by Julia Kent
What planet are they from?
Shannon carefully sets down the water sprayer and takes a few steps closer to Dad. She reaches out with a feathery touch and rests her hand lightly on his forearm. His suit is wrinkled and his cuff link has popped off that cuff, leaving the shirt a mess.
“James, I can’t imagine the kind of grief you felt that day.” Her eyes are warm with feeling, and I can tell there are unspilled tears pooling in them. “No one here is judging you for what you said that day.”
Dad looks right at Marie and ignores Shannon, though I can tell from the way he holds his shoulders that she’s softening him.
“Marie is,” Dad says.
“I don’t judge you for what you said that day, James. But I do judge you for spending all these years blaming Declan and making him carry that burden. I’ve been incredibly imperfect as a parent—”
Shannon and Jason’s very loud, shared snort makes Marie jump a little.
Dad buries a smile and so does Andrew. I see it all peripherally but I’m so focused on Shannon. She’s like an emotional SWAT team negotiator.
“Anyhow,” Marie says primly, “it’s the years of blame that you have to let go of if you don’t want to lose Declan.”
If you haven’t already, her eyes say as she looks at Dad.
Andrew and I say nothing but I can feel his eyes shift over to me, a quick glance meant to convey solidarity.
Dad sighs and looks at Shannon’s hand, still touching him. “I know what I remember about that day. I remember abject horror. The crush of phone calls from law enforcement and medical authorities no man should ever experience.”
Jason’s eyes flicker with sympathy and what seems to be a quick, sick recognition that what Dad went through could happen to any man with a spouse and family. Any.
Dad looks at me and I force my eyes to join his. “You were a panicked mess, Declan. I’d never seen you like that. Even as a child you were composed. Calm. Cool. Unflappable. Your mother and I used to marvel at your composure, and wonder if you were hatched and sent to us from some otherworldly place.” His face twists into a wistful, morbid grin.
“By the time I found you at the hospital you were wild-eyed and messy, hands covered in dirt and face streaked with tears. You begged me to make them save her. Begged me.” He shakes his head. “I barely recognized you. My wife was dead, one son’s life hung in the balance and you weren’t you. Some unseen hand in the universe had dismantled my life as easily as one sweeps a hand across a messy desk and clears it.”
I close my eyes but get no relief from the memory. The flash of images behind my eyelids is a movie I never want to see again. Dad’s right. I remember the begging. The bargaining. The need to be told that Mom wasn’t dead, but even more, the need to be told it wasn’t my fault.
“And I snapped,” Dad said, looking away. “I’m not proud of it, and while I do doubt that I said exactly what you claim I said, I don’t doubt that the emotion behind my words was pretty much the same.”
I’m holding my breath without realizing it. So is Andrew. We both exhale at the same time.
Dad’s right about one thing: my composure level. A friend in college once told me I’d be the perfect Chief of Staff for a high-level politician because I can stay cool under any situation. And I generally can, because when other people experience stress it doesn’t rub off on me. I just watch it unfold and experience it from a distance.
That day when Mom died, though, it was like God himself grabbed a hammer and shattered the snow globe I’d been living in for all my life.
Somehow, I managed to re-instate the composure, but it came at a price. A really big one, involving my dad. He had to be walled off. Contained. Viewed as a benign threat (I know that’s a contradiction, but it works). I’d be friendly. Prove myself to him. Gain his admiration.
But I’d never trust him again.
All eyes are suddenly on me, like I’m expected to say or do something.
No. Dad has to take the first step. Not me.
We wait. And wait. And wait... Shannon gives Dad’s arm a light pat and then steps back, embracing me from the side. Her small act of affection conveys so much more to everyone in the room. It’s all about solidarity. Validity.
Andrew takes a few steps closer to me, too.
Dad notices it, and he looks at me and opens his mouth to say something at the exact moment someone knocks on his office door.
“Come in,” he barks, blowing out a held breath that tells me how tense he really is.
It’s Becky. “Mr. McCormick, the FTC officials are here.”
Andrew grimaces, and he and Dad share a look. “I forgot today’s the day,” Andrew says, giving me an apologetic look. “Routine business, but we can’t delay.”
Marie edges toward me and puts a steady hand on my shoulder, pulling up on tiptoes to kiss my cheek. “Come over for dinner tonight, you two.” She turns back to Dad, who is white-knuckling the entire situation from his desk. “You’re invited, too.” She gives him a smile without teeth and walks over to Jason, her hand linking through his suit-covered elbow.
“You know, I’d like to take you up on that invitation,” Dad says while looking down at the papers on his desk, searching for something. He picks up a metal object and fiddles with his wrist, inserting the cuff link expertly. His demeanor has changed. Whatever chance I had at openness or basic emotional recognition is gone.
Thanks, FTC.
“I, for one, would like to start over,” Dad adds. He crosses the room and walks right up to Jason, who—to his credit—stands his ground. “I don’t believe we’ve been properly introduced,” Dad says, offering a hand. “We’ll be sharing grandchildren someday, so the polite thing to do here seems to be a quick handshake and a memory wipe as we pretend none of this ever happened.”
I give Dad a nasty look and he instantly realizes his mistake. Marie’s eyes light up at his words. Shannon’s standing over by the bookcase nervously spraying the same spider plant over and over.
“I hope you’ll forgive me,” he says to Shannon’s parents. I don’t think I’ve ever heard him say those words. It’s good to know he can say them.
“Deal,” Jason says with relief, shaking back. He grabs Marie’s forearm and pulls her out of the office.
“Can we expect you for dinner tonight, James?” she calls back. As Shannon and I walk through the doorway, a horrified Becky tracks every movement Marie makes.
“That depends on the FTC, Marie,” Dad says, which I know is a firm no. Dad was being polite earlier. There’s no way he’s coming over to the Jacobys’ house, and not just because he’s busy.
Dad can’t handle real people. One glance at Becky’s rack confirms that. Two kickballs suspended under a sheet of Jello shots, covered in a dress.
As I turn to look back, my mind half focused on being a shepherd and making sure the flock is safe and away from the wolf, Dad’s eye catches mine. He looks like he has something to say, but then shakes his head with two quick snaps, as if driving the thought out.
Right.
It’s probably for the best.
CHAPTER TEN
“I cannot believe I sprayed the James McCormick in the face with a spray bottle like a dog,” Shannon says, a look of frozen horror on her face. We have said our good-byes to a very embarrassed Marie and Jason and I’ve brought her into my office to cool down.
“I can,” I say. “You took on Dad. One of the richest men in the U.S. Most powerful, too. He could ruin you, and you did the exact right thing. He and Jason were being ridiculous and you—” I gasp, trying not to laugh. Controlling my ab muscles is impossible, though, and Shannon’s looking at me with great annoyance tinged with fear.
“He and my dad were just being so stupid! Wrestling on the ground like street punks. They’re in their fifties! They should know better! One of them could break a hip!”
“I don’t think age automatically means you’re more mature, Shannon,” I answer. “In fact, I’m damn sure o
f it.”
“I still can’t believe I did that.”
I smile and hold her, hands sinking into her long, brown hair, which fell out of the clip she wore to work today. “That’s my Shannon. You think fast and untangle messy situations.” Shannon’s completely focused on using the spray bottle on Dad, as if that were the boldest thing she did or said just now. She has no idea that for Dad, it was the least of it. Water evaporates, but emotional truth leaves a mark.
Taking on his perspective of the day mom died was like dropping a nuclear bomb on Dad’s internal structure of how the world works. Shannon just told him that if he’s the emperor, he’s wearing no clothes and might want to check the bottom of his foot for a stray piece of toilet paper.
As her eight-year-old nephew Jeffrey would say, Shannon totally pwned Dad.
“This was more than that! This took a kind of courage I don’t normally have, to take on your dad like that—” Her hushed tone tells me she’s on the verge of tears.
“And that’s why I—” want to marry you. The words are on the tip of my tongue and I catch them before I blurt them out. A woman who can boldly take on her own father and my father like that will be the perfect life companion for the next six or seven decades.
She pulls back and looks up at me with an expectant look. “What? Why you....what?”
“Love you, Shannon.” And soon, she’ll know just how much.
Her eyes soften and she reaches up to touch my lips. “I love you, too.” She shakes her head slowly. “I am so fired.”
I frown. “No. The opposite. Men like Dad respond to people who stand up to him when he’s wrong. After he’s cooled down he’ll realize you did him a favor.”
“A favor?”
“He’ll never admit it, of course. And he might give you a hard time here and there for the next week. If you have a meeting with him he’ll be extra tough on you. Gruff. Might try to humiliate you, but only once.” I think it through for a second. “The audience was fairly small and the stakes were, too. Dad will never forget that you sprayed him like that, but you do realize that because Becky witnessed it, word’s going to spread.”
“Noooo.”
“You’re about to get a nickname.”
“Like what?”
“The Jamie Whisperer.”
Her face breaks into four quadrants. One part is trying to laugh. A second is trying not to laugh. A third looks like it wants to scream.
And a fourth is just too amazingly beautiful not to kiss.
So I do.
Her body yields under my touch, the thick fabric of her business suit so coarse, covering the lovely soft lines of her curves. The breathy sounds she makes as we kiss transport me. My mind is too full of other people. They take up too much space in my head.
My hands, however, can never be too full of Shannon.
I lift her in my arms and walk a few feet to my desk, where I set her on the edge, her lovely ass on the glass top, my knee pushing hers apart as I grasp her tight, hand sliding under her suit jacket to find her silk shirt. Within seconds I’m touching her hot skin and I groan.
“Dec, we talked about this. We’re at work, and I—”
My other hand slips between her legs and slides up her inner thigh.
“No, we can’t!” she peeps, but she’s putting up a feeble protest as her own fingers brush with intent against my fly.
Yes, we can! I think, but now’s not the time for campaign slogans. Especially from people I didn’t vote for.
I stop, halting at the top of the thigh-high nylon she’s wearing, fingers hooked in and ready to pull.
“No?” She can stop me any time. I hold my breath and wait. Patience is a virtue. It might not be my virtue, but I can use it to meet my whim when needed.
Her eyes lock on mine. Her hair is mussed and there’s this wild-eyed look about her. If she needs permission from me, I’m already there. One word and I’m in her, finding home. The day has left us both splintered and whirling, and I know that we can get ourselves back to center by centering ourselves.
One thrust, one kiss at a time.
“No, we can’t,” she says again.
And then: “—with an unlocked door.”
I break the sound barrier as I cross the room, lock the door, and return to her. She’s pulled herself up on my desk and her legs are spread open, inviting me.
She’s not wearing any panties. This is becoming a meme, and one I quite enjoy.
Our mouths are hungry, taking and giving, her hands frantic on my belt and fly. Nimble fingers unclothe me just enough. She went on the pill a few months ago so condoms are like the buggy whip. An artifact of a bygone time.
(Yet the whip has a practical use in the bedroom, too, sometimes...).
I look behind her. My desk is littered with business documents and scribbled notes that used to be important but are now impediments. Obstacles preventing me from sinking into her and burying myself in her warmth, my nose in her hair, my tongue loving her teeth.
With one grand sweep I reach behind her and fling everything off the desk.
“Your laptop!” she cries out as the thin, silver computer bounces onto the carpet and makes a distinct beeping sound, like R2D2 protesting being roughed up.
“Don’t care,” I say, hands pulling off her suit jacket, roaming over her lush breasts. “I can replace it. What I can’t do is wait one second longer for this.” And with that, she opens herself to me, and the surge of power that has hummed through me finally unleashes. I’m home, warm and fevered, her mouth, her core all mine.
Mine.
She’s so damn exquisite under me, the glass-topped oak desk better than any bed, bathtub, kitchen counter, car, limo, helicopter, lighthouse, alleyway behind a piano bar, drive-in, er...place...we’ve ever made love. The flush in her cheeks, the way her eyes dance under her closed eyelids, the thin vein that stretches just past the corner of her eye, and the way she moans my name are all its own reward.
Getting to make love on top of all that is like being handed the keys to the kingdom.
Her hands pull at my shirt and I feel a button pop. Then another. A third as I thrust into her, the power surge morphing into a glow that makes me love her so hard I think my heart is about to thrust inside her, too. Shannon rips my shirt open as her back arches up, her little fingers digging into my chest as she clenches in every way you can imagine.
And that’s all I need.
“Look at that city, Shannon. That city is yours,” I murmur in her ear, one hand on her jaw, gently turning her head toward the expanse of glass to our side. “Ours. We’ll make our mark in the world together.”
We’re doing incredible deeds right now.
Her eyes stay focused on my face, mouth open, tongue caught against her top teeth. “You’re the best view I could ever want,” she says. “And the only mark I want to make with you is this.” Her lips bruise mine as she kisses me, hard, her hands grabbing my back with a frenzy that makes me feel as craved as any man has a right to expect.
Out of the corner of my eye the tops of buildings sprawl in an endless series of brick and steel, pouring out into the back bay like sand on a beach. Enormous and imposing and yet, in the span of centuries and millennia, just grains of sand.
Eternity makes everything insignificant. Even buildings and empires.
And that is why love is so important.
“You are so perfect,” I groan as we crest, my hands and mouth unable to touch her enough, her fingers embedding marks that will remain for three days and leave me with a secret smile every time I see them.
As we climb to heaven and then fall, gently, floating back to earth, the desk becomes an unbearably uncomfortable slab of glass and wood. I pull back to standing, eyes eating up Shannon’s disheveled form. We look like something out of a cheesy amateur porno film.
I’m good with that.
Her eyes widen and she looks out the window, then at the door, her bra loose around her breasts, shirt pulled up, skirt bun
ched around her hips.
“I’m a mess!” she groans, sitting up.
I bend down and kiss her, that succulent mouth like sweet honey poured against my lips.
“You’re hot.”
“I’m sleeping with my boss at the office!”
“It’s a condition of your employment.”
She pushes me off her and stands, pulling her skirt down and straightening her shirt. “We just broke about nine Human Resources rules in nine minutes.”
“Let’s go for ten next time.”
“There won’t be a next time,” she protests, reaching back to hook her bra and readjust her breasts. “It’s bad enough everyone thinks I only got a job here because I’m screwing my boss, but to actually be screwing my boss at work is just a little too...” She makes a shivering movement that sets the tops of her breasts jiggling.
I start drooling.
Between the fight our fathers just had, Marie’s inappropriate dressing down of my dad, Shannon spraying my father and the revelation that Dad is fucking his nineteen-year-old admin, I’d say having a quickie on my desktop is the highlight of the day.
Week.
Month.
Okay...week.
And now she’s talking about never doing this again? C’mon. You don’t give a guy a taste of the forbidden and expect him to forget it.
She scooches off the desk and looks presentable in seconds. The kiss she plants on my jaw is too chaste. Too perfunctory.
Too little.
As she turns to walk out of the room I grab her. She spins and falls against me, sighing deeply. I know it’s not that she has any less desire—she’s just freaking out on the inside, overwhelmed by too much input.
Same here, except I deal with these emotions by pounding them out.
Shannon eats ice cream.
I like my coping mechanism better.
“Dec, I seriously have to go.”
I kiss her.
“Mmmm, mmmph serious!” she says.
I kiss her again.
She steps on my foot. Ooooo, pain. I like pain.
