Stripped

by Zoey Castile

  Lily’s quiet for a long time, though I’ve known her so long I can feel her mental mechanisms working. “Are you sure you’re okay? Anything I can help with?”

  “I told you, I’m fine. I’m more scatterbrained than usual. I’m having a hard time sleeping. I start counting the hours. If I go to sleep now I’ll get seven hours. If I go to sleep now I’ll get five, and then two, and all of a sudden I’m late for work and Lukas is signing me up for the bake sale.”

  “So, it’s Lukas now?”

  I sink into the plush leather seat. The car was a wedding gift from Lily’s parents since David’s parents wanted to pay for the wedding. “I had to sign up. You know I can’t say no to work things right now. Plus, it’s hours before your brunch, so don’t worry. I just plan on not sleeping all weekend. And he told me to call him Lukas this morning because he knows we all call him Platypus!”

  “Oh my god, Robyn,” Lily says. “Platypus likes you. You’re going to be Mrs. Platypus. I’ll ask Dave to ask about you.”

  “Do not! I swear. He’s my boss. He was just being nice. And, you just said he had a girlfriend.”

  “Had. A year ago.” She makes a sharp turn and blows a red light. There’s a small thread of the playful, wild Lily Shang I grew up with. “Besides, men are never just being nice. Before you say no, let me just say it’s about time you get back on the dating horse. Or get on the Platypus until you find a horse. Dave mentioned he’s looking to settle down.”

  “You’re the actual worst.” For a moment, my thoughts go back to my neighbor. The sculpted muscles on his broad shoulders. The absolute trouble that sparkled in his blue eyes. And his neck . . .

  I miss some of what Lily says next. “. . . I understand that. Just be there. Please?”

  “Of course, I’ll be there,” I assure her. I have until the weekend to get myself together.

  Lily’s kind enough to not mention that I have been late to every wedding-related event since David proposed. It was almost like my messy streak had started the day Lily put the Tiffany’s princess-cut diamond on her engagement finger.

  No, that’s just a coincidence. I’m really happy for Lily. I am.

  The remaining five-minute drive to my apartment consists of us singing along to Beyoncé’s latest single. Lily drives and I stew in my guilt and try to pick glue out of my hair.

  “Do you want me to pick you up tomorrow?” Lily asks.

  I lean over and plant a sticky kiss on my best friend’s cheek. “I bet I’ll be there before you.”

  “Twenty bucks?”

  “Deal.”

  Before I can open the car door and step onto the curb, Lily whistles at something she sees. Someone.

  “Damn,” Lily says.

  Confused, I follow the object of Lily’s gaze. At the front of my building is a familiar face. More like a familiar body. My skin flashes hot, not just because of our exchange this morning, and not because his sweatpants seem to hug his posterior in the most flattering way, but because his clothes are still on my kitchen floor.

  “That’s my neighbor,” I say, and quickly run down what happened. I’m still holding the car door open. My neighbor is busy curbing the cutest husky I’ve ever seen, and completely unaware of two elementary school teachers checking out his ass.

  “Dude. That’s the guy from this morning?” Lily slaps my arm.

  “Ouch!”

  “You need to take one for the team. The team being me because I’m a reformed slut and going to be someone’s proper wife.”

  “Reformed,” I say, using air quotes.

  Lily barks out laughing, and for a moment, things are like they’ve always been.

  “I’m serious,” Lily says. “Damn. He probably has a huge—oh my god, he’s looking over here. Oh my god, he’s coming over here.”

  “Drive!” I shut the door and lock it.

  “I’m not going to drive,” Lily shouts. “You’re already home. Go talk to him.”

  Lily unlocks the door from her side, and starts to push me out of the passenger seat. The two of us wrestle all the while 5A and his husky stare.

  “Robyn, I’m serious!” Lily says. “Go. Be a person. Who knows? Maybe instead of being Mrs. Platypus you’ll be Mrs. Husky.”

  “I hate you right now.” I huff and try to compose myself as I get out of the car and act as if I wasn’t just practically slap boxing with my friend. I slam the door harder than I intended. I turn around once to give Lily a very stern glare, but Lily just smiles devilishly and peels off at the green light.

  “Hey,” he says. His husky pup runs circles around me so that I’m tangled around the ankles and have to reach out and grab on to his shoulder to keep my balance.

  His hand reaches for my waist and grabs hold firmly, and I’m forced to look up at him, at those sky-blue eyes. In the early-evening sun, I can see there’s a bit of green I hadn’t noticed before.

  “Sorry,” he says, kneeling down to unravel the dog leash from around my ankles while keeping a hold on the ultra-excited puppy. “She’s got a lot of energy.”

  I fight the urgent need to run from him, even though he’s being perfectly polite. There’s just something about him that sets my senses on edge. His hands brush my ankles, and I’m keenly aware of how close he is to the lower half of my body. His touch is soft and gentle. I feel like I’ve fallen into the Victorian era, and I’m letting a man I don’t know graze my skin, and the feathery way he touches me has my heart racing.

  He looks up and smiles at me with those deliciously full lips. “Cold?”

  “Yeah, I left my sweater at school,” I say.

  When he stands up he’s inches from me. It’s like he knows just how to move, just how to look at me to make me nervous. I’m not short on confidence, but the feeling this stranger instills in me is new. It’s the way a predator looks at his prey. It’s like he’s undressing me with his eyes and I’m letting him, reveling in it. No one has ever looked at me the way this man looks at me.

  I haven’t decided if I like it just yet, but I’m not ready for it to stop.

  “I’m glad I bumped into you,” he says. He’s all smiles. He knows what he’s doing to me and he loves it.

  “You are?” I try to contain the nervous swirl at the base of my stomach.

  “Yeah, I was looking for you. Is there any chance that my clothes might’ve gotten mixed up with yours?”

  I feel a tug-of-war between the truth and a simple white lie. Little lies aren’t so bad, are they? Your baby is so cute! That shade of blond looks totally natural. Your novel is so Von-negutesque! Sometimes they’re necessary to save people’s feelings. Sometimes they’re self-preservation.

  But this has the potential to get more complicated. I resign myself to the truth. I come clean in a long, run-on sentence that probably makes me look like the Psycho-est Psycho in Psycho Town.

  Then I ask, “Do you want to come upstairs?”

  FALLON

  To be honest, I wasn’t really paying attention to my neighbor’s frantic explanation about my clothes. Something about life being weird and coffee. I was too busy being mesmerized by the way her lips moved. She has the most full, luscious lips I’ve ever seen, and while she was still talking, all I could do was try to keep Yaz from leaping out of my hands, and me from leaping onto her face.

  The thing that broke me out of this trance was her final question. “Do you want to come upstairs?”

  “What?” I ask, dumbfounded.

  “And get your stuff. Do you want to come upstairs and get your things?”

  In the split second between her questions I’ve already fabricated a hundred different scenarios of what we could do upstairs. Laundry wasn’t really one of them, though we could always get creative.

  I’ve been infatuated a thousand times over. I love women, more than sleep and money and performing. Though all of those things go hand in hand with my work. But this girl. This woman. I don’t even know her name. Her frantic, electric aura gives me a spark I haven’t felt i
n so long. It takes me a minute to recognize it for what it is—raw attraction. I want her the way a drowning man wants to breathe. And I’m not sure I want to feel this way. She already turned me down twice in the same morning, and I’m getting too old to play games.

  Still, I follow her into our building.

  “Here, let me carry that,” I say, taking her overstuffed bag.

  She gives me an off look. It lasts for a moment, but I saw the mistrust there. I understand that she’d be wary about me. I know what I look like, and what people—especially women—think when they see me. Player. Man whore. Slut. Sex in a blanket. Sex on the beach. Sex on 6A’s leather couch . . .

  Get back on track, Fallon, I think to myself.

  “So, do you always get into slap fights before you get out of cars?” I ask as we climb the steps. The super just mopped the floors and there’s the strong smell of lemon cleaner on the stone tiles.

  “That’s just my best friend, Lily, being Lily.” She laughs nervously, and flips her hair over her shoulder. If I were standing two steps up, she could’ve gotten me right in the eye and I would’ve liked it because I’d be closer to smelling her.

  That’s not creepy at all, dude, I think.

  Yaz’s tiny barks echo in the hall. I like to imagine that she’s saying something like, “Are we there yet?!”

  “How long have you lived here?” I want to keep her engaged. I want to keep her answering my questions because she’s an enigma I want to unravel.

  “About four years,” she says, taking her keys out from her tiny purse slung across her body. I’ve always been fascinated by how many bags women carry. I’m holding her heavy purse that’s brimming with papers and pencils and books. From where I stand I can see the red mark on her shoulder that the bag left, and I want nothing more than to reach out and massage it. Then, she has the tiny purse where she probably keeps the things she needs to reach right away—her keys, her ID, her lip gloss, and her birth control (I hope). I’d found out the rough way when I went into my little sister’s purse for gum and fished out the rectangular strip of pills. I ate Monday, thinking it was a mint. They should teach these things in school.

  She opens the door of her apartment, and I linger because she hasn’t told me to come in yet. But I want to more than anything.

  “Have a seat,” she says, pointing to her black leather couch, then looks at Yaz. “Is he housebroken?”

  Yaz barks in response as I set her down but keep her leash on. “Yaz is a girl.”

  “Is that short for Yazmine?”

  I laugh harder than I want to. Yaz takes off with a run toward the couch, pulling me along. “Yastrzemski. He was my granddad’s favorite Red Sox player.”

  “Oh, yeah,” she says in this cute, sarcastic way. “I love sportsball.”

  She shakes her head and stands there. Her hair is coming undone from its ponytail and her warm whiskey-tan skin is flushed. I’m not sure about what to do with my hands, other than rein Yaz in. I want to reach for her, this lovely, fine woman. I want to see if her hair is as thick and soft as it looks. Feel her skin, starting from her delicate ankles again. I’m possessed and it scares the shit out of me.

  “I’ll get your clothes,” she says. “I’m really sorry, again.”

  “It’s fine. Just a misunderstanding.”

  The best misunderstanding I’ve ever had because it brought me here. I try to snoop without snooping. I crane my neck toward her bedroom. The whole place has the same layout as mine, but it looks more lived-in. The floors are scuffed and weathered. There’s a spot on the ceiling where the paint is chipping off. There are portraits and replicas of artworks I don’t know the names of but have seen before. I walk around the round table in the living room. It’s stacked with unopened mail addressed to a Robyn Flores and books and a notepad with monogrammed initials. RF. Robyn, I say the name in my mind. I start to pick up the notepad, but stop myself. Instead I admire the curved slant of her handwriting that lists the things she needs: milk, coffee, socks, underwear. I grin like an idiot.

  I pick up Yaz and she climbs up toward my shoulders. Sometimes I’m not sure if she’s full husky or part monkey. Yaz jumps back down on the table and scatters papers and envelopes everywhere.

  “Yaz!” I hiss.

  I start to gather everything up and come across a photo of her. In it she’s with another girl who looks like a relative. They’re in pretty dresses holding up champagne flutes.

  “That was at my uncle’s wedding last summer,” she says.

  I jump and set the photo on the mountain of paper. “Sorry, Yaz is still—”

  “Don’t worry about it. Are you sure I can’t wash this?” She’s handing me a plastic bag with my missing clothes. Then, that’s it. It’s almost my cue to leave and I don’t want to. I want to spend one of those amazing days with her, where I find out everything about her life. Those kinds of days always end with a kiss, and I desperately want to kiss her.

  “Oh, please,” I say nonchalantly. “This stuff happens all the time.”

  “Girls use your clothes as coffee rags?”

  “Well, not all the time. Actually, never,” I say, suddenly nervous. I want to run my hands through my hair, but I have to hold on tight to my pup or she’ll wreck the place.

  Robyn smiles. “The strangest day of my life is now officially over.”

  “It doesn’t have to be,” I say. “Are you hungry?”

  She looks unsure. How can she resist me? I’m holding a wolf pup and wearing my most revealing gym T-shirt. As we stand facing each other, I see the moment when she gives in. Her eyes soften and her posture relaxes, as if a weight has been lifted from her shoulders.

  “I’m starving.”

  “Me too. How does pizza sound?” I feel stupid asking again, let alone on the same day. I’m so accustomed to women trying to devour me at work that I never considered the real world is not a nightclub. Maybe I’m losing my touch, not just at work but in life. Don’t go down that spiral, I tell myself. I feel my chest constrict as I hold my breath while she answers.

  “Sure,” she says. “But only if we order in. I’m a mess.”

  “You’re the most beautiful mess I’ve ever laid eyes on,” I say, and it’s too late to take it back.

  “I’ll be right back.” She dismisses my comment with a flick of her hand and a chuckle. She excuses herself to her bedroom. I feel proud of myself that I didn’t gloat about her wearing the dress I suggested. It doesn’t matter, because she said yes! Actually, she said Sure, which was a less enthusiastic yes. But it’s a start.

  “Do you have a local?” I ask and pull out my phone to call.

  “Oh! Get the meat lover’s from Rizzo’s. And mozzarella sticks. And garlic bread.”

  My stomach does a strange fluttering thing that could be because of Robyn or because I haven’t eaten anything since my protein shake when I woke up. Whatever. For a moment, I have the girl of my dreams all to myself. Third time’s the charm, and all that. I place an order on the phone and hang up. I sink into the plush couch. Her TV looks ancient, but there’s a stack of worn novels on the coffee table, along with five coffee mugs. I can picture her sitting right here, reading her book and setting down her drink. She probably sets it down and forgets and goes back to the kitchen for another. I try to picture the way this girl lives day by day and I try to picture myself sitting right here beside her. Relax, Fallon, I think, it’s just pizza.

  Wherever these thoughts are coming from, they fucking scare me.

  “Hey, I’m Robyn, by the way,” she shouts from her room, after a while. “What’s your name?”

  “Fallon,” I say and Yaz barks as something knocks over onto the floor. There’s a loud thump on the door, followed by a yelp.

  “Are you okay?” I call out to her.

  “Can you—uh—can you come in here?”

  I push open the door and find her sitting on her floor. She’s a wild beauty with her hair tossed around her shoulders and her hands trying to reach t
he clasp on the back of her dress. I want to tell her she looks cute when she’s frustrated, but I also don’t want to get punched in the face.

  She looks embarrassed and annoyed, but not at me. She stands with her back facing me. “I’m stuck,” she says. “Can you help?”

  My heart races. My heart never races, unless it’s cardio day, or I’ve had a sex marathon. I need to be cool. Relax, Fallon.

  So I chuckle, and I say, “I’ve never met a dress I can’t undo.”

  “I’m glad I have such an expert handy,” she says dryly.

  I unhook the clasp at the middle of her back. The metal is a little warped, which is why it resisted so much.

  “There you go,” I say, keeping my hands at my sides.

  She pulls her hair over her shoulder and my heart stops. Her energy is frantic, like every little thing that has gone wrong in her day feels magnified, and I sort of get that. Her eyes look down at my lips, then at my pants, then settle on my face.

  “Thanks,” she says, but it’s a whisper. “It’s been a weird day.”

  I tell myself to step away. This is a dream. This is my wildest fantasy. But my feet feel like lead. My head spins. I’m frozen in place. This has to be a dream, because this perfect girl stands on her tippy toes and kisses me first.

  4

  What a Girl Wants

  ROBYN

  I feel drunk.

  Not alcohol drunk. Drunk on something else. His scent. His eyes. The way his body fills the space of my bedroom. The way he’s appeared since this morning in a way that makes me want to believe in signs. It’s the way his lips fit perfectly against mine, savoring me, biting me until I have to press my hands on his chest and gasp.

  I’ve never done this before. I’ve never kissed a stranger this way, like I need him. I’ve never been so discombobulated that I grasp for the closest lifeline I find. Part of me knows this impulse is wrong. But the rest of my life is out of order, so why not at least enjoy some of it?

  Fallon.

  His name is Fallon and all I know is that he’s a fantastic kisser. No, I know other things. He loves dogs and he’s a night owl and he’s from Boston. I know he looks at me like he could eat me alive. It’s that look that did it. It gave me a spark I haven’t felt in so long. He picks me up and sets me on top of my dresser, and I wrap my legs around his waist to keep him pressed right against me. His sweatpants do little to conceal his erection pressing against my thigh. He groans against my mouth as I let my fingers wander toward the elastic band.