Sold Short (Sidelined Book 3)

by Ainslie Paton

  And he didn’t say please.

  That was rude. And oh God. Hot.

  She stood there watching him make for the stairs, until Inez said, “It’s no problem, Sarina,” and she had no reason to keep standing there.

  She caught up to him on the landing between the first and second floors. “What is your problem?” He was a step higher and she had to look up at him.

  “This,” he said, taking a step down almost on top of her, yanking her body against his and kissing her with the kind of command that loosened her knees. She flung a hand out to grab the stair rail but he wasn’t letting go and she wasn’t falling anywhere except deeper into the kiss and the false sense of security.

  Public stairwell.

  She pushed him, “Not here.” He let go and followed her up the stairs, another flight and they hit the second floor almost at a run. People were going to think the place was on fire.

  She grabbed the handle on the storeroom door, and Dev pushed it open. They virtually tripped over each other getting inside. “Haven’t been in here for a long time,” he said.

  Neither had she. It wasn’t air-conditioned and smelled like the plastic sheeting marketing used for tech show banners. It was full of odds and ends, and lots of furniture Reid had broken. “Must get this cleaned out.”

  Dev closed the door and they stared at each other, think music done with. She still wanted to hit him, she also wanted to push him against a wall and make out like they weren’t the leaders of a high profile tech company and outside the door were hundreds of employees who looked to them for a good example.

  Last time they goofed off, there were pencils in the roof tiles across several floors of the building. Whatever happened now wasn’t going to win either of them employer of the year and might necessitate a closer look at their sexual harassment policy.

  And maybe open that day care.

  Sound the alarm.

  They both moved, restricted in the terrain. There wasn’t a wall that didn’t have something else leaning on it, broken ping-pong table, basketball hoop with no hoop, old filing cabinet, but there was the back of the door. She pushed, Dev yielded and his back hit with a thud they’d have heard in the cube farm outside.

  Then she lost her mind because this once skinny, eager to please boy knew how to make her forget about maybe being pregnant, standing in a lousy, dusty, harshly lit room of junk, and breaking every ethical work code she could think of.

  He made her forget how to breathe without it being through his skin, to feel without the outline of him under her hands, to think about anything but how her skirt was in the goddamn way.

  By cupping her face in his hands, he flicked an autopilot switch deep in her body that activated her inner erotic and exploded her temperature control. Everything went hot and liquid and deliciously hazy. Clothing untucked, desire unfurled, and Dev’s hand found a way under her skirt to wrap around her thigh and bring her closer, notch them together through layers of fabric that shouldn’t be there.

  With her eyes shut she saw tangled sheets and naked limbs. She heard their soft pleasured moans and sighs and ached for more. She smelled the warmth of his skin and the fragrance of his soap, not the musty room, and they kissed like the war was over and rations had been lifted, greedy and gorging and half sick with tension and strain.

  “I want you,” he said, with a slide of lips down her neck across her collarbone. He rolled her nipple, pushed up above her bra between his fingers when he said, “Please.”

  It was the please that undid her.

  “No.” This was too much, too fast, too late. Lust-fueled regret they’d both come to wish they’d avoided. “There’s no going back.”

  He dropped his forehead to her shoulder, closed his hand over her breast. “I got schooled by a bunch of twenty-one year olds yesterday. This means something, it’s not mindless.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Why? You want this as much as I do.”

  “What would it mean, Dev?” He straightened up, tidied her hair, but he didn’t respond. “Friends with benefits and another man’s baby. Is that what you want?”

  She felt his body recoil, even as he tried to stop it, even as he struggled to find the words to keep them half-dressed and wrapped in each other. It was all too real and too late and too like nothing Dev would have chosen for himself, and for that alone she couldn’t choose it for herself either.

  “Don’t shut me out,” he said, letting her step away and right her clothing.

  “We will always be friends, but this,” she buttoned his shirt up, “this was never us and it can’t be now and if we do it, there’s no going back to what we had.”

  “You didn’t give me a chance.”

  “Every day since tripping over me, Dev.”

  He closed his eyes, lashes trembling. “That’s not fair. Not once did you ask for more.”

  “Not once did you show me you weren’t looking for more with someone else. When you started up with Shush, I was convinced you’d found what you wanted.”

  Hands to his head in exasperation he said, “Why did you think that?”

  Because Shush was a fit with Dev. The same cultural background, the same family situation. They shared heritage and interests. Because of what she’d seen in the café. Because if he hadn’t told Shush about the potential baby then Shush had been sizing her up as opposition. “Because you didn’t talk about Shush, and you’ve told me about every date you’ve ever had.”

  “The fact I keep telling you Shush and I are over, never should’ve started, means nothing to you, and this fuck-hot thing we started isn’t going to happen. You’ll walk away from this?” He was angry now, tucking his shirt in his pants with rough thrusts.

  “How would we be after we did this? How would we be friends, work together? It would all change.”

  He swept a hand through his hair to settle it. “We can barely be normal with each other now.”

  “And if I’m pregnant?” It would be so much more difficult, and he had Ana to worry about. He’d admitted it was too much to handle at once.

  “Eighty percent chance you’re not,” he snapped out.

  She’d lived with the percentages. Gone to sleep at night with the weight of them, woken with an excitement hard to contain. She’d cruised baby-ware websites and new mother blogs, bought what to expect books and a paint chart, and looked at her work clothing, wondering what would still fit and for how long. And of course the Focus really did have to go. She’d stopped herself from thinking about names and putting PayPal to work, because of the percentages, but there was no mistaking this part of her life had begun and whether she was pregnant now or next time or the time after that, her making a baby project was on track to deliver.

  “The thing that hurts me most about us right now is that you’re rooting for the eighty percent. For me not to get what I want.”

  “Because I want—”

  “Something better for me than I chose for myself. Your double standards are showing, Dev.”

  He swore. He would leave in a moment and she would wait until it didn’t look like they’d been in here doing something very much not suitable for work and go back to her desk to find her burrito was soggy and her one precious shot of caffeine for the day was cold.

  He turned his back and put his hand on the door handle. “We’re not done with this discussion. I’ll come to you tonight.”

  “I’m not going to be home till late.” That sounded feeble to both of them. “Dinner with my family.”

  “I have a standing invitation,” he said. “What time?”

  She stared at his back. It was difficult not to touch him. She’d had her hands under his shirt, she’d felt the channel of his spine and the smooth wide flare of his ribs. She had her family and she didn’t need his support.

  “Seven.”

  That was a mistake. She should uninvite him, but she still wanted to hit him, hug him, be with him.

  He opened the door the barest slice and slipped ou
t, and she stood among the broken, discarded parts of the business no one needed and wondered how she’d manage to need Dev less.

  She got to her parents’ early, only to find no one home. It was Brian who arrived first and let her in. He was cooking tonight, BBQ. Ro arrived next and they sat in the yard watching Brian clean the grill.

  “You’re not fat,” Ro said.

  “Funny.”

  “Go pee and get it over with.”

  It was tempting. “This is going to be a circus, isn’t it? What was I thinking?”

  “Not one of your better ideas.”

  “Do you mean wanting a baby or the pee?”

  Ro went to the kitchen and got beer. Sarina waved it away, though she’d need to drink something if she was going to pee on command.

  “You were always going to breed. Just as well,” Ro gestured with her bottle to the house, “they’ll go ape over grandkids.”

  “I’m not doing it for them.”

  “I know. You’ve always done for you. Not a surprise when I think about it.”

  “You still think I’m ruining my life.”

  “I so do. Puke, poop, slobber, that noise they make constantly. The way they cramp your style with their stumpy little fingers and overall passive-aggressive gumminess.” Sarina laughed because Ro shuddered and it wasn’t a put-on. “Whatever you birth is going to throw food, lie, cheat, mess, wreck your things, give you stretch marks, make you think you have to have mom hair, engage in risky behavior, and Stockholm syndrome your whole emotional system, so that you are nothing but a sad, pale ghost of your former kickass self, who wears clothing without a waistband and has no conversation.”

  “Why don’t you tell her what you really feel, Ro?” said Brian.

  Ro acknowledged him with a tilt of her bottle toward the BBQ pit. “Did I mention the poop?”

  Sarina said, “All I heard was you think I’m kickass.”

  “And you’ll be a kickass mom.” That was their own kickass mom stepping out on the patio. “Have you peed yet?”

  “No, I thought I’d wait till there was maximum attention on my urine, so we can all be disappointed together.”

  “Good idea,” said Mom. “Your dad is late as usual, but he likes a bit of drama.”

  “I invited Dev.” He’d invited himself, maybe he wouldn’t show.

  “We have plenty,” said Brian.

  They all heard the front door bang. That’d be Dad. He stepped into the yard with Dev. “Found this hero of the tech industry lurking in the drive. Have you peed?”

  “No.” She threw her hands up and caught Dev’s eye. Even looking at him felt different now, lit a low flame in her chest.

  “One attempt, you can’t possibly be pregnant, darling,” said Mom. “Even with the right temperature and all of the timing perfect, it’s not a sure thing. I had to have a lot of sex, a lot, to get both of you.”

  She groaned. “Dev doesn’t need to hear that, Mom.” Though he looked amused. This is the kind of conversation that would never go down in the Patel family home. It made her think of Ana, how different their situations were.

  Mom gave Dev the once-over. “Take note. You’ll need to be prepared for lots of sex when you want to have a family.” She patted his shoulder. “And when is that going to be?”

  Dev blushed, then shook his head and grinned. The low flame flared and danced and there was nothing she could do to stop it while she watched her parents kiss.

  Dad put his arm around Mom. “The best part about getting pregnant was all the sex.”

  “The rest was all puke and poop, right, Dad?” said Ro.

  “Right,” said Dad. “Puke and poop and squealing, there was a lot of squealing. Invest in good noise-canceling headphones, Dev.”

  Sarina watched her family make a fuss of Dev. Watched him take a beer and fall into a conversation about cars with her father and Brian. She drank water and nibbled on crackers and remembered her latest discovery. Dev liked it a lot when you put your open mouth over his ear. It made him shudder, but not like Ro had done, with genuine distaste; it made his mouth drop open and his hands grip tighter, it made him groan like he was helpless to do anything else. It wasn’t helpful to want to make him do that again, to find out what would happen if she licked him there. Or to realize he was as hyper-aware of her as she was of him. He kept sneaking glances at her, which she tried and failed to avoid, their eyelines snagging, holding, snapping free, only to catch again.

  She stood. Maybe she should go pee.

  They all stopped talking and looked at her.

  Okay, not ready. She had pee performance anxiety. “Can we eat first?”

  “Nearly done,” said Brian.

  “It’s good sitcom material, this pee thing.” Ro shoved Sarina back down on the patio seat and took the one beside her. “Icky, yet everyman, private yet public, has dramatic intensity and builds to a climax, plus it’s a natural cliff-hanger.”

  “How do you figure that?” said Dev.

  “She’s either knocked up or she’s not, that’s the drama, and the cliffy is whether she tries again.”

  “I’ll be trying again,” Sarina said, for herself, for Dev. He’d stayed standing but come closer to the table.

  “What do you think about that, Dev?” said Ro.

  “Most sitcoms have a romance thrown in there somewhere,” said her ever-diplomatic friend without benefits, and snake in the grass; looking so directly at her, if she was made of paper she would’ve burst into flames. As it was, she sat in the cooling evening in a padded patio chair and glowered. Any moment now Ro would notice there were fireballs in their eyes.

  Fortunately, Ro was exploring her creativity. “Ooh, unrequited love, yes, that would make a better story. Sarina’s lover is in prison or wait, he’s stuck on the moon, no, got it, he’s a deadbeat dickhead and left her for his eighteen-year-old executive assistant.”

  Ro was in fine form. “Where is Fabiana, Ro?” Sarina asked.

  She put her empty bottle on the table. “Eh, we broke up.”

  “Shame, she was nice.”

  “Nice is boring.”

  Dev covered a laugh with a chug. Nice wasn’t boring when damp and desperate, when horny in the front seat of a Hudson Hornet, demanding on the landing of a stairwell or nearly shirtless in the storeroom of broken dreams. Nice wasn’t boring in her parents’ backyard where he fit without any effort.

  Worse luck.

  “Come help me with the salads, Ro,” said Mom. “Dev, go hold Sarina’s hand or something. Tell her it doesn’t matter if she’s not pregnant this time. She paid for plenty of sperm in that tube. And then when I get back, tell me about your love life.”

  Ro hadn’t got there but maybe Mom had.

  “Your mom,” said Dev, taking the seat Ro vacated, “I want to borrow her for Ana.”

  They’d been so not normal with each other, it took time to catch up with Ana’s drama and Dev’s despair his parents had hardened even further in their resolve to shut her out. Sarina had no words of comfort for that. A far more intense drama than whether she was pregnant by choice with all the support she would need this month or the next.

  He sat hunched forward with his beer bottle clasped in both hands and she couldn’t help herself but put her hand to his shoulder, run it up and around the back of his bowed neck. “You expected to be muscle, to have to fight for Ana.”

  He nodded. “With my parents and with,” he faltered, “with her friends. But they surprised me. I didn’t expect the maturity. They’ve all had blood tests but they’re not opening the results until they’re together and Ana gives the go-ahead. There are three sealed envelopes stuck to my refrigerator with Star Wars robot magnets. Ana thought about burning them. She’s in love with one of the boys and he’s in love with her.”

  It was percentages all over again. And so much heartache. Five percent chance that Ana got pregnant, a thirty percent chance the father of Ana’s baby was the man she loved. Not much more than a coin toss to separate A
na from a happier ending.

  “It’s like they’re us, the Dude, the Hulk, the Book, and Ana, and the Book has more courage than I did.” He straightened and looked directly at her for the first time since he sat down. He wasn’t frustrated with her, or angry or resentful. There were no fireballs in his eyes. He wasn’t trying to win anything from her. “If all you want from me is friendship, it’s all I deserve.”

  And still she wanted to love him.

  “After we eat I have to go pee on a stick, and then show people. If you say one more thing like that I will burst into tears and my family will stab you with steak knives.”

  He gave her a look that said he might stab himself.

  And then they ate, while the night gathered and the insect repellent came out and the dog next door howled and Ro kept them laughing. Accidently, and then on purpose their bodies touched, the sides of their thighs, hands, fingers tangling under the table. A thumb brush over her knuckles made her reach too fast for her glass and almost knock it over. When he let go of her hand to pick up the salad bowl, it hung in space, waiting for him to re-dock so she could feel earthed.

  She sipped water and picked at her food. The outcome of her pee only mattered in the context of trial and error. You couldn’t consider it a failure; it was just the randomness of baby making that science had yet to get perfect. She already had the appointment for her second insemination booked. Donor #196325 wasn’t going to prison or the moon. She’d secured a supply of his sperm for her use for however long she needed it, and if he impregnated an executive assistant it wasn’t like he was cheating.

  But Dev sat beside her and knew she was anxious and held her hand and it mattered to him, and chump that she was, that mattered to her.

  Cheesecake was a good stalling device but after she’d picked at it, Ro herded her to the bathroom and closed her in with her pregnancy test kit. She took a deep breath and fiddled with her hair. It was time for a color change, something more striking than the blue. She’d drunk so much water if she didn’t pee soon she’d burst.

  She peed on the stick. She’d bought the digital brand; it came in a pack of three, which was somehow reassuring. If not this time, the next or the next.