“I see how it is,” I said, letting the thoughts flow from my brain without filtering them. “You weren’t trying to protect me. You were trying to protect yourself—from feeling guilty, or from having some young tart go around telling everyone she fucked you.”
Yep. I was hit by a tidal wave, and it left me talking like a sailor, which made sense, since I was as drunk as one. (I’m not saying all sailors are drunks, by the way, but there seem to be a lot of jokes and clichés about drunken sailors.)
“Kirby,” Anthony growled. He said my name in a way that made him seem cutting and critical, and not at all cool.
“Anthony,” I growled back, drunkenly trying to mimic his demeanor.
The next thing I knew, Anthony grabbed me by the arm and pulled me off toward the kitchen. The catering staff was still busily working in there, and they seemed to pay no mind to our intrusion.
“We obviously have to talk more about this,” Anthony said in a loud whisper. He was standing close enough to me that I could smell the undertones of his cologne, and I desperately wanted to taste them. “But now isn’t the time or place,” Anthony went on. His voice changed a little as he said it, as if our closeness was affecting him, too.
“What should we do then?” I asked. “Make more plans, so you can bail on me again?”
I don’t know what came over me—or, maybe, I do—but I reached my hand out and lightly ran it over Anthony’s like he’d done to my hand in the tavern. Anthony’s breath shortened and fluttered, and for a split-second, he trembled.
“I’d be a fool to ever do that again,” he said. His words made something inside of me throb. I looked up at Anthony (he was slightly taller than me) and bit my lower lip.
“Don’t do this to me, Kirby,” he begged, though I could tell he meant the opposite. “We really do have to talk about this…but not here. Not now.” That tension was back. That chemistry. I was boiling for Anthony, and I knew, no matter what he said, that he was boiling for me.
Just then, another one of life’s surprises came—and I’m not sure if it was a good or a bad one. London popped up from around the corner. He gave me a strange look for being so close to Anthony, then took a defensive stance.
“Everything okay, Kirby?” London asked. “I’ve been looking for you.”
Anthony pulled back from me a bit. “Everything’s fine,” I replied. “I had a little too much to drink, I guess—and my dad’s boss was trying to talk some sense into me.”
London looked back and forth between me and Anthony, as if he was trying to weigh the likelihood of my explanation.
“Okay,” he finally said. It was obvious that he wasn’t going to leave us to ourselves again. He just stood there like a lump of hot young flesh.
“Alright, Kirby,” Anthony said, resigning to London’s presence. “Enjoy the rest of your night. I’ll get in touch with you soon, to discuss what we talked about earlier.”
“Okay, Mr. Swift,” I replied. From the way he shook his head and averted his eyes, it was obvious he didn’t like me calling him that.
London watched as Anthony walked away, then looked at me suspiciously. “What was that all about?” he asked. “And what’s he gonna contact you about?”
“I told you,” I answered, “I had too much to drink, and he was trying to slow me down…. And as far as what he’s gonna contact me about—it’s work-related stuff.”
I was lying through my teeth, but I had to tell London something—and just as quickly as I did, I tried to change the subject.
“You said you were looking for me?” I asked. “What’s up?”
“Oh,” London answered. “I was gonna leave, but I didn’t want to leave without saying good-bye first.”
I thought that was a pretty lame reason to try and find me, and a pretty lame thing to say. But at least we weren’t talking about Anthony anymore.
“Well, here I am,” I said with a smile. “So you can say good-bye if you wanna. Thanks for coming tonight, and for keeping me company.”
London leaned in and gave me a hug. “Thanks to you, too,” he said. It was nice to feel his strong arms around me, but there was still something that just didn’t feel entirely right about it.
I did, however, feel something hard pressing up against me when we hugged. For a moment, I felt a rush of excitement, thinking maybe I’d finally turned London on. But then I realized that hard thing was the neck of a booze bottle. He must have nicked another one from the bar while no one was looking.
“I’d like to hang out again sometime,” London added as he stepped back from our hug. “I know last time was a little weird for you. I’m sorry. But I’d still like to be friends and see where this goes. Give me another shot?”
“I’ll think about it,” I replied. I hadn’t expected London to say anything like that to me, and I didn’t just want to blow him off. But his proposal, on top of everything that had just happened with Anthony, was a little too much for me to comprehend at the moment.
“Please do,” London said. With that, he left through the kitchen door and headed back to his pool house.
Chapter 3
After London left the party, I figured my safest bet was to seek out Willard and take up conversation with him. I still didn’t want to talk to any more of the potential suitors Mom had lined up for me, and I certainly didn’t want her—or anyone else, for that matter—to see how drunk I was.
I circled the house a few times. Willard’s parents were still there, but there was no sign of him (or of Anthony), so after another quick scan of the room, I went over to Janice and asked where Willard was.
“He wasn’t feeling very well,” Janice explained. “He left about 20 minutes ago. He said he was going to take a cab home. He tried to find you before he left, dear.”
I thanked Janice for the information, and she went on to tell me that she would send Willard my regards and have him call me sometime. I tried to tell her that wasn’t necessary, but trust me, she didn’t want to hear it.
Without Willard as my beard, I knew that I would be a good target for Mom, so I tried to remain in the shadows as the clock ticked on and the crowd began to thin. Eventually, when it was around 11 p.m., after many other guests had left, I decided it was an appropriate time for me to call it an evening. First, I took a page from London’s book and grabbed a fifth of vodka from the bar. The bartender noticed but said nothing. It wasn’t his alcohol, after all.
I went upstairs and stashed the vodka in my room, then came back down, got some orange juice from the fridge, and snuck back up again. Mom saw me going to my room this time, but given the hour, and the clearly labeled drink container in my hand, she simply nodded and smiled when she registered I was going to my room for the evening.
Mom probably thought I was turning in for the night. I wasn’t. As soon as I got into my room, I locked my door behind me and hopped down on the bed, with my cocktail ingredients on the nightstand beside me.
I did a shot of vodka, chased by a shot of OJ, before pulling my tablet out of my drawer. Then, once I booted up the device, I connected to the Internet, loaded a search engine, and typed in “Anthony Swift.” Now that I had put two and two together, I wanted to know more about the man who’d made my life a living hell in a few different ways, from denying my time with my father to jilting me outside of a hotel.
Mom had said Mr. Swift was a billionaire, so one of my initial concerns was to see if she was exaggerating. But from the hits that returned, it was apparent that she was not. Depending on which source you referenced (and I was only referencing reputable ones), Anthony Swift’s total net worth was estimated between 1.6 and 1.8 billion dollars. Maybe he wasn’t the biggest billionaire in the world, but Mom was right—he definitely was one.
I felt a strange feeling in my stomach as I reviewed the numbers. I was a rich kid, and my boyfriends and other male friends had also mostly been rich kids. Being with someone wealthy was nothing new to me, but being with some incredibly wealthy was. I couldn’t believ
e I’d made out with someone with a net worth between 1.6 and 1.8 billion dollars! His worth didn’t make me want him any more or any less; it just made the entire situation even more astounding.
I went back and forth between drinking and researching for well over an hour, and in the process, achieved both greater drunkenness and a greater understanding of the man I’d nearly banged a week earlier. He wasn’t one of those high-profile billionaires, though there was frequent mention of his name on magazine websites, like Forbes, Fortune 500, and Newsweek. But it’s not like he had the money, acclaim, reputation, or commonplace fame of a Steve Jobs, Donald Trump, Justin Timberlake, or Chad Hurley.
Also, there weren’t many pictures of him online, other than the occasional public shot of him at some type of event or ceremony, and there wasn’t a lot of biographical information, either. I was able to discern that he was born in 1964, which made him 51 years old…which was a full 29 years older than me.
The age difference really hit me hard—harder than anything else I’d discovered. Anthony wasn’t just old enough to be my father. He was older than my father. He was nearly thirty years older than me.
I was reminded again of how, that fateful night a week or so ago, I’d told Anthony I couldn’t see him again. I knew then that there was no way anything could ever work out between us, and as the number 30 kept spinning around in my head, I only grew more confident in that conclusion. What could the two of us ever possibly share, other than a fleeting romance?
At the same time, however, I couldn’t help but still be curious. Even if all we could ever share was a fleeting romance, wasn’t that better than sharing nothing? Isn’t it better to have loved and lost, for whatever reason, than to have never loved at all? If we turned our backs on any relationship because it could be fleeting, in the end, wouldn’t we be turning our backs on everything? I’d spent three years with my ex-boyfriend, Jeremy, only to have him leave me when he got into law school…didn’t that make our relationship fleeting, too? And if I’d known then what I knew now, would that have been reason enough to not even try it?
I was starting to confuse myself. For every thought I had, I had an opposite feeling, and for every feeling I had, I had an opposite thought. I was putting myself into a vicious cycle. I kept wanting to find a reason to lose interest in Anthony, but kept wanting to justify my lingering attraction. Push, pull. Up, down. My head ached.
The words on my tablet started blurring together, and I knew I’d hurl if I didn’t stop trying to read them. I powered off the thing, took another shot of vodka, then turned out my light and waited for sleep to come. If I hadn’t been so wasted, I’m sure I would have been up for a few more hours, thinking about Anthony. Luckily, I was so tanked that within a few minutes of turning out the light, I was out like a light, too.
I ended up sleeping rather peacefully that night, though I woke up to a hangover the next morning.
As bad as that hangover was, it was nothing compared to what followed.
Chapter 4
I guess it was around 8 a.m. when I woke up. Like I said, I had a hangover. Or at least I think I did. Considering that I’d only stopped drinking around 2 or so, I very well still might have been drunk.
Nonetheless, with the morning light came a sense of clarity. It was as if a few hours of sleep had helped my mind reach the conclusions it needed to reach. All these ideas I had about Anthony were pointless now. We might have had a chance at hooking up, but that was all we had, and that chance was gone now. There was no turning back now that I knew he was Dad’s boss and he knew I was Dad’s daughter. It was time for me to move on and stop fantasizing about something that wasn’t meant to happen.
My next thought was of London. Like Anthony last night, he’d attempted to clear something up with me—and if I was going to go after a relationship with either of them, London seemed the more fitting option. Sure, he wasn’t a billionaire; he was a little lazy and far too party-oriented, and the only sexual encounter we’d had had been incredibly awkward. But at least he wasn’t 30 years older than me. Like me, he still needed time to grow—and with me, maybe he would.
So, as I laid there, half-hungover, half-drunk in my bed, I resolved to give up on Anthony and give London the second chance he asked for—and what better time than the present. When I sat up in my bed, I could see out of my bedroom window, which was cattycorner to London’s pool house. The lights were on inside, and I saw movement. Maybe he’d spent the whole night drinking, or maybe he’d woke up in a state like I was in. Whichever it was, he was awake, and my poor judgement helped me make a poor decision. I decided to get up and go over to see him, so that, at the very least, we could talk things over (and maybe I could get some more great head out of it in the process).
I was still wearing my dress from the night before and looked incredibly disheveled and distressed in it. It was by far the most expensive piece of clothing that I’d ever owned, and I’d treated it like a secondhand thrift store garment. I changed out of it quickly, laying it across my unmade bed as carefully as I could, and then peeled off my undies and put on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. I slid my feet into a pair of sandals, grabbed my almost-empty bottle of vodka, and crept out of my room.
I could hear Mom and Dad talking, but they weren’t downstairs yet, so I hurried up and ran down the steps and through the kitchen as quickly as possible. I went out the back door and meandered over to the pool house.
Once I was close enough to it, I confirmed the observations I’d made from my bedroom. Indeed, the lights were on, and I could see the outline of London’s form through the curtains. I could also sense activity. Namely, I heard the sound of music, and it was playing so loudly that I knew there was no way London could be sleeping through it.
I knocked on the pool house door, but there was no answer. As I just described, I knew that London was awake and inside, so I pounded on the door a little harder. When London didn’t answer that time, I figured he couldn’t hear me over the loud music—and I decided to do something out of character and be a little more proactive than usual.
London had told me he wanted to hang out. He said he wanted another shot. And after I first got home, he’d extended an open invitation for me to come visit him anytime. So, considering all of those things, I was sure he’d want to see me now that I was here.
I put my hand on the doorknob, playing the odds that I could turn it. I knew I had a 50/50 shot, but I was still surprised when it turned and opened.
I walked into the pool house, unannounced, and saw London standing several feet away, in the kitchenette. His was facing away from me, and he was leaning back against the counter. One of his arms was stretched out across the countertop; the other was in front of him somewhere; and his head was tossed back at an angle. It was a kind of strange position for him to be in, and I couldn’t quite figure out what he was doing.
“London?” I called out as I started to walk toward him.
As soon as he heard my voice, London jolted, stood up straight, and turned to see me. “Kirby!” he shouted, caught off guard. “What are you doing here? You have to leave!” He started fidgeting and moving abruptly, and was obviously shocked and shaken by my presence.
It was too late. I’d taken too many steps, and there was no avoiding, or denying, the spectacle before me.
There London stood, with his shorts down around his ankles and a huge hard-on protruding from his core…and attached to that hard-on was a mouth…and that mouth belonged to Willard.
“What the fuck, London?” I screamed, jumping back.
“Kirby, wait!” London shouted. Willard had let get go of his cock, and London was now struggling to cover it. He reached down and pulled up his shorts, and I watched in absolute astonishment as they slid up over his wilting boner. The mere sight of it rendered me speechless, and along with London’s plea, it stopped me dead in my tracks.
“It’s not what it looks like,” London said as he adjusted himself. Willard stood up and went over to the sin
k to get a glass of water.
“It’s not?” I asked. I was breathing heavily from the surprise of it all. “It looks like Willard was sucking your dick…. If that’s not what was happening, what was?”
“Okay,” London answered. “Maybe it is what it looks like, but I can explain.”
I looked at London for a moment, then shook my head and went to sit down on the sofa. As soon as my ass touched the fabric, I opened my bottle of vodka and took a chug. The taste was a little stronger than I expected, and combined with my nerves, it nearly made me vomit. Thankfully, I was able to catch myself before I threw up.
London walked over to the couch and sat down a good two feet away from me.
“I’m sure you have a lot of questions,” he said, talking in a very calm voice. “But now you also have a lot of answers.” It sounded like a wise statement, which was so out of character for London. Then again, what the hell did I know about London’s character?
“Now you know why I could only go so far the other week when we hooked up,” London proffered. “And now you know why I used to lie to people and tell them we hooked up back in high school…. And now you know why, for all these years, I haven’t fallen for you or tried to date you, when any other guy in his right mind would have.”
London looked at me as if he was expecting me to say something, but I was still speechless.
“I’m gay, Kirby,” he finally said, saying it as bluntly, and as basically, as he could.
“But, why—”
“I guess I was born this way,” he began explaining.
“No,” I said. “I’m not asking why you’re gay. I was gonna ask…if you’re gay, why did you hook up with me a couple weeks ago? And why did you approach me last night and say all that shit about giving you another shot?”
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