by Amy Hatvany
“Not necessarily.” I smiled, and took a moment to appraise him. His wavy hair was shorter than it had been in his pictures, cut haphazardly, but in an appealing, he-might-be-an-artist-who-doesn’t-bother-with-a-comb kind of way. His skin was tanned, and his brown eyes were dark enough that it was difficult to decipher iris from pupil. He wore black slacks and a pin-striped, blue button down that was rolled up at the sleeves, exposing an expensive-looking silver watch on his left wrist. “You look a little familiar,” I said. “Have we met?”
“Possibly,” he said, cocking his head. “I feel like I’ve see you before, too.” He paused. “Sorry for the half-assed pics I sent. I know they weren’t exactly clear.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “Discretion is a good thing.” I felt sure I recognized his voice. “Did we go on a date, and I don’t remember it?”
He laughed—a low and appealing sound. It made me want to say something funny, again. “Oh, I think I would have remembered you,” he said, with a lively edge. “I don’t often forget a date with a smart, beautiful woman.” Suddenly, he sat forward, resting his forearms on the table. “Wait. Did you ever work at a restaurant in Kirkland?”
“Yes,” I said, instantly set on guard. Oh shit. He might know my last name. And then it hit me. “Okay, hold on. Are you Andy the bartender, from the Lakeside Grill?” When I was twenty-one, almost eighteen years ago, a restaurant on Lake Washington was the only place I’d been able to find a job when Peter and I first moved from Boise. It was a busy spot, especially during the summer months, and they employed a lot of bartenders, but there was one, in particular, that I was always happy to have on my shift, and that was Andy. He was a cute and funny guy that the other female servers tended to overlook because he wore thick, nerdy glasses and carried a little extra weight around the middle, but I had always liked his smile and the way he made me laugh every time I picked up a drink order from the bar. Now, the bulge of his stomach and his glasses were gone, and instead of a crew cut, his hair was grown out. He looked like a totally different person.
“Um, yeah,” Andrew said, now. “I’ve been using my full name since I started my company.” He peered at me. “Why can’t I place you?”
“I wasn’t there very long,” I said. “Only six months or so.” I had been four months along when I realized I was pregnant with Ella—at the time, I wasn’t in the habit of tracking my periods, or reliably taking the Pill—and Peter had insisted that I quit my job and let him pay all of our bills. Only one among many bad decisions I’d made during our relationship.
“Wow,” Andrew said, smiling. “Small world, huh?”
“No kidding.” I took a deep breath and frowned. “Unfortunately, it means that this isn’t going to work.”
“Why not? Please don’t tell me you’re traumatized by my previous, not-so-hot geek-factor. I have contacts, now! And I’m not wearing a Star Trek T-shirt!”
I laughed. “Oh god, I forgot about that! It was red, right?”
“No way. Anyone in a red shirt always died on Star Trek. I’m strictly a blue shirt. Like Spock.”
I shook my head, smiling. “Still a little bit of a geek, then.”
He palmed his forehead. “Shit! You’re on to me!” He smiled, too, and his dark eyes twinkled. “Come on. Don’t write me off, yet.”
I looked at him, taking in his newly chiseled jawline and bedroom eyes. Back when we worked together, I was drawn to his sense of humor, but especially to how talkative he was—at least, compared to Peter. I had never thought about Andy-the-bartender in a romantic sense, but I’d liked him. I remember thinking he would make a great husband someday.
“I’m sorry,” I finally said. “I really shouldn’t do this it with anyone I know.” While Jake and I had never specifically discussed whether or not it would be a good idea to engage in this experience with someone we knew, I assumed it went without saying that anonymity was the most important element of maintaining discretion.
“You don’t know me,” Andrew countered. “You knew me. Briefly. For like, six hours at a time eighteen years ago. I’m not the same guy I was at twenty-five, and I’m sure you’re not the same person you were back then, either, because like I said, I would have remembered someone as beautiful as you.” He reached across the table and touched the back of my hand with his fingertips. An undeniable bolt of excitement shot through me.
“Well,” I said, “you definitely have more game than you used to.” I couldn’t deny the attraction I felt—he was funny, smart, and physically, definitely my type. But a little voice inside my head told me I needed to walk away.
“Oh, I’m just getting started,” he said. “Geeky boys do everything better.”
“Is that so?” So much for walking away, I thought. I was having too much fun talking with him.
“Absolutely,” Andrew said. “We’re very interested in how things work. Including a woman’s body. We like to push buttons. And then push them again.” He stroked my hand again with a single finger. “Let me push your buttons, Jessica.” His voice dropped as he spoke this last sentence, and my breath hitched inside my chest. I’d been attracted to the other men I’d slept with as part of this experience, but this was different. The way he was talking to me, using words as seductive weapons, it was as though he’d climbed inside my head and targeted the one thing that made a man impossible for me to resist.
“I’m sorry,” I said, again. I stood up and grabbed by purse. “I have to go.”
He stood up, too. “Okay,” he said. “Let me at least walk you to your car? To make up for being late?”
I hesitated only a moment before agreeing, and a few minutes later, Andrew stood next to me in a parking garage not unlike the one where Jake had taken me up against our car after watching me dance with Will. But thankfully, unlike that night, there were several people in the immediate vicinity to keep me from doing something I might regret with Andrew. I kept looking at his lips, wondering what they might feel like on my skin; what kind of buttons of mine he’d be able to find and push. I worried that with the attraction I felt and the way he made me laugh, he’d already found a few.
“Are you sure about this?” Andrew asked. “I can keep things casual. Totally discreet. Scout’s honor.” He held up the index and middle fingers on his right hand.
“Were you actually a Scout, or are you just really trying to get yourself laid?” I teased.
“An Eagle Scout,” he said, solemnly. We were standing a couple of feet away from each other, but then he leaned in closer and put his lips right below my ear. “I used to be a good boy, but I’ve changed.” His breath was hot, and tickled. It took everything in me to fight the overwhelming impulse to turn my head and kiss him.
Instead, I took a step back. I held out my hand. “It was nice to see you. Sorry it couldn’t work out.”
“Me, too,” he said, taking my hand in his. His skin was soft, save a few calluses, and his grip was firm. His eyes bored into mine. “You know how to reach me, if you change your mind.”
“I won’t,” I said. But even as I spoke the words, I found myself wondering whether they were true.
“SO, how’d it go?” Jake asked me later that night, as we stood in our bathroom, getting ready for bed. I’d texted him, after my meeting with Andrew, to let him know I was safe, but between showing my clients six houses and then having to get dinner on the table while Jake helped the kids with their homework, we had been too busy to discuss the details. “Did you like him?”
“He was nice enough,” I said, as casually as I could. “But I think I’m going to keep looking.” I’d wrestled all afternoon with the idea of telling Jake that I had recognized Andrew, and how that felt like a line we shouldn’t cross. But if I was being honest, the bigger line was about how Andrew had talked to me—and how attracted to him I’d been. Ultimately, I decided that it would be better to keep that information to myself. The way Jake spoke to me about sex since we met Will had become our thing—it wasn’t something I shared with other
men. There were times when I was alone with Will or Alex or Vincent, and they might talk dirty to me while we were in bed, but none of them had used it as foreplay to the extent that Jake did. None of them understood the extent to which words had a certain kind of power over me. My reaction to Andrew was unnerving, because he seemed to so quickly get inside my head. I wasn’t sure how that had happened. The sense of vulnerability I felt—that Andrew saw more about me than I had wanted him to—was the real reason I couldn’t see him again.
“No spark, huh?” Jake said. He set his toothbrush back in the holder and then came over to stand behind me, slipping his arms around my waist. He nuzzled my neck, and then set his lips in the same spot Andrew’s had been, on my ear. “You need someone who makes you wet, right baby?” he whispered. He grazed my earlobe with his teeth, and a chill shot across my skin.
I closed my eyes. “Right,” I said, telling myself this was only a little white lie. My clit ached after Andrew and I parted ways; I probably would have given myself an orgasm, if I had had the time.
“I want you to find someone,” Jake continued. “I want to hear how you fuck him.” His words created vivid images, but in that moment, instead of focusing on my husband’s words, all I could think about were Andrew’s.
All I wanted was his deep voice inside my head, telling me exactly what I needed to hear.
Fifteen
The next afternoon, a little after one, I stepped inside Kendall Properties’ front door. The receptionist, Kimberly, who was a slightly chubby, middle-aged woman with fluffy, bleached blonde hair and a penchant for bedazzled tops, greeted me. I had floor time, which meant if anyone happened to call or show up and needed to speak with an agent about one of our properties, Kimberly would direct them to me. Most agents hated being chained to a desk for four hours, but I actually relished the opportunity to catch up on paperwork, and the possibility that whoever might call or show up could end up as my client.
I spent a couple of hours in my office, making calls and sifting through the messy stack of paper on my desk. Around three-thirty, Kimberly buzzed me from the front desk.
“I have someone on the line for you,” she said.
“Great,” I said. “Put them through.” I hoped whoever was calling might be looking to buy, and would be interested in the Falls, a new construction development about five miles outside of Queens Ridge. I had an ongoing relationship with the investors and general contractor, so I listed every house in the project. I’d pre-sold almost all of them, but had two left. If the person calling ended up buying one, I’d be in for a double commission.
I smiled as I picked up the phone, knowing that it was possible for someone to pick up on my expression based on how I answered. “This is Jessica,” I said, cheerfully. “What can I sell you today?” This was my standard, doing-floor-time greeting, and while it sounded cheesy, I found that if my tone was earnest and warm, it actually won people over.
“A second chance?” a man’s voice said, and I instantly recognized it as Andrew’s. I stiffened.
“How did you find me?” I asked, lowering my voice. My heart raced. I got up and shut my office door. My last name was Wright when I worked with Andrew at the Lakeside Grill; I’d left him yesterday feeling confident that despite our connection the past, he wouldn’t know how to find out more about me, now. I couldn’t decide if I was thrilled or terrified that I’d been wrong.
“Please don’t freak out.”
“You didn’t answer my question,” I said, tightly.
“Facebook. You commented on a friend of mine’s post. Chelsea Wallace?”
I felt a flicker of panic. Chelsea was a client—an older woman who ran a successful online jewelry company called Frost. She had purchased an eight-bedroom house on Lake Washington from me several years ago, and sent me a friend request when I was working with her, as many of my clients do. Last night, while I was scrolling through Facebook— I mostly used social media as a way to maintain contact with my clients, in the hopes that if they needed to buy or sell property again, they’d automatically think of me—I’d liked her picture of the lake in front of her house, blue and glittering in the afternoon sun, and commented, “Gorgeous!”
“How do you know Chelsea?” I asked, still wary that Andrew had contacted me at work.
“I designed her website. My company manages the tech side of Frost’s e-commerce.” He coughed, and then cleared his throat. “I saw your comment on her post, recognized your picture, and felt like it was some sort of weird sign, since we literally just saw each other. I was hoping you’d be flattered. I can’t stop thinking about you.”
The way he said it—the way his voice shifted into something that sounded the way I imagined warm honey might feel—loosened the tension in my neck. After all, this was Andy-the-bartender—the sweet, funny, nerdy guy I’d known almost twenty years ago. He loved computers and Star Trek. He made up limericks about customers’ drink orders and walked me to my car when we both had a closing shift. He was harmless.
“Are you still there?” he asked. “I’m truly sorry if I crossed a line. I just...felt something when we saw each other.” He paused. “Didn’t you?”
“Yes,” I said, before I could stop myself. “But that doesn’t change the fact that I can’t do anything with you.”
“Even if I swear I won’t mess with your real life?”
“You’re calling me at my office,” I said, unable to keep the accusation from my tone. “That’s pretty much the opposite of being discreet.” He knew my last name, now. He could look me up online, find out where my kids went to school. Jake and I never mentioned that we had children to any of the three men we’d been with, simply as an extra measure of protection. Saying I was “in real estate” always felt general enough—I could have been a real estate developer or investor, not necessarily an agent. I also never mentioned Queens Ridge as specifically where Jake and I lived—another level of precaution. No one had found out who I was before, nor had they tried, as far as I knew. And even though it seemed to be a coincidence that Andrew had found me on Facebook, I felt the tiniest bit sick.
“My last name is Rochester,” Andrew said. “I own a company called Lightning Web Design. My address is 42 Lost Lake Road in Kirkland. Google me, if you want. Run a background search. I don’t have anything to hide.”
I was silent. Having him offer me offer me as much, if not more, information about him than he knew about me was reassuring, but still, I was hesitant. It was an entirely different thing for a guy like Andrew, a single man with no entanglements, to be involved in something like this. If it somehow got out that he had sought out this kind of arrangement, I doubted that he would face the same kind of judgment I would as a married woman—a mother—with a public, fairly high profile job. However often I reminded myself that I was a grown woman, now, capable of making her own choices, not only when it came to sex, but everything else in my life, the faint whisper of my mother’s voice still drifted inside my head: “You don’t want to be that kind of girl.”
“Jessica?” Andrew said. “What are you thinking?”
“A lot.”
“Are you angry?”
“Not exactly. More...conflicted.” I had felt something when we saw each other—that all-important, hard-to-define flash of chemistry that I suspected would translate into scintillating sex.
“I’m sorry,” he said again. “I was too impulsive. I should have emailed, instead. I wasn’t thinking. I just...” He trailed off, and this time, I finished his sentence.
“Felt something.”
“Yeah.” I closed my eyes and remembered his lips against my ear as we stood together next to my car, how he’d murmured, “I used to be a good boy, but I’ve changed”—how those words carved my thoughts into a thousand different images of the things the two of us might do together. I shivered, feeling a familiar ache, low in my belly. I imagined what might have happened if I’d kissed him, then. How he would have tasted. How he might have pressed himself against
me. What his fingers might have felt like tangled in my hair.
“Let me think about it,” I said.
“Okay,” he said. “That’s fair. If I don’t hear from you, I’ll assume your decision is made and leave you alone. But I promise you won’t regret giving a reformed geek a chance to show you his wicked-hot moves.”
I laughed, he gave me his number, which I put into my cell, and we hung up. I sat in my office alone, my mind whirling. I considered how Andrew had found me, the very next day after we had coffee. Maybe it was some kind of a sign that we were supposed to connect. Maybe the sex would be so amazing, it would turn Jake on to hear about it like nothing had before. Maybe I was making a big deal out of nothing.
Or maybe, I was about to talk myself into something I really shouldn’t do.
IN the days that followed Andrew’s call to my office, there were end-of-the-year banquets for Ella’s dance and Tuck’s baseball teams, as well as preparations for my parents’ upcoming visit. Jake was at the new office more than ever, still working on getting Justine up to speed, and I ended up receiving offers on both of the remaining houses in the Falls development, so I didn’t have much time to think about Andrew. But when I did, I kept going back to how differently he carried himself than he had when we’d worked together. Back then, he’d seemed goofy and kind—a good person to have as a friend. Now, he came across as mysterious—a bit of a bad boy, really—a good person to have hot, casual sex with. What caused this transition? It made me think about the other guys I had known in my twenties, the ones who had seemed more like boys than men at the time, and wondered who they’d become. All the paths not taken, I thought wistfully, fleetingly, before reminding myself that no man could compare to Jake. But it was that niggling question that drove me to want to see Andrew again.