Do Over

by Serena Bell

  I could fall right back into it. I could fall right back in love with him.

  So as tempting as it is to postpone the inevitable, as tempting as it is to, as Jack put it, reap some benefits from the shitty housing market, I need to get this apartment and get out of Jack’s house. I need to have my eyes fixed on that prize.

  I come out of the bathroom to find the landlord on the phone, and I can tell from the look she gives me, even before I hear her say, “You can email the application to—” that I’m not going to get the apartment.

  She hangs up and says, “The woman I showed it to right before you is sending me an application.”

  “So I’m too late?”

  She’s sixtyish, with big green-framed glasses and gray hair that looks like it’s been set over her head like a helmet. She tilts her head and examines me thoughtfully. “I’ll take your application if you can get it to me tonight. Email it to me.” She hands me a card. “But,” she says sternly. I think she is probably a schoolteacher or someone else used to keeping troublemakers in line. “Unless there’s something missing from her application or she doesn’t qualify, Seattle law says I have to let her have it. She was here first.”

  I know the law she’s talking about. It was put in place to combat racism and other forms of discrimination in the housing process. I appreciate the fact that she knows the law and wants to follow it. So even though part of me is still tempted to beg her for the apartment, I give her my email address so she can send me the application, and then I follow her out of the building and trudge back to my car.

  In the car, I pull my laptop out of my backpack, find the landlord’s email, fill out the application, and hit send. I’m not going to leave anything to chance that I can control. And I’m not even going to let myself feel hopeful about this place. I filled out the application, sure, but I’m going to assume it’s a lost cause. That way I can’t be too disappointed when I don’t get it.

  Or too relieved, I think, before I can stop myself.

  I sigh.

  As much as I want to find a place to stay, I’m dead on my feet after a week of working and apartment hunting, and there’s nothing promising left on my list of prospects.

  I guess I’m heading back to Jack’s house.

  As I get close, my heart beats a little faster, my adrenaline rising. I tell myself that the eagerness I feel to get home is about wanting to see Gabe and nothing else. Not about Jack.

  When I pull up in front of Jack’s house, his mom’s and Sienna’s cars are in the driveway. And even though I figured they’d probably be there—Jack had said they were going to come spend the afternoon and evening with Gabe—I’m instantly bummed. I don’t feel like talking about the failed apartment hunt with a bunch of people who don’t necessarily have my back. I want—

  I want to go back to bed with Jack. But that’s maybe not the best idea ever. Every time he makes me feel the way he did last night, I’m going to slide closer to feeling like I want sex with Jack to be a permanent fixture in my life. Closer to feeling like I want Jack to be a permanent fixture in my life. So maybe it’s a blessing that Jack’s mother and sister are here tonight. They’ll make a great buffer.

  They’re sitting in the living room. Sienna and Jack have beers in front of them, Barb has a glass of wine, and they’re playing Hearts.

  “Hey,” Sienna says, smiling at me as I shut the door behind me. “Give me a minute. I’m about to win.”

  “Hello, Maddie,” Barb says formally—no smile.

  “Hi,” I say, feeling shy.

  As I watch, Sienna’s prediction comes true. Barb’s total tops a hundred, ending the game, and Sienna has the lowest score.

  “Can we deal you in?” Sienna tilts her head.

  I start to wave my hand (so exhausted, heading off to bed), but Jack looks up and gives me a lopsided smile that I can feel in about a hundred separate places, and I find myself plopping onto the sofa beside him.

  “How was the house-hunting?” he asks, as Sienna deals.

  “I found this amazing place—” I begin.

  “Oh, good,” Barb says. “I was just saying to Jack, you two need to be out of each other’s hair.”

  I’m already regretting having sat down. Barb has never tried to hide her feelings toward me. I guess it’s not too shocking: I’m the woman who trapped her baby boy. And something happened between Barb and my mom after Jack’s dad left. I don’t know exactly what it was, but their friendship, which had been close, just—vanished. I think I got lumped in there, too—guilty by association.

  “Mom, Jack’s already told you that’s not true.” Sienna turns to me. “He said it’s been nothing but great having you guys here,” she tells me warmly, and then mouths, Sorry, rolling her eyes toward her mother.

  I’m more surprised by Sienna’s coming to my rescue than by Barb’s attack. Like I said, I pretty much know where I stand with Barb. But I’ve never been so sure with Sienna. When we were little, Sienna sometimes played with Jack and me, but more often, she was off with girls her age, and I was already a senior when Sienna started high school, so I never knew her well. Whenever we’ve crossed paths since then—those occasional holiday dinners, drop-offs and pickups—she’s always been kind, but I’ve always felt like there was a distance between us. At first I thought it might be judgment. But she’s never said anything to make me feel like she holds the accidental pregnancy, or Jack’s decision to support Gabe financially, against me. And she obviously loves Gabe like crazy, would do anything for him.

  I shoot her a grateful smile, and she smiles back.

  “So you found a place?” Jack asks. I can’t read the expression on his face.

  “I did, but I’m probably not going to get it. The landlord had already taken one application, and she said that unless something was wrong with that one, I’d be second in line.”

  His mother gives a sigh of obvious disappointment.

  “That sucks,” Jack says.

  It does, of course it does, but some stupid, juvenile part of me wishes he’d said something else. Like, Good. I’m not ready to let you and Gabe go yet.

  Fat fucking chance, I chastise myself.

  “Fingers crossed,” Sienna says.

  “I’m trying not to get my hopes up.”

  I sneak a look at Jack, and he looks back. And there’s a moment, just a moment, where I think we might be on the same page. Like, I don’t know what to want anymore. Not sure which way my hopes are even headed. I get a giddy swirl in my chest, and then—

  Fear, of course. Like a lead blanket on the giddy.

  “Everyone in?” Sienna asks, and when we all nod, she deals.

  It’s been a long time since I’ve played Hearts, and the rest of them are all warmed up, so it’s clear I’m getting my butt kicked. Meanwhile, I do my best to try to draw Barb into conversation, asking about her trip, asking how things are going with her librarian job—but it’s like squeezing water from a stone.

  “Mom. Tell Maddie about the game you were playing with Gabe,” Sienna says.

  “It was just a game,” Barb says, playing into the current trick, then taking it.

  Sienna rolls her eyes at me again, and the unexpected solidarity, especially in light of the family relationships, makes me feel teary. I guess when you’re feeling suddenly short on girlfriends, it doesn’t take much.

  Sienna and I could be friends, I think.

  The eager little jump in my stomach is followed by me getting a firm grip on myself:

  I. Don’t. Live. Here.

  This isn’t my life, and I have to remember that.

  Jack takes the next trick and winks at me. Oh, God, the wink. He taught himself how to wink when he was ten. Even then, before it should have had any power over me, it made me feel off balance.

  “She put all the couch cushions on the floor and they took off their shoes—” Sienna begins.

  Barb cannot resist. “The rules are,” she says primly, scooping up the next set of cards, “you can’
t step on the carpet. Only the cushions. The carpet is molten lava.”

  “Oh, God, he must have loved that.” I can picture Gabe hooting with joy as he tiptoed and jumped from cushion to cushion. It’s exactly up his alley.

  “Oh, he did,” Barb says, growing more animated. “He was hopping around, saying, ‘Gramma, you be careful! You be careful!’ You should have seen him. And when he ‘fell in,’ I had to fish him out, and I made it very dramatic—”

  She stops as if she’s suddenly realized she’s sharing a moment with the enemy. Then smiles at me almost shyly.

  “He’s a good kid,” she says. She sounds reluctant, but—kind.

  My stomach warms.

  Then lurches.

  I. Don’t.

  Live. Here.

  —

  Barb wins.

  She crows wildly, lording it over all of us. But I don’t mind at all, because she includes me in the lording, and she’s clearly having a good time. And I think about the Barb I knew as a girl, tight-lipped, with bruised dark skin under her eyes.

  This Barb looks…she looks relaxed. Free.

  And Sienna, too—Sienna was one of those girls who was always a little wary. Like she was braced for something to go wrong. But now she’s laughing at her mother’s antics and casting friendly glances my way. She seems like she’s grown into young adulthood beautifully.

  I guess maybe Jack’s dad leaving was the best thing that could have happened to either of those women, in the long run.

  If only Jack could be like that, too. If he could see his father’s leaving as a blessing, instead of more evidence that he is stupid and worthless.

  Barb and Sienna get to their feet, carry their glasses into the kitchen, and help clean up the snacks and the cards. “Hey,” Sienna says. “Some friends and I are going to see Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion, the musical version, at the Fifth Avenue Theater Tuesday night. I have a couple of extra tickets. Any interest?”

  I think my mouth falls open.

  My immediate response is Yes! Like the kind of yes where if she were actually holding the tickets in her hand, I would have to sit on my hands to keep from grabbing at them.

  The yes isn’t for the particular musical, which I don’t know anything about, or the theater, which I’ve heard good things about but don’t feel any huge need to attend—it’s for how much I’d like to be Sienna’s friend.

  But—

  I don’t live here. This isn’t my life.

  She must sense my hesitation. “I know you might have found a new place by then, but then it’ll be even easier, right? If you’re in the city?”

  “I’ll have to find someone to watch Gabe.”

  “I can,” Jack and Barb say at the same time.

  Do you know that thing they say about how when God shuts a door, he opens a window? Standing in Harris’s apartment, looking at the wreckage of my life, I felt so wretched.

  And now I feel lucky. I have things to do, places to go, people to hang with, and family to help me. Even if the luck terrifies me a little (because it can’t hold, can it?), I am not stupid enough to cast it off.

  “Sure,” I say.

  Sienna grins, pleased, which makes me grin too, until we’re grinning at each other like crazy fools. She and Barb hug Jack good night, and then they hug me—Barb is a warm, soft, grandmotherly cloud of Tide laundry soap, Sienna a sharp, bony hugger who still manages to convey affection in the tightness of her grip. They head out into the night and I’m left standing in the living room while Jack shuts the door and turns toward me.

  Chapter 21

  “So,” I say. “You might have an apartment.”

  I’m happy for her. Of course I’m happy for her. She took a body blow with that bullshit from Harris and Mia, and she needs to get back on her feet.

  She nods.

  She looks so beautiful right now. Her hair’s down around her face, soft and sleek, and she’s got a bright glow under her skin.

  I take alpha male pride in having put that glow on her. And yeah, thinking about exactly how I put that glow on her makes me ready to do it again. Like right now.

  She was so fucking hot last night. Moaning into my mouth, talking dirty, tight as a glove around me, coming so sweetly. Later, having my mouth on her again—no one tastes or feels like Maddie. And then twice more before morning, each time hotter than the last.

  “Finding an apartment is good, right?”

  I want her to argue with me, to say, Hell no, not with sex like last night’s on the table.

  “Yeah, it’s good.”

  Of course it’s fucking good. So why does it feel so bad? It’s not like I thought what happened last night could go on forever. Been there, done that, blown it hard. Given enough time, I would screw it up again.

  Better not to give it that much time. Hurts so much less.

  Maddie shakes her head. “I probably won’t get it. I’m telling myself I won’t, so I won’t be disappointed when I inevitably lose it.”

  She’s saying she’ll be disappointed if she loses the apartment. What, disappointed if she has to stay with me and keep having sex like we had last night? If she has to come so hard her toes cramp?

  I put that in my pipe and smoke it, feeling—irritable. “Because it’s hell staying here.”

  She looks at me, eyes big and startled. “No! No, that’s not what I meant. You’ve been—great. It’s just—I mean, what your mom said. We should get out of each other’s hair. You can have your social life back—”

  She says social life in this way that makes it obvious what she means—sex with lots and lots of women—and I’m pissed. Because she’s okay with that, right? She’s okay with—even advocating for—the possibility of me being able to bring women back here and fuck them, when I can’t imagine being okay with the idea of her having sex with anyone other than me ever again—

  Screeeeeeech.

  Those are the brakes in my head.

  She’s shaking her head. “I’m probably not going to get the apartment. And I’m kind of freaked out about that. I mean, I’ve spent, what, like, twenty hours looking at apartments, and there’s nothing I can bring Gabe into, and when I finally find something that’s halfway decent, someone’s beaten me to it.”

  I wrench my head out of my ass and focus on what’s right in front of me, which is Maddie, looking like she’s going to cry again.

  I wish she wouldn’t.

  I hope she does, because if she does, I will have the excuse I desperately want to put my arms around her and—

  And everything. Fucking everything. Bite that amazing, plump lower lip, slide my tongue along hers until she whimpers, eat her mouth until all she can think about is me doing the same thing to her pussy.

  “I’m basically homeless right now, Jack—”

  Annnnd, once again, I’m an asshole.

  I need to be happy for her about this apartment. Because it’s what she wants and needs, because it’s what Gabe needs, and because it’s probably what I need, too. I’m just being selfish, wanting to keep her here for my own deranged, horny purposes, when she could be finding another guy—

  Okay, screw that.

  Just because I’m not enough of a jerk to outright interfere with her happiness doesn’t mean I’m in a hurry to give up sex with Maddie. And it sure as hell doesn’t mean I want to think about her finding herself a new Big Dick.

  “You’re not homeless. You can stay here as long as you need to,” I say. Selfish, maybe, but it’s also true.

  She gets that look on her face again. The soft, wrecked one. And now I’m the one who feels like crying. I mean, not a chance in hell I would, but I at least am in the neighborhood of the impulse. So I do what I always do when things get too real. I make a joke. “You don’t even have to have sex with me if you don’t want to.”

  The corners of her mouth turn up. Now she looks like mischief. She tilts her head. “So, you’re saying that if I said I was really tired right now and just wanted to go straig
ht to bed…”

  “Not a problem.” I wave my hand generously.

  “…instead of dragging you into my room and kneeling at your feet and giving you the best head of your life…”

  It is very, very hard to get the best of Maddie in any kind of verbal play situation.

  It is also just very, very hard. Or getting there, anyway.

  Two can play, though, right? “I’d be fine with that.”

  She narrows her eyes.

  “I’m a big boy,” I say. “I can take care of myself.”

  To illustrate, I slide the flat of my hand over the growing bulge behind the fly of my jeans. It is getting pretty uncomfortable in there, but she doesn’t need to know that. She also doesn’t need to know that I’d take the warmth of her mouth over my own right fist in a heartbeat.

  Her gaze follows my hand, her eyes dark and avid, but to give her credit, she manages to look pretty nonchalant. “Okay, then.” She shrugs. “Good night, I guess.” And she strolls out of my living room toward her room.

  I wait for her to turn back, laughing, but she doesn’t. She goes into her room, pulling the door shut behind her. I race after her and wedge my foot in with just a second to spare.

  “Why, Jack!” she says, with mock surprise. “What are you doing here?”

  “Collecting rent,” I growl, pushing my way into her room and closing the door behind me.

  She giggles.

  “Seriously, Maddie, you can’t just say shit like that—”

  She gives me a super-wide-eyed innocent look. “But Jack, you said you’d be fine on your own!”

  “I will,” I say, undoing the top button of my jeans. “You just watch.” And I undo the next few buttons—which is not easy to do, because my dick is so hard behind my fly that I have trouble getting my fingers under the buttons.

  Her eyes are glued to the proceedings.

  “See?” I ask. “Totally capable of managing this situation.” I push my briefs down, freeing my dick.

  Her pupils flare, and her tongue peeks out to wet her lips. My plans call for that tongue to do a lot more than play peekaboo in the next few minutes, but there’s plenty of time for that. I stroke my hand idly down my length, smoothing a drop of pre-cum over the head as I go. I don’t have to fake my groan, which is half from how good it feels to be this hard and half from watching her eyes follow my hand.