A Sweet Life-kindle

by Andre, Bella

  Worst of all? I reinforced it. Not the rube part, but the belief part.

  Declan says something else in French to the waiter, who nods to me and walks away. Then he turns to Steve and says, “You know my name?”

  Steve laughs in his fakey-sophisticated way. He doesn’t seem to realize how obviously pretentious he is. I see it, Dad saw it from the first handshake he had with Steve, Amy sees it, but so many people Steve worked with never saw it.

  It was my mom’s job not to see it. All she saw when she looked at Steve was Harvard and Farmington and little MBA-fathered babies all lined up and cute in their matching Hanna Andersson pajamas while sleeping in their PoshTots nurseries.

  Declan’s tight jaw and cold eyes tell me he sees it quite clearly.

  “Everyone who’s paying attention in this town knows who the McCormicks are,” Steve says blithely.

  Wrong answer.

  Jessica is sitting across from Declan and I’m across from Steve. Declan’s hand slips under the table and he leans toward me, hot palm landing on my thigh. Although everything below my waist is obscured by the table, it’s damn obvious what he’s doing to anyone observing.

  Steve’s face turns a pale pink I don’t recall ever seeing, and Jessica’s eyes roll so hard she burns twenty calories with the motion.

  “Paying attention is a good quality,” Declan says, turning his eyes to me. He gives my thigh a squeeze. I put my hand on his and try to move it.

  It is granite.

  Something in me snaps and floods at the same time, desperation and attempts at maintaining an illusion of control all melting away with a rush of pleasure. Maybe it’s the wine I guzzled. Maybe it’s the feel of Declan’s hand on my leg, half on the cloth of my skirt and half on my stockings. Yes, the split was that bad.

  Bad never felt so good.

  Steve is cataloging me now, his eyes done with resting on Declan, instead looking at me as if he’d underestimated the value of a discarded possession.

  The waiter picks this exact moment to return, carrying a bottle of white and four glasses. He pours a small amount in a glass. Declan does the necessaries, sipping and nodding with approval. I receive a nice, healthy glass of white wine and then the waiter pours a twin glass for Declan.

  He offers some to Jessica, who nods.

  Steve declines.

  After replacing the chilled bottle in its ice container in a stand that now sits at my left elbow, the waiter asks Jessica for her dinner order.

  “I’ll have a small field greens salad with vinegar and oil and the tilapia.”

  Declan makes a noise of amusement and I try not to laugh. Salad and fish. Boy, did he call it. The only way not to start giggling is to drink my wine, which I do. All of it. Like it’s Gatorade. I decide right then and there to order the biggest dessert they have on the menu and eat it with gusto.

  Because I can. And it won’t have maple in it.

  Steve’s eyes bug out of his head while Jessica keeps her bored expression, Maybe it’s a new Xanax-Botox combo. Perhaps they inject the Xanax directly under the skin, because whatever it takes to achieve a flat affect that is so utterly devoid of emotion can’t be organic. It must be manmade. Someone patented that.

  Except it all morphs when she talks to Declan. The ice queen becomes a sweet, warm princess and she is hot to snag him. Not that I have a claim on him or anything, though the way his hand is learning the terrain of my inner thigh makes me think he was a geography major with a keen interest in cartography.

  I don’t stop him. I don’t want to. And he’s showing no signs of wanting to, either, as his fingertips graze against my skin, moving in light circles, taking their time as they feel their way through questions I know the answers to now, but can’t quite put into words.

  Good luck, Jessica. You can’t compete with Toilet Girl.

  But you just keep on trying.

  Steve alternates between looking like a ferocious business insider and a wounded intern. I can tell the landscape of his internal sense of the pecking order of the world has been deeply shaken. Accustomed to treating me like a social necessary at dinners like this, he used to think he had to carefully coach me. As if I were a walking liability ready to spring a faux pas at any minute and ruin his chances for success.

  And yet I loved him. Still kind of do. Because even now, with Declan’s hand practically typing out all the sexy scenes from Fifty Shades of Grey on my leg in morse code, a part of me wants to help Steve. Whatever that means.

  “I saw the exhibit your brother has over at the Bromfield,” Jessica tells Declan, taking the opportunity to reach out and touch his forearm. My eyes lock on her perfect, slender hand, and suddenly the only meat I want between my teeth are those fingers.

  The possessiveness makes my body go on high alert, and Declan’s hand stops moving. Even he can feel it. He shifts his arm just so, enough to make her drop her hand as he reaches for his wine glass, giving me a sidelong glance that tells me the message was most certainly received.

  “The Bromfield is a gallery for modern art,” Jessica says pointedly to me, leaning around Declan. She says it like she’s a children’s television show host explaining a new concept to an imagined four-year-old audience.

  “I’m more a Fountain Street Studios kind of gal,” I say as I reach for the bottle of wine in the bucket next to me. Steve’s eyes widen a touch, the signal obvious. I’m supposed to wait for someone else to pour it, or to ask Declan or Steve to, or I’m supposed to disappear into a giant sinkhole created by the gravity of my lack of manners.

  Instead, I pour the rest of the wine into mine and Declan’s glasses, and gently return the bottle.

  “Fountain Street?” Jessica says, eyes as wide as saucers, a sarcastic curl to her lip as she looks with fake helplessness between Steve and Declan. “I don’t believe I’ve heard of them.”

  “They’re in Framingham,” I say, pretending not to notice the condescension. She sniffs, expecting the men to join in her game. Framingham is a former working-class town with a city center that is not even the kind of place where Jessica could imagine her cleaning lady would live.

  “The old warehouse?” Declan says. “The one that the artists took over as a sort of co-op?” His eyes light up. “We’ve had commercial photographers from that operation come and do beautiful work for our promo materials in the real estate operation. High-end, quality work.”

  Jessica’s eyes open wider, but this time driven by something other than coquettishness. A sharp look at Steve makes him literally sink a bit in his chair, as if his balls were deflating by the second.

  “Have you been to one of their open houses?” I ask. The place advertises every few months, and I’ve always been curious.

  “No, but I think we’re about to. It’s a date,” he whispers, loud enough for Steve and Jessica to hear. She leans back with her lemon face again and Steve reaches for her hand with a loving look on his face. She tolerates his touch like she’s getting a pap smear. Including the shudder, as if cold steel slides along her skin.

  Declan and I reach for our glasses of wine at the exact same moment, and he hold his out to mine. “A toast!” He looks at Steve and Jessica, and they both pick up their wine glasses, Steve letting out a sigh, as if he’d been holding his breath for too long.

  “What shall we toast to?” Steve asks.

  Declan looks down in contemplation, and his hand opens on my leg, massaging up and down. I don’t even try to pretend to ignore it now, loosened up by the wine and his attentions—both public and private. Doubts fade as the scenario sharpens. Crazy as it sounds, Declan’s got his hot palm on my skin, his eyes on me, and his words, I suspect, are about to center around me, too.

  “To…shopping for a billionaire!” Declan declares.

  Chapter Eleven

  Jessica inhales so sharply she sounds like she’s having an asthma attack as she exhales. Steve greedily takes a sip or ten of his wine without clinking glasses with anyone.

  Declan gently nu
dges my wine with a punctuated connection of glass on glass, and eyes that blaze with so many unspoken words. His hand that moves from my thigh, up over my hip, and to the small of my back speaks a few thousand of them, though.

  “I thought you were going to say, ‘To Toilet Girl,’” I confess quietly, leaning toward him. My lips are so close to his ear I could lick it. Only his slight movement backwards stops me, as he’s out of reach with a shift of air that makes me want to breathe him in forever. He could bottle that scent. Pure Declan.

  He chuckles softly. “Too easy. Besides,” he murmurs, “if you really are on the hunt for a billionaire, you’re batting zero with me. I’m not even close. But you’re technically shopping for my father’s company, and he’s one.”

  Before I can answer, Steve interrupts, and in a loud, commanding voice says, “I can’t compete. I’m only a millionaire.” Fake self-deprecating chuckle. Jessica gives him a honey-cheeked smile, one I thought she reserved only for men like Declan, who are an order of magnitude beyond Steve. I know—and Steve knows—he isn’t really a millionaire. “On paper,” he used to say. Um, okay. Even I, a mere marketing major, know that if you have $1.5 million in assets you’re not a millionaire if you also have $1.2 million in debts.

  But what does a silly Mendon girl with a bachelor’s from UMass know? I’m guessing Jessica is a Wellesley girl. Too fragile for Smith, and too moneyed for Wheelock. Then again, she has a graduate degree from Harvard.

  Steve’s gaze penetrates me, the look cold and hungry at the same time. As much as I hate it, he rattles me. It’s been nearly a year since he dumped me, so while I’m not a raw pile of goo living on ice cream and espresso between healthy doses of self-loathing and a nice injection of desolation, he’s still the man I thought I would marry. The guy who helped me have my first orgasm. The man who cheered me on at graduation. The one who patiently explained pivot tables on spreadsheets.

  And hello? How rare is that? Because you can find anyone to have sex with you, but a pivot table expert who can explain it all in plain English? That’s some rare stuff.

  Declan feels exotic. Extreme. Like a crazy risk you can only grab at a handful of times in your life but that you regret not grabbing for. Steve was the dependable, rusty old lawnmower in the garage. You weren’t riding it anywhere special, but it would start up every spring just like you came to expect it to, and it would always be there.

  Until it wasn’t one day.

  My analogies are getting really stupid as the wine makes me stretch with an unexpected yawn.

  “Size doesn’t matter, right, Shannon?” That’s Jessica’s voice, coming from left field. “Size of the bank account, I mean,” she adds, winking at Declan.

  Even Declan seems shocked. I think that comment would shut my mother up, and make Chuckles give her a high five. It’s so…catty. That thump you just heard?

  The sound of Steve being dumped.

  I feel kind of bad for him, but it’s hard to do that when Declan’s thumb is stroking my soft skin with whisper-light brushes that make me move slightly, just enough to make a rush of molten lava pour through my veins, my body one big thrumming pulse of need for him.

  Wait! This is a business meeting. I’m not supposed to be leaning against a wall of muscle in a bespoke suit, the scent of my own rose corsage from my prom date…er, business associate making me tingly and open. I’m supposed to feel bad for Steve as his entire conceptual framework for how the world works flushes away (see how I did that?) as the waiter delivers our food.

  I see he ordered the filet, too. We used to find that endearing, and yes, I ordered white wine with my steak back then. Until he was in his final year of his MBA, he found that endearing, too.

  Right now, Steve is so focused on Declan he doesn’t seem to realize that Jessica just insulted his penis and bank account, and somehow managed to make me her girlfriend confidante. Impressive to do all that in one sentence. Perhaps I’ve misjudged her. If Chuckles were here, he’d defect to Jessicaland, happy to be united with his ancestral tribe.

  Another glass of wine is needed to fully dissect the layers of Ms. Jessica. And a scalpel, too. Though she looks like she’s been under more than enough scalpels, if you know what I mean.

  We all—except for Jessica—pretend she didn’t say what she said, instead ooohing and aahhhing over the food. I am feeling more and more like this is a date, and Declan confirms it by taking my hand and putting it on his thigh.

  Oh, yes. I can feel how much this is a date, all right.

  “How long have you two been dating?” Steve asks out of the blue. Holy non sequitur. The question is directed at Declan.

  Only.

  “We’re not dating—”

  “Since this morning.” Our voices ring out in unison. You can guess who says what. Jessica gives her version of a snort, which sounds like a kitten sneezing.

  I give Declan a distinct WTF look and Steve glances down into Declan’s lap, obviously spotting my hand doing its own version of Magellan’s circumnavigation of big, round objects.

  No, it isn’t that bad, but in dim lighting with an overcharged tension between the four of us that could power a small town for a week, it doesn’t look very businesslike.

  Which means I just fulfilled Steve’s prophecy about me.

  I just don’t know how to act properly in these sorts of settings.

  Then again, he may be thinking that I’d never felt him up under the tablecloth of a fancy restaurant, surrounded by big-deal makers, but I have no idea whether that is true, because my phone starts to buzz.

  My purse is right next to my thigh, so I leap into the air a bit, startled, my hand on Declan’s lap whacking the underside of the table and ricocheting back into his lap so hard he makes a very uncomfortable ooomph sound that makes Jessica and Steve both arch their right eyebrows, like synchronized cynics. If they make that a sport, they’d win the gold.

  “Sorry,” I whisper as I simultaneously unzip my purse and stand. Bad move. Three (or is it four?) glasses of wine plus stiletto heels plus my ex-boyfriend and his date and an overly attentive business colleague so fine I could suck shots out of his belly button and have it called art by the Bromfield Gallery folks means the room spins and I crash back down into my seat.

  Except it isn’t my seat.

  “Business meeting,” Steve says as Declan snuggles with me in his lap, his nose nuzzling my neck, his arms wrapping around me less out of a lascivious nature and more to make sure I don’t slide off and land on his feet.

  “The best kind,” Declan says, not looking at him. Jessica takes one bite of her fish and looks away.

  Bzzzz. My phone won’t stop buzzing. I stand again, more sure-footed, and excuse myself, walking away as fast as I can. Fortunately, the restaurant is fairly empty, and my lurching goes without notice.

  The women’s room is down a dark hallway with fake candles lighting the way. Monastery wine cellar look. It works. I get to the entrance in front of the ladies’ room and look at my phone. Amanda, of course.

  Did you get the account? she asks. And bring condoms?

  Yes and yes, I text back.

  What? Of course I brought condoms. Bought new ones, too, because it’s been so long the ones I have might have reverted to their original element forms. I might not plan to have sex with Declan, but I’m damn sure going to plan just in case I have sex with Declan.

  Kind of like buying a lottery ticket. You can’t win if you don’t play.

  And…? she writes.

  Yes, I text back, cryptic on purpose.

  Make her freak out. Chuckles would be pleased.

  To which? she types.

  We got the account, I explain. The other one depends on Steve.

  STEVE? Are you still carrying a torch for that asshole? We need to get you exorcised, Amanda types back.

  It’s so hard to read her. She keeps her emotions hidden so well.

  Steve is here. At dinner.

  My phone rings suddenly. I answer it.
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br />   “Where are you and what the hell is Steve doing on your date with Declan?” she snaps.

  “Business meeting,” I insist.

  “You bring condoms to every business meeting you have? When we get the dental association account, you seriously bring condoms for dinner meetings with Dr. Jorgensson?” Dr. Jorgensson is the current president of the association and is in his late eighties. He looks like a nicely dressed orc. He has a home health aide attend all our meetings.

  “Yep,” I say. “Even with him. Can never be too prepared.”

  “Why is Steve there? And speaking of people I would sleep with before I’d ever touch your ex, Dr. Jorgensson looks damn fine compared to him.”

  “Hey! I slept with Steve and that’s really insulting.”

  Silence.

  Then: “I’d still choose the colostomy bag over that piece of – ”

  My phone buzzes with a text. “Gotta go. But we got the account!” I say in an excited voice.

  “That is awesome,” she says, not ready to let me go. “But what is STEVE doing there?”

  “He and his date”—bzzzzz—“appeared out of nowhere.”

  “Where are you?”

  I tell her.

  She emits a low whistle. “Your car’s Blue Book isn’t close to the bill Declan will have for dinner.”

  “I know.”

  “And Steve brought—who’d he bring?”

  “Some chick named Jessica Coffin. Boston Barbie.”

  “Jessica Coffin?” Amanda says her name like I’m supposed to know who she is. “Oh my God. Steve is fishing in big waters.”

  “Well, she clearly thinks his fishie is little.”

  “What?”

  “Never mind.” Bzzz. “I really have to go.”

  “Call or text me later!” Amanda says.

  “Tell Greg the good news!”

  “And you have fun, too. Let loose. Be wild, Shannon. It’s about time.”

  Click. I tap over to messages. It’s Steve:

  I think fate brought you here tonight.