So Wicked

by Melissa Marino

  Her head tilted to the side in confusion.

  I’d thrown so much at her today, and it made the guilt I’d reawakened with my recollections that much worse. As I stared at her, it occurred to me for the first time ever that she was the closest thing I had to family. I had disappointed all other family, both blood and otherwise, I’d ever had and left.

  She was my only friend and I’d lied to her.

  “I want to tell you everything,” I said to her.

  Almost everything.

  Chapter Five

  Marshall—

  Anyone who said opening a new bar or any new business was exciting never fucking did it. Sure, it was the culmination of so much work, seeing the vision you had come to fruition. There was a lot of energy associated with that. I guess some could call it exciting, but not me.

  It was stressful as fuck.

  Hiring, training, scheduling, payroll, deliveries, and another million other little things had to come together at once. At once was happening tonight—our grand opening.

  Wells was my eyes and ears and everything else in between when I couldn’t do it. My temper was short, while my energy level was off the charts. I put everything I could into my new employees, who were saved from my short-temperedness, creating a baseline of respect between me, them, and one another. It was as I said to Alexis—we were going to be a family. It was the way Aaron taught me to run WET. Ginger was going in the same way.

  I rolled over in my bed, exhausted, but letting the early morning sun rouse me. I needed a few minutes of quiet, a few moments of no one calling me with questions or without my mind running in a million different directions.

  I was a dude. There was one surefire way to relax and to replace whatever was going on in my mind.

  My hand ran down the front of my boxers, palming my morning wood, as my eyes drifted closed to visions of my fantasy girl moving above me. Her long blond hair cascading across her pale skin, the edges brushing against the top of her breasts.

  I yanked the sides of my boxers down, kicking them off the rest of the way. My hand wrapped around my cock as I began pumping to the rhythm of how she was pushing herself into me. Harder and harder we both went, and when I was about…

  Ring. Ring. Ring.

  Ignore it. Ignore it. Ignore it.

  It could be about work. The opening today.

  What if…

  Shut the hell up, Marshall. Get back to dream girl.

  I tried to continue the fornication fantasy, but…

  “Motherfucker!”

  I yanked my phone from the bedside table, ready to rip whoever was calling a new one. It was Aaron. He maybe was my partner and best friend, but he wasn’t immune to my wrath.

  “Can you wait until a decent hour to call?” I snapped. “Two hours behind, Aaron.”

  “I know you’re not a morning person, but it’s a little after seven there, and you have a bar opening today. There wasn’t a damn way you were still sleeping.”

  Asshole.

  “Fine. I wasn’t sleeping, but I was trying to give myself a few minutes of chill before everything today,” I said.

  He laughed, this mixture of condescending and truthful humor kind of chuckle he was famous for. It irritated the hell out of me.

  “What the fuck is so funny?” I asked.

  “You’re so transparent, Marshall. I obviously interrupted something this morning.”

  “Ahh, I…no, well…wait.”

  “Oh, relax. It’s not the first time I’ve called you and you’ve had company. Frankly, I don’t know why you answer at all if she’s still there. It’s really rude, Marshall.”

  “For fuck’s sake, Aaron. There’s no one here. Just whatever. Why are you calling?”

  “Because we have a bar opening today.”

  Thanks for the reminder, asshole.

  “Yes, we do,” I said as whatever was left of my hard-on deflated. “And it’s going to be fucking flawless.”

  “Well,” he said. “Nothing is ever flawless, especially an opening. I’m bummed I can’t be there, and you know I was planning on it, but I just couldn’t step away from Chicago with the new restaurant I got here opening next week. However, I’m excited for you.”

  “You mean us. You’re excited for us.”

  “Of course, but…” He trailed off before continuing a moment later. “This is all you, Marshall.”

  “Yes, physically. But this wouldn’t have happened without you.”

  “At this very time? Maybe not. But this is all you. Everything that Ginger is and will be is a result of your hard work and inspiration. I’m proud of you.”

  While I understood his sentiment, I knew if he found out about the Lexie-Alexis situation, he’d flip his shit. In a way, I knew she was right. I was lying to him, my best friend, and that had never happened before. In fact, I didn’t take to lying to anyone. There wasn’t a point. They almost always found out, and if they didn’t, then it was me who had to carry around the guilt, just like I was doing right now.

  It made me more nauseous than drinking orange juice after brushing my teeth…with a hangover.

  But I needed to remember why I was doing it.

  I was doing it to save him from revisiting all the shit he had worked so hard to get over.

  “It’s normal to be nervous, you know,” Aaron said. “Any new endeavor I enter into I get anxious.”

  “I’m not…anxious.”

  “Whatever you say, buddy,” he said with his signature chuckle. “Hey. Delilah’s here and wants to say hi.”

  I listened as Aaron called for Delilah, her whisper of an adorable voice becoming louder the closer she got to the phone. “Is it Uncle Marshall?” I heard her ask Aaron.

  “Hi!” she said when she reached the phone. “Have you seen the dolphins yet?”

  “Hey there, Nutter Butter. No, not yet. I’ve been super busy and haven’t had much time to go to the beach. What’s happening with you?”

  “I have some big news,” she said.

  “You do? Well, I’m always up for big news, but tell me this first. Is it really big news? Or just kinda big news?”

  “No. It’s really big news, Uncle Marshall. It’s like bigger than when the Cubs won the World Series, even though that wasn’t exactly news since everyone was watching it happen. Is it only news if only some people know? Because I think what I need to tell you only some people know, but I don’t want to call it news if it isn’t. What’s that called, then?”

  I laughed because oh, could this little girl make me laugh every single time we spoke. “I’m not sure. I think we can still call it news.”

  “Are you paying attention, Uncle Marshall?” she shouted. “I need to know if it is news or not. I don’t want to call it something it’s not. Geez. It’s like when Mom makes me a peanut butter and honey sandwich, but I asked for jelly. It’s the same but different.”

  I’d heard her call Callie “Mom” for a while, but there was something different about it now. For everything that mattered, Callie was her mom, the only mother she’d ever known. Now, after seeing and being around Lexie, her birth mother, so many damn emotions came at me at once.

  “You are totally not listening to me,” she said, breaking me from my thoughts. “Are you watching television instead? If you are, Dad says that’s rude to do.”

  This girl. She was already such a spitfire that when I imagined what she’d be like when she was older, all I could do was smile. She had two uncles, Abel and I, one by blood, one by choice, and there was no way in hell that between us and her dad any dude would think about fucking with her. But it was conversations like this that reminded me she was going to hold her own just fine. She wasn’t going to need any man to kick ass. She was going to do it all on her own.

  “So tell me the big news, Nutter Butter,” I said.

  “I figured out this morning that muffins and cupcakes are the same thing. They are both just cake. Both of them. But people call muffins ‘muffins’ because it’s an exc
use to eat cake for breakfast.”

  It was such an obvious and oddly profound statement for a seven-year-old that there was no bullshit when I responded to her.

  “You know what?” I asked.

  “Huh?”

  “That is totally news to me.”

  “Right?” she exclaimed. “I mean, frosting on a cupcake is what makes cake dessert, I guess, but a muffin is only a cupcake without frosting. I can’t believe I didn’t know this until today!”

  “Which do you like better? Muffins or cupcakes? They’re both cake, I know, but if you had to choose which one?” I asked.

  “Duh, Uncle Marshall. The frosting is what makes them better. Cupcakes obviously! Plus, Mom is teaching me how to make different kinds. She says I’m really good at it. I think I want to be a baker when I grow up.”

  Her last sentence, coming from her tiny voice, hit me in the heart with the force of a semitruck carrying a trailer full of iron. It momentarily took my breath away that she was talking about baking, that it was what she wanted to do when she was older, just like her mom.

  Not her mom Callie.

  The mom she didn’t even know existed.

  “Dad says I have to go,” she said. “Can you send pictures to me when you see the dolphins?”

  “Of course. Love you, Nutter Butter.”

  “Love you, Uncle Marshall,” she said.

  A momentary handoff of the phone happened before Aaron returned.

  “All right. Talk to you tomorrow to see how it all went, but I already know you’re going to kill it tonight. Wish I could be there to see it,” he said.

  If he was only going to be there to see it.

  To see her.

  My mind circled with all that was on the line, all that I could lose.

  I didn’t remember saying good-bye to Aaron. He was gone by the time my mind returned to the present, my hand still holding the phone to my ear.

  * * *

  The warm August wind blew our hair around, or what was left of my hair after I decided to cut it all off earlier that afternoon, as I gave my staff a pep talk on the outside patio of Ginger. They were ready for the opening in that first-day-of-school kind of way. There was no way of knowing how they’d do until they were thrown into it. However, looking at their eager early twentysomething faces, I had faith.

  “Thanks for all the ironed black button-downs and straight ties. You’re all looking very sharp. Please keep it that way,” I said. “I think—”

  I paused because I couldn’t believe I was going to have to go there again with these guys.

  Two of my kids (yes, I had come to refer to them as my kids because they were and because like I’d told Alexis, this was a family—I was the Papa Bear) started making eyes at each other. It was more than lovey-dovey shit or less. Whatever. It was straight-up eye fucking.

  “And to wrap up,” I said, staring at the couple with my own serious, don’t-fuck-me eyes. “Don’t make me go over the whole business about fraternization between you guys. What I don’t know, fine, won’t hurt me. If I hear about it or, God help me, I see it, I won’t be happy.

  “You’re all ready,” I said. “And I have your back no matter what, okay? No one expects perfection tonight, but I know you’re all going to give it all you have.”

  Wells came up behind me and whispered in my ear. “Line is down the block. There’s media here, too.”

  “Showtime, kids,” I said.

  They scattered like I’d called them for recess, and seeing their excitement only fueled my own.

  I worked it as hard as I could, schmoozing with important people, smiling for cameras, and answering the same questions over and over again, all the while trying to keep tabs on what was actually happening and how things were going. I knew Wells had it covered, and if I was ever going to do my job as owner, I’d have to tap the brakes on the micromanaging shit, but tonight was too important to let up yet.

  By the time I was done talking, or rather bullshitting, with the highest of VIPs, I wanted a moment to take it all in. The flushed cheeks of the newly inebriated matched the vivacious conversations they were having. Rivers of my bow-tied kids weaved in and out of the crowd, trays of cocktails held high above their heads without spilling a splash of booze. The walls, the fucking air vibrated, not just from the music, but from the energy of it all happening. It was all coming together as I’d hoped and expected. What I hadn’t anticipated was the rush of pride that came over me, followed by an even stronger wave of…panic.

  It was all here. It was all happening. It was the best feeling I’d ever had.

  I could lose it all if I fucked up.

  Shut the hell up, Marshall. Don’t throw that out there.

  I wasn’t going to put it out in the damn universe either by thinking about it. Everybody knew that shit was like a self-fulfilling prophecy. You think it too much and it happened, especially the negative.

  “Hey, Marshall!” someone called.

  I turned and the dude—whose name I had no fucking recollection of—from a local restaurant was waving me over. As I made my way toward him, I noticed he was eating one of Alexis’s treats.

  I reached my hand out to shake his. “Hey! Thanks for stopping by.”

  “This place looks incredible, and this?” he said, holding out the cupcake, the remnants of the white-colored frosting smeared across the top of his fingers. “Insane.”

  “Alexis does a killer job with those things. We’re a great…match,” I said.

  I stumbled on the last word just as my eyes caught Alexis, standing in front of her dessert table, chatting with people who came by.

  What the hell?

  Gone was her pink uniform and hair up in a messy ponytail. In its place was a skirt suit, and the skirt part? It was short, almost too short, but it was the rest of her that caught me up. Black stockings, a single seam running up the back, wrapped around her long legs. Her strawberry-blond hair was longer than I remembered. It was always up so I never thought much of it. It hung straight and shiny down over her shoulders, cascading across the matching fitted jacket she wore.

  She was smiling.

  It didn’t look forced, either. It was a genuine grin, the corners of her mouth lifted into a soft curve, as her shiny lips from gloss or some shit made her appear…soft.

  Pretty.

  It was all so not Lexie. Yes, she was pretty, stunning even. Her days in the corporate world always had her in similar outfits, with a perfectly made-up face. This was different.

  This was Alexis.

  A few of the puzzle pieces that were Alexis shifted into place. The whole thing was still a goddamn mess, and I didn’t want to think too much about it, but I was starting to see.

  She was different.

  I hadn’t even noticed that cupcake dude left my side until I was bumped from behind by someone. Turning to look, they’d already passed, but by the time my eyes returned to Alexis, I realized she moved fast. Just the amount of time it took me to turn my head and back again was all it took to catch her just as she bent down and squatted, the best she could in a skirt, to retrieve something from under the table. My feet started to move forward to help her, but I stopped.

  Dead. In. My. Tracks.

  As she moved a box out of the way, scooting farther under the table, her skirt shifted. It shifted up. The slit opened slightly across the side of her upper thigh, and what I saw was what made me stop.

  The hint of a garter holding up the lace top of her stocking.

  I couldn’t help but stare. I don’t think any man could not have, but when she stood back up, she caught me fixated on her legs. Her hands pushed the skirt back into place as her cheeks flushed in embarrassment. The innocent blush. The sexy garters and stockings. It was too much for me.

  The energy stirred, the noise level of the crowded bar diminishing to a soft conversation. Something else stirred…in my pants.

  As soon as I felt it, I shook myself out of it. A natural male reaction to a very fucking off-limi
ts female.

  “What’s up?” Wells said, coming up behind me.

  “Nothing. Well, everything, obviously, but at the moment, everything’s in order.”

  “Mm-hmm,” he said with a shit-eating grin.

  “What?” I snapped. “I don’t have time for this.”

  “About half this bar, me included, just caught you sizing Alexis up. And when I mean half this bar, that included the sizer-upper.”

  “I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”

  He laughed loudly, the howl rising above all the noise surrounding us. “The hell I don’t!”

  Shit.

  “And not that it’s a big deal,” he continued. “She looks hot tonight—well, every night and day. Whatever. You know what I mean.”

  Fuck. He went there.

  I was pissed because he was right.

  I was also relieved because it hopefully explained my reaction to her.

  “Please don’t tell Phoebe I said that about Alexis being hot,” he said.

  “Why would Phoebe care? In fact, why would I even tell her anything?”

  “Because I’m trying to get something going with her, and I don’t want her thinking I’m, like, well, you know.”

  I shook my head. “No, I don’t know, and I don’t have time for guessing games tonight.”

  “Well, like you,” he said. “I don’t want her to think I’m checking out every girl in a skirt.”

  “Oh, for shit’s sake. I wasn’t—”

  He made an oinking noise, followed by additional laughter.

  “What does that even mean?” I asked.

  “We’re all pigs. Just remember to keep it under wraps,” he said, adjusting his bow tie and turning.

  I shook my head and glanced around to see where my next move should be. My head lifted toward the mezzanine to check it out, but Wells, once again, wasn’t finished.

  “Oh!” he said, shouting over the music before stepping behind the bar. “Something got delivered for you and it’s in the office.”

  “Okay. I’ll check it out later.”

  A loud crash of breaking glass had me running in the opposite direction to see if everyone was okay and to survey the damage. Luckily it was only a few broken martini glasses after an already-drunk dumbass tried to hug one of my cocktail servers a little too aggressively. That led to me being back in the vortex of the party, pulled in every which direction as I tried to make sure everything else was running smoothly. The line outside was cut by ten p.m. to allow for the ones who had been waiting to get in. While I didn’t like the fact we were turning people away, the thought of crowds meandering the streets of downtown San Luis Obispo and seeing the line was so fucking amazing. There was a buzz already, and from what I was seeing, that was going to continue. I was going to make sure it continued, even if I had to eat, live, and breathe Ginger. This was my baby now, and nothing was going to stop me from watching her grow.