I walked out into the hot Miami sunlight, took off the cardigan I wore for class, and stuffed it in my bag—my black tank top almost shrinking in the boil. That was the thing about Florida. After having spent my first twenty-two years in New York State, all the clothes I wore here seemed smaller. Even felt smaller on my body. I guess they had to be, because it was hot and humid as crap here.
Luckily, I could hold my own in a tank top, a sundress, or a bikini. It was part of the reason I always wore a cardigan in class.
You would think I was a catch. A twenty-two-year-old grad student who wrote erotic romance on the side, who was on track to get a PhD, who had a body that wore a bikini not the other way around, but you would be wrong. In yet the largest cliché that was my life, Candy was my one and only sexual outlet.
Well, and being beyond sexually frustrated by Professor Dylan.
Things had felt different when I moved to Miami. The women here were gorgeous, exotic. The city had taken whatever mojo I’d had and rendered it mojo-less. I liked blaming it on this place but knew it easily could have also been what happened three months ago, before I left for Miami.
What is that other cliché? Breaking up is hard to do? Well, my breakup with my long-time boyfriend, Keith, included him shouting a list of several self-esteem-blowing statements about how boring I was in bed, the size of my ass, and how I smelled like baby shampoo.
I had been a virgin before him. How could I not believe everything he said when I had no one else’s opinion to compare it to? How could I not believe, when it was so the opposite of the sweet things he would say to me in bed before we broke up? He had been waiting for someone like me his whole life; he didn’t think I could get more beautiful; I made him forget the pain he felt about his brother’s illness.
I could only assume they’d been lies.
He was Pre-Med, and I had chosen him my freshman year of college, when I thought my life needed to follow my parents’ prescription. Stupid me for thinking he actually loved me and not the idea of me—the idea of me as a doctor just like he wanted to be.
To make it worse, before I told him about being accepted to Miami, I’d actually believed he would beg me to reconsider and stay with him at Syracuse where he was attending medical school—that he couldn’t bear to have a long-distance relationship for two years. I thought he’d say I could study whatever I wanted as long as we were together.
Instead he’d broken up with me.
I’d been willing to consider altering my future for him, and in exchange he’d tossed me away.
I was still raw from it, still angry, still wondering if I really did smell like baby shampoo. It was probably why I couldn’t stop fantasizing about Professor Dylan. When you’re starving, everything seems delicious, even a poisonous apple.
Speaking of delicious (double-entendre alert)…
I made my way off campus and headed to Buzzers Coffee House to get a little writing in before dinner. Hopefully James would be working—he really was my favorite inspiration. Truthfully, he was a terrible barista and my drinks always tasted kind of watery, but I probably would have put anything he gave me into my mouth (double, double-entendre alert).
He’d been the star of the new Candy Sloane book I was working on. A steamy, stranded-in-a-posh-ski-lodge-because-of-a-blizzard, strangers-to-overnight-lovers story. It was called Melted. Maybe I’d picked the situation because I missed snow. How as long as you were inside and safe, it had the capacity to warm your whole being—a shining light in your chest as you watched it fall and realized you didn’t have to be anywhere else.
But it also could have been picturing James, shirtless on a shaggy bearskin rug, had the capacity to make me hotter than watching any snowstorm.
In the race for my heart—though neither one was actually running—Professor Dylan would always come in second place to James.
I walked in, the door dinging above me, the din of voices, the sharp clicking of laptop keys, and the whoosh of steam from the espresso machine all around. James stood behind the counter in a tight white T-shirt that outlined his pectoral muscles and hugged his arms.
James wore a white T-shirt like it was his bitch. It clung to his body like it wanted to have sex with him. I can’t tell you how many times I pictured being his white T-shirt pulled over his taut chest, wet from the shower, or balled up in the corner of his floor, still smelling of him while he slept, or hanging from his pocket as he ran on the beach.
Yeah, I spent a lot of time dreaming about being a Hanes T-shirt, about being that close to James’s skin. Unfortunately, I never did anything about it.
The only reason I even knew his name was because he had to wear a name tag hanging off one perfect pec.
Thank goodness for uniform requirements.
Sure, he’d only worked at Buzzers for six weeks, but you would have thought I’d be able to get up the courage to do more than stare at him and fog up my laptop screen. But again, you would have thought wrong.
“What can I get you?” James asked as I took my place at the counter.
“Chai latte,” I replied, trying to focus on his face and not on his chest. James must have understood what girls with breasts you couldn’t look away from felt like because that was what his chest under white cotton did to you.
It hypnotized you.
At least, it hypnotized me.
“Soy milk, right?” he asked.
“Right,” I replied. If only we were in the book I was writing and I could say, The only thing I need to quench my thirst is you, but I knew even as Candy I would never write that. Candy’s heroines were strong. Men wanted them—not the other way around—or at least not that they let men see.
They were so not like me. Not since Keith. Keith had taken what had been a pretty healthy esteem when it came to men and sex and pulverized it down to dust. Being rejected at this point would be like being hit by a hurricane-force wind, leaving nothing left.
“Are you a vegetarian or something?” James asked, starting to ring me up at the register. We’d had some conversations before. Always small talk, but this was getting deep. I mean, he was asking about my dietary preferences.
He was asking if I thought fish had feelings.
“No, I just think cow milk is kind of gross,” I said. “Well, not even kind of, just straight up gross.” I laughed without even meaning to, probably because all I could picture was James pouring gallons of the stuff over his bare chest. Like some kind of porno Dairy Coalition commercial. If served to me that way, I wouldn’t have had a problem with it.
“If you think about it, I guess it is.” He laughed, too.
His laugh made my cheeks feel like there were carbonated bubbles just below my skin.
“The part of the cow it comes from especially,” he finished. Those fogged-up-van-window brown eyes locked on mine.
“Exactly,” I almost squeaked, unable to hide the excitement that James had said more than three words to me. I was suddenly shaking, freezing. It could have been the air-conditioning, or it could have been the realization that this was my shot.
After six weeks of crushing on him, this was it. I sniffed my hair. It totally didn’t smell like baby shampoo.
Fricking Keith.
“Will that be here or to go?” James asked, holding a mug and a to-go cup. Back to his job, back to saying basically three words to me.
What did I expect? It’s not like I’d gone after him. I hadn’t really said more than three words in all the times I’d been in here salivating over him in silence. I didn’t act like one of the characters in Candy’s books would have, not even like Amanda would have. Not even like I might have before I moved here.
Before fricking Keith.
No, I was just a patron at his coffee shop who tipped okay and sat there for far too long, considering the one small Chai latte she always ordered. I also had asked him for the bathroom key practically every time I’d been in there, which couldn’t have been good.
“Um,” I stalled. Maybe
I had to make it my shot. If I could stand up to Professor Dylan before he’d totally burned me, I could at least leave James with something to remember me by. With something that would make him want to say more than three words to me the next time he saw me.
I quickly wrote my number on the dollar I was going to leave him for a tip, and above it I scrawled, For a Good Time, Call Candice.
It was nuts. Crazy! I held it in my sweaty palm, wondering if I would really be able to lean over and put it into the pocket of his apron. One of Candy’s characters would have done it, and I wasn’t getting anywhere with him being Candice.
I wasn’t getting anywhere with guys period being Candice.
He smiled, still waiting for my response, teeth that could turn knees to Jell-O. That could launch me into a tirade of clichés. “Here or to go?” he asked again.
If I was going to put this dollar in his apron like I was Dita freaking Von Teese, I could not stay. Even though I needed to write, I knew it was more important to make my move and leave so he could experience the full extent of my sexiness, or whatever.
“To go,” I whispered in a way I hoped was more Marilyn Monroe than creepy-ass serial killer.
“Not hanging out to write today?” he asked.
I watched him, watched him watch me. I wondered how he knew that I wrote while I was here. I could have been doing anything. Did it mean he had noticed me? Did it mean when he wiped down tables behind me he was glancing over my shoulder?
I wondered if the dollar was a mistake, if I should have just asked him what time he got off work and if he wanted to take a walk.
No, there were tons of beautiful women in Miami. It was practically the law. I had to do something to make myself stand out. I had to do something to prove I had the capacity to not be boring in bed.
“Not today,” I replied, the dollar bill feeling like it was melting in my palm.
“Oh,” he said, and if I analyzed the tone in his voice, which I did, he sounded semi disappointed. “I do some writing, too.”
“Oh,” I repeated. Usually when someone told me he wrote, too, I would start asking questions like, What kind of writing? Who are your favorite authors? Have you published anywhere? I would also start asking one question in my head, the same one all writers thought whether they admitted it or not. Are you better than me?
But I didn’t have time for any of that. I had to give him the dollar and leave.
“Yeah,” he said, letting me know he noticed I was at a loss for words.
And I was, but not totally because of what he said. I needed to concentrate. I looked at his half apron, and as he leaned over to give me my latte I slipped the dollar in the front pocket.
He pulled back, his eyes glistening with surprise. “We’re supposed to share tips,” he said, but I could hear him smiling. Could hear he was at least a little amused I would stuff a dollar in his pocket like he was a male stripper.
“Share it after you read it,” I said, leaving before I could embarrass myself.
If I hadn’t already.
I texted Amanda as soon as I was far enough away from the coffee shop to breathe again. Candy showed someone else her stripes.
Chapter Four
I might have slept with my phone under my pillow just in case James called for a three a.m. booty call.
Okay, fine, I did.
Unfortunately, I woke up with my phone down by my feet and no missed calls.
Was Keith right?
I guess going out on a limb like one of Candy’s characters didn’t work with James. For my sanity I had to believe it was him, not me. I smelled my hair out of habit and stared at my phone.
When I got home last night, I’d written a sexy scene about him in Melted. It involved a hot milk bath—a very hot milk bath—but in real life it looked like there wasn’t going to be a happy ending.
(Double-entendre alert).
I would have to cross Buzzers off my list now, or send Amanda in to get my Chai lattes for me. That was not really an option, because knowing my luck she would end up getting a date with James herself. I knew it wouldn’t be intentional or anything, but I hadn’t ever told her about James, and she had a thing for guys who worked behind counters.
I scrolled through my phone. There were no missed calls from James, but there were two texts from Amanda.
The first said: Don’t wait up.
The second said: Definitely don’t wait up.
They were time-stamped within an hour of each other.
Unlike my luck with guys behind counters, it appeared Amanda had finally gotten lucky with the guy behind the counter at Reggie’s.
I clicked out of my texts and logged into Goodreads, needing some reassurance that I wasn’t totally clueless when it came to sex. I glanced over the review titles: “HOLY WOW!”; “ONE SEXY READ”; and “HOT, HOT, HOT.” At least Candy’s readers thought she knew what she was doing. Maybe instead of the dollar, I should have given James my book to read.
In fiction, when you’re trying to understand someone’s motivation, you create a character bio. When Keith left me questioning everything about our relationship, everything about me, I couldn’t help creating one for him.
Name: Fricking Keith {last name redacted}
Age: 22
Occupation: medical student
Family members and/or significant others: father, mother, younger brother with cystic fibrosis (who made him want to be a doctor)
Personality traits: driven, sheltered, sweet and funny when he’s drunk; serious and mindful when he’s not.
Where is he from: a suburb of Syracuse, New York
Highest level of education: if he makes it—which he will—PhD
Physical traits: blond hair, hazel eyes, six feet tall, 185 pounds. The softest hands I’ve ever seen on a man
Biggest motivator: his brother’s health, money, living up to his parents’ expectations (sound familiar?)
Biggest fear: failure (anyone’s apparently)
Things he likes: watching hockey with his brother, Guinness, kung-fu movies
Things he dislikes: me.
I hoped it would help me to understand why Keith didn’t stop me from going to Miami, why he broke up with me instead. I knew he wouldn’t have come with me—he wanted to stay in Syracuse to be close to his brother—but I really thought we might stay together.
The only thing I came up with was that I’d deviated from whatever “character bio” he’d written up for me in his mind. My choice to follow my dream, rather than go after something more tangible, made me someone he didn’t know anymore. And if Keith was afraid of one thing other than failure, it was inconsistency.
I had to believe that, because I couldn’t deny he might have seen my moving to Miami as the out he’d been waiting for.
I showered, got dressed, and headed into the kitchen where the dinner Amanda brought me the night before still sat. It was a sad Styrofoam container of consolation on our kitchen table. I hadn’t eaten it last night because I didn’t want to be bloated when James called. It seemed silly now—that I’d actually forgone food because I believed James might be seeing me in my underwear.
It’s not like before Candy existed I would have even considered having sex with a guy so quickly, but something about the way I felt when I was writing as Candy made me want to experience the sexual freedom it was clear her characters felt.
It was something I’d never felt with Keith.
Forrest Gump had said life was like a box of chocolates. Now, as an erotic-romance author, I suppose I couldn’t help but wish it was sometimes like a box of sex toys.
I threw the dinner in the trash and waited for my coffee to brew. I felt my stomach growl and grabbed the container of peanut butter from the cabinet. I ate one spoonful, then another, until it was hard to swallow. No one was going to see me in my underwear that night. I grabbed a banana and stuck it in my bag, trying not to think I’d starved myself for some stupid guy who obviously didn’t care I existed.
I was tightening the top on my thermos for my morning office hours punishment with Professor Dylan when I heard the jingle of Amanda’s keys in the door. I felt my stomach drop uncontrollably. I might have been rushing out of the apartment to avoid her.
Okay fine, I was. Her walk of shame totally punctuated my lack of one.
I heard her heels click one clack at a time down the hallway. She was trying to be quiet. She didn’t want to wake me. She had no idea I’d be up at seven a.m. Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for the next month so Professor Dylan could babysit me into obedience.
My stomach fell again. I was an ass. Amanda was being considerate and I was going out of my way to avoid seeing her.
“Oh good, you’re awake,” she said, lengthening her stride when she found me at the coffeemaker.
“I’m not sure how good it is,” I mumbled, but not loud enough for her to hear.
I poured her a cup. She pulled herself up on the counter next to me and sat, her tight red skirt riding up her thighs. She pushed one heel off with her foot, then the other, wiggling her light blue toenails. “I don’t really need coffee,” she said. “I got a lot more sleep last night than I should have.”
“I thought you told me to ‘definitely’ not wait up,” I said.
She ran her fingers through her hair. It was matted—not sex-matted, just sleep-matted. “Yeah, it was looking that way.” She paused.
“Not good?” I asked, my face completing the question. Not good could mean a lot of things, but to Mandy and Candy it meant a big fat zero in the O department.
It meant all bark and no bite in the bedroom.
“Nah, Luke’s just polite,” she said.
“Luke, huh? Did you get a last name?” I joked; because it was easier than hearing Luke actually liked her. That he didn’t just want to sleep with her and leave her.
Why couldn’t I even find a guy who wanted to do that?
“We made out a little.” She shrugged. “But then he used the let’s take things slow line.”
“Maybe he really wants to,” I said.
Sneaking Candy Page 3