The Corner House: A Reverse Harem

by Daisy Jane

  Tonight, we discuss the whole Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez getting back together thing. No one understands. Not a single one of us.

  “I mean, A-Rod has it together. He seems like a family guy. Ben Affleck,” I scratch at my hairline, shaking my head in silent confusion. “He’s like someone you never trust. He just looks shady as hell.”

  “Oh completely,” Abbie says, waving a hand down over the topic. “Once a cheater, always a cheater.” And there’s that Friends reference, right on time. We all share a laugh.

  “Don’t you feel like he would be on an emotional high for days then all of the sudden like, call you up in the middle of the night crying, begging you to not give up on him and asking you where his jacket was at?” Kayla asks, draping her foot over mine.

  “Totally,” Brynn agrees, “and I feel like Jennifer Garner should get some sort of award for handling him for so long.”

  “Yep.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Totes.”

  A few moments of silence. “Think he’s good in bed?” I ask, pulling one eye shut, knowing this is going to make the girls scream. They always talk about sex and I stay shy and reserved, never feeling fully comfortable sharing. I can’t help it; I grew up in a house where we pretended the things that happened between our hips and our thighs were a dirty secret. When I got my first period, my mom gave me the pamphlet from the box of tampons and said “let me know when Aunt Flow is coming so I can restock her supplies.” I mean, how could I be comfortable talking about sex? Yet, she also told me not to be a prude.

  “Sloane Beth Bowers!” Brynn slaps my thigh over the blanket and Kayla and Abbie lean forward, mouths open.

  “Did you just ask if Ben Affleck knows how to fuck?” Kayla gasps, hand across her chest.

  “You want to know if he can lay it down in the bedroom, don’t you! You little horn dog!” Abbie laughs loudly and I can feel myself grow hot under their teasing.

  “Why do you guys have to say it like that! Just let me be curious! Don’t make me sound all, dirty,” I whisper-hiss the last word, and they howl even louder.

  Punks.

  Once they’ve finished their wine and calmed their asses down, Kayla grows serious.

  “I think he has a nice dick but he’d be so emotionally wrecked that he wouldn’t know how to really use it.”

  “Jesus, Kay, that’s…” Abbie drapes her hands over her chest, “so deep.”

  “Okaayyy,” I rise from under the blanket, causing it to push down to everyone’s feet. “I think you guys have had enough of the wine. Let’s get some waters now, yes?” I suggest, knowing that when we reach the point where we’re feeling deep talking about Ben Affleck’s emotionally crippled penis? We’ve had enough wine.

  “You’re sober so you don’t get it,” Brynn says as I pinch the stem of her glass and lift it from the table. I listen to them talk about Ben Affleck’s inability to please Jennifer Lopez, which turns into a debate about how old is too old to not be able to get it up anymore, because Jennifer Garner led them to Alias which led them to Victor Garber which ultimately ended in some agist and highly inappropriate talk about silver foxes. And as they come to the conclusion that your late seventies are probably the last time you can come; we wrap up girls’ night.

  “You should think about trying to contact Bastian,” Brynn says, slipping her purse over her shoulder. The Uber is just minutes away and Abbie and Kayla have already hopscotched their way across my lawn, hiccupping and laughing the entire time.

  I give her a hug and smooth the red fly-aways from her face. She’s the least drunk but still, her eyes are hazy. “I’ll meet someone, don’t worry. I was just venting.”

  “Are you sure you don’t want to meet Bryan’s friend? They were friends in college last year,” Brynn offers again. She’s pitched me Bryan’s friend over and over but I don’t want to be on an awkward double date with extra pressure to have it work because your friends just want to hang out with another couple.

  I nod. “I’m sure,” I say, smiling. “I want it to be organic. Not a forced set up.”

  “Okay,” she says, reaching behind me to grab her Yeti tumbler of water. Two glasses of wine had her itching to get back to her normally scheduled healthful living. She took a long pull from the water and exhaled. “Thanks for girls’ night. See you at work tomorrow.”

  After locking the two deadbolts, I did the dishes, tied up the garbage and went to bed. When tossing in the sheets, waiting for my half of a Benadryl to kick in, I couldn’t help but think about Ben Affleck. If he could get back a woman like Jennifer Lopez, surely, I could step out of my bubble-life and make a move on Bastian.

  Tired of being scared, tired of waiting for the good to happen to me—going against everything I’d just told Brynn I wanted—I start to feel really sure about my plan to make a move on him Thursday.

  He said I could come to his house.

  I’m taking that as a sign and running with it, full speed, Usain Bolt status.

  And instead of being worried, nervous, and scared, for the first time in my life I feel free.

  There is some innate power in going for the thing you want.

  Chapter 4

  My mother is many wonderful things and fortunately for me, a good baker is one of them. She’d entrusted me with her favorite from-scratch recipes when I moved out eight years ago, giving me a housewarming gift of Fat Daddio baking pans. The gift made us both teary eyed and after she’d left that day, I promised myself to practice baking so that no matter where life took me, she and I would always have that, together.

  I’d made my mom’s chocolate cake recipe so many times before but when making it last night I took extra care. Since I’d made it so many times, I usually just threw the ingredients in the bowls from memory. This time, though, I measured them all out. Not even with measuring cups but on the food scale, for accuracy. I didn’t even know if Bastian would eat more than a bite—with a body like that, he couldn’t have indulged too often. But still, I wanted it to be the best cake I’d ever baked.

  I wasn’t trying to get into the man’s pants through his stomach. I wasn’t. But I mean, if it helped me get there, I wasn’t too proud to ignore the help.

  After going through my entire closet mentally twice, I ended up wearing my favorite blue ditzy floral sundress. It was flattering to my subtle curves, the shirred bodice making my breasts look bigger, my waist narrower than it is since the gauzy cotton falls loose under my chest. Sitting a few inches above my knee, the hem was made of a single ruffle with small bishop sleeves. The fabric was a beautiful chambray color with tiny white little daisies throughout. While a cute ponytail and thin hoop earrings went great with this dress, I couldn’t risk putting my hair in an elastic this early in the day. I’d noticed over the last year that the days I wore a ponytail for lots of hours, my head grew tight and sore by mid-afternoon. I just had a migraine about five days ago, I didn’t want to risk it again.

  The walk from my street to Stallion Court was surprisingly short. By the time I reached the corner house, I hadn’t even figured out my exact plan. Planning to hit on a cop at his house—that was so not the Sloane I’d ever been. Smoothing my free hand down the front of my dress, balancing the perfectly round and layered chocolate cake atop my favorite mercury glass cake plate in the other hand, I forced those thoughts out of my mind. Because people change all the time, right?

  Maybe all it takes to change is seeing a guy as hot as Bastian Cute.

  As I lifted my knuckle to knock, the door opened. A blue circle caught my attention and I realized I’d been spotted on the Ring doorbell camera. I guess it’s a good thing I only smoothed my dress and didn’t do a last minute anything in my teeth check like I normally do.

  The sun shining brightly behind me made it hard to pinch my eyes on the tall, shadowy figure in the door way.

  “Bastian?” I blink a few times, moving my head around, trying to acclimate to the light difference.

  “Come on in,�
� says a deep, thick voice not belonging to Bastian. Turning back, I see the Ford truck in the driveway with the Thin Blue Line decal on the window, alerting me to the fact that a police officer most likely drives it. And this is the corner house.

  It takes my eyes a minute to adjust to the low-light of the two-story home but when they do, the man in front of me comes into focus. My mouth goes dry and I nervously hold the plate of cake out to him.

  Holy shit.

  No, seriously. Holy shit.

  More than six feet tall, I’m staring at this man’s corded t-shirt free torso, which is covered in ink. I notice then that his whole body is inked—his neck, up to his jaw, and a breath-stealing and dangerously intriguing tattoo above his eye. In cursive, tracing the arch of his brow, was the word Dreamer. His nose bore a single thin silver hoop and his eyes were like steel. Shoulder length blonde hair, messy and tangled, a jaw coated with a lightest of stubble. Holy shit.

  Have I said holy shit? The plate suddenly weighs a million pounds. My mouth is so dry I am struggling to swallow so I lick my lips.

  “I’m Sloane,” I say, for some reason daintily draping my hand across my chest. My chest, I realize, is heaving slowly. My nipples feel hard but his eyes stay on mine, whether they are or not. His eyes pin me to the foyer as he reaches behind me to close the door. His rush of movement causes his scent to fill the space around me, making it hard to breathe. Hard to do anything but turn to fire, because that’s what my body did. A single drop of sweat rolls down my spine, melting into the top of my panties. He is melting me, from the inside out. Warm, male sweat, raw sex, a body that can pin you and take you. It us all making me dizzy. Putting my hand out to balance myself against the entryway wall, I smile and nod towards my cake.

  “It’s heavy, lots and lots of butter,” I say, hoping he lets me play it off, knowing full well he knows that it was him that made me nervous. Nervous because not only was my body telling me I wanted him, but I wanted him so much that I was scared I was going to act on it.

  He is that fucking sexy. I mean, to even be able to meet someone and say they’re sexy, without knowing their annoying habits and exhausting quirks, that is something. But this tattooed, long-haired, pierced (was he pierced anywhere else?) slice of heaven opened the door and made me rethink all the choices old Sloane had made.

  What was there in playing it safe, anyway? I could get a headache at home just as easily as I could get one in the arms of a man. And God I had forgotten how good it felt to be held tight against a firm male chest, smelling like cedarwood and hormones, skin salty and hot. I miss it but didn’t realize just how bad I missed it until I met this man.

  “Hi Sloane, I’m Bodhi.” Then he reaches out and takes the cake plate from me, his fingers swiping my hand. Just one fast swipe, no momentous touch or soulful meet-cute. But still, my body had no shame. My belly pulls low and tight, a sudden rush of heat floods my panties. Bodhi. He makes me think about things that make me… embarrassed. But good. Dirty, too.

  “Bastian Cute does live here, right?” I ask, trying to break the spell I’m under. It’s like being in a dream where you’re falling and God it’s so scary and you want to stop but you cannot wake up. You just can’t.

  And so, you fall.

  Another drop of sweat slides down my back as I follow Bodhi through the narrow foyer to the kitchen, with a large family room attached. A great, large open living space. I want to inspect every detail and analyze what type of person I think Bastian is but Bodhi sets the plate down and jolts me to his eyes.

  The slate-colored subway tile setting the backdrop, Bodhi’s arms flexing as he pushes the cake across the counter, to a safer spot. His body is truly a work of art. The ink, the muscle, the pure density in his size. My legs want to twist together and the apex of me pulses, hard. I fight it, clearing my throat.

  “He, um, popped my leg back in,” I say, realizing it’s probably out of context. “Oh, I was in an accident.”

  “Are you okay?” Bodhi asks, bypassing the usual peppering of questions like what happened and is your car ruined. His eyes stay on mine as he pushes his fingers through his hair, not stopping until the sandy blonde mess is a perfect man bun on top of his head. On the first try. It is not fair how easily men can look good.

  “Fine, yeah, it was a few days ago. I was lucky considering.”

  “You baked good old Officer Cute a cake to say thanks, huh?” he smiles a daring smile, teasing me with just the curl of his lips.

  “I made muffins,” I say, defending my cake but not in a defensive tone. “The day of the accident, I had muffins in my car that I rescued from the crunch. Officer Cute gave me a ride and commented on them.” I shrug, nodding to the plate, somehow feeling embarrassed that I’d rationalized to him like the old Sloane did. Always trying to make people understand. Bodhi slings a dish towel over one mountainous shoulder and turns, washing his hands at the sink. His back muscles pull and flex under his ink and when I follow the sinewy curve of his spine down to his jeans, my mouth goes dry. What would it be like to run my hands up that back and dig my nails into those booming shoulders? What would it feel like to have that corded torso over me, my fingers tracing the intricate designs of his body art? I bet he’d be warm and hard to the touch and, oh god. I’m literally staring at him with fuck me eyes when he turns from the sink, drying his hands on the towel dangling from him. His grin is big and contagious, and there’s no confusion between the two of us that I’ve been busted.

  “When you think of it as art, it’s not as scary,” he says, wiping the granite kitchen island in front of him.

  “What’s that?” I ask, trying not to sound as nervous as I feel. I don’t want to be nervous. Because the Sloane that came here to make a move on Clark Kent isn’t nervous. He gave me his address. Hot or not, he wanted me to come. There’s no denying that. I, after all, read the book He’s Just Not That Into You. I know what I’m talking about.

  “Tattoos. I saw you looking,” Bodhi says, pulling two big handfuls of sweet potatoes from a strainer inside the sink. He grabs a big knife and pins a potato to the counter, running the blade over the vegetable in slow passes.

  “Oh,” I say, calibrating to the new information. He thought the tattoos intimidated the sun-dress-wearing no-tattoo having cake-baking blonde. If this man thinks that every woman that ogles him (and there must be many) are just intimidated by his tattoos and not imagining what it’s like to be held down, naked, by those vast arms and tunneled by his--

  “That’s how I met Bastian,” Bodhi goes on, pulling me from my spiraling dirty thoughts. “He was going into the Academy and wanted to look hard,” Bodhi lurches his shoulders forward and puffs out his arms like Hulk Hogan. “You know, be the tough rookie.”

  I laugh, because while I don’t know Bastian at all, it surprises me that he’d wanted to look hard. His size and build seemed intimidating enough.

  Bodhi points the knife point in my general area. “He wasn’t always built the way he is now, either,” he slices through the sweet potato another few times, auburn circles toppling onto each other on the other side of his hand. “He was way smaller when he joined the Academy but yours truly showed him the value in lifting.”

  Lifting, thank you for existing, I say in my head, now just openly and shamelessly admiring the flex of his existence. He’s giving me a free pass since we’re openly discussing their fitness and I don’t pass up the opportunity. Do you know how hard it is to not check out a hot, shirtless guy right in front of you? It’s freaking hard. His muscles are like magnets, pulling my eyeballs to him with a force I can’t fight. It’s basically like fighting science and we all know; you can’t fight science.

  Just then, an unseen door pushes open and the sound of a four-legged friend scurrying across the hardwood fills the house. I don’t tense, I grew up with plenty of pets, my first one when I was just four years old. A golden retriever I so aptly named Yellow.

  Then, from the darkened doorway off the kitchen, Bastian appears, weari
ng athletic pants and a fitted gray t-shirt, a baseball cap pulled down over his head, face partly covered in shadow. Do intriguing shadows just follow these sexy men around? When Bodhi opened the door, he was engulfed in shadows, and now Bastian. It’s as if natural light trains itself to romanticize the forms of these two.

  “Sloane,” he says, as soon as he spots me standing a few feet from the island, hands wrapped together in front of me. “I really didn’t think you’d stop by.”

  I could take that as “oh, you’re actually here” but instead, I take it that my stumbling demeanor from the other day had me pegged as the slightly nervous and insecure girl. Which truthfully, I was a little bit.

  Not anymore.

  “Hi,” I raise a palm and nod, trying to control the size of the smile on my face. Trying not to imagine being sandwiched between these two. What a sandwich that would be. There is no fresh and juicy BLT that could top a delicious Bastian-Bodhi grilled Sloane.

  The tip tap of canine toenails breaks the spell these men have me under and when I look down, I see a beautiful Siberian Husky. He sits at my feet and holds one paw up to me, waiting for a shake.

  Kneeling down I take his extended paw in both of my hands, smoothing my top hand over the soft, pillowy fur. “Well, aren’t you a gentleman. Hello,” I say in my dog-voice, knowing that it’s a little high pitched and cringy but anyone who says they don’t have a dog voice is not a person I want in my life. You have to have a dog voice!

  “Grandma,” Bastian says, moving through the kitchen, dropping the leash onto one of the four metal hooks on the wall above the light switch. On the other hooks are sets of keys, two, with the fourth hook remaining empty. The dog retracts his paw from my hand, turns, bouncing back to Bastian. He reaches down and ruffles the dog’s ears and hair, the sight doing something to my heart. Screw watching a hot guy wash a car without his shirt—seeing Officer Cute play with his dog was plenty.