Gibson Boys Box Set

by Locke, Adriana

  “What’s her condition?” he asks.

  My lungs constrict as I consider telling Peck the one thing no one knows but Blaire. My head feels heavy, threatening to fall off my shoulders and roll around on the floor. I may as well let it because as soon as I say this, my nuts will be gone.

  “Remember just after I graduated high school?” I ask. “And I was in that car wreck down by the lake? It was right before the Water Festival.”

  “Yeah. You missed the entire festival that year. Were in the hospital for a couple weeks, right?”

  I nod. Focusing on the knives stuck to the magnetic wall behind the stove and not on Peck, I decide I can’t talk to Blaire about this. Even though she knows, she’s too clinical about things. I couldn’t tell Walker or Machlan. All that leaves is Peck.

  He sits across from me like he has all the time in the world. There’s no judgment in his eyes and I know even after I tell him there won’t be. It’s not who he is.

  I clear my throat. “My lung was punctured. A broken rib. Whatever.” I cough once more, like somehow it’s going to help my lungs fill with air. “Um, I also found out then that I most likely cannot have kids.”

  Peck’s leg stops tapping. His arms fall slowly to his sides, dangling towards the floor.

  My brain replays those words in a sick-mashup with the doctor’s face as he told me the results from my scan. The way Blaire’s hand felt as she held mine. The feeling of having fatherhood stolen from my body.

  I get to my feet and shuffle to the counter and pour myself another shot. Peck doesn’t stop me.

  “So, there you go,” I say, looking at the overfilled glass.

  The room is quiet except for the hum of the ice maker. I don’t know what I want Peck to say, just that I want him to say something.

  “Guess you see my point now.” I stare at the pool of liquor. “I might be an asshole, Peck, but I’m not cruel.”

  “The only cruel part of that is the universe’s cruelty to you.”

  “Don’t I know it.”

  Leaning against the counter, I look at Peck. He’s younger than me by five or six years. A good guy, hard worker, heart of gold. Someday he’ll make a woman a good husband and a kid or two a great father. Something he’ll never know how much I envy.

  My heart shreds in my chest as I allow myself to think about the future. How I felt when my parents died and realized one day my siblings would all have families of their own and I wouldn’t. No one would want someone as broken as me—not for the long haul. Not to build a life together. I could adopt, want to adopt, actually, but a woman isn’t going to willfully give up her ability to look at a child and see her own face, those of her mother and grandmother first. I couldn’t even ask that of someone.

  “I went into teaching because I love kids,” I say, hearing a crack in my voice I hate.

  “Do they know that for sure?” Peck asks. “I mean, maybe things have changed.”

  “They haven’t changed. I’m infertile. My balls don’t work.”

  I eye the tequila again. This time, I shove it away.

  The words coming out of my mouth are mine, but damn it if they don’t sound like they’re a million miles away. Maybe it’s my wishful thinking that I weren’t here right now having this goddamned conversation.

  “I don’t know what to say, Lance. I’m sorry.”

  “Yeah. Me too.”

  He stands, pushing in his chair. Then he leans on the top, his arms dangling over the top rung. “This explains a lot though.”

  “Like what?”

  “The dating app. Why you never bring girls around. You were shoving everyone away, huh?”

  Making a face, I shrug. “Not really. Just not letting them get close enough to have this conversation, you know?”

  “Does this mean you love me?”

  “Shut the fuck up,” I laugh.

  He joins in, his chuckle a lot freer than mine. “Look, I admire your consideration for this … what’s her name?”

  “Mariah.”

  “Mariah,” he repeats. “I appreciate how considerate you’re being. But shouldn’t you see if it even gets to a point where this conversation would take place?”

  “Are you fucking serious? I’m not so drunk I just misheard that, am I?”

  “You don’t know what will happen.”

  I swipe up the glass and down it. It’s not as bad this time. “I know exactly what will happen with her, Peck. Ex-fucking-actly.”

  “The fact you can say that when you’re drunk as hell is impressive.”

  I let my stomach settle. My language skills while drunk aren’t what’s impressive, but I don’t tell Peck that. I don’t explain it’s the fact I can still think logically and reasonably that’s surprising.

  That I want to call her but I don’t.

  That I want to drive to her house and feel her skin on mine but I don’t.

  That I got the woman I’ve wanted for a long time for a few hours to myself today and it wasn’t nearly enough, yet I back away.

  That I have no fucking clue how tomorrow at work is going to go knowing I was buried inside her this afternoon.

  All of that? That’s impressive.

  “This girl isn’t one I can forget. She’s not another pussy, another screen name, another color hair in a hotel bed that I’m reminded of when looking at a box of crayons.”

  “So you love her.”

  “Hell no.”

  “Sounds like it to me.”

  “And you also think you love Molly McCarter. I think your reasoning skills are inept.”

  He laughs. “And you’re batting a thousand tonight, buddy.” He heads to the bottle and pours himself a shot. “You can drive a man to drink.” The liquor goes down a lot smoother than it did for me. “What’s your plan?”

  “My immediate plan is to go to bed, jack off, and then sleep.”

  “I’m thrilled to know that.”

  “You asked,” I point out.

  “I meant with Mariah.”

  Of course, he meant with Mariah. I just don’t want to answer that.

  How do I tell him on the heels of telling him I can’t have kids that watching her with Betsy today made me wonder what she would look like holding our baby? I wanted to know what if felt like to be Eric and standing at lunch with my wife and child?

  That I never wanted to know what that would feel like until I met Mariah.

  There’s an emptiness in my soul, a hollowness I haven’t felt since Britt left me shortly after the accident. When she told me she loved me but couldn’t imagine not being a mother and packed her bags and left for LA.

  That hurt. That felt like an ice pick straight in the gut and I didn’t even necessarily want to have kids with her. It was a talking point only. A possibility after two years together. But imaging those words coming out of Mariah’s mouth seems to hold a whole hell of a lot more potential to inflict a pain I couldn’t absorb.

  I also couldn’t live knowing she’d never know the sound of a baby’s heartbeat from inside her womb. Or what it was like to buy maternity clothes. Or the feeling of being sick in the mornings from incubating a life inside her because of me.

  Sure, there are sperm donors and all kinds of other ways to be a parent and that’s all fine. But I couldn’t give that to her and that kills me. It feels like I’d be lacing my problems onto her and I wouldn’t do that to anyone.

  “I need to go to bed,” I mutter, squeezing my temple. “Can you let yourself out?”

  “Yeah.”

  Shuffling to the doorway, I partially lambaste myself for drinking so much and partially rip my own ass for not going back in the kitchen and finishing off the bottle.

  “Lance?” Peck calls out behind me.

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m really sorry.”

  I head off down the hall. “Me too, Peck. Me too.”

  Twenty-One

  Mariah

  “What did you make today?” Tish breezes in the doorway, catching me before
I head to the lounge for my lunch. She peers over the tin of desserts. “Lemon and red velvet?”

  “It was a long weekend.” I type away at the keyboard to avoid her gaze. “Help yourself.”

  I almost called in sick today. The anxiety of seeing Lance almost got to me. I was up all night, until a quarter to four, thinking about this mess.

  If I only think about the good parts, a smile graces my lips that I can’t wipe off. If I think about reality, it fades pretty quickly.

  “What’s that all about?” Tish asks, pointing my way.

  “What’s what?”

  “That snarl.”

  “It’s not a snarl,” I laugh, giving up the typing ruse and turning to face her. “You’re a pain in my butt.”

  “Mhmm,” she says, biting into a lemon bar. “These are good.”

  “Thanks.”

  She finishes off the piece before dusting her hands over the trash. “Now spill it, sister.”

  “I have nothing to spill.”

  Her hand settles on her popped-out hip. She gives me her no-nonsense look.

  Looking out the door, I don’t see Lance. I’m typically downstairs and back up in about 4 minutes from now and he’s waiting for me. Whether he will come up today or not, I don’t know. But I don’t see him.

  “Tish, let me ask you something.”

  “Sure.”

  “When you were dating around, would you ever have messed around with a man who you knew wasn’t what you wanted?”

  “I’m going to need more to go on.”

  Sighing, I look out the door again. “Let’s say you wanted to settle down, have a quiet little life somewhere. Raise a family. That kind of thing. And then you met a guy who just … makes you laugh and smile, makes you feel confident in yourself. I don’t know how to explain it. But what if you knew that guy was never going to be the guy in the little house with the little kids.”

  “I’d say he was a waste of time then.”

  My heart drops. “Exactly.”

  “Unless,” she says, pulling her shirt snug over her chest, “he looked like him.”

  “Who?”

  “Hey, ladies,” Lance calls, stepping inside my office. “Do I not get my two, three minutes of privacy in here before you come in?”

  “Yeah, Mariah. Step outside so Lance and I can have our private time,” she coos, ending it with a laugh. “Looking sharp today, Mr. Gibson.” She steps around him, mouthing something I can’t even begin to make out as she leaves the library.

  My palms sweat as I take him in. Dark pants and a crisp white shirt with a green tie the same color as his eyes hanging down the center. The tie is loose, like he’s been working it all day.

  “Good afternoon,” he says, shutting the door behind him.

  “Hello.”

  “You look beautiful today. I love that color on you.”

  “Stop with the book manners stuff,” I laugh.

  He shrugs, heading for the cupcakes. “Ah, you made both.”

  “Only because I was bored.”

  I watch him select the one he wants, noticing the dark circles under his eyes. His cheeks lack the color they usually have and the greens of his eyes are a little duller than normal.

  “Up all night?” He asks, peeling away at a red velvet cupcake. “Thinking of me?”

  “Hardly,” I scoff. “I made those and was in bed by eight-thirty.” Lies, lies, all lies.

  “Better than me. My cousin came by and I may have had a little too much tequila.”

  “I can’t drink that,” I say, frowning. I wonder if what happened yesterday afternoon had anything to do with him drinking so much. I don’t recall seeing him with a hangover ever before. The idea leaves me feeling uneven.

  “Does it make your clothes fall off? If so, I have a flask in my car I can go get.” He bites into the cupcake. “Big fan of the cream cheese icing. Not quite as good as the peanut butter, but close.”

  I go back to my computer screen, needing a distraction from the way his mouth works back and forth. Things are too normal, too we-didn’t-fuck-like-monkeys-yesterday.

  The room becomes too small for the two of us as I remember the heat of the pantry yesterday as we slipped off our clothes. His cologne reminds me of the taste of his skin when I bit into his shoulder and I wonder if my teeth marks are still there.

  All night I wondered how he would react once the orgasm wore off and reality set in. How he couldn’t just not message me back because he would see me every day unless one of us changed jobs. I’m not egotistical enough to think I’m any different than anyone else he sleeps with. Not really. Maybe we know more about each other. Maybe things between us have taken some obtuse turn. But none of that changes the fact that Lance is Lance and I’m me.

  “I wasn’t going to come up here today,” he admits. “I was going to stay in my classroom like a responsible professional and work through lunch.” He chomps down on another cupcake. “Yet, here I am.”

  “Why?”

  “Why what? Why wasn’t I coming up here or why did I decide to?”

  “Either,” I offer, chewing on the inside of my cheek.

  My hands drop from the keyboard, my attempt at distraction pointless. There’s no way I’m going to be thinking of anything other than him. I haven’t in the last however many hours. I’m certainly not going to pull it off with him standing in front of me.

  He takes another bite and considers this. “I thought maybe you wanted space or that I should give it to you. Or, quite possibly, it’s just what I do historically after sex.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “But,” he adds, almost taking a lemon bar but picking up a third cupcake instead, “I then realized that was ridiculous. We were friends before you came all over me. So why in the hell can’t we have both? We’re very, very good at both.”

  “Because your language is horrible, you eat all my cupcakes,” I say, “and your come was still leaking out of my vagina this morning.”

  I didn’t mean to say that. But as the cupcake falls out of his hand and lands icing-first on top of book order forms, I’m glad I did. It takes him a full five seconds to regroup.

  “See?” he says, his white teeth shining. “I come in here to be friendly and you make it dirty.”

  “Yeah, I made it dirty because I’m the one who brought up our interaction yesterday. Try again.”

  “No, I brought it up but it’s still your fault.”

  “Oh, really,” I laugh, crossing one leg over the other. “And how do you figure that?”

  He leans forward, his grin as mischievous as I’ve ever seen it. “You make it impossible not to want to lay you on the top of this desk and see if I can’t fill you up again.”

  My thighs burn I’m squeezing them so hard, my mouth watering at the thought of his body on mine. He knows exactly what I’m thinking and, by the look he’s giving me, he’s thinking the same thing.

  “Are you wet for me?” he goads, thinking he’s getting the best of me.

  Game on.

  Holding his gaze, I make a point of slipping my hand under my desk. His pupils widen, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he watches me. My finger glides through my slickness. I hold it in the air, inches from his face. “I’d say so.”

  His eyes burn, his temple pulsing, as he watches my finger move in the light.

  “The question is, Mr. Gibson, are you hard?” I drag my gaze from his face to his swollen crotch and nod. “Looks like a yes.”

  “Why do you do this to me?” he asks, sticking out his bottom lip.

  “You asked. You didn’t have to know. I could’ve sat here all day with my thighs stuck together and nobody would know that but me.”

  A low rumble escapes his lips. “What are you doing after work?”

  “I have plans. You have icing on your lip.”

  He ignores the second part of that. “Cancel them.”

  “And why would I do that?”

  “Because I want to take you somewhere.”
/>   “The last time I went out with a boy as friends we went to the arcade,” I sigh.

  “Were you twelve?”

  “Eleven. That’s not the point.”

  “What is the point, Mariah?”

  The atmosphere shifts in the room, the question that’s been on my mind all weekend now spoken aloud. What is the point of all this? A good time assuredly, but can I make it just a good time?

  How am I going to feel next week when he’s making plans with another girl or stops coming in for cupcakes? Pretty freaking shitty and that’s after sleeping with him one time.

  Sex is great. Really, really great. But I can’t break my own heart—because it would be me doing it at this point—just to get off a few times.

  “Lance,” I say, “this isn’t a good idea.”

  “Why not?”

  Turning the tables, I look at him. “You want to know why? Fine. This is why: there’s nothing good that can come out of this.”

  “I thought you came just fine.”

  I roll my eyes. “We can play word games all day but it doesn’t change reality. We are co-workers.”

  “We’re both incredibly good-looking.”

  Although I smile, I keep going. “We have a friendship of some sort that doesn’t seem to be impeded by our activities this weekend. Let’s keep it that way.”

  “But why? Clearly we can play both sides of the coin and not impact the other. You’re just as argumentative and hard-headed today as you were on Friday.”

  “And you’re just as infuriating and difficult, but that’s not what I’m talking about. We want different things, Lance.”

  “You don’t want to come?” he grins.

  “No. I mean, yes. Ugh.” I lock my jaw and stare at him. “I hate when you do this.”

  He plants his hands on my desk. “If you say no, then no. I’ll not ask again.” His eyes darken with resolve. “I’ve struggled with this all night. As long as we’re clear that we’re just having fun, like what you were looking for on that app, then why not? We’re adults. We enjoy being together. Why can’t it just be that simple?”

  Because it never is.

  I breathe in his cologne, knowing exactly what the scruff of his face feels like against my belly, and consider telling him no. It can’t be that simple. It’s not that simple. In a month’s time I’ll look back and be so head-over-heels for him that I won’t be able see straight. Back-to-back broken hearts isn’t on my agenda.