Natural Love

by S. Celi

  “I like the hair, too. It’s longer now. Floppy.”

  “Didn’t really care much about haircuts in the Peace Corps.”

  She shifted in the chair and pulled her legs underneath her body. “So. Ovation.”

  I smiled. “Grant’s been raving about that place ever since I came back.”

  “Nice. Everyone goes there now. Lots of expensive cocktails.”

  “Sounds awesome.” I paused. “You sure you don’t want to go?”

  I asked the question out of obligation and felt relieved when she shook her head. Thank God. After the thoughts I’d been having the last few days about Avery, I needed space. Time away. And time to remember that thousands of eligible women lived in Cincinnati.

  Women who weren’t my stepsister.

  “Be careful, Spencer. Have fun tonight.”

  “I will.”

  I turned on my heel to leave and her voice stopped me. “Don’t drink too much.”

  The words made me turn back in her direction. “I don’t drink, Avery. Not anymore. You know that.”

  “Bullshit. You were drinking the other day at the pool.”

  My eyebrow arched. “Listen, if you are thinking of telling Dad or Linda about that—”

  “I’m not.” She smirked. “But don’t think I didn’t notice.”

  “I don’t really drink.” My chest tightened as I lied to her. “It’s not a problem anymore. I have it under control.”

  “Whatever you say, stepbrother.”

  “Listen.” I glanced at my Breitling watch. 8:55. “I need to go. I’m going to be late.”

  “Okay,” she said and picked up her book again. I wondered if I heard a hint of disappointment in her voice, but it couldn’t have been that. No way. Not from her, and not about me.

  “Enjoy your book.”

  “I will.”

  By the time I reached the four-car garage, my lungs heaved in rough and ragged breaths. When I slid behind the wheel of the Volvo I hadn’t driven in two years, my hands had turned clammy and cold. I sat there for a few minutes trying to pull myself together. My thoughts were out of control, running a wild race that wouldn’t end well. Not at all. This was Avery Jackson. The same girl I’d known since the summer after kindergarten when my dad met her mom. The girl I grew up with, the person I’d seen sick from the stomach flu and cheered for at her first tennis tournament. The one who used to make fun of me because I loved vegetables, and who wouldn’t ride rollercoasters at Kings Island. The stepsister of mine who was two years younger than me, and fresh out of college.

  This was wrong. Really wrong. And these thoughts needed to stop right away.

  Angry with myself, I turned on the engine and pulled the car out of the garage. Distance. I needed distance. A night away from that house would do it. It had to help. Had to.

  If it didn’t, I didn’t know what I would do.

  “GREEN DRESS,” GRANT said. He had had his back to the bar and his elbows rested on it. “Blonde. Tall.”

  “Where?”

  “About twenty feet away.” He strained to talk over the background music and the chatter of the other people in the bar. “Yeah. Hot.”

  I tossed back the rest of my martini, loving the way the sour and salty liquor slid down my throat. Most of the time I ordered bourbon and Coke, but that night I’d switched it just to give my liver a break. Booze had always been a friend. It didn’t ask too much of me, or set impossible expectations¸ or let me down. Alcohol was a reliable lover, even if it made up one half of a co-dependent relationship I didn’t want the rest of my family to know I was still in. I brushed my hands together and turned around, away from the bar. “Which one is she?”

  “She’s next to the brunette in the red dress. The one with the Red Bull.”

  The blonde and the brunette stood across the bar next to a large column. The blonde’s green dress had lace near the top, and all that did was make me look at her breasts. Large ones. Small waist. Red lipstick. Long eyelashes.

  She’d do for the night.

  “We should go talk to them.” Grant slammed his Heineken on the bar, a look of resolve on his face. “We should, man. They’re perfect for us.”

  “Perfect?”

  Grant kept his eyes on the brunette. “I think I know her. I’ve definitely seen her somewhere else.”

  “She’s gorgeous.”

  Grant had good taste. Very good taste. He also had a type: curvy, large eyes, dark skin. His opposite in every way. Chicks loved him for it, as if he walked around drenched in a cologne that made everyone compare him to Prince Harry. Back in high school and on breaks in college, the two of us worked our way through more Cincinnati girls and women than most men do in a lifetime; we had reputations that followed us like puppy dogs. And that night, as I watched my friend check out the two women, I got confirmation that his rep had only expanded during the time I’d spent redeeming myself in the Peace Corps.

  “They don’t know we’re here,” I said just to needle him.

  Grant liked to think that most women noticed him right when he walked into a party, bar or restaurant. It gave him a machismo that he harnessed and used to his advantage. One time, I even saw him land a girl in less than sixty seconds during a debutante party at Camargo Country Club. Later, he told me he’d fucked the girl in the coat closet.

  “Doesn’t matter. Just turn on that famous charm of yours, and I’ll turn on mine. That brunette is practically eye-raping me. She wants this.” I frowned at his word choice, but Grand didn’t notice. He just motioned for me to follow him. “Come on.”

  We walked over to the girls and Grant introduced us. I noticed the blonde’s red fingernails first. When she clasped my hand with hers, the nails dug into my palm and showed off a flawless manicure. She followed that with a smile I knew she’d practiced in the mirror a thousand times, a smile meant to drew men in like flies to honey.

  “I’m Anna,” the blonde said. “Anna James.”

  “Spencer Chadwick. Nice to meet you.”

  She narrowed her eyes at me and popped her shoulder a bit. In a flash, she had intrigue written all over her face. “Chadwick? As in, Chadwick Properties?”

  There it was—that familiar lift in her voice I heard from everyone when they linked my name with our family’s prominent companies.

  “Yeah,” I said. “As in, Chadwick Properties and Construction.”

  “Wow.” Awe oozed from her like toothpaste from the tube. “I see their signs everywhere.”

  “Yep.” I nodded at Ovation’s beveled glass door. “There’s one across the street from here. We’re doing the renovations on the old Jasper Building.”

  That project cost $40 million and got a lot of local attention because the building had historic value as one of the original high rises in Cincinnati. Over the years it had fallen into disrepair, first as apartments and then as a flophouse hotel. Once our company finished it, though, the Jasper Building would have expensive loft condos, two floors of modern office space, and a four-star restaurant on the bottom.

  “That’s going to be so amazing,” Anna said, just as I figured she would. Pointing out a high-profile project from Chadwick always made people say things like that. “And don’t you all own, like, half of the buildings downtown?”

  “I wouldn’t say half.” I grinned. “But maybe a third.”

  “Well, excuse me.”

  She had a voice that reminded me of smooth satin and sharp eyes. To my left, Grant had already sectioned himself off, claiming the brunette has his. When I turned back to Anna, I nodded in the direction of her drink. “You’re empty. You need another one. What are you having?”

  “Bourbon and Coke.” She laughed. “I love bourbon.”

  “Good choice. Do you want another?” I motioned back to the bar. “Was thinking of getting another martini?”

  “That’d be great, Spencer Chadwick.”

  The way she said my name told me I’d scored four thousand points with her already. The Chadwick name alwa
ys opened doors and often dropped panties. Sometimes I wondered if I’d get as many women if I didn’t have that last name, but on that night, I didn’t care. I needed a distraction from Avery, and this blonde might just do it.

  As long as I could remember her name. Anna. Anna James. Anna James with the satin voice.

  “See you in a minute,” I said, then turned and walked back to the bar and placed an order for another round of drinks.

  They’d moved to an area with a couch, table, and chair when I walked back holding the drinks. Grant had his arm around the back of the couch and some of the brunette, his body angled away from Anna as if only her friend existed.

  Whatever happened that that night, I knew Grant had already made his move. We might have shown up to Ovation together, but we wouldn’t leave that way. Not even close. Suddenly, I didn’t want to go home alone, either. Time for me to make my own move.

  “Here you go, Anna James.” I handed her the drink and slid into the chair next to the couch. “Bourbon and Coke, just like you ordered.”

  “Cheers.” She raised the glass and clinked it with mine. “To new friends. New adventures.”

  “Yes.” I sipped my drink and eyed her over the rim of the martini. “To new adventures.”

  ANNA JAMES’ ARM twisted with mine in the bed. Her leg wrapped around mine, too, and when I opened my eyes, a mass of blonde hair and smeared eye makeup greeted me. She slept there, facing me, as the morning light flooded into the room. I studied her for a while, willing my faint hangover to fade away. The fact that I had a hangover at all irritated me.

  Hangovers meant I’d gone too far. They meant I’d let my relationship with booze beat me up, and ever since I left for South Africa, I had tried not to let that happen. Booze only made a good lover when I stayed in control. And if I wanted to succeed back here in Cincinnati, I had to stay in control.

  Had to.

  “Anna.” I nudged her after a few seconds. “Wake up. It’s after ten.”

  She moved next to me, snuggling closer, and that fact immediately repulsed me. I didn’t know anything about her at all. She hadn’t told me where she worked or her age. Not that I had bothered to ask. I’d just wanted sex. Lot of sex.

  Now, though, she lay naked in my bed and the body that had enticed me the night before reminded me of lumpy bread. This was wrong. All wrong.

  “Anna.” I nudged her again and pulled my leg out from underneath hers. “Please. Wake up.”

  “Mmmmmhmmm.” She opened her eyes, then rubbed them right away. “What a night.”

  “Right about that one.”

  She yawned. “Is it really ten?”

  “Later. Not that much later, but later.”

  Sleep still thickened her voice. “Last night was . . .”

  “Crazy.” I moved again in the bed and pulled my arm away from hers. The sooner I got this girl out of my bed, the better. Messy, lingering mornings after from one-night stands never worked for me. Not before, not in South Africa, and not now.

  “Yep.”

  “Listen,” I said, growing more desperate. “I didn’t expect—”

  She sat up in the bed. The sheet fell away, and for a second, her naked breasts distracted me. Then I shut my eyes and forced the flicker of attraction out of my head. I didn’t want Anna James at all. She needed to leave my bed.

  More than that, Anna needed to leave the house. For good.

  “I didn’t expect it either,” she said with a small smile on her face. “Wow.”

  My boxer shorts, shirt, belt, and jeans lay a few inches from the bed. I pulled my underwear from the mess and got out of bed to slip them on. When I did, I noticed an empty condom wrapper next to it all. At least I had bothered to be safe.

  “Listen, Anna, I just want to be clear. I enjoyed this. Last night was good.”

  Lies sometimes just tumbled out of my mouth. In truth, I couldn’t remember much of the previous night, and something told me I wouldn’t have really wanted to. One-night stands were like B-grade movies. Fun at first, and then always forgettable.

  “It was good,” she said, and followed my lead.

  She found her own clothes close to the door of my room, and that told me she’d been naked first. That was my usual style. Women got naked first, then me. And my one-night stands always happened with the woman on top, pleasing me. More fun that way.

  “But I don’t want any kind of relationship,” I said, watching her put on a pair of black lace bikini underwear and then a black strapless bra. “I hope that’s not going to, well, I don’t know what you expect.”

  I had mastered the chase a long time ago, but I still struggled sometimes with the fallout.

  She shook out her green dress, a wrinkled twist of fabric that looked worse in the morning light, and stepped into it. “I don’t expect anything, Spencer.”

  “You don’t.”

  “No.” She had her dress on now, and she gave me a half smile. “We had fun. We had sex. It happens.”

  “Okay,” I said, still unconvinced as I stepped into my jeans.

  She stepped into her shoes and picked up her purse from the floor. “It’s fine.”

  “Can I drive you home?”

  “No.”

  “You have to get home some way.” A white T-shirt hung from a hook on the back of my bedroom door. I grabbed it and put it on. “Let me take you.”

  “It’s okay,” she said. “And we didn’t take your car home last night. We took a cab.”

  “We did?” Then a few of the memories came flooding back. Yes, we had taken a cab. The Volvo still sat in the parking garage downtown underneath Fountain Square.

  Damn my life. Now I’d have to go get it.

  “Henry can take you home,” I said. “He should be downstairs.”

  “I can just call another cab.” She opened her purse and pulled out a smartphone with a silver case around it. Then she hit it in such a way that I wondered if she had a cab driver on speed dial or in her contacts.

  “Let me at least pay for it,” I said.

  She nodded and placed the order after a few seconds of waiting on the line.

  “WELL, THANKS AGAIN for a memorable night.” Anna stepped off the front stoop and I followed her. The cab waited for her in the rounded driveway, and I nodded at it.

  “Are you sure this is okay?”

  “It’s fine.” She pulled open the passenger door and tossed her purse on the seat. When she turned back to face me, she exhaled a long breath. “It was a great night, Spencer.”

  “It was.” I rubbed my hand on her bare arm. “Thanks.”

  Though I knew I never wanted to see her again, that she was just a placeholder in my bed, I didn’t want her to feel bad about that. That wouldn’t have been right. And I tried to do the right thing.

  I just often failed.

  “Maybe I’ll see you around,” she said.

  “Maybe,” I said, taking care to sound non-committal.

  After maybe three seconds of awkward silence, she sat on the seat and closed the door. I handed the cab driver a hundred bucks through the front passenger window and tapped the hood of the car with the palm of my hand.

  He nodded, and threw the car into gear. I went back to the front doorstep and watched it travel the driveway. Once it pulled onto the main street, I turned and walked back inside.

  Avery stood at the top of the staircase once again.

  “Good morning,” she said, and she didn’t appear happy or well rested. Her hair looked knotted too, as if she’d spent her night tossing and turning in bed.

  “Good morning, AJ.”

  She took a few steps down the stairs. I stayed at the front door, and my hand gripped the handle. Thank God Anna had just left and the two of them didn’t have to share airspace. “You look like hell.”

  “I’m sure I do. Long night.”

  “You’re telling me.” She stopped, leaving about five more steps on the staircase between us. That’s when I noticed her feet. She’d painted her toenails
black. Odd color, for someone like her. She usually chose pinks, reds, blues, and purples, colors that reminded me of jellybeans. “Looks like you found someone to join you.”

  “Oh, that.” I cleared my throat. Not only did I not want the two of them to share the same room, I didn’t want to talk to Avery about Anna at all. Oh, no. Better to dismiss that topic, and fast. “It was nothing.”

  She crossed her arms over her chest and tilted her head. “You like blondes, don’t you?”

  “Blondes?”

  “Yeah, you like them.”

  I shifted my weight. “I wouldn’t say I like them.”

  “Every girl you’ve ever dated is a blonde.” She jerked her head at the driveway. “Wasn’t that girl a blonde? She looked like one. A fake one, but one.”

  “Yeah, she had blonde hair.”

  Avery nodded, triumphant. “And that’s what you like. It’s the only type you ever date. You never glance at anything else.”

  “I guess. I never really stopped and thought about it.” Another lie. Just like Grant, I had a type, and I knew that. And yes, that type always included blonde hair. “But now that you’re saying something . . .”

  “Just the pattern I’ve noticed,” Avery said, walking the last few steps.

  Once she got closer to me, her perfume overwhelmed me, and I wanted to vomit. Not because she smelled bad, but because I couldn’t stand the way the floral scent mixed with whatever alcohol still sloshed around in my stomach. A few more seconds and I wouldn’t be able to hold myself back. I’d take her on the staircase if she’d let me.

  “Your eyes are really bloodshot,” she said.

  “I know.” I rubbed my face with my right hand. “Really weird night. And my car is still downtown.”

  “You got so drunk you left your car?”

  “Yeah.”

  “At least you didn’t drive,” she muttered.

  “No way,” I said, and my right hand found its way to her left shoulder. “I learned my lesson about that.”

  “Good, because that was a big lesson, Spencer.”

  Her eyes bored into me, and I knew she saw right through every lie I tried to tell myself about the night before, every excuse I wanted to find for my latest one-night stand. Avery had a way of seeing into parts of my soul I didn’t want to acknowledge.