Unsuitable Men

by Forrester, Nia

  Tracy walked through her living and dining rooms, checking windows, drawing blinds. A man, whom she had let into her home, into her body, had called her a fucking whore. She crouched on the floor near her sofa as though hiding, but she couldn’t hide from herself. She was a fucking whore. She’d done this before, many more times than she cared to admit; picked up men who she didn’t care about, who she knew didn’t care about her just to help her feel something, anything for a few hours. Except she never did feel anything. Just emptier than before.

  And now, thanks to Kelvin, she felt empty and dirty.

  The only reason she knew the sobbing must be her was because there was no one else here. She was alone. That realization was both painful and a relief. Kelvin was gone, but she was alone. She pulled herself up from the floor, talking to herself, telling herself she was being melodramatic, and that this was no big deal. Some men turned aggressive when they were rejected, every woman knew that. She had chosen poorly, that was all . . . Kelvin was a fluke. One bad apple . . .

  But it didn’t work; she was still shaking uncontrollably even though her rational mind told her there was no danger. And she couldn’t face the idea of going back upstairs to her room and even looking at, let alone, sleeping on that bed. Instead, she went to the foyer and grabbed her purse, pulling out her cell phone. She didn’t consider, she just found the number and hit the call button, anxious for the sound of his voice.

  Tracy seemed to have been waiting by her front door because she opened it as soon as he rang the buzzer. Brendan stepped into the foyer of the beautiful classic brownstone, the interior of which appeared to have been restored to the period in which it was built. But he didn’t have time to take in the period details of his surroundings; he was too focused on Tracy and the look on her face. He got the distinct impression that she wanted to hug him when he entered, but was barely managing to hold back. Instead she hugged herself, her arms tightly gripping her own shoulders. She had obviously been crying.

  “What happened?” he asked, looking around.

  Her voice on the phone had been so urgent, damn near incoherent, so he’d been expecting something dire, some imminent danger when he arrived. But she appeared to be alone.

  “I . . . I just needed someone here,” she said.

  Brendan narrowed his eyes in confusion. “Why? What happened, Tracy?”

  She looked up at him and he saw a flash of something in her eyes. Shame. And loneliness. No, that wasn’t right. Not loneliness, alone-ness. He advanced toward her, putting his hands on her shoulders, gently opening her arms and pulling her slowly into his chest. At that, Tracy seemed to collapse in on herself, loud sobs wracking her body as she cried. Stunned, Brendan held her tighter, not moving until she stopped.

  When she’d calmed down a little and he tried to lead her upstairs, she pulled back, shaking her head.

  “Is someone up there?” he asked, looking up the staircase.

  “No, no,” she shook her head. “He left. He’s gone.”

  Brendan felt his entire body grow tense with anger. “Tracy, did he . . ?”

  “Rape me?” she said. She laughed harshly. “No, he didn’t rape me.”

  The way she kept emphasizing the word puzzled him. She walked toward the back of the house and Brendan followed her into a kitchen with chrome and exposed red brick. It was neat, and impeccably designed, as well put-together as he would expect from Tracy who was herself usually well put-together. She grabbed a sheet of paper towel and noisily blew her nose.

  “Then what . . ?”

  She looked at him, and there was the embarrassment again. “He just scared me, that’s all,” she shrugged. “I was scared and I had no one else to call who would . . .” she paused.

  Brendan leaned in, waiting for her to finish.

  “Who would make me feel safe,” she said finally.

  “Who is he?” Brendan asked, his voice flat.

  He didn’t even need to know the details. Anyone who made Tracy—tough as nails, Tracy—react like this had to have done something that merited a beat-down.

  “Some guy,” she said vaguely. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “The guy you were sitting with?”

  “Brendan,” she said firmly, sounding a little more like her take-charge self. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “Then why won’t you tell me?”

  “What would it matter? What would you do about it?” she asked, her voice tired.

  “I would fuck him up,” Brendan said, looking her in the eye.

  Tracy looked at him for a moment and then the next thing he knew she was crying noisily again. Brendan stood there for a moment and shaking his head, pulled her into his arms.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, stroking her hair. “You don’t need any more drama. I’m sor . . .”

  “No, you idiot,” Tracy pulled back a little and looked up at him. “I wish you would. If I knew how to find him, I’d love it if you’d fuck him up.”

  And then they were both laughing, Tracy through her tears, and Brendan with relief. He kissed her on the forehead and held her tight.

  “You don’t want to go upstairs and get some rest?” Brendan asked.

  Tracy said nothing but shook her head.

  “You do realize you’re going to have to go up there sooner or later,” he said.

  “Yes. Later,” she mumbled against his chest.

  “You want to go someplace else?” he asked. “Or stay here?”

  “Someplace else,” she said, right away.

  Brendan couldn’t believe he was doing this. He was dog-tired, having been up for pretty close to twenty-four hours straight. But still he hadn’t gotten a wink of sleep since he brought Tracy back to his place. She was sleeping a peaceful sleep, her head on his chest, one arm wrapped about him while he tried not to think about how well she fit in that space, how good it felt having her there. And then he tried not to think about the many nights that Meghan had tried to maneuver her way into sleeping at his place; nor about how readily he’d offered up that privilege up to Tracy.

  But she was scared, he argued with himself. What was the alternative? A hotel?

  Yes, as a matter of fact. What difference would it have made? She just wanted out of her townhouse. She would have settled for the Holiday Inn if it came to that.

  But instead, he’d made the call to drive all the way back across the Brooklyn Bridge and bring her here. Because he wanted to. She’d stepped across the threshold and looked around, her face devoid of make-up, dressed in sloppy sweats and a t-shirt, and scuffed Keds that looked like she used them as house slippers. She took in the décor and turned to smile at him; a little smile, a sweet, very un-Tracy-like smile.

  This is nice, she said. I like it.

  And for some reason that pleased him. It pleased him more than it should have. But he could tell she was tired. Her eyelids were slower to reopen each time she blinked. She’d been up most of the night too, and he didn’t much want to think about some of what she had to have been doing and with whom.

  I don’t have a guestroom, he told her apologetically. But you can have my bed.

  He led her into his bedroom suite where once again she looked around, taking everything in. Without all her usual finery, she was prettier than he’d ever seen her before, and he wondered whether she knew that; that she didn’t need all those extras.

  If you need anything, he said, feeling inexplicably nervous. I’ll be just out . . .

  But Tracy just shook her head, and saying nothing, led him over to his bed as if it were her own. She sat on the edge and extended a hand, pulling him down toward her. When he lay back, she just fit herself in the crook of his arm, rested her head just over his heart and within minutes was fast asleep. He had toed his shoes off and when she was asleep, Brendan did to same to hers, and just watched her for awhile.

  The key, he told himself now, was not to think. Just go with it. He closed his eyes and concentrated on the feeling of his chest rising and falling, with the
weight of Tracy’s head. Her hair was damp, and smelled like coconut. He exhaled and felt a few strands stir with his breath. She sighed as though mirroring his actions back to him, and moved even closer. Before long, Brendan felt the beginnings of a dreamless sleep begin to tug at the corners of his mind.

  He awoke what seemed much later to the smell of bacon and was momentarily confused about where he might be. He didn’t have a single thing in his refrigerator except for Vitamin water, of that he was certain, and in his freezer, there was only vodka. And yet someone was cooking . . . who the . . ? And then it came back to him. The long evening at Lounge Two-Twelve. The panicked phone call. The trip to Park Slope and then back.

  Brendan sat up and rubbed his eyes. He was wide awake now, well-rested and clear-headed. He brought Tracy here but it was a mistake, made in a moment of weakness. She was feeling unsafe and vulnerable and he felt protective, but it was time to erect those boundaries once again.

  He washed his face, brushed his teeth and headed up to his kitchen, taking the stairs slowly, hoping she didn’t get all emotional on him when he told her he was driving her home. But when he got to the top of the stairs the sight that greeted him stopped him dead in his tracks.

  Tracy had changed while he was asleep and was now wearing one of his dress shirts, which looked immense on her small frame, and she had belted the waist with what looked his one of his ties. Her feet were bare and she had let her hair out so that it was a semi-kinky, wavy mass about her face, not the severely straightened bob he was used to seeing. She didn’t even notice him at first because she was so busy moving about the kitchen, taking strips of bacon out of the oven on a cookie sheet he hadn’t even known he owned. She bit into one slice and licked her fingers, closing her eyes in pleasure at the taste. Brendan had never seen anything so sexy in his life.

  Shit.

  Then she turned and noticed him for the first time and smiled at him, the same sweet smile as earlier. The same un-Tracy-like smile. Except now he was beginning to believe that it was very much a Tracy-smile, just one that she reserved for very few occasions, or very few people. And he wondered whether he would be one of the lucky few who were privy to it from now on.

  “Hey,” she said. “I didn’t want to wake you so I just borrowed a couple of your things and went to get us something to eat. You do know that sports drinks are not officially a food group, right?”

  Then she was taking a baguette out of a Dean & DeLuca grocery bag, along with eggs, juice and a wedge of soft cheese. She moved around as though she’d familiarized herself with where everything was, and Brendan swallowed, trying to remember why it had seemed so essential that she leave.

  Tracy looked up at him again as he made his way closer, sitting at the breakfast bar, watching as she worked, beating eggs, slicing cheese and bread.

  “I got some olive oil spatter on this shirt,” she said apologetically. “And honestly, I don’t think it’s going to come out.” She winced as though she expected him to be upset.

  “That’s okay,” he said shaking his head.

  “It’s one of your Armani Collezioni shirts,” she said. “Sorry. But I couldn’t find anything in your stuff that wasn’t a designer label. Don’t you ever just go to Target like normal people?”

  “When was the last time you went to Target, Tracy?” Brendan teased.

  “I beg your pardon. Riley and I go to Target at least three times a month,” she laughed.

  “Sure you do.”

  “You should come with me sometime. Best. Date. Ever.”

  Brendan smiled.

  She was so busy with the cooking she didn’t seem to notice that she said the word ‘date’ in connection with something they might do together. It was almost impossible to connect this woman with the calm, cool and collected ice queen image she usually projected. For whatever reason, for the moment she seemed to have let her guard down around him. Maybe this was who she was all along. The person only Riley saw.

  For years he’d wondered how two women, so different could be so close. Riley was the personification of warmth; one of those rare, open-hearted people who loved you right away and had to be given a damn good reason not to. Tracy had always seemed like the just the opposite.

  She grabbed one of the barstools and placed it in front of the cabinets where he kept his dishes, visible through the glass doors. Brendan couldn’t recall having ever taken a dish out of that cabinet so it took him a moment to realize that Tracy intended to use the stool as a ladder.

  “I can get for that you,” he said getting up quickly.

  The last thing he needed was to have her fall and break her neck on top of everything else that had happened to her in the last twenty-four hours. By the time he got to her, Tracy was already standing on the stool and Brendan found himself face to face with her pelvis. He hated himself for the twitch he felt in his groin; after all she’d been through a trauma the night before. But a hard dick had no conscience.

  “I got it,” she said opening the cabinet and grabbing two dishes. She handed them down to him and he tried not to look too hard at the apex of her thighs as he took them.

  “Placemats?” she asked.

  Brendan looked at her blankly.

  “Placemats, Brendan? You know? The things that go under dishes when you’re eating?”

  “Oh.” He shook his head, coming back down to earth. “I don’t think I have those.”

  Tracy rolled her eyes. “We are definitely going to Target.”

  They ate sitting at the breakfast bar, talking about Shawn and Riley’s soon-to-be-born baby and making bets on who would be the pushover parent and who would be the hard-ass. And as they laughed and talked, Tracy got up and poured his juice, made him more eggs and then cleared up when they were done. Then she hung out in the kitchen with him while he rinsed the dishes and put them in the dishwasher, her legs stretched out and resting on his stool.

  He kept reminding himself that he needed to get her out of his apartment, and kept giving himself deadlines to mention taking her back to Brooklyn. First it was, in a half an hour; then when they returned to his bedroom and Tracy turned on the television, it was after the stupid chick flick she seems to be so into. And then she drifted off to sleep, curled around one of his oversized pillows and he changed the channel to a baseball game. Brendan didn’t know when he fell asleep himself, he only knew that when he woke up, it was dark and Tracy was still sleeping, but this time she was curled around him and he was too tired to get up, or to think of waking her, or to even consider driving her all the way back to Brooklyn. And by then, he finally admitted to himself that he didn’t want to.

  Chapter Six

  “I don’t like those,” Brendan said swatting away the red linen placemats Tracy held up for him.

  “This is the fifth choice you’ve vetoed,” she said. “I’m starting to think you don’t want placemats.”

  Brendan laughed. “You think?”

  Tracy sighed. “Okay. Fine. We don’t have to stay. Let’s go.”

  She had dragged him to the Target in Harlem as a joke, and for some reason Brendan didn’t seem to be getting the punch line. But she had been so taken over by the domesticity of the place, and the odd comfort of shopping for household items with Brendan that for a moment, Tracy forgot that she should probably be going home, and that by now he probably wanted nothing more than to get her out of his hair.

  But going back to her empty townhome seemed like such a bleak prospect compared to yesterday and today, just hanging out with Brendan in his apartment, watching movies, sleeping and walking to the gourmet market to grab food for each meal. For some reason, Brendan was averse to stocking his refrigerator, so they’d gone to the market a total of four times, each time buying only enough for the next meal.

  They didn’t talk about why she was there, or when she would go home, but now it was clear that her time was up. It was Sunday afternoon; the weekend was drawing to a close and real life would soon begin again.

  “I app
reciate the thought,” Brendan said following her toward the exits. “But I don’t cook, Tracy. And if I’m in that kitchen at all, it’s not to sit and eat a meal using a place . . .”

  “Fine,” she said, cutting him off. “You don’t have to explain. You don’t want placemats. I get it.”

  She walked briskly, now wanting more than anything to get out of the store herself, feeling silly all of a sudden for coercing him there, acting out some asinine domestic scene that he had no desire to participate in.

  “Tracy,” he said. “Tracy . . .”

  “What?” she stopped and turned to look at him. “We’re leaving, just like you wanted. So what is it?”

  Brendan looked at her for a moment. “Are you sure you’re okay to go home?” he asked.

  Tracy shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. I have to.”

  “But if you’re really not ready . . .”

  “If I’m really not ready, then what?” she asked softly.

  Tracy saw that there was real concern in his eyes. He was such a good guy. A good guy who had a girlfriend he probably couldn’t wait to get back to.

  “I’m okay,” she said, forcing herself to sound more confident than she felt. “And he didn’t hurt me, Brendan. At least not physically. He didn’t . . .” she trailed off into silence.

  He reached up and touched her hair briefly, surprising her.

  “You ever going to tell me what happened?”

  She shrugged again but said nothing. She couldn’t imagine telling Brendan what Kelvin said. Because what Kelvin said was true. And she didn’t want Brendan to know about that side of her. Right now, he was treating her like porcelain, like she was something precious that might break if anyone dared utter even a harsh word in her direction. She couldn’t remember the last time a man had treated her that way, or if another man ever had.

  He extended a hand which she took, without hesitation.