This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
First edition: October 2016
Cover by Scott M. Leonard
Dedication
“Be careful who you call your friends. I’d rather have four quarters than one hundred pennies.”
― Al Capone
Al Capone is probably not the first person to come to mind when you think of quotations about friendship, but here we are . . .
DEDICATED TO MY FOUR QUARTERS
(in alphabetical order)
Ashley, Christina, Lo-arna, Vania: for all the ways you’ve helped me—in real life, with my writing, and with this book especially—for all the laughs we’ve shared, for staying at my side through my lowest lows and many woes, for putting up with my general craziness. In other words, for being Level 10 Friends.
AND TO MY LOVING HUSBAND
Scott: for the same reasons as above . . . and many more.
Dedication
Contents
Chapter 1: Welcome back!
Chapter 2: The Qualifying Lay
Chapter 3: The Morning After
Chapter 4: Confrontations Suck Ass
Chapter 5: In Which Not Even The Author Knows What’s True
The End. Or is it?
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Chapter 1: Welcome back!
hea Josse plopped down in front of her laptop while Skype sang her the song of its people. She clicked on the video call icon and Adam L’amoreaux’s smiling face greeted her.
“Hey,” she said, “how’s the New Year’s resolution coming along?”
He replied, “Proud to say I already broke it.”
“Two days in? I’m impressed.”
“Well I was striving to break last year’s record of a week.” Adam laughed. “Anyway, it’s foggy and stupidly humid out so I’ve resorted to painting in my kitchen. Not the worst thing ever, I know, but . . .” The view in his chat window changed as he repositioned his laptop to show what was going on outside his apartment.
Orange County was visibly dreary even over the Skype connection.
He then shifted his laptop again to reveal the canvas on which he’d painted a muted interpretation of the Pacific Ocean—with the current weather used as depressing inspiration. With one last move, the camera was back on Adam. He pouted. “Miss you.”
“Last night’s date didn’t go well?” Rhea assumed, resting her elbows on her desk.
“She was pretty,” replied Adam. “And nice. Majoring in physics at UCI.”
“Oh.” The pang of jealousy in Rhea’s gut was unwelcome and she knew she didn’t hide her feelings well by how his pout morphed into a frown.
Why did he always have to date pretty women? Why couldn’t he pick someone who wasn’t a threat to her? Regardless of his choice in partners, this arrangement had been mutually agreed upon and she wasn’t ready to renege five months in—not if he wasn’t.
In seven months, however? In seven months all bets were off.
“Yeah, she was great. But . . . she wasn’t you.”
Rhea forced her voice down an octave into the so-called ‘cool’ range. “Did you sleep with her?”
“She sure wanted to. I took a pass. Told her I had an early . . . art . . . exhibit.”
She cocked her head and folded her arms across her chest. “That’s weak.”
He sighed. “I know. I’m not proud but I’d had a couple beers and wasn’t thinking clearly.”
“Oh come on, that’s the ideal time to sleep with someone. I told you, it’s okay. It’s not as if we’re on a break or doing the long-distance relationship thing. We’re just two friends. Besties. Who . . . you know . . . Did it when we first met.” They’d done it a lot, as memory served.
“I will sleep with someone else,” swore Adam, “but not until you do it, first.”
“This whole thing isn’t gonna work if neither of us is even trying to get laid.”
“Hey—” He stuck out his tongue at her. “I’m trying. I’m not convinced you are.”
Rhea took a deep breath. Two thousand miles away and still he could call her on her bullshit. Not preferring to discuss it, she opted to change the subject to something else he probably wouldn’t be thrilled to hear: “So . . . You’ll never guess who friended me on Facebook yesterday.”
“I haven’t checked it since Monday. Who?”
“Brianna Huntington.”
Adam was static so long Rhea wondered if Skype froze as it was wont to do from time to time, particularly during bad weather which it appeared Southern California was experiencing. It was what they considered bad, anyway. A few months living where bad weather meant more than overcast skies and intermittent spitting drizzle and Rhea had the wisdom to see how spoiled Southern Californians were.
“. . . Adam?”
“Is she your high school crush?”
Rhea nodded. In case her side of the connection was the one failing, she also said, “Yeah. I think she added a bunch of us from band. I thought she sent me a request as one of the bunch or maybe by accident or whatever, until she sent me a DM saying she wanted to reconnect. Which is funny, you know, because to reconnect, you have to have ever been connected to begin with.”
“Yeah . . .” said Adam.
“Okay,” she huffed. “What.”
Adam glanced off to the left, where Rhea knew his kitchen window was located. “I just . . .” He exhaled. “I don’t want you getting hurt. Remember, I read your blog. I know what she did to you.”
“To be fair, it’s what I did to myself. And anyway, things are different now. I’m . . . secure in who I am. And . . . I have the best friend a girl could ask for.” She nodded at the camera in her laptop. “I won’t let her hurt me.”
Adam looked back at his camera. “Promise?”
Rhea cleared her throat. “Turns out, she . . . lives in Chicago now.”
He frowned. “Small world.”
“We actually spent most of yesterday chatting on Messenger.”
Still, Adam was stoic. Or maybe Skype froze for real that time.
Rhea’s phone buzzed with a notification from Messenger and she discreetly swiped the screen on to check it.
Hey Rhea, Brianna had sent. Could use a friend in the area. U available to get drinks tonite?
“Well I’m happy as long as you are,” said Adam.
“Oh I’m very happy. I thought it’d be nice to have a friend in the area. But you know what? Nothing makes me happier than knowing I’ll see you again in six months or so.” Rhea smiled, casually closing the Messenger app on her phone without responding to Brianna.
“Um . . . about that.”
Her smile faded, hands dropping to her lap. “What about it?”
He took stock of his surroundings.
“Adam.” she prompted.
“. . . Gary says nothing’s moved in an age.”
Her head dropped, too. “Oh.” She didn’t know for what to feel worse: that no one was buying his art or the lack of sales would impede his next visit.
“This happens sometimes,” Adam assured her. “I’m not too worried. I’ve been watching videos of these amazing chalk artists on YouTube . . . thinking of branching out into other mediums . . . Sometimes that gets stuff going, you know? Oh and Gary suggested I paint a few pieces for an upcoming charity auction.”
“Have . . . you already got the materials for it?”
He nodded. “He wants to pay my
way to Catalina, thinks I’ll do well with that for inspiration.”
Rhea forced a smile. She would have loved taking the trip with him. “I’ll bet he’s right though. You should take him up on the offer.”
“I will. Thanks for your encouragement.” Adam smiled at her, though his looked far less forced than hers.
“Maybe things will turn around before next July.”
Adam’s smile turned impish.
“What’s that smile for?”
“I was thinking about what I’ll do to you when we do see each other again.”
Rhea’s eyebrows jumped. “Oh? You sound like you had something in mind.”
“Well . . . The titty-fucking thing you keep describing to me in explicit detail sure as hell sounds fun.”
She smirked; perusing Cosmopolitan’s website and Tumblr’s sex blogs was paying off at long last. “Getting a pearl necklace from you is one of my sex goals.”
“Oh, Rhea,” he sighed. “I dreamt of you last night.”
“It took you this damn long to tell me? That’s the kind of thing you open conversations with.”
“Duly noted.” Adam laughed, sobering quickly. “I’d gotten off the train and you were standing there in this . . . skimpy yellow dress with these thin strappy things which tied in a little bow on each shoulder. You were . . . it was . . .” He sighed. “It was sexy as hell.”
She made mental note to find such a dress before he returned to Illinois. “Then what happened?”
“We went back to your car in the parking structure. No one else was around; we didn’t question it. I was ready to go to your place and fool around in the shower, you know, like we did that one time—but without the incident which almost sent you to the ER.”
“Yeah . . .” She bit her lip. “That would’ve been a hell of a thing to explain if you hadn’t caught me. On an unrelated note, I’ve been working on my flexibility to keep it from almost happening again.”
Adam’s eyes went wide, his face alight. “A-ny-way . . . you told me you couldn’t wait. And by then I really couldn’t either. So much as seeing your smile made me rock hard. I got in the passenger side, you got in behind the wheel and started massaging me through my shorts.”
Rhea cocked her head with a guilty little smile. “Sounds like something I’d do.”
“You climbed to my side, flashed me in the process. You had this white G-string that was lacy on top and had pearls between your cheeks and up your slit. So innocent but so naughty at the same time. I reached around to caress you with those pearls while you gave me a lap dance. It was driving you crazy . . . Which drove me crazy.
“I don’t know how you got me out of my pants—dream logic I guess, I won’t question it—but the next thing I knew, I was inside you right there in the passenger seat of your car. And the parking structure which was previously empty? It wasn’t anymore and people were watching but neither of us cared—”
“How much do you miss me?” Rhea panted.
He moaned, “So much I’ve gotta fight the urge to get train tickets more and more every day. God, do you know what I’d do to you if we were together?”
“The same thing I’m doing to me right now?” Her hand was down her lounge pants, circling her wet pussy and clit.
“Yeah that’s right,” Adam’s voice cracked.
There was nothing more in the world than his voice and the sizzling of her mounting climax.
“Come, gorgeous lady . . .”
“Oh, God, ohhh—”
Rhea’s phone started ringing.
“Ohh—son of a bitch!” Her orgasm ran into hiding at the distraction. “I was almost there.”
He sounded sheepish: “I came.”
She glanced at her phone to see who had the audacity to interrupt her jilling off. “Shit. It’s the chiropractor. I’d better answer it.”
“Miss you, love you, text later. Bye, sexy.”
“Love you too. Bye.”
“Hello?” Rhea answered her phone with her left hand as Adam’s video feed blinked from the computer screen.
“Hi, Rhea? It’s Lee-Ann.”
Calls from the office manager seldom worked in her favor—there was a certain aptness that it was she who’d interrupted Rhea’s masturbating. She put on a smile, however, hoping it masked her annoyance over the phone. “Hey Lee-Ann, what’s up?”
“Sheldon had a family emergency and needed to reschedule with someone. He’ll need coverage for Saturday night in exchange for a shift tonight.”
There was no apparent reason for Rhea to say no. She had nobody to hang out with in Aurora. No dates for the foreseeable future. And Saturday night patients were always so grateful to be seen that they were more pleasant than weekday patients, even those in significant pain. Especially those in significant pain. “I can trade.”
Rhea hoisted herself from her chair and retreated into her bedroom well aware of the squishiness of her underwear. She scratched out her shift information on the desk calendar. “When do you need me?”
“Saturday nine to six.”
“Okay. I’ll be there.” Rhea jotted down the times.
“Thanks so much. Your flexibility is duly noted. Doctor Kasick doesn’t forget stuff like this and your probation period’s ending soon.”
She smiled crookedly at her calendar. “Good to hear.”
“Enjoy your evening off, Rhea.”
“Thanks, Lee-Ann, you too. Bye.”
Lee-Ann ended the call and Rhea exhaled, looking at her phone’s home screen. She opened Brianna’s conversation in Messenger and typed, Can you meet me at Hoppy Endings in Lombard? Don’t know how far that is from you.
She then sent a text to Adam. I miss you. 7 months will go by in a wink. Keep busy w Gary & Catalina & chalk. When you get here? All the titty fucking you can handle.
He responded: I love you. You’re the best. Followed immediately by another text: Please get plowed by some guy in the meantime. Have fun. Sow oats you never got the chance to.
Rhea sighed, closing his text conversation.
A message from Brianna came in. I can be there by 7. That work for u?
Yep, Rhea typed. See you there.
Rhea paced out in front of a brick building with floor-to-ceiling windows, its patio filled with vacant round tables covered in a thin layer of snow and illuminated only by indoor lights. A metal fence with elaborate scroll-work separated the patio from the sidewalk and it was lined with closed umbrellas, each one capped with a fine dusting of white powder.
She pulled her hands from her parka pockets long enough to check her phone—it was ten minutes until seven and the butterflies in her stomach called in reinforcements, and they, reinforcements of their own.
What the hell am I going to talk about with the prom queen?
Okay, so she wasn’t the prom queen but she may as well have been.
She took a single step toward her car and stopped herself. How many times had she almost bailed on something she was ultimately grateful for seeing through?
Adam.
The indoor skydiving guy. What was his name again? Ricky? Jonas? It had been a fun evening even though it didn’t lead to sex.
Maybe this will be a fun evening, too.
Of course it’ll be. Because fun is defined as meeting with the girl who deliberately shut me out of her cliques six years ago. The same girl I was more attracted to than the man I married. The girl I could obviously never have for any number of reasons. Yeah. Sounds fun.
Okay. Okay! This was a supremely dumb idea but maybe it’ll be good for me. I can forgive her for being such a raging bitch when we were younger and then go home feeling like the better person for it. If, of course, she didn’t make plans to purposefully stand me up because she hasn’t fucked me over emotionally quite enough for one life—
“Rhea? Oh my Lord, is that you?”
Rhea’s eyes lifted from the concrete to see Brianna approaching a few yards away.
Brianna was gorgeous as ever; her Facebook se
lfies were doing her no favors. Her blonde hair was tucked into a sloppy ponytail, blue strands popping out against the field of silken gold. She wore a pair of fluffy white earmuffs; the light bouncing off them from inside the restaurant gave her the appearance of having a faint halo. Her cognac brown eyes were rimmed with maroon dust and fringed with what had to be falsies.
Rhea remembered the holier-than-thou sway in Brianna’s strut even the floor-length coat she wore couldn’t hide.
Regardless of the bitter cold, she dressed as though she were a damned goddess, as if she expected Mother Nature to kowtow to her sense of fashion.
Long story short: The lousy bitch was luscious.
“Yeah, it’s me,” Rhea grumbled, retreating into her thick cowl, acutely aware of the tiny blemish she had in front of her right earlobe. It was in reality a pinprick of red; in her mind’s eye it was the Mount Everest of zits and must have been all Brianna saw when she looked at her. “Hi.” Rhea swallowed. “Brianna.”
The rhythmic clicking of Brianna’s stiletto boots against the pavement stopped. Rhea wondered how she walked with them, especially on the slippery sidewalk. “Bri. It’s Bri.”
Rhea cleared her throat and grumbled, “‘K. Bri.” To use Brianna’s nickname felt uncomfortable, bordering on painful, the way it felt to rest her bare back against a cold bathtub filled with hot water. Or . . . Maybe I don’t use her name at all. Problem solved.
“You . . . look . . . Unrecognizable,” said Brianna. “Amazing. Actually.”
“Thanks. I guess?” Rhea laughed stiffly.
“No, seriously. I love your hair. Wish I could pull off a cute little cut like that.” Brianna opened her arms for a hug and Rhea in turn crossed hers over her chest, rubbing her biceps brusquely through the parka as she took a giant step backward. Her foot slid on a tiny patch of ice and she recovered quickly enough Brianna didn’t appear to notice.
“We should probably get inside,” said Rhea, gesturing with a stiff jerk toward the building. “It’s frostbite weather.”
Smiles By Trials (Rays of Sunshine Book 2) Page 1
