she did it. Always.
If anything, the only thing I’ve ever hated about Clara...was finding out how much she hated me.
“If I’d told my sister what you were doing,” she says, “you wouldn’t be alive, right now.”
“Hmm. Good luck with that, Georgia.” I lean on the doorjamb and cross my arms. “So what does she think you’re really doing, every morning?”
“Volunteering.”
I whistle. Clara narrows her eyes more, the longer it goes on.
“What?”
“The plastic seams on that halo are showing again, princess.”
“Okay, stop with that halo shit. I’ve never said I’m perfect. I don’t act like—like this goody two-shoes Pollyanna type.”
Yeah, I think, figured that out when you told me to fuck your mouth. I’d never been so happy to be wrong about a person in my entire life.
“And,” she goes on, squaring her shoulders, “I’m not a princess. Unlike you, I’ve worked for everything I have. My nursery didn’t have a million-dollar view of the Hollywood sign.”
She steps close. Her perfume today is something floral. Too similar to whatever she wore that night.
“If anyone’s sporting a fake halo,” she says, “it’s you. Saying ‘it’s just business’ an
d ‘don’t take it personally,’ when we both know if anyone else on this planet had sent you that email, you would have deleted it in a heartbeat. You want to make my life a living hell and not come out looking like a monster when it’s over?” She shakes her head. “Not possible.”
Her outburst would make me step back, if I had anywhere to go. The strike plate of the door digs into my spine until something cracks. I honestly don’t know if it’s the frame, or me.
“Again,” I tell her, “I’m an asshole. I own it. Nothing fake here, Hurley.” I brush some glitter off her shoulder, courtesy of an embellishment on her hat—Goddamn, how much can one person wear before they’re just breathing this stuff in?—and smile when she yanks her body away.
“You think calling yourself one makes you not one. There’s no ownership. If you truly accepted how much of a dick you really are sometimes? You’d be sickened. You’d do something to change.”
“Maybe I just don’t give a damn. Try it, it’s refreshing. Certainly better than all that perky, constantly-happy shit you and your sister do.”
For all my words and the bored façade I keep in place, she is actually pissing me off.
“Maybe you should try caring about anyone but yourself for once,” she snaps. She wraps the leash around her hand like a cast, until Bowie flops down at her feet to wait for Intermission in this dramatic-ass play.
“Hell,” she adds, painting me from head to toe with this smile so bitter, I’ll never get the taste out of my mouth, “it might even get you a few more views on that pathetic music channel. Certainly more than that act you’re always putting on.”
Good, there’s the reminder I needed. Clara is annoying.
“Oh, you mean like you guys, getting excited over every panda-shaped bar of soap or nuclear waste eye shadow that gets dropped on your stoop? Pass.”
That’s that: she’s about to leave, finally leading Bowie to the elevator. I can’t help but notice that, no matter how enraged she is at me...she’s still so gentle and kind to my dog.
I should leave it at this. I won.
But it doesn’t feel like it. And as soon as she’s walking away, I let myself blurt what I know will make her stay. Even if it’s just a few measly minutes.
Even if it guts me to hear it.
“What act?”
Clara freezes with her finger on the Down button, not yet pushed. I clear my throat and rearrange myself in the doorway to face her. “What act do I put on?”
“Not sure I should tell you.” She stabs the button and eyes the floor indicator instead of me. “I’d hate to destroy you twice in one day.”
“Dramatic and delusional. The whole package.” Without even thinking, I grab my stuff, lock the door, and follow her onto the elevator while she’s pressing the Door Close button like it’s the morphine pump on her deathbed.
The doors shut. Bowie nudges them and whines, then braces himself when the floor jerks toward the lobby.
“You didn’t destroy me,” I spit, wondering why I can’t let this go. “I don’t care one bit what you think of me.”
“Right. That’s why you ran into the elevator like a hurricane.”
“Seriously.” I step in front of her and take the leash, so Bowie can’t yank her out of here before I get my answer. “What act?”
“You really want to know?”
“In a morbid curiosity way, sure. Probably won’t have time to tear down your argument piece by piece, but I’ll give you the gist.” I jerk my head at her. “Tell me.”
Clara wets her lips. I don’t let it get to me.
“Mr. Humbled Child Star Burnout,” she says, voice so low the hum of the elevator almost strangles it, “pretending he’s slumming it in the city like he can make a hard-earned comeback. Like he got to where he is through grit and determination, when the truth is all he had was his mom’s former glory to open a few network doors.
“You want so badly to be this misunderstood artist who fought his way back from addiction, and who’s so much deeper than that show ever let him be—because oh, how original, he totally rebelled against his former wholesome image—and you’re not.
“All you are is a statistic. One more kid the industry chewed up and spit out. One who’s in such denial that the sitcom and his mom’s fame got him to where he is—or was—that he rejects both constantly, gets pissed at every interviewer who mentions either one, and refuses to do that reunion special even if it would help out his costars.
“All because he just can’t accept that that was his peak. That maybe he was never talented enough to make it on his own, or else he could make it back on his own now.”
Through it all, I stare at her, thanking the universe once more for this unreadable face it gave me.
Behind me, the doors open.
Bowie strains on his leash until, without looking away from her, I snap my fingers. He whines, then sits as the doors close again.
“That’s your act.” She’s breathing fast, but her stare doesn’t waver. Her voice doesn’t crack. “And the most pathetic part? Everyone sees through it but you.”
Before I have time to overthink, or to think at all…before she can decipher even one grain of emotion in my face—I push my mouth against hers.
I steer her to the back wall by her hip and wait until the fists she braces against my chest relax, slowly opening as her eyes slide shut. Her lips part, and I push my tongue past her teeth.
I want her to shut up.
I want her to take it back.
I want the edge of every panel in this elevator indented into her bare shoulders until it hurts, and the taste of me swims in her head the way those words are going to swim in mine long after she leaves.
I want to take Clara Hurley apart piece by piece and put her back together the way I want her. A way that makes one ounce of sense, because I’m tired of trying to figure out how the hell she can get me rock hard while getting on my last fucking nerve.
My hands push on his chest, but my tongue tangles with his.
When I summon my voice from the breathless pit of my chest to tell him to leave me alone and go to hell...all I can do is moan. His thigh presses against my crotch and I lean into it so hard, I think he’s the only thing holding me up.
“Have you forgotten,” he pants, catching my bottom lip between his teeth while his eyes flash, “that I know every last secret you’ve got?”
The pounding of my heart slows, now in a vice of fear.
“You asked,” I remind him, hating that my voice sounds so far away and small. I want the boldness back, the steady bile I just had on my tongue.
Wes aligns his face with mine: foreheads and noses touching, each of us breathing the other’s exhales until we’re dizzy. His hand travels to the spot below my ear, anchoring me in place.
“You can’t—” My words catch, mostly because too many fight to come out at once. There’s a hundred things he can’t do. Yet here he is, doing them all.
The most pressing one, at the moment, is the way he’s pressing himself against me even harder. Thank God he’s in jeans instead of sweats, or he’d feel my wetness on his thigh, all this white-hot desire I desperately wish didn’t exist.
“You can’t release that email,” I manage, swallowing when his lips hover near mine again, “just because I said some things you didn’t like. You asked me. I warned you.”
“That’s not what I meant.” He brushes his mouth across mine like painting a coat of acid. I watch it lift into a smirk. “I meant...it’s pretty damn bold of you to tell me I’m putting on an act, when you stand there pretending to hate me.”
“Actually, I said I didn’t think of you enough to hate you.”
“Which is clearly a lie of its own. You think about me plenty.”
“Fine.” The bile inches to the tip of my tongue again. “I do hate you.”
“Maybe so. But not enough.”
Suddenly, his hand replaces his thigh, rubbing me through my underwear.
“That’s wh
y you’re wet for me, right now. That’s why you dream about me so much, you haven’t slept right for a year.”
With a heavy-lidded stare, Wes tilts his head back and watches the flush crawl across my chest.
His hand presses harder. Rubs faster.
“That,” he whispers, “is why you’re about to come.”
Don’t. I shut my eyes. It’s not even his touch that drives me to the edge. It’s that stare.
Don’t finish.
It takes everything I have to shove his hand away. Not because Wes resists; in fact, the second I move to stop him, he does.
I just don’t want to stop him.
For all the fury in my head, and the clench in my stomach at the thought of him making me see those stars and sparks again...I want it. Not once since that night have I been able to bring my body to the heights that he did.
And, deep down, part of me wants to know if he could do it again, now that he’s out from behind the mask. Now that I know it’s him.
But I don’t give in. I push him back even while he’s stepping away. I shake my head even while he’s nodding, already complying.
“Walk my dog.” His other hand presses the leash into mine.
The hand that was between my legs shifts, thumb rubbing against his fingers to dry it. I wish it wasn’t such an inexplicable turn-on: that he doesn’t wipe it off on his pants.
Wes presses the Door Open button and steps back. Bowie yanks me along.
With my self-control hanging by a thread, I worry I won’t have the strength to resist looking back. Somehow, I do.
Not that it matters. I hear the elevator shut and begin to rise, right after I step off.
Thirteen
My jizz hits the shower floor. I let go of my cock with one last pump and rest my head on the wall.
This is a first: jacking off in an ice-cold shower. The water put goosebumps on every last inch of me, but did fuck-all for the erection Clara left me with.
Even the orgasm doesn’t help much. Ten minutes later, I’m picking at my guitar strings and getting hard again, remembering how insanely wet she was.
