by Hamel, B. B.
I hate men like him. I don’t want to give him a chance.
But it’s too late. I already gave him a chance when I slept with him, and now I’m pregnant.
I hug my nana goodbye and leave her little apartment. I walk slowly through the heavily carpeted hallways, past boring beige walls and equally boring paintings. Old people roam the halls, looking bored or tired or annoyed or all three. As I pass them, I keep thinking about my nana, stuck in that room.
She’d go out with Ben, even if he is a rich bastard. She’d give him a shot.
One day, I won’t be able to anymore, and I might look back and wonder what could’ve happened if I had.
I step outside and take a deep breath. I know what I’m going to do, but I’m dreading it already. I feel like it’s going to be a mistake, but maybe it’s a mistake I need to make.
I’ve been so good these past couple years. I’ve done nothing but work, write music, help my nana, and work more. My friends all moved on, got jobs, got married, all that stuff. I’m still stuck, trying to figure myself out.
It’s time to take a little risk. Besides, he sent me that CD knowing I’d need to ask questions about it. I need to know what it is, what each take represents, every single little detail he can give me.
Screw it. I can make a mistake. I’ll give the rich bastard a shot, but if he turns out to be the asshole I’m afraid he is, I’m bailing.
One sniff of it, and I’m out.
But the thought of that orgasm keeps drawing me closer, and I keep wondering if there’s more.
5
Ben
It’s around five when my phone rings. A number I don’t recognizes pops up, and a thrill of excitement runs down my spine.
Get yourself under control, Ben, I think to myself. Markus would give me so much shit if he knew I was getting giddy because some girl’s calling.
At least I hope it’s her. If I pick up and it’s some fucking spam call asking me if I want a bigger penis…
“Hello?” I answer.
“Hi, Ben?”
It’s her. I know it’s her. I recognize the voice right away, sultry and sexy and so fucking hot I can barely control myself.
The memory of her tight pussy wrapped around my cock as I spurt cum deep inside of her leaps into my mind. I have to force it away.
“Alice,” I say, smiling. “I was wondering if you’d call.”
“Well, you left me no choice.”
“Oh, you like flowers that much?”
“Very funny. It’s that CD.”
“Did you like it?”
I can hear the excitement in her voice. “I love it,” she says. “Where did all that come from?”
“I’ll tell you all about it over drinks.”
She hesitates a second, but only a second. “Okay.”
“Good. What’s your address? I’ll send a car.”
She laughs like I’m joking. “Yeah, okay. Seriously, where do you want to go?”
“Seriously, I’ll send a car. Give me your address.”
“Really? Uh, okay, sure.” She gives it to me and I write it down on a yellow legal pad. “You don’t have to do that though. I can walk.”
“Don’t worry, it’s on Somesuch’s dime. I’ll write it off.”
She laughs a little and I can tell she’s already nervous. “Where are we going?”
“You’ll see. I’ll send the car in an hour.”
I hang up the phone, smiling to myself. I bet she’s annoyed that I won’t tell her where we’re going and that I’m only giving her an hour to get ready.
I should probably be nice. She has been avoiding me, after all, and I did have to bribe her with that CD to get her to call. Still, I can’t help myself. I want to knock her off balance a little bit.
She’s the kind of person that has walls, and I love breaking those down.
* * *
The bar’s lights are low and the place has a smoky vibe, although nobody can smoke inside anymore.
A jazz trio plays some quiet music, the piano stealing the show. They’re up on a stage in the far corner, mostly ignored by everyone around them.
I spot Alice before she spots me. I’m at a table in the corner opposite the band, in what I think is the best spot in the house. I catch her eye and wave slightly.
She smiles and heads toward me.
I stand and kiss her cheek as she comes up to the table. I’m wearing a button-down and a pair of slim jeans to her little black dress. She smiles at me as she sits and I lean back, taking her in.
Alice is as beautiful as I remember. Maybe even more so. She puts her hands on the table like she doesn’t know what to do with them. I sip a glass of whisky.
“I’m glad you came,” I say.
“Like I had a choice.”
I smirk. “Of course you had a choice.”
“Not after you sent that CD. I couldn’t exactly listen to it and not talk to you.”
“True. I guess I was a little manipulative there.”
She grins at that. The waiter stops by and she orders a club soda with lime.
“Keeping my wits around you,” she comments when the waiter leaves.
I just shrug. “Probably a good idea, although I doubt staying sober will help.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“I suspect you’ll still end up naked tonight either way.”
I smirk and watch her cheeks turn pink. “Don’t be so sure,” she says back.
I laugh and watch the trio for a second. I love these guys. They’re all older, in the fifties at least, and insanely talented. They play the old standards like they wrote them.
“Where’d you find this place?” she asks me. “It’s like an actual jazz bar.”
“Friend of mine opened it a few years ago. I’ve been helping him find acts.”
“Really? Are these guys yours?”
“No, unfortunately,” I say. “They’re amazing though.”
She nods a little, watching them. “Very nice. Smooth and mellow. Almost like they’re bored.”
I grin at her. “That’s just how an old man plays it.”
“Guess I wouldn’t know.”
The waiter returns with her drink. She sips it and I watch her closely. I keep getting flashes of that night, the intense desire for her, the pleasure blooming through me. She smiles a little, showing her perfectly white teeth.
“What?” she asks.
“Nothing.” I sip my whisky to cover my embarrassment at getting caught staring at her. “You wanted to ask me about that CD.”
“Oh, right.” She leans forward excitedly. “Okay, on track one, they say this weird verse…”
For the next hour, I field questions. I try to tell her as much as I can but to be totally honest, I don’t remember it all. And she’s relentless. She has an incredible ear and noticed a ton of details that I probably missed at the time, like how the third track is played slightly up-tempo in that take compared to the studio version, or how Joss misses a bunch of notes on the last track and how those notes are all gone from the final cut.
“It was chaos,” I tell her. “Recording that record was nuts. They were new to the studio and really raw, but they wanted to do take after take, wanted to get it perfect.”
“Did they?”
I shrug. “Probably. It was close, at least.”
My drink’s gone by the time she’s done peppering me with questions. She leans back in her chair, a satisfied smile on her lips. I’ve seen that look before, although deeper last time, more intense.
“It must’ve been amazing, being there,” she says.
“It was,” I admit. “I’ve produced a lot of albums at this point, but they… Slide was something else.”
“Do they get along?” Her last question comes out like she was almost embarrassed to ask.
I purse my lips for a second. “Nathan and Joss didn’t at the time, but they do now. Landon and Chase are close… yeah, they do. It’s not always perfect, but they’re close.”
/>
She nods once, still smiling. “I knew it. You can always tell when a band hates itself.”
“Yeah? How?”
“It’s a vibe you get. They don’t want to get near each other on stage and they’re never photographed together outside of band contexts.”
“Huh,” I say, thinking back to all the bands I’ve seen come and go. “I think you’re right.”
“I’m definitely right.” She grins at me. “I have an eye for this sort of thing.”
I laugh softly and think about ordering another drink, but I stop myself. She hasn’t been drinking this whole time, just sipping on her club soda.
I decide not to have another. I lean back and cock my head, wondering when the last time was that I chose not to drink more.
It’s been awhile.
“Let’s go do something,” I say suddenly.
“Do something?” She cocks her eyebrow. “I told you I wasn’t going to sleep with you.”
I grin at her. “That’s not what I mean, but it’s nice to know you’re thinking about it.”
She blushes slightly. “I’m not—”
“Come on,” I say, standing up. I reach out my hand and she takes it.
“Where are we going?”
“We have unfinished business.”
She frowns at that as we leave the restaurant. I nod at the owner on the way out, knowing he’ll put this on my tab.
It’s funny, being rich. People only give you a tab when you have a ton of money. If I couldn’t pay any of this stuff, they’d make sure I always had cash. But since they know I’m loaded, they let me get away with it.
I wonder how they’ll treat me if I ever lost everything.
We step out into the city street and start walking. I think she figures out where we’re going pretty fast. The studio is just a couple blocks away.
We step up onto the stoop and I unlock the door. She follows me inside, hanging back a little bit.
“Listen, I’m having fun, but I don’t know about this.”
I sigh. “Will it help if I promise not to touch you?”
For a second, she looks disappointed, but she quickly masks that. “It might.”
“I promise not to touch you.” I smirk a little. “Unless you touch me first.”
She rolls her eyes. “Good enough.”
“Come on. I just want you to teach me that song.”
She follows me into the live room and we sit down at the piano. I sit there and watch her play through the song a couple times, listening once with my eyes closed. I get that same feeling again from the last time I heard it, a deep and intense peaceful calm rolling over me.
Nothing ever makes me feel this way. I never want to skip another drink. I never want to promise not to touch a woman I want to fuck. It’s just not the kind of man I’ve been for the last few years.
Maybe Alice is making me into a different man. The kind of man I think I can be, if given the right chance.
Or maybe not. I watch her play the last time, but my eyes keep roaming to her body, wondering if I’ll ever get another taste of her skin. I want to tongue her pussy, lap her up, drink in her moans, make her tense as she comes on my tongue. I want to hear her whisper my name and when she’s finished, I want to tease her into another one.
I want hear her beg so badly it almost hurts.
“Okay,” she says, looking at me sideways. “It’s your turn. Show me what you got, suit.”
I smirk at her as I place my hands on the keys. “You know I don’t wear suits, right?”
“You’re still an executive, so you’re a suit to me.”
I laugh softly and start to play. It’s halting and nowhere near as beautifully smooth as what she can manage but I still make it through most of the song without any major mistakes.
She looks surprised. “That was pretty good.”
“Thanks,” I say. “I have a pretty good memory for this sort of stuff. At least when I’m not distracted.” I give her body a pointed look.
She rolls her eyes. “Good one. Here, like this.” She plays through the middle part where I had the most trouble.
We go back and forth like that for the better part of an hour. She teaches me the song and soon I’m playing it through, smooth and easy. Still not as lovely as what she manages, but at least it’s accurate enough.
I teach her a song of mine, an upbeat little thing. She plays it perfect almost right away. “Too easy,” she says, giving me a challenging smile.
We go back and forth like that, playing little bits of music. It’s the most fun I’ve had in a long time, and soon another hour slips past. We’re just playing around, our bodies next to each other on the bench, laughing and talking about nothing but music.
Eventually, she stretches and stands. “Wow,” she says. “It’s actually late.”
I shrug a little. “Is it ever really late for a girl that tunes pianos in the middle of the night?”
She shrugs. “I don’t do that anymore.”
“Oh, no?” I pretend to be surprised. “Why not?”
She gives me a look. “Someone trampled all over that.”
I laugh a little. “Sorry to ruin a good thing for you.”
“It’s okay. I made other plans.” She drifts away, into the middle of the room. “I like this place, you know?”
“This was the first thing we built,” I say, stretching my legs. “We were living out of a tiny apartment, dumping all our money into this place. We didn’t even have an office for years.”
“And now you’re huge,” she says.
“Yeah, now. Not back then. We had to work hard, lose a ton of time and effort and money and years before we finally got here.”
“How’d you do it?”
I shrug a little. “I don’t know, honestly. A lot of luck, a lot of hard work.”
“I guess that’s how it is for most things.” She cocks her head. “You don’t sound too happy about it, though.”
“I guess I’m not.”
“Why? You run a successful record label. You get to produce bands, hang around with musicians. I mean, it’s the dream, right?”
I look away. I don’t know how to explain this without sounding like a spoiled fucking asshole.
“When you’ve already reached your dream, it’s hard to figure out what to do next,” I say softly. “I know that sounds bad. It’s just how I feel, I guess.”
She watches me for a long moment and doesn’t speak. I feel like a fucking moron although I’m starting to get used to feeling like this around her.
“I should go,” she finally says. “This was fun.”
“Yeah, it was.”
She turns to the door. I want to get up, call after her, make her stay.
I don’t move. I watch her leave, wondering what the fuck comes next.
6
Alice
I keep thinking about what Ben said last night. Those words run through my mind, over and over again.
When you’ve already reached your dream, it’s hard to figure out what to do next.
For a second, I caught a glimpse of him. Not the version of him that he presents to the world, the cocky rich bastard that I’m afraid to get anywhere near, but another version.
One with depth and truth inside of him.
I’m not used to seeing that from men like him.
I roll out of bed the next morning and stretch a little. I don’t have any work to do until later today, so I throw on some clothes, go downstairs, get my mail, and head back up for some breakfast.
I flip through the bills while I eat a bowl of cereal. Unlike everyone else I know, I still pay my bills with a check through the mail like some kind of Luddite. I don’t know why, I guess it’s just easier that way.
I open the bill for my grandmother’s home and sigh. It’s the same every month and every month the number drives me insane. I do some mental math and realize that unless I pick up some extra work soon, I won’t be eating much again.
I’ve been h
ere before. Hell, I’ve been here ever since my deadbeat dad fucked off forever.
I’ll never forget that day. It was two years after my mother died. He was barely around when she was sick, always out somewhere, either working or spending time gambling. He’s won and lost more fortunes than most people will ever see in a lifetime, but it never mattered.
He never helped. My father was never the kind of person I could rely on. I figured that out young when he was never there for my birthdays, never remembered my favorite foods, never knew anything about me. He was always drifting in and out of our lives, barely engaged.
My mom used to make excuses. “Oh, he works so hard, honey,” she’d say. My father was a salesman for an auto parts distributor, and he was always using that as an excuse to travel all over.
Mom loved him anyway. I don’t really know why. She was so beautiful and talented, but she was stuck raising me and my older brother.
And then she got sick. I was seventeen when she was diagnosed, and eighteen when she died. It all happened so fast, the drugs, the pain, the sickness ravaging her. She used to smile and laugh but I could see all the humor was slowly leaving her, replaced by constant pain.
My dad had no fucking clue. He stayed as far away from her as he possibly could. “Just can’t look her in the eye,” he’d grumble at me before heading to the casino two towns over or to the track to lose more money betting on horses.
So I took over for him. My brother was in college, and although he tried more than Dad did, he wasn’t much of a help. I was the one that was there for her, the one that saw it all. I was the one that dealt with her, laughed with her, cried with her. I was there when she finally passed.
My fucking brother and father were nowhere to be seen.
He stuck around for another couple years, my dad did, living in the same house. When I turned twenty though, my grandmother’s lungs got so bad that she had to have medical treatment around the clock. Dad dumped her in a facility and took off the next day.
I’ll never forget the last time I saw him. “Sorry, sweetie,” he says to me, smoking a cigarette, probably to mask the stench of vodka on his breath. “Can’t sit around here anymore, you know? Your Nana’ll be fine. She’s got money. You take care.”