Sleeping with Her Enemy

by Jenny Holiday

  “Let’s go somewhere else,” Jack said, looking at his phone. “Cassie’s at a karaoke bar.”

  “I am not doing karaoke,” came Dax’s reflexive reply.

  Jack raised his eyebrows. “And you think I am?”

  “I don’t know,” Marcus said. “I can see you maybe rocking some Johnny Cash, Lou Reed. Something grumpy.”

  Dax laughed. It was true. Historically, Jack had been kind of a grump. And as if on cue, his friend shot Marcus a quelling look. It was nice to know that although Cassie had lightened him up a lot, he hadn’t changed elementally.

  “No singing,” Jack said. “But girls.” He grinned. “They have a way of lightening the mood, don’t you find?”

  “I’m out,” Marcus said. “I believe a couple of my copywriters are at this karaoke extravaganza, and I make it a policy not to socialize with my employees.”

  Dax rolled his eyes.

  “We can’t all hang around coding with a bunch of bros all day,” Marcus said. “Anyway, I have a ton of work to do this weekend. We’re pitching on Burger Prince.”

  “Well, that’s something new.” Jack delivered the barb with a smile. Marcus had been trying to diversify his client base. But the fast-food accounts, it seemed, just kept coming out of the woodwork.

  “Hey, gotta pay the bills.”

  Jack was already signaling the bartender for the check. “All right, let’s hit the road.”

  He was assuming Dax was coming, obviously. Didn’t notice Dax hesitating. It was better to know, so he spoke up. “Do you think Amy’s with them?”

  Jack’s head shot up from where he was signing for the drinks. “Why?”

  Because he hadn’t spent nearly a month going out of his way to avoid seeing her at work only to run into her at ladies’ night. He shuddered to think what she might be wearing. To imagine the karaoke mike pressed up against her red lips.

  “No reason.”

  “Well, let’s go then.”

  He was stuck. There was no credible way to beg off. And in truth, with a few beers in him, his defenses were down sufficiently that he didn’t want to.

  “Where the hell is this place?” Dax asked once they’d been in the cab for a good fifteen minutes.

  “Some dive in the burbs,” Jack said. “I know. They couldn’t just do karaoke at the Gladstone like normal people. Apparently this place is less overrun by—and I’m quoting Cassie here—hipsters doing ironic versions of Heart songs while inexplicably looking down their noses at unironic renditions of Katy Perry.”

  Dax grinned despite himself. Sounded like it was right up Amy’s alley.

  “So you and Amy seemed like you were pretty tight for a while there.”

  “Yeah. She was helping me manipulate my mother into buying a condo.”

  “I know, but weren’t you canoeing and stuff on the island, too?”

  What was this? The Inquisition? But then he remembered that time Jack had caught them making out in the elevator. “Yeah, she came out a couple times.”

  “It just seems weird that you guys were friends—or whatever—all of a sudden, and now you’re not again.”

  God, he sounded like Kat, who kept nagging him to bring Gloria’s midwife back to dinner. “We’re not not friends,” he started, but then stopped because were they in junior high? Next Jack was going to ask if Dax liked Amy or like-liked her.

  Jack didn’t answer for a while. Just looked out the window. But then, suddenly, he turned and said, “This is the part where I go all older brother on you and tell you that if you hurt her—or if you already have—I will make your life very unpleasant.”

  Dax held up his hands in a gesture of surrender. “There’s no hurting. She isn’t in relationship mode now.”

  “And if she were?”

  So not only were they in junior high, apparently they were junior high girls who were going to hold hands, talk about their feelings, and then exchange friendship bracelets. “She’s not.”

  That was as much as he was saying, and thankfully, they’d arrived at the dive in question, so Jack didn’t press the matter any further other than to say, as they hopped out of the taxi, “I just want you to know where my allegiances lie.”

  Dax raised his eyebrows. “Sheesh. Totally unnecessary message received.” Not that he blamed Jack. Amy was his long-standing and trusted second-in-command. And Jack was the kind of guy whose loyalty, once earned, followed a person around forever.

  And Amy was the kind of girl who deserved that loyalty.

  He shook his head as he pushed open the door, trying also to shake off this heavy, unsettled feeling. He wasn’t sure if it was the weird conversation he’d just had with Jack or the prospect of seeing Amy that had him out of sorts. He needed a drink. Conveniently, a huge bar lay between them and the stage up front, which was currently unoccupied as the sound system pumped out a non-karaoke version of some pop thing he didn’t recognize.

  “I’m going stop at the bar,” he said to Jack. “I’ll catch up with you.” As he stood trying to grab the bartender’s attention, the emcee’s voice broke into the canned music and introduced a singer. He didn’t really pay attention to the man. He also didn’t pay attention to the opening swells of some other pop thing he didn’t recognize.

  Until he did recognize the voice singing it.

  He didn’t know what to do. Would she want to see him? Would she want to see him seeing her sing?

  He stood, unmoving, staring at the back of the head of the person sitting on the barstool in front of him, while his skin slowly heated. Her voice wrapped itself around him, a girlish python gently but surely squeezing the air out of his lungs.

  She had a good voice. Not a professional one. It was a little shaky, but in tune as it sang a story of some kind of victory against the odds. It described crowds going wild, and he was transported back in time to the baseball game. To the joke proposal, when they had colluded in stealing poor Julie and Jason’s romantic night out.

  Others joined in on the chorus, their voices emphatic in the way only drunk friends can be. Then for some reason, he thought about Amy driving them around in her little red car, concocting a crazy caper to trick his mother into moving. It had been another great joke they’d shared, conspiring against everyone.

  Amy had been really fun to scheme with. Somehow, with Amy, the world was full of inside jokes. And if you were very lucky, you got to be one of the insiders.

  As the laughing, happy chorus reached its peak, he was suddenly able to put his finger on what had been wrong with him lately.

  He wanted to be an insider.

  Everything was more fun when he and Amy were sleeping together.

  Was it possible he had made a mistake? He abandoned his quest for a drink and began to move away from the bar, letting the voices of her and her friends wash over him.

  He cleared the bar, and there she was. God, there she was. Exactly as he expected, and yet nothing like he expected. She was wearing that purple silk dress again, and a small braid ran along her hairline, framing her face, which, as he watched, went from a wide smile to a serious, almost pained look. For a moment, he thought she’d seen him, that he had inspired that change in mood. But, no, she hadn’t. It seemed to accompany a similar change in the music.

  Her backup singers grew serious too, letting their voices fade out as she picked up the verse. It was about saying good-bye, about life taking the narrator and the person she was singing about in different directions.

  She looked up then, almost as if she had felt the weight of his gaze, and met his eyes. The sad part of the song was over, and what he assumed was the final verse was crescendoing. Her friends were doing most of the work now, though. She was singing, but she was phoning it in.

  Mostly, she was just staring at him with big, sad blue eyes.

  He had been an insider for a brief, beautiful moment. Amy and Dax versus Jason and Julie. Amy and Dax versus Lin Harris. Amy and Dax versus the goddamned world.

  He wanted back in.
>
  Dax wasn’t an idiot. He could recognize when his self-imposed rules had grown too rigid.

  Time to start sleeping with Amy Morrison again.

  …

  Everything started happening all at once. It had seemed to Amy like the song would never be over, that she would be forced to endlessly live out a waking nightmare in which the object of her imaginings literally manifested in front of her eyes.

  She’d been thinking about the baseball game as she sang. The fake proposal. Pulling one over on that whole stadium, almost like they were professional criminals. That was probably the most fun she’d ever had. Except for the time they’d gone paddleboarding. Or…to the movies.

  And then there he was. So gorgeous and so unexpectedly dear to her.

  To know that she couldn’t have him—in any capacity—was as gutting, all of a sudden, as her non-wedding day had been. Worse. Because this time, she had come to realize, she’d really, truly lost something worth having.

  His face was utterly blank as he stared at her. It was almost like he didn’t see her, like he was looking through her. And yet she felt the weight of his attention. She couldn’t wait for it to be over. To flee. But she dreaded it all at the same time.

  Then he was coming at her. But so was her brother. For some reason, the prospect of Dax meeting her brother scared her. Dax’s family was so sweet. So normal. She feared, totally irrationally, that if he met hers—even Michael, the only normal member—they might somehow taint his.

  Somewhere in the midst of all this, her phone started ringing. She glanced down. It was the moving company. She looked back up. Dax was still making a beeline for her, looking like he was going to explode in anger or…something.

  She took the coward’s way out. “Hello?”

  “Hello there. I’m calling from Canadian Movers to confirm your move tomorrow. The truck will arrive at your house on Ava Road between one and two p.m.”

  “What? No. The move is scheduled for Sunday, not tomorrow.”

  “Amy Morrison, 222 Ava Road?”

  She furrowed her brow, stuck her finger in the ear that wasn’t resting against the phone to block out the noise of the bar, and turned her back on the two men who had arrived, one on either side of her.

  “Yes, but the truck is supposed to come Sunday at one.”

  “I’m sorry, that’s not what my records say.”

  “Well, amend your records then.”

  “I’m sorry, miss, I can’t do that. We don’t have any trucks free Sunday.”

  Anxiety began to settle in her gut as she imagined her house, which was nowhere near ready to be moved. She was only halfway through packing.

  “You’re going to have to tell me one way or the other, miss.”

  “I’m sorry. What did you say?” She took a deep breath. She’d been letting panic get the best of her. She needed to concentrate.

  “I said I will refund the deposit on the truck if you want to cancel it, or we can be at your house tomorrow at one.”

  She swallowed a curse and shook her head. “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow at one then.”

  “What’s the matter?” Dax and her brother said, pretty much in stereo, as she hung up.

  Okay, no time now to wallow in heartbreak. Or whatever it was. “Mix-up with the moving company. The van is coming tomorrow.” She picked up her drink and downed the rest of it in one gulp. “Gotta go pack my house. And/or have a heart attack.”

  “Shit.” Her brother ran his fingers through his hair. “Well, we’ll get it done—we’ll have to.”

  She was already making a mental list. “We need to see if Jack and Cassie can help tomorrow instead of Sunday. And find out if the storage place can take my stuff a day early. I’m not booked to arrive there until Sunday, either.”

  “Where are you moving?” Dax asked. “And where’s the storage space?”

  “Dax, this is my brother, Michael. Michael, this is my…this is Dax.” She took a step back. No need for Dax to be all up in her space like that—pointless torture was not what she needed right now. “I bought a condo in a church conversion in the Junction,” she said. “But it’s not going to be done for another couple months, so I’m renting a place at Yonge and Bloor in the meantime. Storage is in Mississauga—I’m going to store some stuff I won’t need until the condo’s ready.”

  “You can just store your stuff at my place. I have a huge empty storage locker at my condo.”

  Yeah, that was not happening. Unable to think of a way to say I don’t store my stuff with people who broke my heart, she just turned away. It wasn’t his fault—he’d delivered exactly what he’d advertised: a short-term fling. He couldn’t help it if she didn’t want it to end.

  But not before her brother succumbed to Dax’s charms. “Wow,” Michael said, “that would be great. If we have to pack your whole place before tomorrow afternoon, not having to make a round trip to suburbia will be a huge help.”

  “I’ll come over tomorrow and get your stuff. That will save you even more time.”

  “No need,” she said. “We’ll work something out.” She could feel Michael’s eyes boring into the back of her head as she turned away, but she didn’t care. No way in hell Dax was going to brush her off and then ride to her rescue.

  “I don’t need you and your millionaire-mobile,” she finally said, once she realized that everyone was waiting for her to speak and that nothing was going to happen until she did. She was being rude, but she didn’t care. She’d been so worried about observing proper post-hookup etiquette. But if they weren’t hooking up anymore, what did it matter?

  She could rescue herself, thank you very much.

  Chapter Sixteen

  He waited until eight o’clock the next morning before pointing the millionaire-mobile northward to Amy’s. He didn’t care that she’d told him not to come. He was beyond that. Honestly, the presence of her brother was the only thing that had prevented him from going over there at three in the morning to start shoving things into boxes—all the faster to get her back into bed with him.

  But really, he couldn’t legitimately suggest they pick up where they left off until moving day was over. She was stressed and distracted, understandably so. He also wanted to wait until Michael had gone home. If Jack had gone all big brother on him, who’s to say what the actual big brother would do? Hi, I’m here to defile your sister, but don’t worry, we’re both down with keeping it casual.

  So he drove to Starbucks and ordered a bunch of coffees and breakfast sandwiches, and crossed his fingers as he rang the doorbell that everyone was already up.

  “Oh!” Amy exclaimed when she swung open the door. Her face lit up for a split second before it shuttered. “I told you not to come.”

  The trick here was to endure the body doing one thing—sweating, tensing up, yearning at the sight of the should-be-illegal beauty before him—while the face did another. Namely, be cool.

  “I know. I just thought I’d see if you needed any help.” He extended the Starbucks tray. “Or coffee.”

  She stared, frozen as if undecided about permitting his continued presence. He hadn’t yet decided on his next argument when the brother came to his rescue.

  “Dax, is it?” Michael came forward and took a coffee. “Thanks, man. We’re actually in pretty good shape—we’ve been packing all night—but I could use some help taking apart some of the furniture. And we haven’t gone to the storage place yet, so if you’re still offering…”

  “You got it. Whatever you need.” Though he was talking to Michael, Dax let himself take one more look at Amy. She was wearing a baggy T-shirt, and she had a smudge of dirt on one cheek. Her lips were pursed but after a moment she sighed, and he knew he’d won the right to stay—for now.

  …

  By ten, when Cassie and Jack showed up, they were actually almost done.

  That didn’t mean Amy wasn’t a basket case, though. Maybe it was the lack of sleep. Maybe it was the act of going through every single item she owned
and ruthlessly assessing it against a strict set of criteria she’d established to determine what would make the cut into her new life. Maybe it was saying good-bye to her first house. Maybe it was finding little things that reminded her of Mason, whether they were actually things he’d left behind, like those spacers that allow you to play forty-fives on a record player, or just things that brought to mind happier days, like the big pasta bowl they’d bought to use at their first dinner party.

  Maybe it was saying good-bye to the life she’d always thought she wanted.

  Or maybe, a little voice inside her said, it was saying good-bye to what she couldn’t have. Which was, irritatingly, upstairs banging around in her bedroom. How ironic.

  How heartbreaking.

  No, not heartbreaking, she told the little voice. She reminded it that she and Dax had never been more than friends—or frenemies, or whatever. Your frenemy couldn’t break your heart. They’d both clearly wanted a casual thing. It ran its course, which, on account of the spectacular sex, was a bummer, but if she was heartbroken right now, it was because she was literally packing up and leaving the life she’d planned on for so long with Mason.

  “Everything okay?” Jack asked as he returned with Michael and Dax from a tour of the house. The three of them had been discussing how to stage the rest of the work.

  “Yep!” she chirped. The look Jack shot her suggested he didn’t believe her. But he didn’t press her. She took a deep breath. “What needs to be done, still?”

  “Not much, really,” Michael said. “The guys and I are going to move most of the upstairs boxes into one room so it will be easier for the movers, but that’s pretty much it. I have to say, we really killed it last night, little sis. And Dax, you were a lifesaver with those big pieces of furniture.”

  “Why don’t you and I start cleaning this floor?” Cassie said. “Then you won’t have to come back and do it later.”

  Amy had been going to hire a cleaning service, but she nodded her agreement. It was better to be busy, to give her agitated mind something to focus on.