by Danes, Ellie
My father’s phone started to scream in his hand since he had never placed it back in his pocket. “Speak of the devil, your mother probably needs help with a new patient we just took on. The paperwork has been hell so far.” While it continued to ring, my father waved the phone in my face. “Watch how someone successful actually answers when a co-worker calls.”
I hated hearing him call Mom a co-worker, but I’d gotten used to things like that ever since the divorce and they had continued working together. My father came over to where I sat in the loveseat and patted me on the head, kissed me on the forehead, and then waved to me while turning around as he began discussing work with Mom on the phone. He left my apartment without another word directed toward me.
Once I was sure he had exited the building and gotten back into his car, I got up and went to admire the painting of the stranded ship. My father had riled me up so much that I almost wanted to punch a hole right through the canvas, but I decided to hang it up right in the entryway to my apartment so that it was the first thing anyone saw when coming into to my home. I searched my room for my hammer and a nail, but couldn’t find anything to hang it up on.
I had to go over and ask Dalton for some nails.
I went to the bathroom and brushed off some tears that had welled up after my father had left in a hurry, but didn’t have to fix myself up too much since I had choked back most of my emotion before it could erupt from my tear ducts.
The hallway was deserted when I tiptoed out of my room. I snuck up to Dalton’s door with my heart racing. I knocked lightly and then held my breath. When he opened his door, he was in a t-shirt and a pair of loose exercise shorts. His hair was wet and he smelled like soap. He held a damp towel in his hands and wiped it haphazardly over his head. His tussled hair dripped down his neck onto his white shirt, allowing visibility to some of the black ink the shirt hid.
“Break something already?” He sighed, mockingly.
“I came to complain about the management here. It seems one of your lazy workers forgot the mint on my pillow this evening,” I teased back, making sure he didn’t notice I was drinking in the visual of his bulge at the front of his shorts.
“I forgot to mention we had royalty in one of our rooms. I’ll make sure our minter gets on that right away.” He shifted his weight, causing the bulge in his shorts to be even more visible. “How did things with your father go?”
“I’m still that boat, and he’s still draining my ocean.”
“Too bad he doesn’t realize how full your sails are of wind. Even without an ocean, nobody can truly stop you from sailing anywhere you damn well please. I don’t claim to know exactly how you feel, but I understand what that imprisoned feeling must feel like. I get that around my father too, like I owe him a debt and the only way to pay is with my freedom.”
Knowing he understood a bit of what I was going through relaxed me, and completely dried any remaining tears induced by my father’s visit.
Dalton stared at me, his eyes locked on my face. Then his gaze flicked down to my chest, and the cleavage exposed by my neckline. I noticed that his bulge had gotten larger and now was pressed against his waistline and leaning slightly to the left.
I bit my lower lip, trying to ignore the tingling I was experiencing between my legs, and nodded in agreement. I watched as his eyes darted from my eyes to my lower lip caught in between my teeth, and I noticeably watched his package tremble and grow larger.
Down the hallway, the elevator chimed and opened up, but there was nobody inside. It shocked both of us out of the moment, and Dalton cleared his throat before speaking.
“It does that from time to time. It’s on my checklist to remove the building ghost.”
“I need to get nailed,” I blurted, then quickly corrected myself. “I need to get nails, to hang up that painting I got earlier. I don’t have any more nails in my house. Do you have any nails I can borrow—I mean have?” Blushing, I hoped that he hadn’t picked up on my Freudian slip.
Dalton thought to himself for a moment, then gestured that he would be back in a moment and walked away into his kitchen. I watched how the exercise shorts gripped tight to his ass as he walked away, still wet and dripping from his shower. When he was completely out of view, I leaned in to get a peek of his house.
The room looked completely bare, just a tired couch and a coffee table with a broken leg. In the corner was a table and mismatched chairs, on which squatted a lonely beer. The only item Dalton seemed to possess was a baseball bat leaning against the wall near the window.
He came back with the nails. He caught me looking around at his apartment and I stepped back, trying not to look weirded out by the empty space that was his home.
With a slight frown, Dalton held out the nails for me to take. Something about the empty room and his frown sent alarm bells off in my head, and my legs tensed up, ready to carry me back to my room as fast as possible. “Thanks, Dalton.”
“Your father doesn’t appreciate how luminous you are. Don’t let him extinguish you. You’re too bright for him to be able to, anyway.” Dalton smiled at me. “If you need anything else, don’t hesitate to come wake me up.”
The alarm bells in my head abruptly shut off. All the fear that had sprung up a moment ago melted away in an instant, and I found my legs that had been primed to run suddenly give way and rock me forward into embracing Dalton. I hugged his damp body to mine, letting him drip over me as his wet shirt slowly soaked mine. His shorts didn’t stop his rock-hard bulge from pressing into me, and I could feel wetness creep through to the fabric of my panties. I didn’t expect him to, but after a few moments of me squeezing his torso and letting him get me soaking wet, he raised his free arm over my shoulder and squeezed me back.
Letting go of the embrace, I smiled up at him and he smiled back. Who was this stranger, this bad boy who couldn’t care less? He was desperately trying to hide the understanding and thoughtful man kept secret underneath his bravado. He was someone who understood what I was going through and knew how it felt to be completely and utterly stuck in life.
We said goodnight to one another, and then I retreated back to my apartment. The whole night I imagined Dalton, just on the other side of the thin apartment wall, sleeping so near to me after removing his damp clothes and entering the covers of his own bed without putting anything else on.
Chapter 11
Dalton
I could hear Brittany’s door close, when I heard a ping come from my computer set up near the kitchen sink. My shorts were too wet because I hadn’t had time to dry off after my shower, so I threw on a clean pair of sweatpants without bothering with briefs and walked back to my computer in the kitchen. The free feeling that I always got from going commando in sweatpants was instantly choked when I read who the ping had been sent from over the apartment portal.
My father wanted to schedule a meeting for the next morning, and in the description for his request he had added, “You continue to show a lack of desire or understanding to prove that you want this second chance. Set aside time tomorrow morning to discuss this with me; you need to prove that you’re making progress and not repeating the past. I have yet to see proof of this.”
I checked my phone to see if maybe he had called me before attempting contact through the apartment portal, but when I found nothing on my phone saying he had tried to get a hold of me, it made perfect sense to me since our relationship was strictly business.
It made me feel closer to Brittany, who in reality was physically close to me by being just on the other side of my bedroom wall. We had more in common than I had originally thought, and it pained me knowing her father had just left her with the same frustration and anger that I was experiencing from my own father.
I had been trying not to think about how she had come to my door after her father had left and caught me right out of my shower. I had thrown clothes over my wet body and covered most of my tattoos before answering the door, yet she didn’t seem to mind the tattoos that
peeked through. She had even pressed herself firmly against my body while I was still dripping, squeezing her hips into mine as she held our embrace. Couldn’t she see that she drove me wild? Didn’t she understand that I needed to keep my nose clean and I couldn’t risk getting involved with her? She must have seen how excited she had made me with those thin shorts. If she couldn’t tell by looking, she most certainly could feel how I excited I was against her.
Now she was once again on my mind. As I prepared for bed, I thought to myself how she was just on the other side of the wall doing the exact same thing. As she brushed her teeth in the adjacent room, I imagined her holding her toothbrush in between her teeth so that her arms were free to slip her loose sweater up over her head. If the wall hadn’t been there to separate us, then I would have brought myself up behind her and pulled her waist into mine, leaning into her neck and biting her, causing her to giggle between brush strokes. She would bend over to rinse out her mouth, squirming as she pressed her butt firmly into my crotch. Then she’d lean back up and turn around to wrap her arms around the back of my neck.
I rinsed my own mouth when I’d finished cleaning my own teeth alone in my bathroom. I slipped under the covers of my bed, playing out the fantasy I had let my mind invent. I turned my body so that as I fell asleep I was facing the wall that guarded Brittany from me. I wondered if she was okay after seeing her father, and I wished I could help her get out from his clutches. I wanted to hold her as we fell asleep, making sure that she knew someone cared about her. I wanted to tell her that she didn’t need to listen to her father and I wanted to confide in her about my father. I wanted her to know that she wasn’t alone.
Pushing all of these thoughts away, I tried to fall asleep. No matter how hard I tried, though, my thoughts kept coming back to Brittany and wanting to comfort her as I drifted into unconsciousness.
I woke up the next morning to a series of rough knocks and the sound of a key entering the lock to my apartment door. I jumped out of bed, still commando in my sweatpants, and rushed over to the baseball bat I kept near the living room window in case of intruders. I raised it above my head and approached the door as it swung open. My father, in a khaki-colored suit with leather shoes, his belly entering long before him, barged in through my door. Without flinching, he glared at me and barked, “Put that down before you do something again that you regret.”
I set the bat down, feeling utterly perplexed.
He closed and locked the door behind him and turned to face me.
“I didn’t know you had a key so I thought you were an intruder,” I explained. “I only keep this bat around for self-defense.”
“You do understand that there is a difference between assault and self-defense?” he asked.
This was the first time in a long time I had seen him in person, and he sent that comment my way like it was a bullet. I could feel my hackles raise as I got heated, angry he would even ask such a vile thing.
“I know the difference.” I turned to the window and opened the blinds, letting the sun pitch in through in long, rectangular patches.
“I see your decoration skills have still not changed,” my father said, taking in my apartment for the first time with me in it. “It looks like your room all those years ago, like you never left.”
He had never graced my doorstep with his presence until now. The room he had referred to, where he said I never left, was the place I had lived during the darkest period of my life. His words scratched open the wound.
“I don’t need a lot in order to get the things done that are needed of me,” I told him, trying to look respectable in my empty living room. With embarrassment, I realized I was still in sweatpants while my father had on a suit, and as he continued looking around my living room with knitted eyebrows, I tried to adjust my morning stiffness without him noticing.
“Tell me why are you dressed like that,” he said. “Have you been seeing a woman? Is there a woman here now?”
“No,” I said. Not that it was any of his business.
He marched over to my room and yanked open the door, making sure my room was woman-free. “With your past, you can’t be sleeping around, and if I hear that you are without intending to wed the girl first, then you know what happens.”
He didn’t have to remind me, I knew that if I was caught sleeping around before marrying that I was removed from ever accessing the money my father was holding for me. He would kill me for slandering his name, if the media even faked a story with a headline along the lines of “August Jones and His Promiscuous Son.”
My father had made it so that legally I would need to get married without scandal before ever inheriting a dime.
He cleared his throat and faced me squarely. “From now on, you’re going to check in with my assistant daily, once in the morning and once in the evening. I’m only trying to help you. You can still enjoy your life and have fun, but you’re on thin ice. Don’t forget that you put yourself there.” He pulled a card from his breast pocket. “My assistant’s name is Roland. He’ll be by at eight in the morning and in the evening every day except for Sunday. Here’s his number if you need to reschedule, but I’m putting my faith in your ability to show me that you truly want this second chance, so do what you need to do to make eight o’clock work for you.”
“I’ll make that work.” I took the card from his hands.
He nodded, taking one last look around the room, and then walked into the kitchen to look through my drawers.
“What are you looking for?” I asked.
“I hope I’m looking for nothing.” When he had also gone through all my cabinets, he turned back toward me and put out his hand for me to shake. “I look forward to hearing positive progress reports about you from my assistant.”
He shook my hand, and then left. I could hear him lock me back inside my apartment after he was on the other side of my door.
I made myself a pot of coffee and pumped out forty push-ups on the kitchen linoleum while I waited for the hot water to drip through the coffee grounds. I slammed the push-ups out fast, trying to exorcise the rage that was building up inside my chest from my father’s visit.
A soft tap at my door interrupted me, and I got up to see who was outside my apartment now. I couldn’t believe that my father had returned, let alone that he would knock in such a dainty fashion.
When I opened the door, Brittany was standing outside in a pencil skirt and a blazer. The skirt clutched tight against her curves, snaking down to her knees and hugging snug against her waist. Bouncing lightly against her hip was a large purse where I could see the outline of a textbook, but I was more focused on the outline of the skirt took against her curved hip, tapering in above her waist and stopping just below the belly button in a classic style.
She looked down at my sweat pants. My hard-on was still very visible through the soft, thin fabric, and I could see blood rush to her cheeks as she blushed. I shoved my hands in my pockets to try and gain some form of decency. Her shy smile erased all the rage I had been harboring a moment before. As she averted her eyes, I couldn’t help but get more excited by her getting flustered from seeing how stiff I was.
“Good morning,” she said through a mischievous smirk. “Was that your father leaving just now?”
“Yeah, he was on my ass about work. I really can’t stand how he treats me like just a tool in his toolbox, built and ready to be used for the sole purpose of following his orders.”
“He looked just as much of a jerk as my father is.”
“Sounds like we need to form a club,” I joked, and she laughed.
“We really do.”
I wanted to ask her out, this time on a real date without the guise of simply being a professional rendezvous between tenant and manager, but I held my tongue. My father’s words rang in my ear.
“Did you need something?” I asked, knowing that if I stared at her any longer in that slim skirt without inquiring about business, I might slip up and ask her out anyway.
At first my heart plummeted and my mouth went dry, and then I remembered what my father had said about meeting his assistant every morning. I stepped out into the hallway to peek through the windows by the entryway door. It was, in fact, one of my father’s cars. “One of my father’s assistants, nothing for you to worry about.” I shrugged, resigning myself to obeying my father.
As she passed me to leave for class, Brittany scratched my back, her nails instantly soothing my tension. I turned to her and she gave me a knowing smile without words, a smile that said, “I get it,” without actually verbalizing it. I smiled back at her, one of those sad smiles you give to someone who has said something funny to dry up your tears.
After she walked outside and down the apartment steps, I waited a few breaths before heading out to talk to my father’s assistant so that he wouldn’t suspect anything between me and Brittany. I was positive if he saw how I looked around Brittany he would know without a doubt that I was falling for her, and I could not let that happen.
Since hearing my father had all but made it illegal for me to flirt with her, he had ignited an obstinacy in me I couldn’t explain and I knew deep down was going to get me into a lot of trouble. I knew in that moment that I was going to disobey him, ask Brittany out, and risk everything.
Chapter 12
Brittany
It had been a few days since my father had come by to tell me about Reginald Briggs, soon to be doctor, and I was dreading every day that brought me closer to meeting him when he flew in from Who-Cares-ville.
Reginald had called me the day after my father had left his number. He’d recited a laundry list of his accomplishments and told me he had looked me up online and considered me what he described as, “a highly sought-after partner.”