by Tia Siren
I almost wished I had brought the girl home, just for one night. I liked the idea of waking up with someone in bed with me the next morning.
As soon as I had the thought, I shook my head to banish it. I must be drunker than I thought if I was thinking like that. Maybe I should just go home and go to sleep.
Chapter Two
Paige
I groaned as I shifted into wakefulness, rolling away from the bright sunlight that was hitting me directly in the eyes. I generally was pretty good about closing the blinds before I went to sleep, but Saturday night had been long at The Shift, and I hadn't gotten in until nearly four in the morning. By that point, I had been tired enough that I collapsed into bed and passed out, barely pausing to strip off my work clothes.
I squinted at my phone: eight in the morning. Why was Erica yelling at someone over the phone at 8 a.m. on a Sunday?
“I know exactly what you did,” she snarled at whoever was on the other end of the phone. “Did you really think you were going to get away with it, Paul?”
For a moment, I pulled the pillow over my eyes and huddled down under the blankets, hoping that I could go to sleep. But then, I sighed, realizing that getting back to sleep was a lost cause. Her voice was only getting louder and shriller, to the point where I had to worry that she was going to wake up everyone in our worn-down apartment building, rather than just me. Given that our landlord lived one floor down from us, that probably wasn't a good idea.
Again, 8 a.m. on a Sunday.
At least now I could identify who it was that she was yelling at. It was Paul, her boyfriend. Or at least, he had been her boyfriend. From the sound of things, it was over between them. Not that Erica's boyfriends ever lasted all that long. I loved the girl, but she had a knack for dating sleazy dudes. It didn't help that she picked up most of them from The Shift, where I worked as a bartender and she worked as a manager.
“I don't care what your excuse is!” she snapped. “You're a fucking dick, you know that? Go to hell.”
Curiosity got the better of me, and I rolled out of bed, pulling on a T-shirt and padding barefoot out of my “room.” Erica was just hanging up the phone and starting to make coffee, slamming cupboards as she went.
“Good morning,” I said while yawning. “Or, not so good morning, from the sound of it.”
Erica startled and gave me a sheepish look. “Sorry, I didn't mean to wake you up,” she said sincerely.
I gave a pointed look towards the sheets that separated our bedrooms from the rest of the cramped living space in our studio apartment. “I think you woke up the whole apartment building,” I told her. “Hate to say it, but I think baking is in order, or else Mr. Jensen's going to have us out this time.”
Erica winced. “I'll make some muffins,” she said, starting to pull out the ingredients, her movements less angry this time.
“Want to tell me what happened?” I asked her, flopping down on the sofa and watching her.
“Paul went home with someone last night,” she said tightly, her mouth drawn into a thin line. “Not me.”
I feigned surprise, even though again, Erica's usual choice in guys meant this wasn't a surprise. “How'd you find out?” I asked.
“Well, he decided to pick her up from The Shift,” Erica said, a hint of her earlier anger coming back into her voice.
I winced. That was a new low, even for one of her dudes. “I'm so sorry,” I said, shaking my head. “Let's have a girl's day today. We'll go to lunch, and then we'll come back here with ice cream and watch shitty chick flicks until I have to go to my parents' place and you have to go to work.”
“Can't, we're getting supplies in today, and I have to be there to supervise,” Erica said, making a face.
“You should delegate more,” I told her, not for the first time.
“Remember what happened the last time I did that?” Erica asked, shaking her head. “We ran out of toilet paper mid-way through the month.”
I laughed. “Well, maybe if you delegated to someone with half a brain, rather than Roger, it would work out better.”
“But then I'd be delegating to you, and we still wouldn't get to have our girl's day.” She measured out water and poured it into a bowl, beginning to mix it into a batter.
“You know, this is why I don't date, just fuck,” I mused. “Boys suck.”
Erica laughed. “I may have to start taking a page out of your book,” she said.
“Anyway, if you can sneak away for dinner, you're welcome over at my parents,” I told her. She had yet to take me up on the offer, despite the fact we'd been roommates for nearly a year now, and I went to dinner at my parents' place every Sunday night.
My mom was a stickler about these family dinners, despite the fact that I was twenty-eight years old. I could only imagine what she would do if I moved out of New York City. Probably, she'd show up on my porch every Sunday evening like clockwork, no matter how far away I moved.
I smiled a little at the thought.
That evening, I tried to keep that smile on my face during dinner, but it was difficult when Mom started asking about my love life again. “Haven't you found yourself a nice boy yet?” she asked. “You live in New York City, after all. There are thousands of boys to choose from.”
I barely kept from rolling my eyes. “Mom, you know most of the boys that I meet, I meet at the bar,” I reminded her. “You wouldn't want me to date one of them, trust me. Erica just broke up with her boyfriend this morning. She met him at The Shift, and two weeks later, he was cheating on her.”
I felt kind of bad, using Erica's situation to get Mom off my back, but I needed to say something to get her to quit hounding me. We had this conversation every week, even though she knew it drove me up a wall.
“Then you need to get out more,” Mom said firmly, nodding her head like she was the wisest person in the world. “I know there are all sorts of websites these days. And applications for your phone, too. Gina told me that's how she met her fiancé, you know.”
At that, I did roll my eyes. Gina was my younger cousin, who had just recently announced her engagement. She was only twenty-one, but Mom liked to remind me that was also the age she had been when she married Dad. By the time she was my age, I had been out of diapers and my younger sister, Holly, had been just starting to toddle around the house.
“Are you trying to suggest that I go on a date with a total stranger?” I asked Mom. “Do you have any idea how many of those profiles are fakes? Or guys who just want sex and nothing else. Gina just got lucky.”
“How would you know, if you've never tried it?” Mom asked.
“Maggie,” Dad finally said, laying a hand on Mom's arm, and that was the end of the conversation for the night.
But I knew it was going to be the same thing the next week, and the one after that, and the one after that. I suppressed a sigh. I understood Mom was just impatient for grandchildren, but I didn't know what to tell her. Even if I did get a boyfriend, I didn't think I wanted to have children. After all, I had a difficult enough time keeping myself afloat. I couldn't exactly raise a kid in the place Erica and I shared, and the whole reason I was sharing the apartment with her was that I couldn't afford a better place.
Even if I could manage to keep food on the table and a roof over our heads, the kid's whole childhood, we would be just squeaking by.
To be fair, my childhood had been the same. I'd never realized it at the time; slices of bread for breakfast and “Mickey Magic beans” (your average baked beans) many nights of the week had just been normal. But the older I got, the more I realized how poor we had been while I was growing up, and I could only imagine the sacrifices that my parents must have made. I wasn't sure I wanted to make those sacrifices. And I wasn't sure it would be fair to intentionally bring a child into this world, knowing I wasn't going to be able to give them a life with smartphones, sports, and other things their peers would get.
Besides, when it came to the relationship front, I didn't feel li
ke I could date someone. My parents were still together, sure, but I knew a relationship like they had was rare. Watching Erica and the rest of my friends go from relationship to relationship hadn't helped my cynicism.
It seemed like relationships never worked out the way that people wanted them to, no matter how much work each party put into it. If it was just going to end in heartache anyway, why put yourself through that? Sure, it might work out once in a blue moon, and my parents were evidence of that. But I didn't believe I was going to meet my prince charming, or that he was going to be as in love with me as I was with him.
I mean, I had my needs. But those needs were satisfied by a quick, meaningless fuck and, every once in a while, a good cuddle. The whole Hollywood idea of being with someone for the rest of your life, waking up with them every single morning, talking about your day, having dinner together? Honestly, that seemed laughable. You'd run out of things to talk about in the first couple months, I was sure.
Did I think, after all, that Mom really cared when Dad griped about his coworkers? Or that Dad cared about the gossip Mom told him about the women in her yoga class or about Mr. Talbot, who had lived down the hall for the entirety of my life? I didn't want my life to be like that.
I shook my head and tuned back to the current conversation. Holly was telling them all about her new job, at some fancy think-tank. She had a background in liberal arts, and yet she made more money than I could ever imagine making. She was happily married, and she and Andrew were talking about having children once they had settled into the new home they were building together.
She was the model child, and I had never been able to measure up.
I swallowed thickly and played around with the food on my plate. I loved my family, but these family dinners could be difficult sometimes. Part of why I wished I could convince Erica to come to them with me: she would provide a bit of a buffer between my parents and me. I doubted Mom would be so persistent in asking about my lack of relationship if we had guests. Even if she did ask, Erica could help me deflect.
On the way home, I stopped at the grocery store and grabbed a pint of ice cream. If Erica had been in all day doing inventory, she should be home early.
But when I got home, the apartment was still empty, and even though I waited up until after midnight, she never came home. Probably has a new boyfriend already, I thought, not sure whether I felt exasperated or bitter about her ability to move from guy to guy.
The difference between her and me was that no matter how many times she got burned in a relationship, she always managed to invest herself emotionally in another relationship within weeks, or even days. I didn't know how she managed to love people as easily as she did, but it wasn't a skill I could mimic.
I sighed and put on the TV, changing the channel to some shitty reality TV show about weddings that got crazy out-of-control. I put the second spoon back in the drawer and worked my way through the pint on my own.
Chapter Three
Michael
Tuesday morning, I had a big meeting with the board members of Lincoln Hotels Corporation, which I owned a majority of stock in. The hotels had made me a billionaire (not that I'd ever had to worry about money), but I didn't have much to do with them, these days. I spent more time involved in private investing, turning the money that I'd made into something good.
Most people in my generation had a “work hard, play hard” attitude. I'd just finally reached the point where I could “play hard” for the rest of my life and never deplete the money I'd amassed. So I tried to pick causes I cared about and manage funds for them. Of course, there was also a substantial amount of play that went into my lifestyle.
“Don't you ever get bored?” Chris, my best friend from high school, had once asked me. Like me, he didn't have to worry about money, but he preferred to remain actively involved in everything that was going on with his father's architectural firm.
I had laughed at the thought of being bored. “I'm good at running a company in the hotel business, but it's not fun,” I had told him. “And if I wanted to, I could charter a jet to Europe tomorrow, or to Hawaii. Or I could book a trip into outer space. Take a weekend retreat in the Adirondacks with any hot girl in this city. The possibilities are endless. I make sure to give back, with the investing that I do. And that in itself comes with research and meetings. But the hotel company can run itself.”
I shook my head and brought my thoughts back to the current meeting.
“Our profits are up this quarter, and everything is looking good as we roll into the next one,” one of the men was saying. I couldn't remember his name, even though I was pretty sure that I had hired him, but he had a monotonous voice that had me this close to falling asleep. “In fact, it's been a record year for us already, in terms of the number of days that we've been fully booked across our properties.”
I barely refrained from reminding them that if there was nothing wrong, there was no reason for them to trouble me with a meeting like this. I knew that as the owner of Lincoln Hotels Corporation, I had to show my face to the board at least a couple times a year, but if we weren't voting on any big changes, it seemed like I should just be able to hang onto my stock and stay out of things. That's what employees were for, after all; they dealt with the day-to-day running of the business.
Fortunately, the meeting didn't last much longer. I hightailed it out of there before anyone could try to get me to join them for lunch.
Instead, I headed alone down the street, to a local deli that I liked to eat at whenever I was in the area.
When I got to the counter, there was a new girl behind it making sandwiches. She wasn't as smoking hot as the girl I'd had in the limo on Saturday night, but she was attractive. I smiled at her. “Hey, you're new here, right?”
She giggled and ducked her head. “Is it that obvious?” she asked, gesturing at the sandwich that she had just finished putting together.
“Well, I would have recognized you if I'd seen you before,” I told her. “Someone as cute as you? The highlight of my day. Plus, you put way more mayonnaise on those sandwiches than the last guy.”
“Too much?” she asked worriedly, peeking into each of the sandwiches that she had just sliced in half.
“No, I think it's perfect,” I told her. “No one likes a dry sandwich.”
She gave me a smile and finished handing those sandwiches to the guy in front of me. “What can I get for you?” she asked, wiping her hands on her apron.
“Surprise me,” I told her, winking. “You seem like you probably have good taste.”
She blushed and looked down at what she was doing. I sauntered over to the cash register and waited for her. As she rang me up, I took a bite of the sandwich. “Mm, that's tasty,” I said, and she blushed again as she smiled at me. “Tell you what, since you have such good taste, maybe you'd like to go out sometime,” I said to her.
She gave a startled laugh. “Do you usually take that long to set up your pickup lines?” she asked.
I grinned at her. “Well, did it work? Can I have your number?”
“I wouldn't want you to think that I didn't have good taste,” she said, eyeing me obviously. She grabbed a pen and scrawled her number on the back of my receipt.
I slid the receipt into my pocket and went over to a table near the window, letting her move on to the next customer. Maybe I'd call her, or maybe I wouldn't. I was sure it was flattering enough for her to have me ask her out to begin with; whether or not we ever went on a date was inconsequential.
I scrolled through my notifications as I munched on the sandwich. The girl had loaded my sandwich with lots of meat and extras. Sometimes it paid to be a flirt. As I was checking my messages, I received an incoming call from Chris. “Hey man, what's up?” I asked.
“Hey man, not much. You down for some Thirsty Thursday drinks this week? I'm getting back from LA that afternoon.”
“Yeah, sure,” I said. “I'll be there. I want to hear all about your trip.”
&nb
sp; “Cool, cool. Just about to run into a meeting. Take a two-week vacation, and it's like everything goes to shit. I don't know how you can delegate like you do.”
I laughed. “I hire better workers than you do, I guess.”
“Yeah, that must be it,” Chris said distractedly. “Anyway, I'll see you Thursday.”
“See you Thursday,” I agreed.
I finished my sandwich and glanced at my watch. Just in time to go to my next meeting, this one with my attorney. I made a face just thinking about it. It was a meeting that I'd been putting off for years now: making my will. But Dad and the attorney had recently been hounding me to sit down and get it done, reminding me that I was only getting older.
I was 32 and in great health. I went to the gym almost daily and wasn't into any extreme sports. I was nowhere near retirement age let alone death—unless you counted accidental death. But in that case, nothing had changed between now and ten years ago. I didn't see why writing out my will was suddenly such a huge deal.
But I'd agreed to the meeting, just to get them both off my back.
When I got back to the office, the attorney was already waiting in one of the conference rooms. I rolled my eyes: it bothered me when people showed up early to meetings. What if I'd had a meeting before this one and it ran over? I was a busy man, after all.
I thought for a moment that I must have the wrong conference room. There was a woman in a neat business suit sitting in one of the chairs, fixing her lipstick. She smiled when she saw me and dropped the lipstick and her compact back into her purse. “Mr. Adams,” she said, coming toward me and extending a hand. “I'm Lee Atwater,” she said.
I raised an eyebrow at her. “Ms. Atwater. I was under the impression that you were a 'he'.”
She laughed, shaking back her long, wavy hair. “The name does that to people,” she agreed. She sat back down in her seat, adjusting her long legs and looking expectantly at me. “Let's get started. If it's all right with you, I'd like to start by talking about what you'd like done in terms of a funeral, and then afterwards, we'll talk about the details of dividing up your impressive wealth.”