by Ryli Jordan
I absentmindedly pulled out my phone. I slowed to a stop and stared at it for a long moment, then dialed Charlotte's number. I hadn't tried to call her. I'd sent her a couple texts, but I hadn't really expected her to respond to those. But maybe if I called…
After two rings, I hung up. I didn't even know what I wanted to say, and I figured I owed it to her to figure that out before I said something I would regret.
I took another deep breath and wandered into the park near my apartment building, sinking down onto one of the benches there. Slowly, I tried to dissect my feelings. First and foremost, I knew I was lonely. I'd been lonely for a long time now. Fucking around with girls had been a balm for that once, had allowed me that sort of human connection that I needed, but it hadn't worked that way in a long time. Now, it was just routine to sleep around—and it was what my friends expected of me.
Beyond that, I knew that I was somewhat...scared to have the sort of life that Charlotte had. There were so many ways that I could mess that up, especially when there was an impressionable child involved.
I took a deep breath and dialed Charlotte's number again.
“What?” she asked testily when she picked up. “Do you have another family function you need me to go to? Our performance wasn't believable enough last time?”
I blinked, taken aback by her hostile tone. “Charlotte...” I trailed off, swallowing hard. “It's not that,” I said. “I mean, we were believable enough before; Aunt Elaine gave me access to my trust fund. But that's not what I was calling about.”
Charlotte sighed. “Look, Beau, it's late on a Friday night. I know you're probably drunk, but do I really seem like the booty call kind of girl? Mikey's just gone down for bed, and I just want to kick back and relax with a glass of wine and some shitty TV. That's what I do with my Friday nights, okay?”
I could sense that she was about to hang up. “Wait,” I said half-desperately. At the moment, though, I didn't care about sounding desperate. “Charlotte, wait. Just hear me out. Please.” I took a breath. “This isn't a booty call. I'm not—I've been drinking, but I'm not drunk. I'm just at that point where I'm actually feeling bold enough to…to actually examine my feelings for once.” I scrubbed a hand over my face. “Look, could I come over, maybe?”
“How would I explain that to Michael?” Charlotte snapped. “Beau, you don't know what it's like, when you have children. They ask all the questions. Anyway, I wouldn't trust you to be here at this hour.”
“I'm not going to take advantage of you,” I said impatiently. “I just want to talk. But if you don't want to talk, I want to sit there on your couch and watch shitty TV with you, if that's all right.”
Charlotte was silent for a long moment. “I'm not worried about you taking advantage of me,” she finally said. She sounded almost like she might cry. “I really like you, okay? In another lifetime, maybe we could have hit it off. But in this lifetime, I have a five-year-old son, and that's...well, that's more than you'd bargained for, isn't it? That's not something you want to find yourself….stuck with. Not that I think I'm stuck with Michael, but I know how things must look from your perspective. You get to choose to walk away from this.”
I frowned. “Charlotte, just because Michael's father walked away from the two of you, it doesn't mean that I'm going to do the same,” I said quietly, suddenly realizing the root of the problem. I laughed a little. “You don't know me well enough to know this or to believe this, but I have very single-minded focus when I want to. Remember, you think I could be a great guy, beneath all the layers of rich asshole and whatever else I come off as. I want...” I trailed off.
Charlotte sighed. “Why don't you come over?” she asked, to my surprise. “Why don't you come over and we'll watch shitty TV and drink some wine and then you can sleep on the couch, and in the morning we'll tell Mikey that you're just a friend of mine and that you came over because...you were feeling lonely. And then I'll make breakfast and you'll go off to work and maybe I'll never hear from you again, but at least you'd have met Mikey and you'd know exactly what you were getting yourself into.”
“Okay,” I said breathlessly, already moving towards my apartment so I could get my car. “Okay. I'll see you in a little while.”
Chapter Seven
True to what she'd said, when I arrived at Charlotte's house, there was a show paused on the TV and a glass of wine on the coffee table next to the couch. Charlotte stood to the side to let me in and then shut the door. I turned towards her, catching her hips in my hands and then leaned in to kiss her, feeling uncharacteristically shy.
Charlotte's hands came up to pull me closer, but she broke the kiss quickly. “We should...move this,” she said, glancing towards the stairs. “If Michael wakes up, I don't want him to see...” She shook her head.
“Sure,” I said easily. “Lead the way.”
In her bedroom with the lights turned off, we both stripped with a sort of desperate inevitability. I chuckled a little. “It feels like we're teenagers again, trying to get this done before our parents get home,” I whispered.
Charlotte snorted. “Strange to be on the other side of things, isn't it?” I could see her biting her lip in the light from the streetlight outside. She slowly reached around behind herself and unhooked her bra.
I made a soft noise and took a step closer, bending down to kiss each of her pale nipples. I rubbed my hands gently down her sides, amazed to find my fingertips leaving a trail of goosebumps in their wake.
We stripped off the rest of our clothes and fell into the bed in a tangle of limbs. I rolled us so that she was beneath me, pinning her there with my knees at her hips. I took my time kissing my way down her milky curves, then shifted my weight back so I could put my head down between her legs, kissing at the soft flesh there.
But we were both too impatient for too much of that. After making sure that she was slick and ready to go, I palmed myself a couple times and then slid my thick length inside of her. Charlotte moaned and pressed the back of her hand against her face, and I froze. “Does that hurt?”
She laughed breathlessly. “No, you idiot.” She twisted a little against the sheets. “That feels so good, I can't even tell you.” She rocked against me a few times. “Warning you now, though, you're going to make me come embarrassingly easily.”
I grinned crookedly at her. “Oh really?” I asked, thrusting into her a few times. “Don't come yet—not until I tell you to.”
Charlotte's eyelids fluttered and she didn't fully manage to bite back her moan. “Okay,” she gasped, using the headboard to get leverage to meet my thrusts.
The following morning, I was momentarily confused to wake up on an unfamiliar couch, staring up at the white stucco ceiling. But of course: Charlotte had apologetically asked me to sleep out there after we'd lain there in the dark for a while. I'd wanted to stay there with her in my arms for the rest of the night, but with the possibility of Michael coming in and finding us there, we'd both known it was safer for me to be out there on the couch.
After a moment, I realized what had woken me was the little boy poking my hand. The boy was cute, his blonde hair in total sleep-disarray and his eyes wide. I smiled at him, remembering the previous night and realizing this must be Michael. “Morning, buddy,” I said, voice still rough with sleep.
Michael put his fingers in his mouth, still staring at me. I tried again: “I like your dinosaur pajamas.”
Charlotte came out of her bedroom and Michael immediately ran to her side, clinging to her leg. “Mama, there's a weird man on the couch!” he cried.
Charlotte blinked down at him and then glanced over at me, a questioning look on her face. I smiled and pulled myself out of the next of blankets on the couch. “Good morning.”
Charlotte smiled hesitantly back at me and knelt down next to her child. “Mikey, this is my friend Beau,” she told him.
“Oh,” Mikey said, fingers in his mouth again. “Did you have a sleepover?”
Charlotte grinned at him.
“Kind of. Beau was feeling a bit scared in his big, dark apartment by himself, so we watched some TV and then went to sleep, just like we do when you're scared of the dark.” I snorted but managed to cover it with a cough.
Michael stared at me for a long time. “Okay,” he finally said, shrugging a little. “Mama, can I color a picture while you make breakfast?”
“Course you can,” Charlotte said, already moving to the closet. “Can Beau color a picture with you?”
“He can do the dinosaurs,” Mikey said. “I wanna color the cars!”
“Okay,” Charlotte said, laughing a little. She brought two coloring books and a cup of crayons over to the coffee table. “You two color; I'll go make some pancakes—how does that sound?”
“Yum yum yum,” Michael said, hugging her leg and then sitting down on the floor with one of the coloring books. He looked expectantly up at me. “Come on,” he said, beckoning for me to sit down on the floor with him.
I sat hesitantly next to him and grabbed the other coloring book. “So...” How did you make small talk with a five-year-old?
“You're special,” Mikey said, not looking at me as he colored in a picture of a yellow taxi. “Mama never makes pancakes, only on holidays.”
I blushed and randomly chose a picture of dinosaurs to color. “Maybe she just wants pancakes today.”
“Nuh uhn,” the kid said, shaking his head decisively. “Whenever I ask for pancakes, she says they're just for special days.” He looked over at my picture. “You're doing it wrong,” he said.
I blinked down at the pencil in my hand. I'd been carefully coloring inside the lines and everything. “What do you mean?” I finally asked.
“That dinosaur is purple,” Mikey said, pointing to the matching dinosaur on his pajamas. He giggled. “You messed up, silly.”
“Hey,” Charlotte called from the kitchen. She emerged through the doorway, wiping her hands on her apron and then putting her hands on her hips. “Michael, be nice. Beau can color the pictures however he wants—remember that talk we had about art and creativity?”
Michael sighed dramatically and rolled his eyes. “Fine,” he said. Then he muttered under his breath, “But it's still wrong.”
I couldn't help cracking a smile. “That's okay, bud,” I said. I looked over at Charlotte, hoping she could see the hidden meaning in my next words: “I don't always have to be right.” I took a deep breath. “Would it be okay if I go talk to your mom in the kitchen for a minute?”
Michael gave me a blank look. “Okay,” he said with a shrug, easily continuing his coloring.
I smiled at him and then stood slowly, walking over to where Charlotte was. In the kitchen, I was surprised to see tears in her eyes. “Hey,” I said, reaching out to stroke her cheek. “Hey, what's wrong?”
She pulled away from me. “So I'm guessing this is the point where you tell me that, yeah, this is way too much to deal with and you're sorry but this isn't going to work and you were wrong to think that you could–“
“Charlotte,” I interrupted, pulling her into my arms. “Charlotte, hey. That's not what I'm going to say at all.” I gently stroked her hair. “What I was going to say, if you'd let me get a word in edgewise, is that actually I was wrong—but not about this. I was wrong to think that I didn't want this.” I squeezed my eyes shut for a minute. “I'm twenty-six years old, and I've never had a serious relationship. I–“
“This isn't a good experiment,” Charlotte interrupted. “Do you have any idea how impressionable little kids are? This isn't the place for you to try to have a serious relationship that then you walk away from three months from now.”
“I know,” I snapped, pulling back so I could look her straight in the eyes. “Charlotte, both my parents died when I was a kid; do you think I don't know what it feels like to have someone as a key part of your life and then have them just...gone?”
We stared at one another for a long moment. “I want this,” I told her. “In ways that I don't even know if I could put into words. I want to wake up and have you cook breakfast—or I'll cook breakfast, I make a mean omelette, I don't know. I want to be here. I want to come home from work and hear what Michael got up to in school or what latest art project you're working on or–“
“You don't know me well enough to want all that yet,” Charlotte said, looking uncertain.
“I learned a lot about you at the wedding,” I said. “God, you were so good with my family; you had them all charmed by the end of the night. I didn't even know that was possible. You're smart and you're funny and, sure, you've got a kid. You've got a kid that's just as smart and funny and cute as you. That's a bonus. And anyone who has led you to believe otherwise is an asshole.”
Charlotte blinked at me and then turned back to the pancake batter that she'd been working on, stirring it vigorously for a few moments before slamming the spoon down. “Do you really mean this?” she asked, her voice barely a whisper.
“I really mean this,” I said sincerely, practically holding my breath as I waited for some sort of sign from her. She was silent, though. “You're the first woman who has really made me want to clean up my act,” I confessed. “You're actually the first woman who just hasn't...fallen all over herself to get in bed with me. It's refreshing. And it crystallizes a lot of things for me.” I shook my head.
“Say something,” I finally begged, when she continued to stand there quietly.
Charlotte spun around and stalked over to me, grabbing two fistfuls of my shirt and pulling me down into a bruising, passionate kiss.
I returned the kiss eagerly, arms sliding around her as though we were made to fit perfectly against one another. Slowly, I nudged her back against the counter, pressing our bodies flush against one another. When she nudged a leg between mine, I couldn't help grinding down against it, biting back a moan as I did so.
“You have no idea how badly I want you,” I mumbled against her lips. “Last night did nothing to take the edge off.”
“You can't want me that badly,” Charlotte said. “Enough that you want to give up your gallivanting around and everything else.”
I shook my head incredulously and caught her hand in mine, guiding it down to the bulge in the front of my pants. “I haven't been this hard since I was sixteen or something,” I told her. When she lightly squeezed at my member, I groaned and dropped my head down to rest against her shoulder. “Fuck,” I said shakily.
Charlotte looked at me in wonder, giving me a few experimental pumps through the cloth. “You really mean it,” she said.
“I really mean it,” I agreed, biting my lower lip. “All of it.” I pulled away, even though it pained me to do so. “We'll take it as slowly as you need, so that you really trust that I'm not just going to have sex with you and get sick of you or whatever. We can–we can do things right. But I really, really mean it—I want you, Charlotte. I want this.”
I smiled at her and then turned my gaze pointedly towards the doorway. “But you had probably better finish those pancakes now.”
Epilogue
“All right, buddy, you gotta buckle your seatbelt,” I said, reaching over and tugging the back of Michael's shirt to get him to sit down.
Michael pouted at me. “But I can't see out the window as good,” he complained.
I smiled. “Don't worry, they'll turn the plane once we take off and you'll be able to see the whole ground underneath us,” I promised. “And then we can put on a movie on the little screen here and you won't want to be looking out the window anymore anyway. Sound good?”
“Okay,” Mikey agreed, huffing a little. He pulled on his seatbelt and I double-checked that it was tight enough.
Then, I turned to Charlotte. “You ready?” I asked.
She smiled a bit nervously at me. “I guess so,” she said. She laughed a little. “This is my first trip out of the country.”
“So you've said,” I replied, grinning at her. “It'll be fine. Trust me.” I squeezed her knee lightly. “Anyway, you dese
rve a reward for finishing school, and it's summer vacation, and this marketing conference couldn't have come at a better time.”
“And you've always planned to travel around Europe once you got access to your trust fund,” Charlotte reminded me.
I smiled and leaned over to kiss her. “Of course,” I agreed. “But instead of parties and blowouts with losers that I never really liked anyway, I get to explore it all with you. With both of you.”
“Beau, Beau!” Mikey cried, tugging at my arm. “Stop being gross. The plane is going!”
I snorted and rolled my eyes at Charlotte, but I couldn't keep the smile off my face. “Look at that, buddy,” I said. “Do you remember what happens now?”