Miss Behave

by Nikky Kaye

  I’d never known Mike single, in fact. He had met his wife in college; they’d been together nearly ten years. That seemed to me an eternity to be with just one person. But then, my longest relationship had lasted less than a year. In my experience, the longer you dated a woman, the greater their expectations got. More time, more “romance,” more control.

  More lies.

  If I’d learned anything from my parents’ divorce when I was a teenager, it was that all of those things led to nothing but acrimony. I still suspected that my father had been happy when my mother died, even though they’d been apart for a few years. To be honest, I resented the fuck out of him for that back then. Hell, I still did.

  That was why I prided myself on being honest in my column. People needed to hear the truth about relationships, even if it hurt. Better to sting now than scab over later. It was human nature to pick at scabs, which always made the scar worse. Then again, an ounce of prevention was worth a pound of cure. Actually, make that 0.05 of an ounce—the average weight of a condom.

  I was a guy’s guy; I knew a lot of stupid shit.

  “Yeah, well, I don’t date,” I said to Mike as we watched Maxie get hit on by a miniature schnauzer. She wasn’t alone; it was a veritable love fest.

  It seemed like most people at the dog park were couples. Mocking me. The few single guys I saw were probably using their dogs to try to pick up chicks. There was only a handful of women alone, so good luck to them.

  Wait. Across the field I spotted Lizzie’s friend Dara, playing fetch with a tennis ball. Sorry, her dog was playing fetch with Dara throwing the ball. She hadn’t seen me yet, and I turned away from her.

  Mike’s voice interrupted my observations. “How many times have you fucked Miss Behave?”

  “Her name is Lizzie, and I haven’t counted.”

  He side-eyed me. “Do you have meals with her?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Conversations? Like, outside of bed?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Have you ever gone shopping together?”

  Did a bookstore count? “I guess.”

  “Dude, you’re dating,” he informed me. Before I could respond to that, he hit me with the next blow: “Maybe that’s why your column has been kind of…”

  I frowned at him. “Kind of what?”

  “I don’t know. Lost its edge a little. You used to be a sharp motherfucker. Maybe that’s just what happens when you work with someone like that, right? You lose creative control.”

  “I still have creative control. I write whatever the fuck I want.” I scowled. “And by the way, you’d better rescue Maxie if you don’t want puppies in your house as well as a baby.” Fucker. Sucker.

  Mike cursed and went to chase his dog.

  * * *

  “Dear Miss Behave: Well, she blew me. Now I think we’re dating, which isn’t really what I planned. What’s the difference between being friends with benefits and being in a… relationship?”

  Confused Cubicle Crush

  “Dear Crush: Congratulations on rounding some bases (and maybe a home run)! Usually the distinction between hooking up and dating is based on mutual expectations. Did you guys talk about what intimacy meant to you before you explored it? If you’re like most people, then you probably left a lot of things unsaid.

  Some women have sex before falling in love. Some women are the opposite. Same thing with men. Where you run into problems is when one partner believes that sex equals love and commitment, and the other person does not.

  If you work with her, hopefully you respect her as a person and not just a sex object. Focus on that when you spend time with her. Take a break from physical intimacy, and explore your connection with her on an emotional level. If you find yourself wanting to spend time with her without being intimate, then maybe you’re on the road to a real relationship.”

  Miss Behave

  Fuck. I closed the tab on the browser. Goddamn Mooney had taken this conversation between Miss Behave and Cubicle Crush and ran with it. Lizzie had gotten into it, as well, thinking that she was some kind of matchmaker.

  I wanted to punch myself in the throat. Why? Why had I thought that sending that first email was a good idea? Answer: I hadn’t thought, clearly. It was supposed to be a flirty little joke, but somehow it had snowballed into a whole… thing.

  Yet I felt compelled to keep emailing her. Maybe Lizzie did have some kind of magical power as Miss Behave that drew people to her.

  Maybe there was something to be said for telling people what they wanted to hear, instead of broadsiding them with the ugly truth.

  But wait? Was this what I wanted to hear? That sex meant love? Or that it didn’t? See, this is why I was a better advice columnist than Lizzie. She was too ambiguous sometimes. Too behaved.

  A Guy’s Guy would have told Cubicle Crush to back the fuck off, unless he preferred his hook ups to turn into clingers. If he didn’t plan on actually dating her, he shouldn’t have ridden the office photocopier. That was always a bad idea.

  I rubbed the bridge of my nose, my head spinning from berating my anonymous self. Damn it.

  “Something wrong?” Soft hands landed on my shoulders and squeezed. I nearly jumped out of my chair.

  Lizzie’s hazel eyes were clouded with concern as she sank into the office chair beside me in the conference room. It was time for our weekly meeting.

  “No, nothing. It’s fine.” I rolled my shoulders back, as though the movement could shake off the memory of her touch. then I pointed to the center of the table. “I brought you a Caesar salad.”

  Her chair squeaked as she reached over for it. When she popped it open, she turned to me and beamed.

  “Aw, Ash! No croutons, half dressing and—”

  “—extra lemon,” I finished. I’d heard her order it like that enough times while we were out.

  She squealed and spun in her chair. “You remembered!” Rising halfway out of her chair, she darted into my personal space and kissed me on the corner of the mouth. “I lo—” Her voice broke off as I whipped my head toward her.

  I stared at her, my lips parted in shock.

  Lizzie blinked at me, then at the salad. “I love it this way,” she said quietly. “Thanks.” After that, the only sound in the fishbowl was her stabbing her salad and it crunching in her mouth.

  I hadn’t realized my heart had stopped until it started again, like I’d been hit with a defibrillator. Clear!

  There was no way—no way—that she had been about to say “I love you” right? Absolutely no way, whatsoever.

  13

  Lizzie

  Ash was acting weird. Then again, so was I.

  The more time I spent with him, the more I liked him. It was beginning to become a problem—I liked him a lot.

  And it was so easy. He knew all the best hole-in-the-wall restaurants and cocktail bars; he thought I was beautiful, his apartment was nicer than mine, and my hand fit in his perfectly.

  We held hands a lot when we went out to places. At first it was just to tug me across the street or to warn me about a bicyclist careening toward us, but then he stopped letting go.

  For someone who’d argued that I was too old-fashioned, Ash Garrison knew an awful lot about wooing a lady. Picnics in the park, miniature golf, cozy bookstores—he gave some good, old school woo.

  Except that after that first… intense night, he’d been on his best behavior and was a perfect gentleman.

  Damn it.

  I ached to feel his hands on my body, greedy and commanding. For the first time in my life, I found myself fantasizing about sex—about his cock and his mouth and his fingers. My heartbeat sped up when I thought about running my tongue over his six-pack, and I became damp just at the memory of his head buried between my thighs.

  I wanted him to want me so badly he’d do anything to have me—because that was how I wanted him, and I was slowly going crazy.

  “So why don’t you just jump him?” Dara asked me one evening.
>
  And risk being rejected and humiliated? No, thanks! “I just…” I waved my hand helplessly. “I don’t know. What if he’s just not that into me?”

  “He was into you pretty deeply, from what you—mmph!”

  I slapped my hand over her mouth and looked around the mostly empty office. She was working on some graphic stuff for the website, and I stayed late to talk to her. I’d been spending most of my free time with Ash, and I missed girl talk.

  Or at least, I thought I’d missed girl talk—until my face was set on fire.

  She glared at me and pried my hand away. “Well, what makes you think he’s not into you?”

  “One, he hasn’t argued with me over anything in like a month.” I began listing them off on my fingers. “Two, he brought me wonton soup the other week when I wasn’t feeling great. And three, he keeps kissing me.”

  My friend took her gaze off her computer screen long enough to roll her eyes at me. “Wow. What an asshole.”

  “Just kissing me. Don’t get me wrong—he’s an amazing kisser. But I want… more!”

  She nodded. “You want the peen.”

  I slumped back in my chair beside her. “Yeah, I want the peen,” I confessed. “But clearly he’s not interested in my shriveled up raisin vagina.”

  “I still say that’s an analogy, not a metaphor.”

  “Well, I want my coochie to be rehydrated. I want it filled and brought back to life as a nice, juicy grape!”

  Her nose wrinkled.

  “Too much?” I asked.

  “Little bit. So, he treats you great, is considerate and thoughtful, and kisses you like your teenage movie star crush. Is that about right?”

  I bit my lower lip. “Pretty much.”

  “And there’s been no smexing since that first time?”

  Only time. Could you even call it a first time when there hadn’t been a second? “Not even strip Scrabble.”

  “Hmmm.” She dropped her mouse and reached for her phone, then started typing something into it.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Texting another guy to ask his advice.”

  My hand shot out to her wrist. “What? What guy?”

  She shrugged, pulling her arm free. “A guy I’ve been seeing. Maybe he’ll have some insight.”

  Oh god. “Just don’t use my name.”

  Dara’s mouth turned up as she stared at her screen. “Don’t worry, I won’t. Totally hypothetical situation,” she said slowly as she presumably typed the words.

  I idly checked some stuff on my phone while she chuckled her way through a brief textversation.

  “Okay,” she said, showing me her phone. She’d begun with:

  “Hypothetical situation: a couple has a fuck hot night of sex. Afterwards, they’re still seeing each other all the time, but haven’t had sex again. The girl wants sex. Why isn’t the guy trying to get in her pants?”

  Her new boyfriend had responded: “Hypothetical, really? What did I do wrong?

  “Nothing, it’s not you. It’s not me. It’s a friend needing advice.”

  “Aren’t you friends with an advice columnist? Ask her.”

  “I will. Any thoughts from the male perspective?”

  “Maybe he’s trying to let her down easy.”

  “Still lots of kissing with tongue. I think.”

  “Hmmm. Is she on her period or something?”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Dara shouted at her phone, her thumbs flying. “Immature…”

  “No! what should she do?”

  “Has she tried just taking her clothes off?” she read off to me.

  “Well, no,” I admitted.

  Dara threw her phone back down on the desk as it buzzed again. “Well, we can assume that all men are idiots. The evidence builds on a daily basis.” She jerked her chin toward her phone. “But it’s not the worst idea. Just go to his apartment and do the whole sexy lingerie under the coat thing.”

  Hmmm. I could try. “It would be so unlike me, though.” But maybe that was reason enough to do it.

  * * *

  The next night, I stood in front of Ash’s apartment building, wearing my sexiest black bra and panty set underneath my beige trench coat.

  My highest heels made my legs look freaking great, even if my toes were numb, and my hair was piled into a loose bun on top of my head. It was my attempt at “sex hair” that was supposed to look like I’d been ravished but actually spent forty minutes creating in front of the mirror. I’d even found a black garter belt in a store and some black sheer stockings to sex up the outfit. I’d spent half an hour perfecting my smoky eye and went down a rabbit hole online researching the best lip stains.

  I was ready for seduction.

  I could admit it—I wanted the peen. And it was time for me to reach out and grab it.

  Well, not literally, because that might be impolite and possibly painful if someone moved the wrong way.

  He was so used to me coming over that he just buzzed me up without talking to me over the intercom. Had I become that predictable? I could be an axe murderer for all he knew, and he just put his entire building at risk.

  My nerves rose as the elevator did. I felt nervous sweat on my upper lip, and I blotted my face with a tissue from my pocket.

  As I approached his door, I used the selfie setting on my phone to check out how I looked. I looked hot. I looked fuckable. Bolstered by my newfound confidence, I shoved my phone in my pocket and unbuttoned my coat.

  I opened my coat, making sure the lapels were tucked behind the sides of my breasts, which were spilling over in the push-up bra. And then I pulled up the ridiculously low cut panties. I took a deep breath, and another.

  Then, while sucking in my stomach and jutting my hip out in some kind of model-like pose, I knocked.

  A blond guy opened the door. Not Ash.

  While I stood there frozen in shock, his mouth fell open. Then he turned and yelled, “Hey, the stripper’s here!”

  What? The what’s what?

  “Come on in, honey!”

  My feet were numb as he tugged me into the apartment. Sitting on the couch were three other men—strange men I didn’t know—playing video games.

  No Ash. Did I have the wrong apartment?

  “Did you guys do this?” Blondie laughed and jerked his thumb at me.

  Wide-eyed, they all shook their heads.

  I looked around, recognizing everything. Leather couch. Glass table. Stupid, hipster, industrial décor. No, this was the right place. But apparently I was here at the wrong time?

  “I’ll take your coat,” Blondie offered, “unless it’s part of the act.” His eyebrows went up and down suggestively.

  “No!” I whipped my coat closed over my mostly naked body and wrapped my arms around myself to keep it that way.

  “Oh, I get it.” Blondie grinned. “Do you have music?”

  “Music?”

  “To dance to.”

  “No!”

  “Are we role-playing? I have some experience with that. That’s how most of us here met, doing RPG.”

  I looked for help from the gamers on the couch, but one of them was focused on his lap, another had gone back to Mario, and the third stared at me as though he’d never seen a woman before.

  The blond man swept a chair out from under the dining table, placed it in the middle of the room, and sat on it expectantly.

  Waiting for his lap dance.

  Oh my god. “No, I’m looking for Ash.”

  “Oh, do you need to settle up, first?”

  “No!” I was starting to panic. “I’m his…” What the hell was I, anyhow?

  While I was wrapping my arms around myself like my trench coat was a straightjacket, one of the men scurried down the hall. Blondie sat there on the chair expectantly. I backed up against the nearest wall.

  Two sets of footsteps echoed on the hardwood floor in the hallway. Lap dance boy yelled out, “Best baby shower present ever, Ash!”

  Ash appea
red, his gaze focused on the phone in his hand and a frown on his face. I’d never been so happy to see him.

  “What are you talking about, Mike? I didn’t hire any—” He looked up, his eyes bugging out as he saw me. “Lizzie?”

  “You know the stripper?”

  He glared at his friend as he hurried over to me. “She’s not a stripper, asshat. Put my fucking chair back.” To me: “What’s going on?”

  “I… uh…” I felt so foolish. My face was hot and I felt on the verge of tears.

  “Okay, come on.” He slipped his hand into mine and I followed him back to his bedroom, where he closed the door behind us.

  His laptop was open on his bed, as though he’d been working or something while his friends hung out with his console. He glanced back at me, then shut it down and put it on his nightstand.

  “What’s wrong? Were we supposed to do something tonight?” He looked me up and down. “And why are you holding your coat like that?”

  All my fears and insecurities bubbled up in my throat. I was sorely tempted to take off one of my stilettos and stab him in the neck with it.

  Letting out a growl of frustration, I stretched my arms out and shoved him.

  Hard.

  He reeled, the backs of his knees hitting his bed. His hands went up in the air as he bounced on the edge of the bed. “Hey! What the—what’s going on, Lizzie?”

  “What’s wrong with me?” I wailed.

  I hated the way my voice sounded—all whiny and needy. But I’d built up the courage to go across town in basically my underwear, and been mistaken for a stripper by a bunch of geeks. I figured I was a little entitled to some hysteria.

  As I spread out my arms, my coat flew open and Ash got a good look at what was underneath.

  I’d heard that it takes more muscles to frown than it does to smile. At that moment, Ash was using even more than that. The look on his face was one of shock, disapproval, concern, and lust.

  “What the fuck are you wearing?”

  “I’m wearing fucking clothes. Clothes for fucking. Not that you seem to be interested in it.” I crossed my arms—not for some kind of sexy effect, but just because I was fed up.