by Virna DePaul
I bit my lip then, even knowing it was a bad idea, I did it. I typed in my password and shoved the phone against my ear.
“Lauren, I know what you’re thinking today. I know you’re thinking you made a huge mistake. You’re remembering me and wondering why your pride couldn’t get past just one tiny, miniscule mistake in an otherwise perfect marriage. Because I know you Lauren Decker. And you know I know you. Here’s how well I know you: you haven’t had sex since me. We both know why. You still love me. You still want me to fuck you. You know the only fuck you’ve had in the last year is the one you gave yourself when you signed those goddamn papers. I—”
I pulled the phone away from my ear and stared at the screen as if waiting for an error message to come up. I stared at it waiting to wake up in my own bed and realize it was all a dream. I stared at it waiting for someone to rush into my bedroom and laugh, saying this was their phone and that they accidently grabbed my phone by mistake.
But this was my reality.
I felt myself shaking with anger. “The bastard. The bastard!” I jumped out of bed, then dialed the numbers that had been burned into my head before even thinking to consider what a terrible idea it was.
“Hello, dearest ex-husband. So lovely of you to call today and leave such a touching message,” I said, my voice quiet but vehement. I was so angry I barely knew what I was saying.
“So you say you know me so well, do you? You, you of all people know me so well, do you? Well, did your magic ball tell you I’m on my way to fuck the hottest guy I can find? That I’ve already fucked a twenty-eight year old? Did you know that he makes you look like the Pillsbury Dough Boy after Thanksgiving? Did you know he’s smart and sexy and everything you’re not? If you knew me so well how did you not know that if you could fuck a young nurse, I could fuck my pick of young guys, too. A bank clerk? A grocery boy? A stripper? And yes, even a young resident? They all want me, Samuel. So I just wanted to thank you for your call, asshole. When I come tonight, know that you and your limp dick will be the farthest thing from my mind. Know it won’t be your name I’m screaming.”
* * *
Ryan
“Have you been listening to a single word I’ve said for the past five minutes?”
I blinked to find my childhood best friend, Chance, glaring at me. We were both in the back of his food truck, Lucky Chance, parked in front of a downtown Denver bar with a crowded outdoor patio, and I’d been staring at a pan filled with sticky BBQ sauce bubbling on the stove top. In truth, I hadn’t been listening. I’d been too busy thinking of Dr. Lauren Decker.
I’d just completed week one of my four week trial period at Graton’s Gift Hospital, in which I’d mostly observed and/or assisted in clinic. In that time, Lauren and I had worked seamlessly together. I hadn’t brought up the virtual way we’d met again once she’d walked out of that elevator that first day. I figured I’d put my cards quite clearly on the table and it was time to focus on my career. That and my family was what was going to keep me in Denver no matter what did or did not happen with Lauren again.
Yet I couldn’t help hoping that something would happen. And it was that kind of fantasizing that had Chance calling me out.
“Of course I’ve been listening,” I said as I stuck my pinky in the sauce. “Eh, needs more vinegar.”
“Dude! Not with your hands!” Chance grabbed a spoon, tasted the sauce himself, then added more vinegar before turning back toward me. “Does this woman you’ve been daydreaming about all night call you out on your never-ending bullshit?”
When it had to do with work, Lauren had no trouble putting me in my place. She just refused to acknowledge that on a personal level, I’d love for her to put me in my place, too. Between her thighs being my first choice.
I sighed and glanced once more at the crowd on the patio. It was filled with beautiful women, and chances were it wouldn’t be difficult to find one to fuck the image of Lauren out of my mind. And instead of going out there to find her, I couldn’t stop thinking about my attending surgeon.
It’s still early for a Friday night, I reminded myself, and I deserved a bit of fun. Since my work hours weren’t quite as rigorous as they would be when I officially took a position with Graton’s, I’d already visited my mom a few times, who’d reassured me she was doing fine. She’d also communicated quite clearly that as much as she was looking forward to having me in the same city as her again, she actually wanted to see less of me while I was here for the month.
“Don’t worry about visiting me,” she’d said. “You’ll be busy at the hospital, and Sharon and I are doing just fine on our own.” Sharon was her live-in nurse slash personal assistant, who was helping her while she went through her cancer treatment. “And before you ask again, no I don’t want you staying with me. You’re a healthy young man who’ll have to see to his needs during this month. Now stop coddling me, Ryan.”
That was my brain surgeon mother, I thought fondly. Frightfully pragmatic, proud, and loving all at the same time. I knew she hated the thought of anyone pitying her, even her own son. But damn, I loved her, and I was so damn pissed at my father for what he’d done, I’d refused to take any of his calls.
“Hello? Earth to Ryan?”
I glanced up at Chance, who was looking at me expectantly. Ah right. He’d asked me about the woman I’d been daydreaming about.
“How do you know there’s even a woman?” I asked Chance. “I could be daydreaming about your BBQ sauce, despite the fact it needed more vinegar.”
He rolled his eyes.
“Because I’ve been listing single, smoking hot, smart, funny, adventurous, wild and chill women in Denver I could hook you up with for the past five minutes and you haven’t even asked to see a single Tinder pic.”
Chance pulled a basket of wings from the fryer and tossed in his sauce to coat them in a large metal bowl.
“So,” he asked, giving me an eye before flipping the wings again into the air. “Who is she?”
I leaned against the cabinets and dragged my hand over my face with a groan.
The large metal bowl clattered on the counter as Chance turned to face me. “So there is a woman. Spill!”
“She works at Graton’s Gift.”
“Okay...”
“On the exact same floor as me.”
“Not ideal I guess.”
I sighed and grabbed my open beer from the counter. “She’s my attending surgeon.”
“Fuck.”
I nodded and took a healthy gulp. “She’s beautiful and brilliant.” I’d assisted Lauren in surgery for the first time earlier today and she was an amazing doctor. Cool under pressure. I wanted to be just like her when I grew up, I thought with a mental snort. “She looks closer to thirty but she’s also almost forty.”
“Fuck.”
“And she wants abso-fucking-lutely nothing to do with me.”
Chance silently went to the little mini fridge in the back of the truck and brought out a bottle of whiskey. He poured two shots and handed me one after I downed the rest of the beer. He raised the glass. “Fuck.”
I laughed. “Fuck indeed.”
Both of us stared at the floor and listened to the music starting to filter out through the bar.
“I mean you can’t pursue that, right? You said you’ve already decided to accept the chief resident position here.” Chance asked.
I shrugged. “There’s no official policy that would prohibit us from having a relationship, at least not that I know of, but even if she was willing to give me the time of day, it’s a tricky situation.”
“Yeah, especially for her. You hook up with your older hot-as-fuck supervisor—and I know she has to be hot-as-fuck for you to be this gone over her—and you’re a stud. Her? It’s a shitty double standard but she’d be labeled—”
“A cougar. Desperate. Unprofessional. Yeah, I know. And she knows. Which is probably why she’s freezing me out.”
“That or she’s just not into you.”
“Right.”
But something in my expression must have given me away because suddenly Chance’s eyes widened. “Wait, she is into you. Are you holding out? Have you banged her already?”
I thought about telling him how we met but decided not to, which was peculiar in itself. I normally had no problem sharing information like that with Chance. But doing so about Lauren just seemed wrong. “No, I haven’t—”
“Hey, we want BBQ.”
I turned to find three guys at the food truck window.
“Just a minute,” Chance called.
“Eh,” I said, “go, go. It’s fine.”
“We have money we want to give you, dude.”
Chance leaned over and shouted again toward the window.
“I said just a second, dude.” He thumbed over his shoulder. “Can you believe these people?” he mouthed.
I laughed and pushed off of the counter to shove him toward the window. “We can talk about this later,” I said. “Give the people what they want.”
Chance grabbed my shoulder and waited till I begrudgingly looked him in the eyes. “We are going to talk about this, okay?” he said, more earnestly than I thought was necessary. “I’m here for you, got it? And not just for you and your mother.”
That went without saying. Chance adored my mother, and she reciprocated the feelings. Apparently they’d already played Rummy together twice this week.
“BBQ!” a tipsy girl called from outside the truck.
“Yeah, yeah,” I said, pushing him away. “We’ll talk later.”
“I mean it.”
“Emhmm.”
I found a spot near the back door of the food truck and propped my feet up on the mini fridge. Women, beautiful, beautiful women, one after the next, walked past the truck into the bar and I could only find enough energy to give each one a cursory look.
Because none of them were Lauren.
That one had dark hair but it was nowhere as pretty as Lauren’s. That one had nice tits, but not as nice as I imagined Lauren’s were.
That woman had legs like Lauren: slim and toned, and I wondered what they felt like. Lauren’s legs, that is. Although the woman was pretty, too. With the same sharp, cropped dark bob.
Beer nearly slipping in my lap, I sat up. The woman was showing the bouncer her ID and she turned just enough for my heart to stop.
The woman didn’t look like Lauren. The woman was Lauren.
I hopped out of the truck.
“Chance,” I shouted. “Chance, I’m about to do something really, really dumb.”
The line for his food truck snaked all through the open patio of the bar and Chance looked over at me, wiping the sweat from his forehead.
“So what else is new?” he called over the blare of the pulsing music inside the bar.
* * *
A minute later, I stood in the entrance to the bar. Lauren faced the dance floor as she talked with a man seated next to her. Her image seemed to pulse like a strobe as people walked in front of me.
She was intoxicating, absolutely intoxicating. In a sea of miniskirts and skin-tight blue jean shorts, she wore a fitted skirt that stopped just past her knees. It drove me wild, wanting so badly to see what was underneath. Her silk shirt went up to her neck, but when she turned slightly I realized the back was entirely bare. It made my mouth dry. I marveled as her dark hair seemed to take on different colors as the dance floor lights turned on her. Fiery red. Punk pink. Green. Even a deep blue that rivaled the clearest tropical waters.
The bartender handed her a shot, and she and the man beside her cheered to something I couldn’t hear. Lauren laughed, flipped her hair, and drank it down, coughing at the end. Then she shifted… Turned. When her eyes finally landed on me, it was as if a record scratched and the world stood still.
I imagined it then. Or rather, I allowed myself to imagine it again.
How it would be if the two of us got together for real. I didn’t try to hide my thoughts, either. I made them blatantly apparent as I took her in. I started at her chest and worked my way down to the tips of her shoes.
I loved her cock-tease of a shirt.
On the car ride home to my apartment, I’d slip my hand inside and caress her tits till her nipples were hard, straining against the silk. She’d sag in her seat when my hand slipped away to palm my hard dick through my pants at the red light just before my apartment. I’d bite my lip at how perky her nipples were through her shirt, how close the tie in the back was to slipping loose entirely, how she squeezed her legs together just slightly, thinking I didn’t notice.
Somehow we’d make it inside, and she’d slip her sexy heels off the second we stumbled through the door of my apartment, her hands in my hair, my hands against her waist as I pressed her against the wall. She’d twist around in my grip and grind her ass against my crotch until I finally reached for the zipper and yanked the skirt down to her ankles. She wouldn’t be wearing underwear. I’d get on my knees and press her legs apart and bury my mouth in her wet pussy.
Shuddering, I glanced up, into her eyes, communicating all that I was thinking with one glance, and saw her mouth part on a gasp. The space between us felt more and more like a rope unraveling, with just the tiniest of strands remaining, ready to snap. I never wanted to look away from her. I wanted to see her eyes when she took in the full sight of me naked, cock hard and throbbing for her. I wanted to see her eyes when I bit into the soft flesh of her inner thigh. I wanted to see her eyes, even if they were squeezed closed, the first time I brought her crashing over the edge, screaming my name.
I don’t know how long we stood there like that. A minute. Five. Ten? I didn’t care. I could have stood there for ten years. Instead, I walked up to her and, ignoring the man next to her, murmured, “Acceptable?”
The shock on her face slowly disappeared and a smile creeped up. She looked me up and down, just as I had done to her. My heart leaped when Lauren then stood up and leaned into me. The bar practically thudded from the noise of the crowd and the music and the thundering feet on the dance floor, but I heard her voice in my ear, close, so, so close, as if it had been blasted through a megaphone.
“Unacceptable.”
Shit.
She laughed at my surprised disappointment, and with a cheeky “I’ll see you later,” to the man beside us, walked away. I swear she added an extra sway of her hips just to fuck with me before she disappeared into the crowd.
Holy shit. If she was dishing out torture, I wanted more of it. Who knew when I’d ever get a chance to meet Lauren’s Lana-esque side again? So I ignored the “Thanks a lot, dickwad, but at least she shot you down” grumbles of the man who’d been talking to Lauren before I arrived, grabbed a beer from the bartender, and went looking for her.
I found her again in the upstairs bar. This time she was sitting by herself, sipping her drink, so I cozied up next to her.
“A gin and tonic,” I said to the bartender who hastily threw a cocktail napkin on the clearly soaking wet bar before nodding and grabbing bottles. Lauren ignored me. When the bartender returned with the drink, I wrote a quick note on the napkin and pushed the drink with the napkin and pen over to her. Lauren stared at him a moment, then slowly picked up the pen, wrote something down, then left.
Leaning over, I checked the two boxes I’d drawn under the word Acceptable?
Lauren had very clearly put an X in the ‘No’ box.
“Can I buy you a drink?”
I caught the question in the lull between songs and caught sight of an older man next to Lauren just a little ways down the bar. When her eyes met mine, she smiled at me, then up at him. “Gin and tonic, please,” she said, her hand patting his chest playfully.
I groaned and downed the drink myself.
A few minutes later, I found her swirling a cherry around the bottom of her martini glass as she looked over the glittering Denver skyline. I inched my hand along the interior railing in front of us until my pinky just barely grazed hers.
“Acceptable?”
She dangled the cherry from the stem and then plopped it into her mouth, sucking on it seductively before saying, “Unacceptable,” and walking away. But by now, I was reading the message in her eyes instead of on her lips. So our game of hide-and-seek continued.
Outside on the patio, air thick with summer heat, her shoulders bathed in the warm glow of the strung lights, my thumb skimming her lower back.
“Unacceptable.”
In a dark corner of the bar, me pressed against her as people shoved by, or on the dance floor, her dark eyes drawing me in as she swirled her martini glass, my pinky dipping into the gin, sucking it into my mouth. Her hesitation.
“Unacceptable.”
In the back hallway, floor sticky and fluorescent lights flickering, her laughing with a guy, looking at me over his shoulder, me mouthing ‘Dance with me’, her mouthing right back: “Unacceptable.”
As we played our game, I politely declined woman after beautiful woman who asked if I wanted to dance, if I wanted to take a shot, if I wanted to smoke a joint in the alley. Red painted nails reached out for me and swirls of perfume tried to loop me in and blonde curls brushing tanned shoulders called me closer, but I wasn’t even tempted.
The dance floor shook the wood planks of the bar floor in the darkness and I passed by couple after couple moving as one, hands in hair, lips on lips, asses on crotches. I could have that with anyone in this bar, but Lauren was the only one I wanted that night.
Unfortunately, despite enjoying the game we were playing, I lost her at one point, and couldn’t find her again. After a half an hour, I figured she’d started regretting our little game. I hung in there for twenty more minutes before I gave up.
I called an Uber, and went outside where I saw Chance had already closed up shop and left.
When the green Subaru pulled up, I opened the door.
“Ryan?”
“That’s me.”
I got in. As we waited for the red light ahead and the bustling late night traffic to move, I leaned my head against the seat rest.