“Lunch with my mother was awful, thanks for asking.”
“That was a given.” Ryan disregards my comment and leans forward to ask, “You and baby girl back to normal?”
No. I know the answer, and simply shake my head, feeling the deadweight sit against my chest as I turn off my computer. I still have hours before dinner, but I’d rather distract myself with Ryan and anything other than work before meeting Sophie tonight.
“We hit it off just like normal, but she’s not …” The back of my throat goes dry, so I pick up my coffee, drinking it black as always.
“She still loves you,” he tells me gently as if that’s what the problem ever was.
“She’s resistant to being with me.” I finally settle on that truth, spacing out the words and letting them sit in the air while Ryan considers them.
He slumps back, letting his back hit the chair and turns his hands up as he says, “She always has been resistant, hasn’t she?” When I don’t answer he adds, “You didn’t think she’d just fall into bed with you and go right back to being what it used to be, did you?”
“You’re the one who said ‘normal,’” I remind him, barely hiding my irritation. He’s never had a stable relationship. He doesn’t mind living vicariously through the only one I’ve ever wanted. She doesn’t want it to be what it used to be. I can’t tell him that part. I’m ashamed of it. I thought it was good. How could I have been so wrong? I thought I was good for her. I thought I was good to her.
“See, I thought you had a stick up your ass the last few years because you hadn’t gotten your dick wet, but here we are, and that stick hasn’t budged.”
“How’d you know?”
“That you guys fucked?” he asks me with a brow cocked and his forehead scrunched. As if it’s an odd question to ask. I just gaze at him coolly and he shrugs.
“She told Trish, who told Brett, who told me about ten minutes ago.”
“Word travels fast.”
Ryan shrugs unapologetically. “It’s been a long time coming… So you got her in bed… and then what?”
“That’s none of anyone’s business.”
“Aw, come on, Brett and Trish only know so much. You’ve got to give me something.” Brett and Trish know too damn much. Trish I can understand, although I’m still pissed she didn’t tell me Sophie was coming back. And Brett needs to mind his own fucking business.
“Can we talk about something else?” I ask, not hiding the irritation in my voice.
“So your lunch date with your mom went poorly?”
I grin at him as I reply, “I hate you.”
“You love me so much. I could feel the waves of adoration from all the way down the hall to my office.”
“You should have stayed there and finished the numbers for the meeting tomorrow.”
“Already done,” he tells me and I’m quick to retort, “For the meeting Friday then.”
He only snorts a laugh and there’s a moment of awkward silence. The kind that comes when someone’s begging to ask you a question, but they don’t know how you’ll react.
I tell him, “Just say it. Whatever it is.”
“What did your mom want?” he asks me with nervous hesitation. My mother is never a topic of pleasant conversation.
“To tell me she’s getting another divorce.”
“I thought she just married …Steve?”
“She divorced Stewart last year, this one’s name is Jerry.” Although the conversation is almost casual in tone, it’s anything but.
“Ah.” Ryan nods and raises his brow as high as he can before sucking in air through his teeth. “Well, maybe the next one will be a winner.”
“Doubtful,” I mutter under my breath and stand abruptly, ending the conversation. My mother wouldn’t know love if it sent her the biggest paycheck she’d ever seen.
Chapter 10
Sophie
Six years ago
“Hey.” Madox’s voice is gentle as he approaches. “You fell asleep out here,” he tells me as if I didn’t intend to sleep out on the sofa. He wouldn’t talk to me. Wasn’t he mad at me?
“Oh,” I say like I’m surprised, pretending like it was an accident. “Are you done working?” I’m hesitant to ask. Lately he’s been working extra hours a lot and half the time I think he’s doing it just to avoid me, the other half of the time I feel like I should be working harder. As hard as he is. It’s constant. I’ll go to college this fall though and then maybe I’ll be just as busy as he is.
“Come to bed,” he tells me and I do. His thumb rubs soothing circles on my knuckles as we walk hand in hand. I keep looking up at him, not knowing if it’s all in my head or not.
Before climbing into bed, I ask him, “I thought you might be mad at me. I thought maybe I should go home.”
“If you want to leave, I’m not going to stop you,” he tells me and he says it easily, like the words shouldn’t cut so deeply into me. When my parents fought it was with sharp tongues. All it took for Madox to bring me to the point of leaving, was the truth, casually spoken.
He tells me he doesn’t know why I’m crying. I swear we speak different languages.
Today
Madox was always good at wining and dining me. At spoiling me with pretty things. That’s how he apologized. It’s how he said thank you. He spoke with gifts.
Trish told me it’s one of the ways to express love. She got it from some book about there being five different love languages. Even if gifts are one way to demonstrate love, it never felt right. Not to me.
He could have bought my entire world a million times over. And all I did was run to him, spread my legs and stay in his bed instead of going home. It felt like… it felt like he was buying me. I didn’t want his gifts.
I told him that once. It didn’t end well. One of our many breakups.
When we got back together, he told me the Tiffany necklace he put around my neck was from a dollar store. So it didn’t count as ”buying my affection.”
I can’t explain how powerless I felt in that moment, but also how cherished. I still have that necklace. I love that necklace.
I’m trying not to feel the same way now as I take my seat in the private room in the back of The Cherie. It’s a fresh start and new beginnings. I’m not the same girl I was back then, and this isn’t “buying” me. It’s just dinner.
Maybe it’s a way for him to show me he loves me, as Trish would say. I asked her what my love language was and she said words of affirmation. That I like to be told things, told that I’m pretty, that I’m doing well, told that I’m loved. I laughed when she said it and told her, “No wonder it didn’t work between us. I couldn’t afford to tell him I loved him and he couldn’t speak it.”
Inside the restaurant is exactly as fancy as I pictured in my head. White linens and polished marble walls. It’s the kind of restaurant where not a single expense is spared, and the waiters wear cuff links and spit-shined black shoes.
“Thank you,” I tell said waiter, and try not to pull down the skirt of my dress as he pours water into our glasses. I don’t touch my hem until he’s turned his back and no one can see me squirm… except for Madox. Like always, I’m not quite dressed for the occasion.
It feels like our first date all over again. Where he knows all the tricks and holds all the cards, and I’m barely gripping on to anything.
“Dark blue is your color.” Madox’s words make my heart do that stuttering thing. I can feel heat flood up my chest and to my cheeks. With a soft smirk kicking up the corners of his lips he adds, “Blushing looks good on you too.”
Slipping a lock of hair behind my ear, I tell him, “Thank you. You look handsome too… you always do.”
The fluttering in my chest matches the way my stomach feels, and I search around the stark white tabletop for a menu of any kind. For anything at all to distract me from the sincerity of Madox’s gaze. But there’s nothing save polished silverware and lit candles.
“I like it when yo
u do that,” he says lowly, in a tone that hits straight to my core. I have to lift my eyes to his, barely able to breathe at seeing the look in his eyes.
“Do what?”
“Compliment me.”
“I’m sure you have lots of people do that.” Even as I speak without conscious consent, I can’t help but to look over every bit of his features and feel a pinch in my brow.
“They’re not you.”
“That’s very sweet of you.”
“It’s also true. I’m glad you agreed to come out tonight.”
“You’re different, Madox,” I barely whisper and wish I had a menu or something to hold in my hands. Instead, I shove them into my lap and wring my fingers around one another as Madox, with a look of slight vulnerability on his handsome face, asks me how. He stays perfectly still though, never showing anything more than a glimpse that he may be less than in control.
“It’s just …” I bite down on my bottom lip and try to put it into words. “When I remember us, you didn’t talk much about,” I pause as I struggle to come up with an explanation. “About anything, really. I never knew what you were thinking about back then.”
“Trish told me you prefer words of affirmation,” Madox tells me as he takes the beautifully folded napkin in front of him and lays it on his lap. “She told me we need to learn each other’s forms of communication, and I’m trying. I think she may have insight I lacked when we were together.”
Madox’s features could be carved of marble. They’re flawless and classically handsome; perfectly poised. My own feel like they’re crumbling at what he just told me. It’s a pain, but a good one. Like when you’ve given yourself to someone for the first time, and the powerful mix of emotions surges inside of you, looking for a way out—until they kiss you, hold you close. That’s the kind of pain I feel right now. Along with the panic of being too vulnerable.
“You’re too far away from me,” Madox tells me, cutting off my thoughts.
I have to grin at his statement. We’re alone in the room and I can only imagine what he’d do to me if we were closer. The very thought makes me squirm, and I can tell from the look in his eyes he would do whatever the hell he wanted with me back here.
“Do you remember when I ate you out under the table at … what was that place?” he asks me and my core heats immediately, remembering how he didn’t give me any notice, he simply ducked down under the table in the middle of the restaurant and slipped his hands up my skirt. All while I stared fixedly at the wall, trying not to scream in pleasure.
“Blue Hill.”
“Yes,” he says and nods, picking up his drink then adds, “you loved that place. How could I forget?” My heart flutters in a way that wishes I were closer to him right now. As close as I could be, but instead I stare down at the silverware, which makes my smile come back.
I was sure someone was looking at me when my silverware hit the plate of the chocolate lava cake with a loud clatter that night he crawled under the table at Blue Hill.
“My hand shook when I tried to drink my water, you know? It was hard to play it off.”
He flashes a wolfish grin back at me. “It was the day before your birthday, I remember that.”
“Is that why you did it? An early birthday present?”
He shakes his head once, a short and deliberate no. “I did it because I wanted to taste you right then and there.” My nipples pebble and my pussy clenches, instantly remembering how his tongue dove into me, how his fingers gripped my hips.
My voice is merely a murmur when I tell him, “You do always get what you want, don’t you?”
“Right now, I want to fuck you on this table. So you tell me, Sophie.”
My heart slams, the heat rising and flooding every inch of my body.
The nerves intensify until Madox nods his head toward someone over my shoulder.
“I sent in the order on my way here,” Madox says and waits for my reaction until I nod in understanding, peeking at the waiter as he makes his way over with our first dishes.
Right now, I wish I had something to give Madox. A gift of some kind. I don’t know what I could give a man like him, someone who has everything. I want to try too though. If he’s trying, I’m going to try with everything I have.
The young man is professional as he sets our food down in front of us. Bone white china plates with a fennel and leek citrus salad beautifully arranged on the dishes. As the waiter explains the first course, a silent lady in black dress pants and a gorgeous white blouse pours the paired wine, some Chenin Blanc.
It’s all beautiful and decadent, but I couldn’t name half the ingredients if someone told me they’d pay me a million dollars cash right now to tell me what I was eating.
Once we’re alone again, I thank Madox and change the subject to something that isn’t going to get me fucked on this table. “I like it when you order in advance, although then I can’t hide behind the menu.” With a flirtatious smile, I take a bite and savor the sweetness of the expensive dinner.
He smirks at me as if he knows exactly what I’m doing. And he goes with it. Giving me a moment to breathe and come down from the high I was just on, remembering what this man across from me is capable of.
There’s tension between us, but it’s the good kind.
“Good, isn’t it?” Madox asks, lifting the glass of wine to his lips, but not drinking until I answer him. I have to cover my mouth and finish swallowing when he smiles at me like that. Because when he does, I smile too.
He chuckles into his glass when I nod, and as he sips I tell him it’s all delicious.
“The lobster risotto is next. I think that will be your favorite.”
Letting my fingers slip down the stem of the glass I ask him, “Will there be another glass as well?” and he nods. Shit. These places always give you so much wine and so little food.
“I have to work tonight,” I tell him, voicing the concern that’s keeping me on edge.
The light in Madox’s eyes, that fire dims slightly, but it’s back just as quickly as it left. “I could have it all wrapped up to go if you’d prefer.”
“No, no, I just can’t drink …much.” Lifting the glass to my lips and deciding this will be my only glass until the presentation is done tonight, I tell Madox offhandedly, “I’m a little too carefree when I drink.”
“What’s wrong with being carefree?” he questions, although it’s meant to be playful.
“Well, last night for one,” I answer him honestly. It’s not healthy to do what we do. “I probably shouldn’t have slept with you.” An anxiousness comes over me, this feeling of dread.
“Why is that?” he asks, sitting up straighter and placing his hands on the table. His fingers are interlaced as his thumbs roll over one another. I imagine this is how he looks at business meetings. Intimidating.
“Well that makes me kind of easy, doesn’t it?”
“I wouldn’t use the word ‘easy.’ You’ve never been easy to hold on to.”
I start to say it would have been better between the two of us back then if he’d been open with me like this, but it feels like the start of a fight and that’s the last thing I want.
Habits are hard to break and when I left three years ago, I spent a lot of time with self-help books. Lord knows I needed it. I’m trying to break the habit of picking fights with him. Toward the end, I think I’d pick a fight just to see if he would ever tell me to stay.
He never did.
I already wish I hadn’t brought up this topic. It’s begging to be spoken from the tip of my tongue though. I want to know what he wants. For years I’ve wanted to know what I mean to him.
It feels so obvious to me right now, but is it so wrong that I want to hear it? And even worse, that I’m afraid of what he’ll say.
“Thank you for inviting me out. I needed it after today,” I say to change the subject, feeling a cowardly chill run down my spine at the mere idea that Madox will tell me I’m an old friend, or friend with benefits,
or something like that if I were to ask him.
“What’s wrong?”
“Just a lot of stress at work.”
“I wish you wouldn’t lie to me.” Madox’s gaze leaves me and it feels like a punishment. I can feel his disappointment. That’s how much power and control this man has over me. I hate disappointing him.
“I don’t know that I want to talk about it,” I answer hesitantly. “I don’t want to upset you.”
Madox considers me for a moment, his forehead marred by a deep crease and his dark green eyes swimming with questions.
“I respect that,” he tells me with sincerity. His voice is low though, as if he hates to allow me that freedom of not confiding in him.
He changes the subject, but to something I didn’t expect.
“I saw my mother today.”
“Oh?” I ask him, glancing just for a moment to the waiter who’s suddenly at my side, offering him a small smile he doesn’t see as he clears the table of the porcelain plates.
Madox finishes his thought only once we’re alone again. “So I had a rough day as well.”
“How is she?” I ask. “Is it still the way it was?”
“The two of us not speaking and pretending there’s anything at all we could talk about? Yes. It’s exactly like that.” He may not realize it, but every time he speaks about his mother, there’s anger in his tone. Coupled with an impatience I don’t see from him often.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I say, and my words are calm and gentle, as is my hand reaching out to him. He accepts my offer, lacing his fingers between mine.
It feels so good to touch him. I have to close my eyes for a moment to remind myself that this is real. He’s really here and he’s even talking to me about his mother.
Maybe I’m not the only one who read some self-help books after I left.
“Don’t be,” he tells me as his thumb rubs circles along my wrist. “We haven’t had a relationship since my father…” Madox doesn’t finish that sentence, but then he adds, “And I doubt we ever will.”
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