Hold Me Today

by Maria Luis

  His fingers find me as he stands to his full height. He’s still in his T-shirt, and I go with my gut, fisting the hem and silently ordering him to take it off. He does in one smooth move, then returns the favor.

  “No bra,” he husks out when my shirt meets the same fate as his and the popcorn.

  “No bra,” I whisper back, my fingers gliding over the ink. Without the night there are no stars. I skim my hands up, cupping my breasts for him to see, tweaking my nipples.

  It’s all he needs to line his cock up with my entrance and plunge inside.

  We moan together as my body adjusts to the length of him. Nick grabs my knee, holding me open, and pulls back—then thrusts even harder inside. I bite my lip and reach for the ball of his shoulder to keep myself in place.

  Nick holds nothing back.

  His thrusts are swift and powerful, short and precise. He never lets up the pace, and when I meet his gaze, I don’t want him to slow down. Not now, not ever. He watches me like he can’t look away, and when he finally does, it’s only to stare at where we’re joined. I’m spiraling, threads of anticipation turned into ropes of pleasure, wrapping me up, keeping me here with him when my soul has always run from the prospect of more.

  “Fuck, Mina,” he grunts, his features stark as he slams into me, “I’m gonna come. Touch yourself, koukla.”

  I slip my hand between our damp bodies. And then I do nothing but feel: the way Nick’s hand trembles on my knee, the way he tilts his hips to make sure I cry out with every thrust, how I finger my clit sloppily, without precision, because I’m too far gone to do anything but beg for Nick to make me come.

  Even though I want it, I’m not ready for the force of the orgasm that grips my limbs like anchors mooring me to a dock. I feel it up through my spine and down to my toes, and then I feel Nick release inside of me as he groans my name.

  Better. How does it get so much better with him every single time?

  Muscular arms draw me into his embrace, my cheek pressing against his sweaty, bare chest. I can’t even find it in myself to care. “I like whittling wood,” I mutter against his skin. “It might become my favorite hobby.”

  His fingers draw a random design on my back. “I’ll never be able to look at the church spire without thinking of you.”

  “The one inked in your skin or the wooden one?”

  I feel his wide smile against the top of my head. “Both. Definitely both.”

  30

  Nick

  “All right, boys, who’s ready?”

  I look up from where I’m installing one of the sleek, black styling chairs Mina spent a small fortune on. Standing next to the first one I put in this morning, Mina makes a come-sit-down gesture with her arms to Bill and Mark. Vince already went, the cheeky bastard jumping into the chair the moment Mina even offered to do a little trim.

  Bill folds next. “Yup,” he says, rubbing a hand over his messy hair, “I could definitely use a trim.” He sets down the drill he used to screw the five-and-a-half foot tall, silver-embossed mirror into the floor. Six mirrors sit on either side of the room—officially the first furniture Agape welcomed within its walls. Mina spent the entire morning bouncing around, Windex in one hand and a rag in the other, spraying them all down until they shined to glossy perfection. Her excitement is contagious, and even though the boys and I should be heading over to the museum to finish off the rest of the work day, I couldn’t resist getting started on the styling chairs.

  After three weeks of putting in the time and sweat, Agape is finally beginning to look like a real salon.

  “Come and take a seat!” Mina steps beside Bill and, with her palms on his back, she steers him toward one of the chairs. “What’re we thinking today? Just a trim? Maybe bring down the sides and leave the top a little longer?”

  Bill sends me a quick, panicked glance over his left shoulder.

  I have no idea what he’s looking at me for—I’ve spent my entire life dealing with hair that will not be tamed, no matter what I do with it.

  “Shave it all,” Vince shouts from the hallway. “If I can’t see his head, it’s not short enough!”

  “Could be a good look,” I muse out loud, one hand resting on my bent knee. “How’s your head shaped, Billy? Oval? Triangle? Maybe a little penis-shaped?”

  Bill’s feet lock tight on the floor, unmoving. “Bald is not a good option for me.”

  Bless her hilarious humor, Mina does nothing but pick up a pair of shears and hold them up high like she’s a doctor about to go in for heart surgery. “Take a seat, Billy.” Snip, snip. “I have a vision and only you can help me bring it to life.”

  Bill’s eyes pop open wide.

  Mark, on the other hand, laughs so loud he drops his hands to his knees and nearly collapses. “Oh, man. If you ever decide to quit doing hair, I think you’ve got a future in horror movies ahead of you.”

  “Who says I’m just playing around?” Mina steps forward, shears still snipping threateningly at the air. Behind her back, she waves a hand to keep us quiet. And even though my guys don’t know her well, we’re all completely aware that she’s full of shit—except for Bill, who looks ready to piss himself if that little dance-dance-dance-shuffle he’s doing is any indication.

  “Dude,” Vince says to Bill, head sticking out from the hallway, “if you can’t handle a woman with a pair of scissors, how the hell do you plan to survive the zombie apocalypse?”

  “Valid point.” I sink back on my heels, the drill lax in my hand. “Mina, give him your worst.”

  Her light laughter precedes her giving Bill a little nudge into the chair. He acquiesces, but only just barely. For the next twenty minutes, she spritzes his hair until it’s damp—shampoo bowls aren’t coming in till tomorrow—and then happily brings down his wild mane to a respectable cut that she claims shows off his features perfectly.

  I don’t know whether Bill’s actually got himself some perfect features, but even I can admit the style she’s gone for makes him look a few years younger.

  While she blow-dries his hair, I return to installing the second-to-last chair. My time spent here in Agape is almost at an end. Besides the shampoo bowls, there’s not much left to do—the bathroom is done and looking “chic and elegant,” just as Mina wanted. The parlor doors, although a bitch to install, are also looking pretty. I went for a dark rosewood stain to complement the cream-colored walls Mina opted for in the two back rooms.

  The last major task comes in the form of the mural I’m surprising her with. It’s not ideal, having someone paint the ceiling when we’ve already put in the slate floors and furniture, but beggars can’t be choosers. Before we leave for Maine this weekend, I’ll be here with Vince, covering everything with sheets and tarps so that my buddy can come in and finish it all up before we get back on Sunday.

  I hope Mina likes it.

  Screw that, I hope she fucking loves it and thinks of me every time she looks up after a long day in the salon.

  I nail the last chair down, flicking off the drill and setting it aside. Lifting my arm, I scrub the back of my gloved hand against my damp forehead. I’m not ready for this arrangement with Mina to end, and I’ve lost a lot of sleep this week trying to figure out how to broach the R word with her. A relationship, the one thing she avoids like the plague.

  Except that, in the last few weeks, it certainly hasn’t seemed like she’s been avoiding it all that much. She suggests us getting together to hang out just as much as I do. We call each other throughout the day: between clients for her, who she sees at their houses, and jobsites for me. It feels . . . domesticated, almost, like we’ve been seeing each other romantically for years.

  Forget the fact that I’ve known her for years or that she’s my sister’s best friend, this thing with Mina feels right. It feels permanent. And I can’t help but think long-term: how she might look in a wedding gown, whether any kids we might have will inherit her honey eyes or my gray ones.

  I’m hoping for honey rimmed w
ith amber.

  Rein it in, Stamos. Rein it the fuck in.

  “Nick?” At my softly uttered name, I lift my chin and meet my favorite brand of honey. Mina motions to the empty chair. “How about I finally give you that trim I promised?”

  “I thought you’d never ask.”

  I strip off my work gloves, dropping them next to the drill, which I unplug from the outlet before moving toward Mina. Today she’s wearing a pair of gray sweatpants that gather at the ankle and another one of her sweater crop tops—this one is white and reveals a strip of tantalizing bare skin. She looks comfy and edgy and beautiful all at once, and it’s no wonder that my hands have a mind of their own. The moment I step in close, I brace a hand against her hip and brush my lips over her forehead. “Don’t turn me into Vin Diesel,” I tell her, giving us both a throwback to one of our very first emails that we exchanged.

  The backs of her fingers gloss over my knuckles. “Or what?”

  Gamóto, I love the challenge in her voice almost as much as I love verbally sparring with her. Pulling away, I drop my ass into the chair and swivel it around to stare her down. “Or you’ll be lucky if you see any of The Great One on our trip to Maine this weekend.”

  Her face reveals nothing as she spins me back to face the mirror. “Men,” she huffs playfully, “your entire sex gives way too much credit to your dicks. How many minutes do you think you spend thinking about it during the day? Asking for a friend.”

  “Percentage-wise?”

  She nods, then reaches for one of the bottles sitting on her makeshift cart.

  “Oh, I don’t know.” I pretend to think heavy on the topic while I watch her tip what looks like oil into the palm of her hand. “Maybe eighty percent?”

  Rubbing her palms together, she meets my gaze in the full-length mirror positioned about a foot away from my feet. “And the other twenty percent?” she asks.

  I offer a slow grin. “Spent thinkin’ about you, Ermione.”

  Her cheeks grow rosy, and she pokes me in the shoulder with a knuckle, since her hands are all slick with oil. “Smooth, Stamos, so smooth.”

  And then she slips her fingers into my hair and I go straight to heaven.

  “I thought you could use a little stress relief,” she says, her attention fixated on my head while I watch her in the mirror. I’ve seen this woman naked, I’ve seen her orgasm so hard that her pupils dilate and her legs twitch, but to date, I can’t say that I’ve seen her shy . . . until now. She doesn’t look up as she massages my scalp, applying pressure with her fingertips. It’s an act of self-control to keep from groaning out loud when she glides down to the nape of my neck and works to loosen the tense muscles there.

  Voice rougher than I’d like to admit, I mutter, “You have unicorn fingers.”

  She laughs at that but doesn’t stop her ministrations. “The old salon I worked at—we were expected to offer a short scalp massage before every haircut. If I have unicorn fingers, it’s only because I learned the better the massage the higher the tip.”

  Makes sense. I feel like one lucky son of a gun right now. “You can have every tip I’ve got.”

  “Ah, I see we’re firmly in the eighty-percent bracket right now.”

  “Don’t forget the twenty, koukla. I’m thinking about you.”

  Briefly her fingers freeze, and my gut clenches with the worry I may have overstepped our casual boundaries. But then she continues, and it’s the little smile gracing her mouth that has me relaxing again.

  Once she’s done making me almost come in my pants from her unicorn scalp massage, she starts in on the haircut itself. She spritzes my hair, using some shampoo that she says doesn’t need to be washed out but will remove most of the oil she used on me. I understand approximately half of what she says, but I give her my undivided attention anyway, nodding and doing exactly as she tells me to do.

  She spends more time on me than she did on my guys, and I like to think it’s because she enjoys touching me as much as I enjoy being touched by her. She clips here and snips there, her fingers fluffing my hair, all while eyeing me with studious focus. Her teeth sink into her plump lower lip as she steps back to survey her handiwork.

  “Satisfied?” I ask.

  “I aim to please.” She winks at me, then sets her shears down on the cart to her right. Picking up one of the smaller tubes with a glossy, blue coating, she squeezes product into her hand and rubs her palms together again. “I didn’t want to go too short with these curls,” she tells me, threading her fingers through my hair to evenly distribute the cream. “I like having something to hold onto when you’re doing business.”

  Doing business. Now that’s a euphemism I haven’t heard before.

  Cracking a grin, I shift my gaze from her face to my reflection. Call me a romantic or what have you, but I feel like I look different. It’s not the hair. Mina’s done a great job with the unruly mop on my head, for sure, but it’s not what strikes me the most. No, it’s the way I look younger—less surly, as she always tells me, less reserved. The grooves in my face appear softer, less deeply embedded, and I know I only have Mina to thank for the pep in my step.

  I want this more than I should.

  Me, her, and a fake relationship I desperately want to make real.

  “Ermione, I—”

  The sound of her ringtone cuts through the air and she flashes me an apologetic grimace before grabbing it from the cart. “It might be a client,” she says, her honey eyes already fixed on the screen. “Hold that thought.”

  Keeping my gaze on her face, I listen as she answers the phone. “Hello, this is Mina.” Her eyes go wide. “Oh! Yes, of course I remember you, Detective.” She shoots a look my way, her honey eyes snapping with impatience. “You did? Oh, my God, that’s awesome . . . I see.” Mouth falling open, she plants a hand on my shoulder like she’s searching for support, and I reach back, wrapping my hand around her wrist. “Well, damn. Sorry, not damn. I don’t think I can curse—oh, thanks for understanding. But, really, French toast? Company fraud all in exchange for . . . Yeah, I’ll get myself a lawyer. Thanks for finding him, Detective. It’s appreciated more than you’ll ever know.”

  With a tap of her finger she ends the call and tosses the phone in the glossy black cart.

  “That was the police officer in charge of my case with Jake Rhodan.” She stares at the phone, then looks over to me. “The IOU man.”

  “Ah, the one who stole your check for—”

  “A shit ton of money.” She nods, pulling out of my grasp and planting her hands on her hips. “They caught him. He’s at the station now.”

  “Well that’s good.”

  “He bought some hockey player’s French toast on eBay with my money.”

  I promptly choke on nothing but air. “I’m sorry”—I roll my hand, motioning for a repeat—“I’m going to need you to elaborate. Did you just say he spent thousands of dollars on French toast?”

  “According to his transactions, I guess. His name popped up on their search list—the cops, I mean—and I can’t even begin to explain how all of that sleuthing works but, yes, he spent five-thousand dollars on leftover French toast that some beefy player didn’t manage to eat while he was on some morning show. The TV host auctioned off the breakfast on eBay as a joke. The rest of the cash he took from me . . . Well, hopefully he still has it.” Her features pull tight. “I’m seconds away from tears and I don’t know if they’re laughing tears or oh-my-God-this-is-my-life tears.”

  I consider her features thoughtfully. It’s a bad situation, but it’s also hilarious—and completely unexpected. “I wonder if they auctioned it off sans maple syrup or if it was already drenched in it.” Mina turns murderous eyes up on me, and I hold up my hands to ward her off. “It was a joke, koukla. Don’t cry.”

  With an exhaled breath, her shoulders droop in defeat. “You suck, you know that? Now all I want to know is if he received soggy French toast in the mail.” Her hands come up to shield her eyes. “Did he have to
pick it up himself? Was it sent via UPS? Did this happen right before he was due to start on Agape, which is why he left the IOU? Who buys French toast when they steal thousands of dollars?”

  There we go. The pinched look in her expression has turned more incredulous than sad, and I do her one better by pulling my phone out of my pocket and heading straight to the internet. I tap in the basics—Hockey Player’s French Toast Auctioned Off—and wait for the search to load. When it does, I select the first article and read aloud, “An anonymous man from Revere, Massachusetts, breaks a previous record from 2000, when a 19-year-old bid on Justin Timberlake’s half-eaten French toast. According to Blades Hockey player, Andre Beaumont, he was flabbergasted by the winning bid amount and is rumored to have said, ‘Who the fuck does that? I feel like I at least owe the guy season tickets. Also, the money is going to charity—don’t ask me which one yet. I’m still wrapping my head around a man spending five-thousand dollars to eat my leftovers.’”

  “I’ll eat his leftovers if someone gives me the money,” Mina mutters, disgruntled.

  I pocket my phone. “Óxi. You’re gonna go down to the station, correctly identify him, and then you’re going to let me take you out for dinner where we’ll get some delicious—”

  “Don’t you dare say French toast, Nick, or I will—”

  “—Pancakes.” I grin down at her. “French toast’s first cousin, twice removed.”

  “I’m going to kill you.”

  “Nah,” I murmur smoothly, “you’re going to let me feed you, and then you’re going to let me do business.” I lean down to brush my lips over her cheek. “Someone’s got to do a test run on this new haircut, koukla, and that someone is you.”

  31

  Mina

  “I like Nick Stamos. A lot.”

  I repeat the words to my reflection in the mirror the night before our trip to Maine. I’m still holed up at my parents’ house for the time being, while Nick and the guys put their full efforts into finishing off my salon, which means I have clothes strewn everywhere, leaving me little room to move around. There are choices to be made—what jeans and sweatshirts and knee-high socks to bring with me—but I can’t stop re-reading the message he sent me via email. Sitting on the edge of my mattress, I swipe open my phone, and lucky me, his message was the last thing I looked at.