“You do that, but unless they okay additional security measures, my recommendation is to sell your pricey penthouse for a profit and move into some place that has better protection. You’ll need it too. If you don’t have women already sneaking in at all hours trying to get a piece of Oliver Graham, most eligible bachelor, you will, and this place will make it easier for them to get you in a compromising position. It’d sell more than a few tabloids. Good luck if you’re trying to have a serious relationship. Is a new girlfriend going to believe that a random woman broke into your apartment?”
He’s still scowling when I drive away.
At home I send a text to Natalie, hoping she’s not too pissed off when she wakes up. It’s a toss-up which part of my body hurts more. Reluctantly I climb into the elevator, which I rarely use but was the primary reason I bought this particular townhouse. At the top floor, I stagger out. I drop my pants and ease down on the edge of the bed.
My left thigh looks swollen. I could use a good rubdown, but it’s three in the morning and the only people I could call to give me a massage at this hour would be delivering the standard happy ending. And my dick only wants one woman right now.
As I ease the rubber sleeve down and the sock, doing the same to my arm, the relief of having the artificial limbs off is tremendous. I flop back onto the bed to enjoy the air circulating around my body. I miss her already and I feel stupid for leaving. Of all people, Natalie’s the last person who would judge my appearance. She seemed disappointed I was fit and attractive, I remind myself. Fatigue sets in. I should shower tonight to avoid too much swelling from the heated water in the morning. It makes it hard to get the prosthetics on. But my body has turned leaden and my eyelids drop down and then I’m out.
The sun streams through the unblocked windows a few hours later, jolting me awake. I slept poorly. My skin is itchy from not showering and my bed feels curiously empty. I remember waking up after surgery. The pain was intense everywhere—not just around the surgical sites. The phantom pain everyone warned me about took me off guard. As time went on, that pain eased to a dull ache, until it just felt like I was missing something. Wearing my artificial limbs helped, and like Natalie, if I was distracted, it was easier to shove the pain aside.
I’m feeling that curious dull ache again. Like I’m missing something vital.
I hop into the shower and clean up. Drying off, I view the wreckage of the night before. The prosthetic is still in the jeans with the boot around it. I don’t want to hassle with it, so I scoop up the mess and toss it in the corner. There are advantages to having a thick wallet and one of those is having more than one prosthetic. I pull the other carbon fiber foot and socket out of the closet and throw it onto the bed next to the arm I discarded last night.
I cover the arm with the sock and the liner and affix the stump into the arm socket. From the dresser I pull out another pair of jeans and a plain gray T-shirt. The shirt slides easily over my head. The jeans are another story. I stick the prosthetic into the jeans leg and then repeat the process I conducted for my arm. Sliding the other leg in, I’m dressed.
After four years of this, it’s as habitual as brushing my teeth and just as routine, but it’s a chore. One of the biggest changes post-injury was how long it took me to do even the most ordinary of tasks. The hand and arm prosthetic, no matter how great the advancements, are still tools and not real limbs. Ironically it was my injury that made me realize I have opinions about how my home is set up and what kinds of clothes I like. I prefer big furniture with plenty of places to put my feet up, and soft clothes without many fastenings. I also know who I want in my home. I want Natalie and not because I need help putting on my clothes.
The only reason I want Natalie here is because I want her with me. Not to help me dress or pick out my clothes, but because I want to watch her sleep, watch her wake up, watch her writhe on my sheets. I want to take her in the shower and put her ass up on the highboy dresser at the perfect height for my mouth.
And yes, it’s a strange yearning I’m experiencing. It took me a couple of years after surgery, after wearing the artificial limbs, to truly feel comfortable in my own skin again.
I’d met my share of women who had a fetish for amputees and then a few who wanted to smother me with well-intentioned care, but I wasn’t interested in playing someone’s charge. I wanted a partner and preferably one who didn’t try to ride my stump. I shudder at the memory of that night gone wrong.
But there were plenty of women who didn’t care. Some just wanted a guy who knew how to use his equipment and who cared if they had an orgasm. Natalie isn’t a fetishist and she’s not looking to be my mother. But she’s not quite in the “I just want to fuck” category either.
To be fair, I suppose some of the women I dated in the last couple of years wanted something more meaningful, but I wasn’t interested. Now I am. Real interested.
But if I don’t get my act together and pull up my big-boy pants, I could lose her before I even have her.
With that, I set off to find Sabrina. If I’m going to convince Natalie to move in here, I’m going to need to make some changes.
“Hey, sleepyhead,” she greets me, but doesn’t move from the center island where she’s chopping up a pineapple.
“Good morning, Bri.” I kiss the top of her head, which isn’t that much shorter than mine. Bri’s a tall girl. “You got some coffee left over?”
She jerks her head toward an already filled cup, the steam rising indicating it was freshly poured. I take a big gulp before thanking her. “You’re an angel.”
“Late night, huh?”
“Something like that.” Talking about sex with my baby sister has always made me uncomfortable. This time is no different. I can still see her in diapers. I was thirteen when she was born, and my feelings toward her are more paternal than brotherly, which pisses her off. As she regularly reminds me, she already has a father.
But she’s twenty-two and knows exactly why I was late coming home last night.
“I hope you practiced safe sex,” she smirks, also knowing exactly how uncomfortable it makes me.
I rub a hand over my face and then into my hair that I’ve forgotten to brush after I showered. It’s probably a mess, but I don’t care. I’m debating how much to share with Sabrina about Natalie and not just because I want to move Natalie into the townhouse.
“You busy today?” I ask.
“I’ve got two morning classes and then I’m done. Why?”
“Want to go shopping?”
She squeezes her eyebrows together in confusion. “Are you offering to take me shopping? You hate shopping. You hate spending money.”
“I don’t hate spending money,” I protest. “I object to being wasteful. Spending two hundred bucks on a pillow that I’m not allowed to use because the sequins might rub off is wasteful.”
She waves her hand in the air as if my argument has no merit. “I am not buying your new girlfriend anything.”
“I asked you to do that one time.”
“Three times.”
I take a long sip of coffee that’s cooling fast. “I didn’t want to give a gift that was thoughtless, so I went to my dear sister for advice, and you did a great job. Which is why I’m coming to you again. Competency generates a repeat performance request.”
She rolls her eyes. “So what is it going to be? Clothes, jewelry? You know I do not do lingerie. That is still a hard limit.”
“Of course not,” I say with mock indignation. “If, hypothetically, I were to give you a photograph, could you re-create the room in the picture on the third floor? How doable is that?”
“What? You don’t like what we’ve done to it already? When we were decorating it four years ago, you said nothing too bright and no flowers. This is a totally gorgeous space!” Sabrina exclaims. “People would pay lots of money—lots of frivolous money—for what we did in this house.”
I scratch my head and wonder how my intention to bring Natalie here has turn
ed into an indictment of the decorating taste of my mother and sister. I think it’s lack of sleep. If I’d stayed at Natalie’s place, I would have slept better, longer, and I would have had good-morning sex. Then I wouldn’t be making these obvious missteps.
“I have this friend—”
“Is this for the journalist? I thought you broke up with her?”
Gathering the reins of my rapidly shredding patience, I repeat, “I have this friend—”
“If it’s not that one chick, then who?” She taps a finger against her lip. “You were out late last night, and Victoria said you didn’t talk to anyone at the club when you were out with Ian and her. Was it that lawyer lady from Mom’s charity dinner the other night? She didn’t seem your type.”
While Sabrina runs down her short list of suspects, I refill my coffee. Leaning against the counter, I watch her with some amusement. She is going to be surprised, but in a good way, I think. Natalie and she would get along. Sabrina has a lot of creative energy she seems to try to suppress because she thinks we want her to fit into some business mold. Mom and Dad have told her that she can do whatever she wants, but Sabrina’s headstrong. Once she gets an idea in her head, you can’t shake it from her. So it doesn’t matter that she loves music, she thinks she’s got to be a banker or investment fund manager or do something that makes her a “real living,” as she calls it.
Kaga is one of those ideas. For some reason she thinks she’s in love with him, but like the business thing, once she wakes up, she’ll realize the error of her ways. But until then we all watch out for her to make sure she doesn’t butt her head against too many brick walls.
At the table, Sabrina gasps and slams a hand down on the pine surface. “Oh my God, I heard that Laura Severson got a divorce recently. Do not tell me you are getting back together with that bitch.”
I blink in surprise. “I didn’t know she was getting a divorce.”
“Not getting, already done. Finite. Quickest divorce in New York State. I guess they could not stand each other.”
After I broke it off with Laura, she wasted no time in hooking up with a friend of mine. At the time I’d thought he was too good a friend to be comforting my ex with his dick, but after I’d gotten out of the military I realized that I had almost nothing in common with the guys—and girls—I’d hung out with as an arrogant trust fund kid at Columbia.
“Wait, if you didn’t know she was getting a divorce, then were you sleeping with her while she was married?”
Sabrina looks as scandalized as if she’d found out I’d been caught having sex in Central Park.
“It’s not Laura,” I answer, puzzled. I hadn’t seen—or talked—to Laura in about two years, unless you counted that time we ran into each other by Rockefeller Plaza. I had popped into the LEGO store to buy Megan’s oldest a Harry Potter set, and Laura must have been buying out every store around the rink, because her hands had been full of shopping bags. She’d given me a kiss on the cheek and told me to call her. I promptly forgot her number. At the time I was still seeing the journalist or “Ms. Snoopy,” as Sabrina liked to call her.
“So who is she? And why doesn’t she like how the third floor is decorated?” Sabrina asks with impatience.
And apparently a thousand questions are what I’m going to have to pay to get this favor done.
“I have a friend,” I start again, only to be interrupted.
“Is that what we’re calling them now?”
I cut to the chase. “Sabrina, what is it going to cost me to get you to do this for me?”
She sits, knees drawn to her chest, looking like the baby girl I used to push on the swings at the park. “You know what I want.”
“Ask for something else.” Anything else. The implacability in my tone makes her frown, but wisely she doesn’t press.
“Fine,” she huffs. “I want you to be there when I tell Mom and Dad about my new job.”
I reach over and squeeze her hand. “I would’ve been there anyway. Ask again.”
“Tell me,” she implores and grips my fingers. “Tell me exactly what your objections to Kaga and me are. Don’t say it’s our age—I know that can’t be it.”
I drag my prosthetic down my face in frustration, wondering if the carbonite fingers would make it more or less painful when I poke my eyes out. “You’re right. It has nothing to do with your age difference.” It would make me extremely hypocritical, given that Natalie is probably ten years younger than me. “The issue is more complicated than your age. And it’s not my story to tell.”
“But you won’t even let me talk to him, so he can’t tell me the story.”
“Let it go.”
She turns away so I can’t see her hurt, but I know it’s there. It’s painful to see her distressed, and I blame that all on Kaga. It seems that it wasn’t so long ago I could coax her out of a pout with a trip to Dylan’s Candy Bar or an ice cream in Bryant Park. That ship has sailed. Now she wants to have a relationship with one of my good friends, whose personal life is more fucked up than a Bravo reality-TV show. No, I don’t want her involved in that. If that makes me an asshole older brother, then so be it. I’ve been called way worse for lesser infractions.
But I stay quiet as she gathers her composure and makes up her mind about my favor. “I’ll do your little decorating project. I’ll reserve my reward to be named later.”
“Done,” I agree with relief.
“So when does this need to be accomplished? What’s my deadline?”
“Today.”
“What?” she screeches. “I can’t accomplish this today. Are you high?”
“I need it done today. Or at the latest, tomorrow morning.” I pull a credit card out of my pocket and slide it across the table. “Whatever it costs.”
“Who are you and what have you done with my brother? The last time we decorated this house, you wanted to buy everything used because you could not believe that a sofa could cost more than a couple grand.”
“I still don’t. I think that the furniture you made me buy was highway robbery. But I’m not asking you to buy furniture. I’m asking you to re-create a couple rooms.” I pull up the pictures I’ve taken on my phone and show them to her.
“Did Barbie decorate this bedroom? I’ve never seen so much pink outside Victoria’s Secret.”
I shrug. I kind of liked it. It was different than anything I had and it fit her. It made me feel like . . . I was trespassing into something solely her own and making my own mark.
Sabrina sighs. “I’m going to assume you are redecorating for a woman and not a child. If you’d shown me this earlier, I would have scratched Snoopy off my list right away. She does not look like a woman who sleeps in a Disney princess bedroom.”
“What is the kind of woman who sleeps in a Disney princess bedroom?” I ask, curious. Natalie’s a grown woman who writes gritty science fiction novels and plays video games in her downtime.
“Someone who didn’t get enough time to play with dolls as a kid.”
I wonder if that’s true. Maybe Oliver forced her to play catch with him. Whatever her reasoning was, it didn’t bother me. My dick didn’t get any less erect in her sweet-smelling bedroom filled with lace, pink, and ruffles. In fact, if this is what a Victoria’s Secret store looked like, I’d have to stay away, because the association would get me instantly hard.
“I want to know more about this chick. You’re going to spend thousands of dollars re-creating two rooms for her. I might only be twenty-two, but I’m not dumb. You want to bone this girl. The question is why you have to redecorate rooms that already exist in your own house just to have sex with her.”
“Not that it’s any of your business, but I don’t have to do any of those things just to have sex with her.”
“Oh.” She nods knowingly. “You’ve already been in her pants and want to continue to do so. Got it.”
“My friend”—I emphasize the word—“suffers from severe anxiety. She’s living in a place that I don’t t
hink is very safe. There are threats against her life. I’d like her to come and live with us for a time. In order to make her comfortable, it makes sense to provide her with familiar surroundings.”
Sabrina slaps the table. “Why didn’t you just say so? Geez. Men.”
I watch her pocket the credit card and stomp off. When she gets to the door, she stops. “I’m happy to spend your money and I’m happy to re-create this Barbie Dreamhouse on the third floor, but I’m not happy with your explanation. And I’m telling Mom,” she ends ominously.
That went well.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
NATALIE
I wake up to an empty bed and a text message.
You were sleeping when I left. Text me or call me when you wake.
I reach over to feel the side of the bed that is as empty as it is cold. And there is no indentation, no sign that he spent even a minute in bed after we had sex.
I sit up and look around. There are pillows strewn everywhere and I’m not even under the sheets. Instead, Jake wrapped me up like a burrito.
I have a choice here. I can be hurt because he ran off like I was some one-night stand from a club or I can take it for face value—that we were two people who satisfied a sexual urge with no promises of commitment.
And we’re more than two people. We’re at least friends. The things we shared last night were too wonderful and too intimate to be the words of a smooth operator who wanted an easy lay.
He didn’t leave me exposed, but covered up. Bundled into a cocoon of blankets. And even if I was some conquest, then so what? I opened the door last night. Well, technically Jake opened the door, but I unlocked it, and I didn’t freak out when he came inside. That’s a huge win.
So I’m not going to be upset that I woke up alone. I’m going to be happy that I was brave enough to have a new friend in my apartment and that I had amazing orgasms with a man, not a vibrator.
Speaking of my vibrator, I kick off the blankets and toddle into the living room. A quick perusal shows that Jake picked up in here a little bit. The pillows from the sofa are stacked, one on top of the other, and the vibe is resting on the coffee table. All of that is going to need to be cleaned. With sanitizer.
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