“No, it’s not the same thing. It’s not the same thing at all.”
The waiter came over, and it was a good thing he did, because I was about to fling my glass of water across the table at Rob. I was fuming. He’d unwittingly hit a raw nerve. I don’t know how it is for all women, but I’m incredibly self-conscious about my appearance. No matter how hard I try, and no matter how beautiful I feel, there are still things about my body that I’m sensitive about. I’ve struggled with my weight all my life. I’ve obsessed about this and that defect. Did he even appreciate the fact that I’d spent over an hour making myself as beautiful as I could for this date? Did he think it was easy? Did he think all girls were supermodels who just fell out of bed looking beautiful?
I fucking put myself on the line coming out to meet him. He was rich, handsome, successful. I’ll admit it. He was a little intimidating. Saying I could do things to improve my appearance, even mentioning the word cellulite, was not cool.
“Can I get you another glass of wine, Madam?” the waiter said.
I turned my wrath on the waiter. The poor guy didn’t know what hit him.
“Exactly when did I go from being Miss to being Madam? I’m thirty-four.”
“Oh, I’m very sorry Miss. I meant no disrespect whatsoever.”
I shook my head. I was losing it. I was making a complete fool of myself.
“I’m sorry,” I said to the waiter. “It wasn’t you. I’m just having a bad day.”
Rob spoke up. “You better bring us a bottle of your finest chardonnay,” he said.
I nodded. More wine would mean I couldn’t drive myself home, but whatever. I obviously needed a drink.
Chapter 12
Lacey
I DON’T KNOW HOW MUCH of that bottle of wine Rob drank, but I definitely had too much. I had to lean on him as we left the restaurant. I stumbled on the step.
“Valet,” I said, but he was already shaking his head. “I can’t give you your keys, Miss. You’ll have to pick up your car in the morning.”
“What? How am I going to get home?”
The valet looked at Rob, then back at me. “I can certainly call you a cab.”
“A cab? I live in Socorro Valley.”
All right. I’ll admit it. It wasn’t my proudest moment. In fact, I was feeling completely pathetic. I was drunk. I didn’t feel particularly beautiful because of the whole cosmetic surgery debate. And I was also still feeling completely rejected by Grant, because I couldn’t think of a way to make him want anything more than a one night stand with me. It had been a tough couple of weeks. I wasn’t at my best.
So please don’t judge me when I say I was making a big deal about not wanting a taxi for one reason only. I wanted Rob to offer me a ride. And not just a ride home. I wanted him to get me in his car, take me to his apartment, and fuck me.
Was I attracted to him? Not particularly.
Had I enjoyed my date with him? Not particularly.
Should I have wanted to get in his car? No, I should not have.
I should have had more dignity than that. More self-worth. But I just felt like such a loser. And when you feel like that, there’s nothing better than a sloppy one night stand with a guy who you’re not even sure is that into you. Right?
Wrong. I knew it was wrong. I knew I was clutching at straws. But someone had to want me, right? I was dolled up. I wasn’t that bad looking, was I?
“You don’t want me to call you a cab?” the valet said, again looking at Rob for some indication that he was going to step up and get me home safely, or at the very least, get me off the steps of this fancy restaurant.
“I don’t want a cab,” I said again, and I could even hear the slur in my words.
God, it was awful. I was that drunk chick at the end of the night who’s insisting on making some pointless scene with the restaurant staff.
I looked at Rob, but he was just standing there blankly as if he didn’t know how this was going to play out. What the fuck was he waiting for? I was offering myself to him on a plate. Why wasn’t he offering to drive me home? He’d hardly had a glass of wine all night, two at the most. Hell, I was going to let him take me home and fuck my brains out. Wasn’t that what guys wanted at the end of a date?
There was a long pause. No one said a word. What the fuck was Rob waiting for?
I looked at him desperately, and I never felt so pathetic in all my life.
And then the words came from my lips. I still cringe when I think of it. It was possibly the lowest moment of my entire existence. This is what I said.
“Won’t you give me a ride, Rob?”
I don’t know if I’m getting across how utterly pathetic I felt. I was practically begging him to take me home.
And did he say yes? Did he take the bait? Did he stand up like a man and take me home for a fuck?
Actually, he looked at his watch. And then he scowled, like it was getting a bit late and what he’d really have preferred to do was get home and get some beauty sleep. He didn’t even want to fuck me.
And even then, I could have still rescued the situation. I could have told him to forget about it. I could have told the valet to call me a cab, and it would have been the last time I ever set eyes on Rob in my life.
But you know what I did instead? I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you exactly what I did. I begged. I got down on my hands and knees, into the mud, and I begged. I mean, not literally, but really there was no difference. I basically begged my date to take me home.
I said, “Please, Rob.”
And the fucker sighed again, like it was a chore.
“Sure,” he said at last, and he couldn’t have possibly said it with less enthusiasm.
*
ROB HAD A MERCEDES, and the valet brought it around and watched as I dragged my pathetic butt into the passenger seat. I shuddered at the thought that I’d have to go back to the site of my humiliation to pick up my car.
“So you want a ride all the way to Socorro Valley?” Rob said once we were on the highway.
And it only got worse.
“Oh, that’s too far to ask you to drive,” I said.
“A hotel then?” he said, without missing a beat.
Fucker. Why didn’t he want me? Was I really that repulsive to him? I thought about all the perfect women he must see on a daily basis. He’d made it eminently clear that I was nothing close to perfection.
I should have said, sure, whatever, drop me at a hotel.
But what I said was, “Or we could go back to your place.”
I gave him my most seductive smile. He’d rejected me and I still wasn’t getting the message. I’ll never live down the humiliation I felt that night.
“I guess,” he said.
*
I FELT SILLY WHEN WE got to Rob’s apartment. It was obvious he was a bachelor, but the drawer in his bedside table was full of condoms, and I spotted a woman’s thong on the floor in the bathroom.
He was a player. He slept around. And again it hit me, how pathetic he’d made me feel, practically begging him to take me here to his bed. How had that happened? Had he planned it. Had he manipulated the situation so that it would end up that way? All that talk about how I wasn’t as perfect as the women at his clinic, was that a way of knocking down my confidence and getting me back to his place, feeling like this?
I was lying in my underwear, between sheets that still had the faint trace of perfume on them from his last conquest, and I waited for him to come out of the bathroom.
The wine was beginning to wear off, and with it, some of my natural shyness was beginning to come back. I pulled the sheets up around me and shivered. The apartment was expensive, but spartan and poorly decorated. The bedroom was cold and stark. It felt like a motel room.
What the hell was taking him so long? A minute passed, then another. Then five minutes passed.
“Rob,” I called at last.
No answer. I got up and went to the bathroom door, my underwear doing nothing to p
rotect me from the chilly air. Why was the apartment so cold? Didn’t he turn on the heat?
I was about to knock on the door when I heard talking. What was going on? I put my head to the door and listened. He was on the phone. I couldn’t make out the words, I couldn’t tell who he was talking to, but he was definitely on the phone.
I thought I heard him say the words, “I’ll pay you back soon. I’ve got a plan. Just give me a few more weeks.”
It sounded like maybe he was in debt. Then he hung up and turned on the shower.
I sighed and went back to the bed. It was just after midnight. You want to know how long it was before Rob finally emerged from the bathroom? It was twenty-five minutes. If it wasn’t so cold in his bedroom, I’d have been fast asleep.
Rob was naked apart from a towel wrapped around his waist. His body was nice, but not as masculine as I liked. He was in good shape, well sculpted, but it was almost as if he was too manicured. I wondered if he shaved the hair from his chest and legs. His muscles were nicely formed but weren’t large.
“Are you ready?”
I guessed I was ready. I’d begged him to bring me there. I’d waited twenty-five minutes for him while he showered. I was ready. But what I really wanted to know, was who had he been talking to on the phone? Who did he owe money to? And how much?
I nodded.
He came over to the bed, the towel still around his waist, and pulled down the sheets. I shivered as he revealed my body. I looked down at myself. My voluptuous breasts were held nicely in their black lace bra. My panties matched. I looked good. But my mind raced over the millions of imperfections I was sure he was seeing.
I waited for him to say I was beautiful. Would it have killed him to say that? Even if he didn’t mean it? Just to put my mind at ease a little?
Instead, he said, “Pass me a condom, would you?”
I reached into the drawer by the bed and grabbed one from his stash. He was sitting over me, his legs straddling my body, and he finally took the towel from his waist and revealed himself to me.
Don’t compare him to Grant, I told myself. Don’t compare him to Grant.
But it was too late. My mind instantly made the comparison. Rob was smaller. He was also less confident. His cock was semi-hard, and hung from him lifelessly.
“Want me to suck it?” I offered.
He didn’t answer. He ripped open the condom wrapper with his teeth and tried to put it over his flaccid dick.
I reached up and touched him, but when my hand met his cock, he flinched. It was as if he didn’t want to be touched. I felt painfully awkward. His cock wasn’t hard and there was no way the condom was going onto it in that state.
“Let me suck it,” I said again.
The sound of my voice sickened me. This was nothing like that passionate night in the barn with Grant.
That was sex. This was an awkward, sloppy, drunken mistake. I should have known better. I wasn’t a kid anymore. I shouldn’t have been putting myself into situations like this. It would take weeks for my self-esteem to recover from this.
“Just turn around,” he said.
I nodded. Anything to make the situation less embarrassing. He got off me and I turned around and got on my hands and knees. I waited to feel his hands on me but they never came. I turned around and saw that he was stroking his cock, masturbating, trying to make it hard.
“Maybe we drank too much,” I said.
He sighed in exasperation. There was a television remote by the bed and he grabbed it and pointed it at the television behind him.
“It usually helps me if I watch some porn first,” he said. “I need to see really hot chicks to get it up.”
That stung. I don’t think he could see my eyes in the darkness of the room, but I felt as if he’d just slapped me in the face. I felt like crying. Was he blaming me for his inability to get it up? Was he saying it was because I wasn’t hot enough?
I wanted to call a cab. I wanted to get out of there.
“Maybe this isn’t working,” I said, offering him a way out, but now that he had me, he wasn’t letting me go.
“Just give me a minute,” he said.
His television was a nice, fancy one with menus for on demand content. He scrolled through a list until he reached something called Total Cheerleader Mayhem.
“Here,” he said. “This will do it. These girls are on fire. If I had one of them in here I’d devour her like a piece of dessert.”
I nodded, stunned at how insensitive he was being. Did he honestly not realize how incredibly insulting to me that was? If he had a problem getting it up, I could handle that. I didn’t expect him to perform like a sex machine. That’s what foreplay was for, and tenderness, and seduction. If he gave me a chance, I’d have made him so hard he’d explode inside that stupid little condom. There was no need for him to insult me.
The porn started, and immediately he got harder. I half-watched the movie, which basically consisted of two skinny, perfect teenagers sucking some jock’s cock, and at the same time I kept an eye on Rob’s gradually stiffening cock.
By the time he was erect, I didn’t want to have anything to do with him. If he hadn’t been able to get hard looking at me, then why should he have his orgasm inside me?
As it turned out, I didn’t have to worry. Even now that he was hard, he still couldn’t bring himself to make a move on me. I watched, dumbfounded, as he continued stroking his cock while watching the porn. Not once did he try to get me involved. It was as if I wasn’t even there. He spat on his hand to make it wet, then rubbed it up and down on his shaft, over and over. The bulb at the head of his cock grew pink and swollen and I could tell he was bringing himself close to orgasm. The girls on the television in their fake cheerleader costumes continued to slobber all over the jock’s cock.
I cleared my throat. I’m not kidding. I actually cleared my throat, the way the boss of a company might when his employees were slacking off and hadn’t realized he was present. But it made no difference. Rob just kept pumping his shaft, and at the same moment that the actor on the porno orgasmed all over the faces of the cheerleaders, Rob spilled his seed all over his hand. I watched his white semen spurt up and land on his lap. He was so weak he couldn’t even look at me.
I suppose I should have been grateful. He didn’t deserve to get his jizz anywhere near me. If he didn’t appreciate my attractiveness, then he didn’t deserve to fuck me. I should have felt grateful. But what I actually felt were tears of shame and humiliation forming in my eyes.
*
TRUE TO HIS WORD, Rob had to get up very early the next morning. His alarm went off at five and I pretended to be asleep as he showered and dressed. He left without saying a word, without checking if I was awake, without giving me a kiss.
I supposed that made sense. Why would he have kissed me then when he hadn’t kissed me the night before?
As soon as I heard the door shut behind him, I got dressed, called a cab, and let myself out of his apartment. If I never saw that cold, barren condo again, it would be too soon.
The cab took me to the restaurant and I cried all the way there.
Why was I crying? Because I’d let shit like that happen to me too often in my life. Was I really that worthless? Did good men really not have any interest in making love to me? I’d been cheated on, humiliated, dumped, and now, a new insult had been added to the list. I’d been ignored.
The only man who’d ever acted like he actually enjoyed making love to me was Grant, and there was no chance of that ever happening again. Not that I could see. Grant wanted a one night stand, and he didn’t believe in marriage. Another dead end in the maze of dead ends that was my love life.
Chapter 13
Grant
WHEN I HEARD LACEY’S CAR pull up the driveway in the morning, I could finally breathe easy. I know I shouldn’t have been worried about her, it wasn’t my place, but when she was meeting up with some random guy from the Internet, I always worried. I wasn’t jealous. I w
as used to her staying out all night with guys. I just worried sometimes. Especially when she went all the way into the city and didn’t call anyone.
I should have let her get home in peace but something brought me down the stairs and into the kitchen.
“I just made coffee,” I called when I heard her open the front door. “You want some?”
She seemed a little sheepish, like she usually did when she got home in the morning. It wasn’t even seven-thirty yet. It was obvious she’d spent the night with her date.
“I’ll have a cup,” she said, almost apologetically. “Thank you.”
I looked up at her. She was being surprisingly nice, which was rare since our escapade at the wedding. It made me wonder what had happened. She usually softened up like this when something bad happened. Had that asshole from her date tried something? If he did, I’d kill him. I’d nail his fucking guts to the wall, so help me God.
I took a deep breath and forced myself to calm down. If there was one thing I knew about Lacey, it was that she valued her privacy. In fact, when it came to her romantic life, she was positively secretive. She never told me or the other brothers a thing.
I poured her a cup of coffee and handed it to her. She seemed shaky. Something had definitely happened on her date. I was certain of it.
“How was your date?” I said, trying to sound as natural as possible.
She caught my eye. “I didn’t think you’d be interested in something as mundane as a woman’s personal life. Aren’t you more interested in freedom and the like?”
“Come on, that’s not fair.”
“Isn’t it? Isn’t that what you said?”
“I never said that.”
“You’re the one who’s all about the one night stands. Never let a chick tie you down.”
“Lacey, where’s all this coming from?”
I knew she was still sore about what had happened in the barn. I hadn’t handled that as well as I should have, and I owed her better. I’d never have talked her into that one night stand if I’d thought for a second it would leave her feeling this upset. I’d been selfish. I’d wanted her body. I’d craved her. And I took what I wanted without considering the consequences.
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