Sour
Page 27
I went down my list of buddies, looking for a place to stay, and luckily for me, Leah’s roommate had just moved out. I can afford a place of my own, but if I want to reach my goal of opening my own bar, I’ve gotta live lean for a while. I’m close to having enough saved to make a decent go of it without having to stress too much over those critical first two years in business and without having to borrow money from the old man, or anyone else.
Since I left Aubrey, I’ve gone out with a few girls but nothing serious. Honestly, I can’t seem to find anyone that can keep my interest beyond a decent fuck. I’ve had a few one-and-done hookups. Those were fun, but at some point, I’d like to have something more than just random women in my life. I like the idea of having someone to share things with, instead of just someone to fuck.
When I get home, I grab a beer and kick back to watch some TV and unwind before bed. I’m almost two episodes in on catching up with my favorite show, when a noise from the hallway catches my attention.
An insanely hot redhead is waltzing down the hall toward me, wearing an oversized Ramones t-shirt. “Hi,” she says, leaning against the archway that connects the living room to the hall where our bedrooms are. “Any more of those?” She asks, pointing to my beer as she licks her lips.
“Yeah, sure. Fridge. Bottom right shelf.” I reply. This woman is truly smoking hot—tall with long, lean legs and long, thick red hair that looks like her natural color.
“Thanks,” she says, looking me up and down slowly. Her gaze lingers on my crotch, which surprises me considering she’s a guest of Leah’s. I watch her walk over to the kitchen. I can just see the fridge from my spot on the sofa, and when she opens the refrigerator door, she bends over to give me a full show of the fact that the t-shirt is the only thing she’s wearing.
Damn. Definitely her natural color. My cock immediately responds. This is all I need—a hard-on courtesy of my roommate’s girl.
Red walks back through the living room toward the hall and pauses before she goes back toward Leah’s room. “You’re hot,” she says. “You wanna come play?” She arches an eyebrow up at me.
“Thanks, beautiful, but Leah and I don’t share.” I tip my beer bottle toward her and give her a nod.
“Oh,” she says, shrugging. She puts her beer down on the hardwood floor, and peels off the t-shirt, revealing a sexy six-pack and a spectacular pair of tits. “Too bad. ‘Night then.” She picks up her beer and walks back down the hall, disappearing into Leah’s room.
Fuck, I groan to myself. I walk to my room for a shower and to relieve the situation Red has caused. In the shower, I grab the soap, and with my back to the water, I stroke my aching cock until I groan out a release.
I’ve been going through a bit of a self-imposed dry spell for a while now. I realize now, after having broken up with Aubrey that I had gotten really comfortable with her. I miss having someone who knows me, or at least, who has an interest in knowing me. I miss having someone who does all the little shit a girl does when she knows what you like.
It might sound lame, but I like having someone who knows how I take my coffee or turns up the radio when my favorite song is on. The hookups don’t do that for me, and I haven’t met anyone worth dating. Not anyone available, anyway.
I want a woman who’s smart enough to hold a decent conversation, someone who has a good sense of humor and doesn’t take herself too seriously. It sounds like a lot to ask, but I know women like that exist, I’m just not dating any of them.
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On Saturday, I wake up and decide to drive up to Noblesville. I grab a small toolbox from the hall closet, put it in the back of my Jeep, and head out. Along the way I stop at The Flying Cupcake for a half dozen Boston Creams. They’re my grandmother’s favorite, and I know she’ll be excited about them.
When I pull up to the house at the edge of town, I see her old Lincoln Town Car parked out front. I grab the cupcakes and walk up the steps, across the creaking floorboards of the front porch, and knock on the front door. It takes a couple of minutes for her to answer. At her age, she isn’t quite as fast as she used to be.
“Alexander! What a nice surprise!” Nana says when she answers the door. She’s one of the few people on the planet who call me by my real, given name rather than the nickname I picked up in school.
“Hi, Nana,” I say, leaning down to hug her. “How are you doing?”
“I’m just wonderful!” She smiles up at me, patting my arm. “Does that bag have something for me inside?” She asks, pointing at the white bakery bag and smiling broadly.
“It just might,” I reply. “Have you been cupcake-level good?”
She laughs. It’s what she always said to me when I was a little boy. When I’d ask for a piece of candy, she’d say, “Have you been candy-level good, though?” It made me consider whether I had, in fact, earned the treat I was asking for, but she always ended up giving in regardless.
“I think I’ve been good enough for a cupcake or two,” she smiles. “I’ll get the milk!”
I sit down at the dining table and retrieve the box of cupcakes from the bag. Nana brings in two glasses of milk and sits down with me.
“You don’t have to work today?” She asks the question as she peels the edges of the cupcake paper down, using the paper as a makeshift plate before lifting the cake and taking a bite.
“Mm, mm, mm!” She’s smiling broadly, closing her eyes and nodding her head back and forth. Seeing her so happy makes my whole damn day.
“Not today,” I reply. “I have been working a lot, though,” I follow her lead, peeling the paper away and lifting the cupcake to lick the frosting off the top.
“I just hate you having to work so hard, dear,” she says, her bent fingers patting my forearm. “Sometimes I wish you had stuck it out at the firm a little while longer. At least until you had a little more saved.” She glances at me from under her brows, cautiously.
I hold my tongue. She means well. She has always just wanted me to be happy. The law firm was killing me, though. I was starting to imagine scenarios where I wrapped my Brooks Brothers tie around my head like a bandana and used the stapler as a weapon to shoot my way out of the place and make my escape. I had to get out of there.
“I couldn’t take it anymore, Nana. I may be working hard, but at least I’m doing something that doesn’t keep me up at night,” I give her a smile and a little shrug.
I had followed in my father’s footsteps, going straight to law school from college. I spent almost seven years working in his law firm in Chicago before I tapped out. I couldn’t take the politics, or the schmoozing with clients. I hated representing clients that I knew were trying to rip people off or get away with something.
Granted, I was a corporate attorney, so it’s not like I was getting murderers out of jail. Still, writing contracts that took advantage of one guy in favor of another wasn’t something I was interested in making a life doing. It soured my taste for the law altogether.
“I could help you; you know. It would be an investment,” she says, glancing at me from under her eyebrows. She knows my response will be the same as it has been the half dozen times she has asked before.
“No, Nana. I’m not taking your money. Thanks, though. I appreciate that you believe in me,” I say, squeezing her hand. “That means more than you know.”
“As long as you’re happy, dear,” she says, reaching for another cupcake.
“Are you supposed to have two?” I ask her, arching up an eyebrow. She isn’t diabetic and she’s in pretty good health, but I always worry about her. At seventy-eight, I know how important it is for her to eat right so she can stay feisty and keep kicking my ass for a lot of years to come.
“The first one was very small,” she says, grinning devilishly as she bites into the second cupcake. This is exactly why I only brought her half, instead of a full dozen. If I brought twelve, she would eat them all, without hesitation, as soon as
I was out the door.
“I brought my tool box,” I say. “Got any chores for me?”
“Well, if it’s not too much trouble, I might have a couple of things you could do,” she smiles at me. “I won’t keep you all day.” She says, retrieving a note pad on which has scrawled at least seventeen things she needs me to do.
I smile as I take it from her hand. “I’m on it, Nana.”
“Thank you, Alexander. I’m going to go watch my programs,” she says waving her hand in the air as she turns to walk away. “Let me know when you get to page three.”
Page three? I flip through the notepad. Yup. Three pages. Fuck. Goodbye, Saturday off.
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