by Julie Kriss
My heart squeezed silently in my chest. “Yeah,” I told him. “I do.”
Twenty-Four
One month later
Nick
Where are you right now?
The text came through on my phone, and I put down the book in my hand to read it. Evie.
In reply, I pulled up the camera and took a selfie. A wide shot that didn’t just show me, but where I was: sitting on the ratty sofa in Andrew’s living room, my feet up, the usual piles of junk around me. Behind my shoulder, my brother sitting at his keyboard, working away.
I didn’t add any words to the message. I just hit send.
“Did you just take a picture of me, asshole?” Andrew said.
“Yeah,” I replied, putting the phone down. “Deal with it.”
“That’s dangerous,” Andrew said, clicking away. “I’m very fucking good-looking. It isn’t safe to have my picture out in the world. I’m like plutonium or something.”
“Evie can handle it.” I picked up my book again, but put it down when another text came in. Is that a textbook? Evie wrote.
Of course she’d zoom in on that one thing. Yes, I typed back. Studying. Test in two days.
Tell your brother he’s handsome, Evie wrote, because she knew how to butter Andrew up.
She also knew exactly how to get to me, Evie did. Fuck off, I wrote back. Your turn.
I put the phone back down while I waited. This was the new game Evie and I had been playing for weeks. When the other person asked where you were right now, you took a picture and sent it. Then the other person reciprocated. It wasn’t much of a game, maybe, just a back and forth between us. I didn’t even know why we kept doing it. All I knew was that I liked it when her texts came in. And I always wanted to know the answer to the question Where are you right now?
It would take her a second—it always took Evie a second to get up the nerve to take the picture and send it—so I picked up my book again. Principles of Creative Writing. Here was the fucked-up thing: I’d actually signed myself up for a creative writing course. One of those continuing education things, because come on—I needed to aim low. But so far it wasn’t so bad. And I wasn’t doing so bad at it. And it was the first thing I’d learned since dropping out of college five years ago. I was learning about three-act structure and character development and point of view, and fuck if it wasn’t pretty interesting. The tests were about mechanics, but for the assignments I’d have to submit original work. I was thinking of a Lightning Man story already.
“Hey,” Andrew said. “You think the banner should be fixed width or full width?”
“Full width,” I said, flipping to the next chapter of the book.
“You don’t even know what I’m talking about, do you?”
“No.”
“Ugh. I’m working with amateurs here.” Andrew clicked around. Outside, one of the neighbors fired up his lawn mower. It was June in the Millwood suburbs, except inside this tiny living room. In here, we had no seasons. It was fine with me.
“Despite the fact that you know nothing, I’m going with full width anyway,” Andrew said. He was programming the Lightning Man website, which we were planning to launch in a few weeks. The whole thing still made me nervous, but I’d agreed to it. If you love him, you have to do it, Evie had told me, and she was right. So we were doing it. He was talking about apps and paid downloads and print on demand. I had no idea about any of that, though I tried to follow along.
It wasn’t about the money for either of us, but the challenge and the creativity. And Andrew… Andrew was juiced. He worked on nothing except Lightning Man right now, and he had a spark that I’d never seen in him before. He fucking loved every part of this project, and he wanted me to write stories, like I always had. So maybe it would be okay to change things, like Evie said. Maybe it would work out.
I still didn’t take my leather bracelet off, though. And I spent a lot of time at Andrew’s when I read and studied for my course. So much time that I’d started bringing Scout with me instead of leaving her home alone. Scout was somewhere on the sofa next to me right now, where she’d burrowed beneath a pile of Andrew’s laundry to sleep.
It was a pretty nice scene, all told. Except Evie wasn’t here.
My phone buzzed with a text.
She’d taken the picture. The point of this game, the game where we texted the pictures, was complete honesty. You had to take the picture when the other person asked. So Evie had taken a picture of herself standing in the alleyway behind the bakery where she worked. No, the bakery where she was manager. She was wearing cargo pants and a V-neck T-shirt, an apron tied over her clothes, her red hair tied up loosely on the top of her head. She was holding two trash bags, and there was a dumpster behind her. The glamorous life of a baker, she wrote.
Even in everyday clothes, standing in front of a dumpster after going to work at four in the morning, Evie was hot. And awesome.
Take off your clothes, I texted her.
Ha, she wrote back. You first.
Me: Andrew would be mad.
Her: So would the homeless guy sleeping in the alley right now.
“Earth to Mason,” Andrew said, pulling me out of my conversation. “You’re not studying, you’re staring at your redhead.”
“None of your business,” I told him.
He rolled his eyes. “Please. I’m ordering my own tux for the wedding. I look good in dove gray.”
“Can it,” I said. “We’re not getting married. We’re barely even dating right now.”
“Which is stupid,” he pointed out, “because you are.”
We were dating, sort of. Evie had walked into a bakery in downtown Millwood that had advertised for a manager job, and she’d given them such a hell of an interview that they’d hired her on the spot. She supervised the bakery, managed the staff, oversaw the daily receipts, and helped with hiring and marketing. It was great, but it was also a huge learning curve, and the hours were long, at least at first. She worked a lot, and she didn’t need distractions.
I was a distraction. This wasn’t the kind of job she could walk into late, wearing my T-shirt after a night of nonstop sex. So I stayed away from her on work days, doing my course work and hanging with Andrew. On work days, we texted each other, but not enough to get her in trouble. On work days, I didn’t even take her out to dinner, because if I did we’d end up fucking. On work days, I behaved.
On her days off, I did whatever I wanted.
Which was a lot.
On her days off, she’d come over and I’d fuck her however I wanted, as long as I wanted, as fast or slow as I wanted, until she’d come as many times as I wanted. Then we’d eat something and relax and talk about our week. Then we’d try to watch TV for about fifteen minutes, until we pulled each other’s clothes off. Then we’d fuck some more. Repeat until she had to go back to work again.
Was that dating? I had no idea. It was pretty fucking great, though. So great I wanted more. But I had to be patient. Evie wasn’t fucking around with her career anymore. She had her eye on owning the bakery one day, when the owner retired, and she wasn’t prepared to risk that. So we didn’t.
I had my own shit to take care of, anyway. I’d had to make things up with Andrew after our fight, and then we had to work out the Lightning Man details. I didn’t party anymore. Instead I enrolled in my course and started studying. And coming up with more ideas. I had a thought that Lightning Man wasn’t the only comic I had in me. There were at least two others buzzing around in my brain. If he was game, Andrew was going to be my comics partner for a long time.
Which was also pretty fucking great, though I didn’t let myself think about it too closely.
Scout came out of her laundry burrow, blinking sleepily, and wagged her tail when she saw me. She did a wiggle, her whole hind end going back and forth, as she turned in a circle, her tongue hanging out. I patted her and she promptly rolled over, giving me her hairless belly to rub. I had to rub it with just my fingertips,
because my palm was too big. She really was the stupidest dog on earth.
“What does Evie say about me?” Andrew said. “She must have said something.”
“She said I’m better-looking than you.”
“That’s a lie. When is she coming over for dinner?”
“Never, because you can’t cook.”
“I’d learn.”
“No. And why are you trying to impress my girlfriend?”
“Someone has to do it. You know, woo her. Give her some romance, make her feel special. And I thought she wasn’t your girlfriend?”
This was classic Andrew, trying to piss me off. I was in too good a mood to fall for it. “She’s my girlfriend,” I said, “but she’ll dump me if you cook for her, guaranteed.” I closed my book, stopped rubbing Scout’s belly—she jumped up immediately—and stood up. “I have to go. You need anything?”
“No, I’m good,” Andrew said. “Mom brought a few things by earlier.”
Right. Our mother, who had been coming to see Andrew, while avoiding me. I took how that made me feel and pushed it down, way down. “Okay then,” I said.
“She’ll come,” Andrew said. He had turned away from his computer, turned his chair to face me. “She’s just working up the nerve. But she will.”
“I’m not holding my breath.” I wasn’t going to call her, either. If she didn’t want to talk to me, there was nothing to say. I gathered my shit and my dog, said goodbye to my brother, and left.
I parked in front of my place and opened the back seat to get Scout. I tried to clip the leash to her collar, but she wasn’t having it. Instead she kept standing on her hind legs, waving her front paws at me. This meant she wanted to be picked up. She was surprisingly lazy for a dog who moved almost nonstop.
I slung the gym bag from the back seat over my shoulder and picked up my textbook. Then I picked up Scout, who promptly started licking my face. “Knock it off,” I told her, struggling against her small tongue while I bumped the door closed with my hip. She kept at me, aiming for the end of my nose. I hit the button to lock the car while dodging her. “Jesus, Scout, quit it.”
I turned around to see a woman standing there, watching my little show. My mother.
She was about fifty now, I supposed. Still slim, her back straight, her hair dyed and styled. She wore a linen blouse and skirt that looked nice and probably cost more than Evie made in a week. She was clutching her purse and looking at me with a worried smile.
I just stood there, in my old sweatshirt, with my bag and my book and my silly dog, staring back.
“Nick,” she said. “Can we talk?”
I thought I’d be cool whenever I saw her next. Instead I felt like someone had punched me in the chest and in the side of the head at the same time. “A month?” I said to her. “You’ve been going to see Andrew for a month, and now you want to talk to me?”
She winced, but she didn’t turn away. “It’s harder with you,” she said. “You’re tougher than he is. And I knew you were angry.”
“You think?” I said.
“I’m sorry,” Mom said, words I never thought I’d hear from her mouth. “I’m sorry about everything. And I’m sorry about what I said to you that last time, in the hospital.”
I can’t, Nick. I just can’t. That was what she’d said when Andrew had tried to kill himself the second time. I’d called her, and she’d come, but she’d left before he woke up. I just can’t.
I shouldn’t forgive her for that. But that particular crime wasn’t mine to forgive, it was Andrew’s. And Andrew made his own decisions. All I wanted was to see him happy.
Scout squirmed in my arms. “I can’t talk about this right now, like this,” I said. We were standing in the parking lot of my building. “I have to go.”
“Can we go inside and talk, then?” Mom said. “Can I come in? I have a lot of things I want to say.” She paused, while I stood rigid. “Please, Nick.”
Fuck. I shouldn’t do it. I should tell her to just fuck off and go home, leave me to my life. I should tell her there are no second chances.
It would be easier to tell her to go. Easier not to try. Easier to just stay in my life the way it was without changing anything. To shut myself off from anyone causing me that kind of pain again. That would be the easy thing to do.
But Andrew had made me promise that if she came to me, I would listen. And I knew that Evie would agree. The easiest way wasn’t always the best way in the end. We were both learning that. Sometimes you had to walk the hard route, the route that didn’t have any signs. The route that could hurt you.
So I looked at my mother, at her hopeful face, and I sighed.
“All right,” I said. “Come in.”
Twenty-Five
Two Weeks Later
Evie
Even after everything, I still liked to punch Nick Mason.
“Come on, Evie,” he said. “Hit me harder.”
We were at the boxing gym. We’d been here for an hour, sparring—sort of. Even though I’d upped my game, our version of sparring consisted of me hitting him, and him not hitting me back. He refused to do it any other way. Find some other guy to hit you, he’d told me. I’m not fucking doing it.
So, fine then. I hit him.
Not in the face. No way was I aiming for that gorgeous face of his. But his hot, muscled body was fair game. We dodged around the mats as I aimed for his chest, his shoulders, his stomach. He was faster than me, and I only landed some of the hits I aimed at him—and the ones I landed he ridiculed as too soft. His taunts just made me work harder, and we were both covered in sweat. My arms were shaky and my legs were rubber. I felt freaking amazing.
I positioned my feet and jabbed him again, almost getting his pec. He raised a glove and blocked me, our gloves smacking. “Better,” he said. “Maybe.”
I straightened, scrubbing my forearm over my sweaty forehead. “You’re such an asshole,” I said, panting.
“I know,” Nick said. “It turns you on.”
“It doesn’t.” It totally did.
“Right, redhead.” He glanced back over his shoulder, where the gym had emptied out behind us. It was closing time, apparently. The other guys had gone and an old guy was turning out the lights.
I’d had no idea we had to go. But Nick wasn’t moving. The old guy turned out a few more lights, then gave Nick a nod—which Nick returned—and walked out the front door, locking it shut behind him.
“What’s going on?” I said.
“Workout’s over,” Nick said, his voice deceptively casual. He used his teeth to rip the velcro off his right glove.
“He just closed the place and locked us in,” I pointed out.
“Yeah, he did.” Nick dropped his glove and started on the other one.
We were completely alone in the place now. The lights above our mats were the only lights on. It should have been creepy or weird. Instead I watched Nick drop his other glove, and I felt a hard shiver of anticipation. He was planning something. I didn’t know what it was, but I had the idea I was going to like it.
Still, I kept my voice calm, like this happened every day. “So how are we going to leave?” I asked as he stepped forward and undid my glove. “If the place is already locked, and all.”
“Spare set of keys in one of the lockers in back,” Nick said. “We’ll lock up behind us when we go.”
“Uh huh,” I said. “And since we’re done working out, what are we doing between now and leaving?”
“What do you think?”
The shiver of anticipation came again, harder. Oh, I liked this. He dropped my first glove and started on the other, and I just watched him. There was nothing I liked looking at more than Nick Mason. He was all muscles and scruff and bad-boy tattoos, all sweaty and mischievous and dangerous, and he was all mine. All mine.
Six weeks we’d been doing this. Playing a sort of game that was fun and hot and, underneath, deadly serious. I was managing a bakery now, working hard and long hours and loving
every minute of it. I spent all day with breads and pastries and the people who loved them, and so far I was happier in my career than I’d ever been, because I’d stopped worrying about what people thought. I just went to work and came home happy, smelling like pie crust and sugar.
And on my days off, like today, I got Nick. All to myself. We played—we sparred and we talked and we took shots at each other. And the sex—oh, my god, the sex. Sometimes I thought I could spend a week locked in a room, doing nothing but having sex with Nick, and it still wouldn’t be enough. We were daring and creative and sometimes wild, and the back and forth we did beforehand always added to the foreplay. With Nick, I always had to work for it. And it always paid off.
Today, he had that look in his eye, like he was going to dare me to do something. I was already wet, just looking at him and thinking about it. But there was something else going on, too. This wasn’t just a sex dare. I’d done Nick’s sex dares—a lot of them—and they were never quite like this.
But there was nothing I could do except wait until he was ready to show me what he was planning.
I couldn’t wait.
He pulled off his shirt and mopped himself with it. I watched, appreciative. “Is this going to be a strip show?” I asked him. “I might give you a tip.”
“You wish,” he said, scrubbing the shirt over his face and his hair. “You know I don’t strip for money. I only strip for sex.”
“Is that what we’re negotiating?” I said, even though I was totally already in. Still. “I’ll think about it.”
“You already are,” said my cocky boyfriend. “You’ve been thinking about it for the last hour, and now you’re all ready to go.” He dropped the shirt and came toward me.
I crossed my arms. “I’m sweaty,” I said.
“So am I,” Nick said, putting his hands on my hips.
“We’re in a gym,” I said. “There’s no way we’re having sex right here, right now.”