by Sarina Bowen
“You say that, but—” My phone rings in my hand. The phone number of the caller is blocked. Nonetheless I answer it so fast that Silas laughs. What if Heidi needs rescuing from her date? “Hello?”
“Jason.” The voice on the other end is slurred by both alcohol and tears. Fuck. It’s not Heidi, thank God. But it’s a call that I dread nonetheless. “Honey. How are you?” the older woman asks.
“I’m well, Jolene. And you?” I hold in my sigh, because I know what’s coming.
Her sob is loud and broken. “It’s that time of year again. When I feel so blue! It’s gonna be bad this time. I just know it.”
Fuck.
It is that time of year again. I always struggle in the fall, too. Although Jolene is the kind of person who leans into tragedy. The first moment I met her I knew she was trouble. Jolene—my high school girlfriend’s mother—is a hundred and two pounds of narcissism with a raging addiction to alcohol on the side.
“Me too, Jolene,” I say. I’ve learned that agreeing with her is the quickest path to freedom.
“It’s so hard. So hard to watch the leaves fall again and to know my baby girl won’t ever see them again. She loved the fall. We used to go back-to-school shopping together.”
I grit my teeth. There’s some truth in what she says—Lissa loved every season. She was full of life and adventure. But Jolene had only been interested in her daughter when it suited her. And most everything Lissa bought she earned for herself.
“The high school looks just the same,” Jolene says between sniffles. “Just the same! Kids with their backpacks…”
Silas is motioning to me from the other end of the couch. He’s lifting his hand in imitation of drinking a beer.
I nod, and then reconsider. Tequila, I mouth. He gives me a salute and marches into the kitchen. Jolene goes on and on in my ear. “My sweet girl. So nice to everyone.”
Tuning her out, I kick my feet onto the coffee table and settle in to remember Lissa the way she really was—an absolute hellion of the highest order. In a good way. When my parents were giving me grief about playing junior hockey instead of going to prep school, it was Lissa who’d said—middle fingers raised—“Fuck that noise. You do you.”
She was so strong. A lioness at sixteen. I fell hard.
Five years later, it’s still so easy to picture her face. I only keep the one photo in my gym bag. But I can see her so clearly in my mind that I don’t need more. She had a wide, laughing smile and bright, mischievous eyes. My wild girl. My Lissa. I loved her with the pure, bright fire of youth. I thought we’d have a hundred years together.
We got two.
“The Juliet to your Romeo!” Jolene wails. “Gone. A real-life tragedy.”
It was. And it’s one that I re-live through phone calls like this a couple of times a year. She always calls in October or November. The accident happened over Thanksgiving weekend. Freezing rain. A slippery Minnesota road. I’d been four states away at a hockey tournament that I’d signed onto at the last minute.
“You can’t leave me alone with the family on Thanksgiving!” Lissa had shrieked when I told her. “They’re the worst on holidays.”
It was all true. I shouldn’t have left her there to fend for herself. Even so, Lissa didn’t need to solve the problem by escaping into the car of a friend who was too high to drive…
Silas puts a bottle of Jose Cuervo onto the coffee table, along with two shot glasses. This happens right around the same time when Jolene steers the conversation to the other purpose for her call.
“My goddamn landlord,” she weeps. “A man with no heart at all. I’m a little short this month, and he’s threatening me. A lonely old lady. Can you believe the nerve? I’m between jobs right now. He knows this.”
“How much do you need?” I ask immediately. There’s no point in beating around the bush.
“You are such a good boy to offer,” she sniffs. And I swear I can hear the distinctive sound of a match lighting her latest cigarette. I’m going to write her a check and she’s going to blow it on cigarettes. “I’ll lose this apartment if I don’t come up with fourteen hundred real quick. Not that I have any groceries in the kitchen.”
“Let me have your address,” I say, grabbing a magazine off the coffee table and flipping it over.
I look around for a pen. Silas tosses me one with those quick goalie reflexes. Thanks, I mouth. When he’s not busting my chops, Silas is the best roommate ever.
“Could you send it Western Union?” she asks with a sniffle. “I’m kinda in a bind.”
“Why not,” I say, eyeing the tequila bottle.
“I want to pick it up at the Walgreens on East Main Street. It’s store number 111.”
“Okay, sure. I’ll do it tomorrow afternoon. I’m traveling in the morning. Better go, Jolene. Good hearing from you,” I lie.
“Goodnight, honey. Be well. I’ll pray for your safe travel.”
We hang up and I toss the phone onto the coffee table and put my head in my hands.
“She’s back, huh?” Silas asks, uncapping the tequila. “How much does she want this time?”
“Whatever,” I grunt. Hell, if Jolene knew the terms of my new contract, she would have asked me for ten times as much. Luckily, she doesn’t follow hockey.
Besides, taking care of Jolene is something I do for Lissa. The only thing I can do for Lissa. It has fuck-all to do with Jolene.
“I think you should tell her to fuck off,” Silas says. “But if you won’t, let’s drink tequila instead.” Silas hands me a bottle of water first, because it’s important to stay hydrated the night before a game. Then he lines up the shot glasses and pours.
We dunk the first shot in silence.
“Can I ask you something?” he asks eventually.
“Maybe?”
“What would it take to make you serious about a girl again?”
“A frontal lobotomy,” I say immediately.
Silas rolls his eyes. “I was being serious.”
“Me too,” I snort. “Dude, there is really no point. I’m used to being single now. I like it.”
“Forever, though?” He leans back and looks at the ceiling.
I glance at my roommate and try to guess what’s in his head. Silas is one of the most unreadable people I’ve ever met. “What’s got you asking, anyway?”
He shrugs. “Hockey and dating don’t really go together so well. But someday…” He doesn’t finish the sentence.
“They don’t,” I agree. “But so what? You and I can get all the, uh, companionship we need without the commitment. So why do you even let it bother you?”
“One-night stands aren’t really my style.” He’s not lying. Silas hooks up like maybe twice a year. “But I feel like I’ve been single so long that I don’t even know how it’s done.”
“Every night in the locker room there’s somebody who’s all pissy over a fight he had with his wife,” I point out. “Not sure you’re missing out.”
“And we may never find out.” He sits up and pours us another couple of shots. “Want to kill some zombies?” he asks after he hands mine over.
“Absolutely.” I down my second shot and get up to fetch the Xbox controllers. We hunker down and play a few rounds of our new favorite Call of Duty. It’s getting late, and Heidi still isn’t home to kick us off the couch.
Eventually Silas gives up and declares he’s heading to bed. “You’re going to get some sleep, right?” he asks me.
“Yeah. Soon.”
“How about I put away the tequila?”
“How about you leave it here instead?”
“Suit yourself. You’re waiting up for Heidi, aren’t you?”
“No.” But where the hell is she? “I don’t think she’s coming home at all.”
Silas winces, which only means I’ve done a poor job of concealing that it bothers me. He walks behind the couch and then stops one more time. “Just don’t finish the bottle, okay?”
“Right, Mom.”
He actually tousles my hair like I’m five and then finally departs, leaving my brooding ass alone.
I help myself to another shot of tequila, just to keep my buzz going. Then I grab Heidi’s pillow off the tidy stack of belongings she keeps in the corner. And when I lay my head down on the case, it smells like her. I take a deep breath of her citrus scent and wonder where she is right now.
It’s selfish, but I want her here on the other end of the couch, giving me sass and telling me what to do. Silas was right earlier tonight when he said that I have it bad for Little Miss Perky. It’s true.
But just because you want something doesn’t make it yours. I have a poor record for taking care of beautiful girls who trust me. It’s better for everyone if I stick to hookups and bachelorhood.
And she obviously went home with her college boy. So I don’t even have to move my drunk ass off this couch.
I must have fallen asleep. Because the next thing I know I’m trying to roll over and my leg is dangling off the couch and my arm is trapped between the cushion and the back of the sofa.
Ow.
I stumble into my bathroom to take a piss and brush my teeth, blinding myself with the bathroom light.
My muscles are tight from practice, and the bed beckons. I drop my clothes a piece at a time as I make my way to the bed. Lifting the covers, I collapse onto the cool sheets.
Except they’re not that cool. And as I roll toward the bed’s center, I collide with something smooth and warm.
Someone gasps, and it isn’t me. “J-Jason?”
“Mmm?” My hand finds soft skin. Bare skin. My fingers splay across the bliss of her silken stomach before I fully understand. “Heidi? You’re naked in my bed?”
“You were asleep on the couch!” she sputters as I quickly withdraw my hand. “And all my nightgowns are in my bag under the coffee table. In the dark. I didn’t want to disturb you.”
“Oh, I’m disturbed.” I sit up fast and fumble for the lamp. When I switch it on, I’m immediately sorry I did. The sight of sleep-tousled Heidi in my bed is devastating. The sheet is askew so that her breasts are partially revealed. I can only see one rosy nipple, but my mouth waters anyway.
“You’re staring at me,” she whispers.
“So fix it,” I grunt. “Move that sheet.”
Heidi’s fingers find the edge of the sheet. She looks me dead in the eye. “Yes, sir.” And then the vixen pulls it down instead of up.
Now all I can see are two full breasts, a sleek tummy that I’d like to measure with my tongue, and a tiny pair of black lace panties. “Jesus Christ.”
Heidi puts a hand on her stomach. She stretches her fingers until her pinky finds the edge of the panties, and she lets that little finger slip beneath the elastic.
I finally find the willpower to look away. “What are you doing?”
“Who’s asking? You’re more naked than I am,” she points out.
When I look down, my cock is tenting the sheet that’s covering my lap. “I mean, what are you doing in my bed?”
“I told you.” She sits up, and I’m powerless again. I turn my head just as her tits bounce from the motion. “My bed was occupied by a snoring right wing.”
“Because I thought you went home with him.” Okay, that comes out a little too forcefully.
Her eyes widen with surprise. “And that bothered you?”
I shrug, because it’s already clear to both the naked people in this room that it did. And if that makes me an asshole, I guess that ship has sailed. “You thought about going home with him, right? You’re wearing those.” I point at the incriminating lingerie.
“Maybe I did think about it,” she admits. “These are my lucky panties. And he asked me back to his hotel room.”
“And you said no? Why?”
“Because he wants me to love him,” she whispers. “And I don’t, so it wouldn’t be fair. If I slept with him, it would only be for birthday sex.”
When her rosy lips form those last two words, my disobedient cock gives a throb. I force myself to look at the alarm clock. “It’s two in the morning. Your birthday is over.”
“Right,” she snaps. “Like I said, I didn’t come back here to beg you to jump my turnstile. Been there, done that.”
“So you’re here to torture me instead?” I’m so aggravated right now. Not one thing in my life makes any damned sense.
“No. That’s just my consolation prize.”
“I’m no prize,” I grumble. “What you don’t understand is that I’m saving us both a lot of hassle.”
She rolls her eyes, tosses the sheet aside, and scrambles to her knees. “Now, you listen up.” I can’t, because her fearlessness turns me on like nobody’s business. “If you’re so smart and I’m so stupid, maybe you could answer a couple of questions for me.”
“What’s that?”
“Why was it so easy for me to turn him down? And yet, when you look at me like that—like you can’t decide if you should kiss me or kill me—it makes me really wet?”
I let out a loud, unhappy groan. “Why did you have to say that?”
“Because you pretend you don’t care! But you do. Here you are asking about my choice in lingerie, which clearly flips your light switch—” She waves a hand at my aching dick. “—but I’m supposed to be content with being the only woman in Brooklyn who’s off limits.”
Fuck me. The woman is listing all my flaws and inconsistencies, and every one of them is true.
“Why not me?” Her eyes flash as she continues her sermon. “If half of what they write about you is true, you’ve stamped the passports of—”
Check, please. It’s fucking inevitable that I put my trembling hands on her soft body and push her down on the bed. The moment my palms meet warm skin, she stops ranting. Finally. But I’m not one to take chances, so I fit my mouth over hers just to shut her up. With my tongue.
The moment my mouth melds with hers, Heidi moans. She grabs me by the hair and pulls me closer.
Fuck me, but I love it. Leaning into her soft curves, I taste her more deeply. Her tongue tangles with mine, and she moans again.
That sound you just heard was the door slamming shut on my self-control. If Heidi wants to make bad choices, I’m done being the one to stop her. Women never listen to me, anyway. Not when it counts.
But she’s paying attention right now as I roughly claim her mouth, my whiskers abrading her soft skin.
“Is this what you want?” I mumble against her tongue.
In answer, she arches her back, asking for more contact.
I deepen the kiss, plundering her mouth, kiss after kiss. “You didn’t answer,” I point out, because I’m still in a mood. “You want my mouth? How about my hands?” I run a palm down her curvy body.
She only moans.
“I can’t hear you. You want more?”
“Yes,” she bites out. “And if you’re just teasing me right now I’ll—”
She doesn’t finish that sentence because I push my hand inside her little tiny panties. Her legs part on a gasp. Holy fuck. My fingers find so much slickness and heat that I groan with impatience. “You’re bare,” I croak as my fingertips slide against soft perfection. And the truth hits home. “You shaved for him.”
“He likes that,” she gasps, lifting her hips to meet me.
“Why? Does he put his mouth on you?” The image of another man’s face between her legs makes me feel a little more insane than I already feel. I stroke her sweetly.
Her forehead wrinkles as she shakes her head and shifts her hips.
“No? Then he’s a fool.” I give the panties a tug, but they don’t give way. Maybe that only works in porn. “Lose the panties, I want a taste.”
Big blue eyes measure me as she kicks them off.
“Good girl,” I say. Heidi’s pink lips part in surprise. And it dawns on me that being a good girl might be a habit that dies hard. This gives me even more ideas. “Take the sheet off me.”
She blinks, and then her gaze drops to my waist where the sheet is still covering my cock, save the dot of wetness where I’m leaking against the fabric.
“I’m waiting.”
“Hold your horses,” she whispers crossly. But then she takes the edge of the sheet and yanks it down, exposing my erection. She licks her lips and reaches out a hand to touch me.
And I catch it midair. “Not yet,” I say, having no idea why. All I know is that I have to keep the upper hand. “First things first. There are condoms in that drawer.” I point to the nightstand on her side of the bed. “Take out as many as you think we’ll need. If you don’t want to go there, I guess that would be none. It’s your call.”
Our eyes lock, and I wait, wondering if she’ll make the smart choice and shut me down. I want her so badly. But I’m sure I’ll regret it later.
I exhale as she turns toward the drawer. Because the bed is huge, she has to crawl forward on her hands and knees to reach it.
I die quietly at the view while she reaches into the drawer. My blood swims with desire as I picture myself bending her over the edge of the bed and—
Heidi turns around, holding a strip of no fewer than ten condoms. She tosses them to me with narrowed eyes.
A bark of laughter pierces through my lust. “Who’s a funny girl?”
“You’re so fond of giving me that speech about how there are only one-way tickets on the Castro train. Better make it count.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
What have I gotten myself into?
17
Heidi
The way he’s looking at me right now? Smoldering.
My wish list has always been lengthy. I’ve wanted ponies and gold medals and trips to Paris. But I don’t remember ever wanting anything as badly as I want Jason Castro right now. Nobody has ever made my pulse feel thready and my hands sweat.
This time I won’t blow it. This time I’m not drunk, although I feel a little woozy anyway as I lean back against the headboard. I can hardly believe all the sass that’s fallen from my mouth tonight, or my little acts of bravery. And I need to keep up the fearless-girl routine, so he won’t see how shaky I feel right now.