Dangerous Desires

by Tia Siren

  That tone of voice disgusts me, as does everything else about Jack. As does the fact that I had lowered myself to his level at one time because I had been a fool.

  I want to argue with him, to point out that he has no right to say I can only continue on in a case I’d already won if I sleep with him again. It’s not only immoral but also illegal.

  But after a long day of arguing with opposing counsel in a different case, a mediator who didn’t seem to see that the case had little value, and even my own client—who was mad at me for not being able to settle the case despite all the odds against me—I am dead tired. The extra energy I’d just spent dancing didn’t help.

  My mom always used to say not to make any big decisions when I’m hungry, angry, or tired. And right now I’m all three. What I want to do is to tell Jack to go take a hike, but that would be a very big decision indeed. It could cost me my career even more than sleeping with him again could.

  The knot in my stomach grows so big I’m unsure whether it can ever be untied. Reality sinks in as I realize I’m actually contemplating sleeping with this jerk again, just so I can maintain the status quo and not have everyone at the office know about my past mistake. While part of me feels this would be digging the hole I’d made for myself even deeper, the other part of me doesn’t think it has much of a choice.

  “Well, nice talking to you, Jack,” I say, gathering my briefcase and turning off my computer. “But I had a long day today in the Pastore Power mediation, so I was just about to head home.”

  My mom also always used to tell me that avoidance never solves a problem, but that seems to conflict with her first piece of advice. I wish I could call her out about that, without including the context that caused me to realize it.

  “That’s fine. Have a great evening, Dear.”

  Jack says it as if he has to give me permission to leave even though I’ve worked ten hours today. And as if he thinks my silence equals unspoken permission to continue whatever it was we started. To me, it was a stupid event that was over as soon as it happened. To him, it’s clearly some kind of forbidden workplace affair he thinks will keep going.

  In your dreams this will keep going, I want to tell him, but I don’t have the strength right now. At this point, I’m just happy to be heading home. I push past Jack, who looks comfortably at home in the chair in my office, as if he was hoping to camp out—or more—all night long, which he probably was.

  I still have to put up with a crowded subway full of people, before I can relax and celebrate the great part of my day while trying to forget the bad parts, but I can’t wait until I’m home. Nothing else better happen today because I think I’ve had about as much as I can take.

  As I head down the elevator and out of the office building, I can hear my mother’s voice ringing in my ears: “Famous last words, Kelia. Famous last words.”

  3

  Kelia

  I collapse onto my sofa as soon as I get home. It’s old and tattered and I’ve had it since law school. I could definitely afford to upgrade it, but I don’t want to, because it’s so comfortable—emotionally as well as physically. I love to sink down into its soft, plush cushions, and its strong side arms always feel like they’re protecting me.

  I know it’s pathetic. But I haven’t had a real relationship ever since I called things off with Patrick. Sure, I’ve dated and had sex with guys but I have never found anything like what I had with him. Our emotional connection was intense. And physically—well, physically, I’m ashamed to say it but I’ve never been able to orgasm with any guy other than Patrick.

  At first, I tried to tell myself that I was just stuck on Patrick because he was my first love and my first everything. My first kiss. The first time I had oral. The first time I made love. All of it was with him, so it was only natural that it would be hard to get over him.

  Over time, though, I’ve realized that what Patrick and I had was special. I was so eager to make my way out of my small hometown and into my education, my career, and a bigger city. I was young and naïve and thought relationships were a dime a dozen. Apparently, I was very wrong.

  I open up my Kindle and decide to try to focus on something other than Patrick. I have a lot of guilt and regret about him that I don’t need to pile on top of the guilt and regret I’m feeling—for different reasons—about sleeping with Jack.

  I try to tell myself not to be too hard on myself. I work hard and next year I should make partner. But it feels like all I am is a billable-hour slave with no recognition except from a boss who wants me for all the wrong reasons. As I pick back up in the romance novel I’m reading, I feel like the last thing it helps me do is escape.

  I’m towards the end and the hero just proposed to the heroine. That scene plunges me more into awful reality than wistful fantasy, because it could have been my life with Patrick, but I threw it all away.

  Then the hero kisses the heroine and she feels as if they haven’t had sex in years, even though it had only been a couple days, while he was away on a trip. I can relate but for different reasons. I’ve had sex, but nothing that has brought me to climax, except by myself.

  Speaking of that, I reach under my comfy couch and pull out the vibrator I keep in a box. It looks and feels like a cock and it wiggles around as well as vibrates.

  Also, it’s become my number one relaxation tool. Now the vibrator feels almost as comfortable slipping inside me as my couch does when I sink into it. I always think that whoever came up with the term “Bob”—Battery Operated Boyfriend—was a genius, because that’s exactly what this busy little machine often feels like to me.

  As I read about the hero kissing the heroine, I can’t help but picture him with Patrick’s handsome face. With his blond hair that gets even blonder from the sun in the Pennsylvania summers, especially during the weekends we would go down to Ocean City, Maryland, and spend our days lounging on the beach and our nights partying with friends in a beach house.

  Blue eyes that matched the waves that lapped at our feet as we would take a midnight stroll, just the two of us, high on forbidden Mike’s lemonade and a few tokes of a joint we’d shared with friends, high on each other and on life itself. And lips full and soft, which knew exactly how to part my own.

  I’m still wearing my skirt so I pull my panties to the side and let the vibrator hum up against my clit as I remember how Patrick used to lick it. I put my Kindle aside, thinking there’s no reason to even get to the sex part since thinking about Patrick does it for me more than any make believe hero could.

  I put the head of the vibrator inside me and wish it was Patrick’s cock. As it works its way around the insides of my pussy, I rub my clit and think about how Patrick used to do that. He’d always make sure to make me feel good all over while he fucked me, and I would come so many times.

  I look down at the vibrator pushing in and out of me, wishing it was Patrick’s cock, and I feel myself coming all over it. It’s wet with my juices and I rub my clit more while I come again. Then I rub it all over my clit, which feels so good that I have no choice but to hump it and ride it while I moan, “Patrick, Patrick, Patrick” over and over again.

  Finally, I collapse onto the pillow on the armrest of the couch, breathing heavily. I know I’ll have to get up soon and wash my hands and my vibrator, and put “Bob” into his special place in his box and then under my beloved couch. But I don’t want to do a thing right now except feel the electricity coursing through my body and ending up at the sensitive nerve endings I just stimulated.

  I sigh, and realize I’m drifting off to sleep, but I don’t want to fight it. I’ve had a long day—a long week—a long few years, at least, and I could definitely stand to catch up on sleep. I can worry about the appeal that Dan Buckles just filed, and the mediation that didn’t settle today, and the fact that my boss not-so-subtly hinted that I’d have to keep sleeping with him if I want to advance at work, tomorrow.

  For tonight, I close my eyes and pretend that the armrest behind me i
s actually Patrick’s strong arms, except they’re wrapped around me, holding me close and steady.…

  4

  Kelia

  “Doot, dooooo, doo-da-doot, doot, doot, doo-da-dooo…”

  What the hell?

  I wake up foggy headed to the sound of Paula Abdul’s Straight Up. It’s my ring tone for calls from people whose numbers I don’t have in my phone.

  Looking down, I realize my legs are still spread and my panties are still halfway to the side. My vibrator had slipped out of my hand and is now on the floor. I jump up and scramble to the small purse inside my briefcase, where I keep my phone.

  What time is it?

  1:10 a.m., according to the clock on my phone.

  Who the hell would be calling me right now?

  It’s a Pennsylvania number, and the area code is from Washburg, my hometown. My blood runs cold, wondering if something happened to my sister Maisy.

  Our mom died three years ago, and I still feel like I’m in the early stages of mourning sometimes, breaking down into tears for no reason and thinking about her all the time. Sometimes the grief feels as fresh as it did when I had to board the flight to her hometown in Chicago to meet up with Maisy and our Aunt Belinda and our one remaining grandparent for the funeral. Our dad had died when we were much younger— I can barely remember him. Once Mom passed rather suddenly after a brief battle with cancer, we were left orphans at what felt to me to be a very young age, even though we were both adults.

  I couldn’t bear anything else like that happening. I try to tell myself it’s just some old high school friends calling me up while they’re having an impromptu drinking party on a Tuesday night, or maybe someone pranking me.

  I want to answer by saying, “Who the hell are you and what do you want?” but I settle on a shaky, “Hello?”

  “Kelia?”

  His voice… the way he says my name… sounds instantly familiar, but I tell myself I’m just imagining things. It can’t be.

  “Yes.”

  “This is Patrick.”

  It is.

  How can it be Patrick? We haven’t spoken since I left for college, and that was all my fault. I’m the one who called it off and told him it would be better for us to go our separate ways and not leave things open ended by continuing to talk to him. And I’m the one who should have initiated any contact since I was the one who said that, but, I never did.

  So many times, I’ve thought of trying to contact him but I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t want to kill the good memories I have of him if he would be mad at me—which he would have every right to be—for randomly calling him up out of the blue.

  I think a bigger part of me didn’t want to hear that he’d likely moved on, gotten married, had some cute kids, all while I was slaving away in an office or arguing other peoples’ battles in a courtroom. I had thought that was what I wanted, but I was a fool, and it was too late to go back now, so I always told myself, why call?

  But now, he was calling me.

  “Patrick. You changed your…”

  I start to say he changed his number, but he anticipates what I’m going to say and cuts me off.

  “Kelia, I’m calling you from the police station.”

  I open my mouth, but my jaw freezes, unable to form words. I had been temporarily blindsided with the foolish thought that Patrick could be calling me to profess his still undying love for me, and then I would confess the same for him.

  I had forgotten it was the middle of the night, and that one reason I called things off with Patrick was that while I had plans to move to New York for law school and become a lawyer at a large firm, his plans were quite different. He wanted to become a police officer, just as his dad and grandfather had been, and to stay in Washburn where the rest of his family lives.

  He’s a small town guy, with family and roots that are important to him. Now, after everything that happened with my mother, I rarely get to see my sister, who stayed in Washburn, where I rarely get to go due to working so much. Now I can see that Patrick was wise to value such permanent things, whereas I chased after glittery dreams that seemed to be made of gold, but which I soon found out turned to dust.

  “Patrick, what happened?”

  I can’t believe I’m still focused on my regrets over Patrick instead of whatever reason he’s calling me from the police station at this ungodly hour. But I guess I can’t help myself, since it’s been so long since I’ve heard his voice, and now it’s technically right up against my ear.

  “It’s your Aunt Belinda,” he says, and I feel a strange mixture of relief, sadness, and confusion. “She passed away.”

  “Oh,” I tell him, exhaling for the first time since I answered. Then, realizing that I probably sound insensitive, I add, “That’s sad.”

  And it is sad. I don’t have many remaining relatives left. I was the closest to Aunt Belinda out of all of them, and was able to see her during the few times that I went out to Washburn to see my sister or high school friends.

  But still, we weren’t super close and never really had been. She was fifteen years older than my mother, so even the two of them weren’t ever very close.

  My mother used to tell me that her own mother, who passed away when I was a teenager, favored her sister. She never seemed particularly upset about that fact, because she said her father favored her so it was even. I can still hear her voice in my memory, saying, “But that doesn’t mean either of them were right to make their favoritism so obvious. I would never do that with you and your sister.”

  And she never had. If you told me I had to guess which one of us my mom favored, I would have to flip a coin. Because if she had any preference, she never did or said anything to make it known. Her sister, on the other hand, seemed to continue the family tradition and openly favored me over my own sister.

  I always felt bad about that but Maisy never seemed to care. She said Aunt Belinda was boring and that I was free to be the one to endure all the knitting, cross-stitch, and baking lessons I could stand.

  My sister was right that that’s what Aunt Belinda always wanted to do when I was in town. But Aunt Belinda always had a special place in my heart as a businesswoman who made her own way in the world, or at least in the small town of Washburn and surrounding areas.

  She owned a bakery and craft store called Crusts and Cross-stitch. At first, many of her friends would come do crafts together and enjoy her pies and cookies. Later, the bakery earned a reputation as a fun place for women to gather and talk, and they came from as far away as Harrisburg and Frederick to try the apple pie while also trying their hand at the latest cross-stitch design.

  Aunt Belinda wisely made her own patterns and sold the supplies to make it. She started teaching classes and charging a fee. She was someone who saw money-making opportunities everywhere she looked, so she started advertising in Gettysburg that she would teach tourists how to cross-stitch Confederate flags, maps of the Northern and Southern territories that they could hang on their walls, and other war and historical memorabilia, and rumor has it that she even made crochet cannonballs for the kids.

  I’ve heard that she even went to Baltimore and convinced store owners in the Inner Harbor to put up leaflets saying that if tourists would only venture an hour and a half North, she would be delighted to serve them some Pennsylvania Dutch cobbler pie while teaching them how to cross-stitch framed portraits of rowhouses and shipyards. While I was never around enough to witness this first hand, I’m sure it was true.

  Needless to say, Aunt Belinda’s bakery and craft store did well enough to make her a comfortable living, and while giving me craft lessons or baking together, she would also tell me how she came to be such an entrepreneur. I think she influenced my decision to go to law school, so that I could have my own career and money like she always did.

  But now, I have to beg silent forgiveness from the memory of my dear old Aunt Belinda, because I still can’t believe that Patrick Dolan, the love of my life that I so foolishly
walked away from, is on the phone. And I also can’t help but think that at least nothing bad has happened to my sister, and that it is the natural order of things that a quite elderly aunt would pass away before my younger sister would.

  “I just thought I should let you know,” Patrick says. “I just found out, and I’ve also heard some rumblings…”

  He trails off, and I try my still sleepy-minded best to put two and two together.

  “You’re a police officer?” I ask him.

  “Actually, I ran for sheriff last year and won,” he says, unable to hide a bit of bravado that sneaks into his tone.

  And rightfully so. Unlike Jack Schneider, Patrick Dolan is not an egotistical braggart. It’s rare that he even seems proud of himself, and now he has every reason to.

  “Congratulations, Pat!” I say, unable to hold back my excitement, and apparently also unable to refrain from using my old nickname for him.

  “Thanks,” he says, and I can almost see him blushing through the phone. His pale cheeks turn super red when he gets embarrassed. Just like when we were voted Prom King and Prom Queen, and had to go up on stage at Prom to get our crown and tiara.

  I thought it was the best thing to have ever happened to me—and I still kind of do—but he was mortified. He tried telling me it should go to a kid named Ron who was in a wheelchair. While I appreciated his kindness, I told him that even though Ron was cute and charming—both of which were true—Patrick had him beat in both departments, and was thus more deserving of the crown.

  “It was a tough race, but when it came down to it, my family has such a strong history of service to this town that I think the residents realized…”

  “That you were absolutely the best choice, family or not,” I interrupt him, not wanting to let him downplay his own achievements. “That’s really, really great, and I’m so proud of you.”