by Kim Karr
“It’s true.”
“Thank you. And you look fantastic. I think Fiji was just what you needed.”
“Can I show you to your table?” the guy Fi was flirting with asks her. Now he looks like Orlando Bloom.
“He’s cute,” she mouths on our way to the table. “And he’s single.”
Oh, my God, she’s trying to set me up.
“Your server will be with you shortly,” he tells us as we both remove our jackets and slide into the booth.
“Thank you,” Fi smiles at him. And then she bobs her chin in my direction. “This is my friend, Tess. Tess this is Drake.”
“Nice to meet you,” he tells me.
“Likewise,” I smile.
He stares at me a few seconds before leaving.
Fiona settles into her seat and pulls off her leather gloves with a dreamy sigh. “To be single again.”
“Fi,” I warn, and seriously consider leaving my own gloves on to disguise the sudden trembling of my fingers. This is going to be so much harder than I had practiced.
“What? He’s the restaurant manager. He’s perfect for you.”
I laugh and shake my head. “You got the manager to bring us to a table.”
She smiles, her glossy lips more prominent with the tan on her face. “He was standing there, so I started talking to him. Then one thing led to another.”
I reach across the table to squeeze her hand. “Fiji was good for you. It’s great to see you smiling. You seem like your old self again.”
She squeezes my hand in return. “I feel like my old self. And I’m so glad you’re back in Chicago.”
“So am I.”
“Are you really?”
“Yes.”
She looks me over, as if doubting me.
“Fi, I’m fine. More than fine. And don’t worry, I plan to stay here.”
She nods. “Well that’s good because you look it.”
After the server takes our order, and delivers two Japanese High Balls, courtesy of the restaurant manager, I lean across the table. “So, Fiona, tell me. How was your trip?”
“It was better than I ever could have imagined.” Fiona says this with gleaming eyes and lips wet from where she’s licked them. “Ethan splurged for a private villa, and we had our own swimming pool just steps away from the beach. I felt like a queen.”
I take a sip of my drink, and then set it down. “And, what did you two do for fourteen days?”
She puckers her lips at the tart taste of the drink, but then swallows a healthy sip. “Not bad,” she says. “What did we do?” she repeats tapping her fingers on the table. “Let me see. We walked on the beach, jet skied, swam in the ocean, and lounged by the pool. We had massages in our bedroom. Ate the best food, and drank all day long. And we had sex, like five times a day.”
I practically spit out the cherry I am chewing from my drink across the table. The romantic picture she’d created in my mind of the Tokoriki Island Resort somehow seemed insignificant. “Five times a day?”
She nods her head, her honey-blond hair falling just so over the shoulders of her soft, emerald green silk top. “Everywhere.”
Just then the server delivers our sushi. I wait until she’s cleared the area and once again lean across the table. “Tell me more.”
With her chopsticks, she dips a piece of spicy tuna into the soy sauce. “The room was so romantic, Tess. It had a white sheer curtain all around it and the view out to the ocean was to die for. Everything about the resort was magical. Ethan and I couldn’t keep our hands off each other. We had sex in our room, in our pool, on the beach, and in the ocean.”
“I can’t believe you did it morning, noon, and night,” I say around a mouthful of sushi. “I wasn’t sure Ethan had it in him.”
She points her chopsticks, the ends stained with soy sauce, at me. “To be honest, I didn’t either. He even tied me up one night and we,” she lowers her voice to a whisper and looks around, “had anal sex.”
This time it’s a piece of rice I choke on. “Did it hurt?”
Fiona and I have always talked about sex candidly. She’s the one who told me what to do with the twins the first time I put my mouth on them. She was promiscuous. Then again her parents were kind of hippies, and the camp they took her to each summer was more like a commune. Fiona told me the married couples there would exchange partners. My parents would have died if they knew. I guess her parents had somewhat of an open marriage. But even that didn’t keep them together. After Fi graduated high school, they divorced and both moved away. Her mother now teaches yoga in Monterey and lives with her girlfriend. Her father remarried and has six kids and lives in a little town along the coast Washington. Fiona hasn’t seen either of them in years.
Whereas I always yearned for the wild, she dreamed of the tame, but when you put the two of us together, she was always the wild one, and I was the tame one.
Fiona licks her chopsticks seductively. “At first, it did, but it didn’t take long for the stretching and burning sensations to fade, and then I didn’t mind it.”
I stop with a piece of sushi halfway to my mouth. “Mind it?’
She shrugs. “I think it’s one of the things men like to do to feel like they own you. I didn’t love it, but Ethan did. I’ll do it again if he asks.”
I laugh so loud I’m surprised the other diners don’t turn their heads. “Fi, you are too much.”
“Hey, we both want to keep each other happy.”
I raise a brow. “Is Ethan on that page?”
“He is now,” she grins. “We talked a lot on this trip about making sure he makes time for me. I think he finally gets it. And will do it.”
Our dinners arrive and we spend most of the meal talking more about Fiji, and Fiona and Ethan’s sexual exploits.
They did some crazy things like watch a guy jerk himself off under their outdoor shower. I guess he’d thought their villa was his. I laughed when she told me he opened their door to see them both staring at him, and screamed before running.
Story after story, she never stopped amusing me.
I draw my fork through the last of my garlic-parmesan potatoes, but then set it down. “I’m full.”
Fiona pushes her plate forward slightly. “Me too. I ate way too much.”
I wipe my mouth with the napkin and consider how exactly to tell her about Nick and I—casually, or just blurt it out?
This is so much harder than I thought it would be. Besides, I’m really worried about you Nick too. What if later when we all meet up, Nick has an aversion to being seen with me? Hell, I’m driving myself crazy. “Do it already,” I chastise myself.
Just as I’m about to open my mouth, Fiona waves down the server. “Can we have our check, please?” she asks her.
The server nods. “I’ll bring it right over.”
Fiona pulls her wallet out. “Let’s head over to Studio Paris early so we can dance before the guys get there. Knowing you, you’ll probably leave the minute Nick opens his mouth, and then we won’t have any girl time.”
Right here, this is my chance.
But instead of telling her about Nick and I, I say, “That sounds like fun. I haven’t danced in ages,” and then I pray Ethan doesn’t text her the news before I get the courage to tell her.
Looks like I’ve found God again.
Tess
THERE’S NOWHERE LIKE home.
You can take the girl from one big city and put her in another, but it isn’t the same. Chicago is my home, and even though I’ve been gone for six years, it feels like I never left.
Arm in arm, Fiona and I traipse around the block. It’s a three-minute walk at most, but both of our feet are frozen before we see the black awning with the white letters spelling out the club’s name.
Studio Paris has been around for a long time, and Fiona and I came here often during college. It’s one of chicest nightclubs in River North. With bottle service and an outdoor lounge, it has always drawn a crowd.
Tonight DJ Jazzy Jeff is spinning, and the line is around the corner. He’s known for playing classics from the eighties, nineties, and two thousands, with a bit of techno mixed in. When I lived in New York, he’d come play at Cielo, and he’d always draw the biggest crowd. Luckily, we don’t have to wait in line. Nick knows the owner, and he left our names at the door.
Shivering, we push our way inside and check our coats. The pink hue of light casting on the white leather is new. It used to be purple. Still, the place is the same. We head for the stairs and pass a bunch of giggly girls here for a bachelorette party.
I point to them. “They remind me of us during your bachelorette party.”
She yells in my ear, and points to the girl with the tiara on her head. “Except I was pregnant and sober, unlike her.”
I laugh. “That’s so true.”
Upstairs, the dance floor is less crowded. There’s a lounge to the left, and the long, white leather sofas are mostly empty.
“Let’s get a drink,” Fiona says, heading toward the bar.
I follow her, looking around at how much things up here have changed compared to downstairs. It’s nicer than it used to be.
At the bar, Fiona orders two shots of tequila and two dirty martinis. “The dirtier, the better,” she calls to the bartender.
He turns around and gives her a wink. She always turned heads everywhere she goes, and married or not, she still does.
I shake my head. “Always the wild one.”
“Not anymore. I don’t get out that much, I might as well live it up. Ethan’s the designated caregiver, so I might as well get drunk.”
“Is that like a designated driver?”
The bartender sets the two shots down. “Yes, except he’s on Max duty tonight and in the morning.”
I lick my wrist and salt it. “How’d you swing that?”
She licks her wrist and salts it. “I promised him sex tonight and in the morning anyway he wanted it.”
I clink her glass. “I like your way of thinking. Here’s to having fun.”
She clinks back and shoots the shot, sets it down, and orders another.
Three shots and a drink later, we are both feeling more than a little tipsy.
“Don’t look now,” she whispers, “but the guy at the end of the bar is staring at you. And he’s really cute.”
“Fi, I have some—” I start to say.
Just then the DJ starts to spin “Umbrella” by Rihanna. It was our theme song as teens, and we both look at each other in remembrance. I’d say I was going to her house to sleep over, but the truth was her parents had left her home that summer while they went to the commune, so we went out and hit the clubs.
“Let’s dance,” Fiona says grabbing my hand. “You can flirt with that guy later. Sometimes it’s good to play hard to get. Besides, once he sees the way you move on the dance floor, he won’t be able to keep his eyes off you.”
To say anything would just be a waste of breath.
We make our way out to the dance floor and start to move. Bouncing and wiggling, hips shaking, it feels just like old times. We know how to dirty dance. We’ve done a lot of it. It isn’t long before people start watching us. I think that used to be the best part of going out to clubs with Fiona. Wondering what the men who stared at the two of us dancing and having fun were thinking. Except now, as men surround us and explode into a frenzy of catcalls, I didn’t think it was fun anymore. By the look on Fiona’s face, neither does she.
As soon as the song ends, she says, “Come on.” She takes my hand. “Let’s go sit down.”
Over on the leather sofa, she sits on the end and I sit beside her. She attempts to wave the waitress down, but she’s unsuccessful. Sighing, she pulls her phone out of her small purse.
I can see the text messages from Ethan lighting up her screen, and I cover them with my hand. “Fiona, I have something to tell you.”
She glances up. “What?”
“Nick and I are together,” I blurt out.
She fixes me with her stare, and then bursts out in laugher. “You and Nick? Are you joking? You despise him. You call him Ethan’s jerky friend.”
I move my hand away from her screen. “I did think he was a jerk, but that was before I got to know him.”
She sets her phone down on the table in front of us without looking at it. “And what? Now you think he’s a sexy jerk?”
“Well yes,” I tell her, “No, I mean I don’t he’s a jerk anymore. Now I like him.”
Her hands go up rather animatedly. “Whoa, back up. Did you two hook up while you were babysitting Max?”
Uneasiness moves through me. “Yes, we did, but only after Max was in bed. I swear.”
She stares at me dumbfounded. “Please tell me you didn’t do anything in my bed.”
I cross my fingers across my heart. “I swear we didn’t. We stayed in the spare room.”
She’s a little bit of a germ-a-phobe.
“Oh thank fuck,” she says, dragging her hand dramatically across her forehead and leaning back against the couch. The look in her eyes tells me she’s processing everything. The alcohol making her a little slow to the draw.
I wait for it.
First comes the hand gesture. “Let’s be clear,” she says, narrowing her eyes at me, and pointing her finger. “Are you telling me you had sex with Nick, and you’ve waited until now to tell me?”
I nod impishly. “I’ve been trying to tell you all night.”
Fiona continues to wave her finger at me. “Hold on. Let me get this straight. You and Nick are,” she air quotes, “together.”
I nod again.
“And by together, you mean fucking.”
I nod one more time.
She goes back to pointing, her words only mildly slurred now. “And you let me go on and on about how many times I fucked my husband in Fiji instead of telling me all the sordid details about how the hell you ended up fucking Ethan’s jerky friend, Nick Carrington?”
“For you,” the waitress says to me, setting a dirty martini down in front of both me and Fiona, “from the guy at the bar.”
I smile at her. “Thank you.”
The three shadows looming over us should have been the first sign that the waitress wasn’t our only company, but I was so engrossed in Fiona’s animated question, I never looked past her.
A husky male’s throat clears.
I look up to see Nick, Jace, and Ethan, but really all I see is Nick. He’s wearing a black long sleeve t-shirt that sculpts his body and black jeans that hang low on his hips in the most delicious way.
Don’t get me wrong, Jace and Ethan are also both very good looking men. Just not my type. They are dressed very much the same as Nick—t-shirts and jeans. I guess hitting a dive bar first hadn’t given them cause to dress up. Jace is a tall guy, maybe as tall as Nick. Maybe taller. He has dark hair and dark eyes. With his broad shoulders, he’s visibly fit. Ethan is a little shorter and slimmer, but his blond hair and strong profile make him look like an Abercrombie and Fitch model.
Before Fiona can say anything more, Ethan swoops down and kisses her. “Hey babe, I hope you told her what a stallion I was.”
Jace thumps Ethan on the back. “Sorry to disappoint you bro, but I think your wife would rather hear about what a stallion your jerky friend is.”
Fiona’s gaze lifts in horror, and she mouths, “I’m so sorry,” to Nick.
Nick circles around the table and while doing so, he waves her off. “Don’t worry about it Fi, I’m used to it by now,” and then his eyes flick to me and I can see amusement glittering in them. “Hi,” he mouths, coming toward me.
“Hi,” I wave, feeling a little flutter of nervous excitement in my chest. This is the first time we’ve been together out in public where we know people. I wonder if he’ll kiss me. I try to recall the different women I’ve seen him with over the years, and don’t recollect him ever holding hands or kissing any of them.
Ethan looks from Fiona to Jace a
nd then back to Fiona. “Is that right?” he mutters.
While Fiona tries to pacify her husband, I focus on the tall, dark, and handsome specimen of a man sitting beside me.
“If you drink that drink, I might have to kill the guy at the bar,” he mutters.
His jealously sends a tiny thrill down my spine, and my breath catches. “I wouldn’t want his death on my conscience,” I practically purr.
“It won’t bother me,” Jace says, picking up the martini and taking a sip.
Ethan sits down and pulls Fiona onto his lap. I have to say, I haven’t seen him this affectionate with her since they got married. I think Fiji was just what they needed.
Nick shifts a little closer, studying me carefully. “You waited to tell her, why?”
I shrug. “I was worried, I guess.”
“What do you mean?”
I lean back on the sofa. “To be honest, I wasn’t certain how she’d take it. She’s really protective over me and doesn’t want to see me get hurt.”
He grins at my answer. “You mean because I’m such a manwhore and all, and I couldn’t possibly stay with you for long.”
I make a face at him. “Funny.”
“Well?”
I look at him.
“How did she take it?” He gives me a what are you waiting for to tell me look.
I shrug again. “I have no idea.”
“Then let’s find out.”
“How?”
“Kiss me.”
The pulse in my neck begins to throb. “Here?”
He nods.
“You’re serious?”
“Completely.”
My eyes drop to his mouth. He really does have a great mouth. It’s kind of perfect actually. “Now?”
He leans in. “Now!”
I push him away. “I thought you didn’t do PDA?”
I think I see a dimple flash. It’s rather adorable. “That’s the real issue, isn’t it? You have no idea how I’ll react to our friends knowing we’re together, and that makes you even more nervous than telling Fiona ever did.”