by Aubrey Dark
Jake looked unimpressed. And the last thing I wanted Steph to be was unimpressed. I had to stick with Jake’s advice if things were going to work. I needed her to know that I would do anything to win her over, including getting every strand of fur off of my clothes before our date.
“Okay,” I said. “Otis, you have to go out now. Out!”
Otis was too happy chewing on my discarded tie to listen to me. I took the end of the tie and pulled him through the doorway to the other room. He looked balefully up at me before I closed the door on him.
“It’s okay, Otis,” I said. “We’ll hang out later. Wish me luck, okay?”
Otis sneezed and turned away. I didn’t know if dog sneezes were good luck or bad luck. I hoped they were good luck.
“Okay, Jake,” I said, pulling off my fur-covered suit jacket. “Let’s start over.”
“Why are you doing this?
He asked the question calmly, like it was a discussion point at one of his big board meetings.
“This?”
“Why are you going on a date with this woman?”
“To see if I can win her over.” Obviously.
“Why?”
“Why what?”
Jake was in my closet, riffling through my suits. He paused on a dark gray suit and pulled it out, looking at it thoughtfully.
“Why do you want to win her over?”
I didn’t know what he was driving at. I shrugged.
“So that we can date.”
“That’s not a good answer.”
“I don’t know what kind of an answer you want.”
“Look,” Jake said. “You’re my friend. And Lacey is going to be my wife. I don’t want this thing with Steph to get in the way of our friendship. If you hurt her—”
“Why would I hurt her?” Why did everybody think I was trying to hurt Steph?
“I don’t know. Why did you ask her to marry you? Because we were joking about it with you?”
“No! Because I love her!”
I flopped down on the bed and rubbed my temples. Jake came out of my closet, the dark gray suit in one hand.
“Really?”
“Really! I think about her all the damn time. I can’t stop thinking about her. And when you guys were joking about marrying her, I thought about it, and… well, I wanted to.”
“So you changed your mind. You are falling in love with her.”
“Jake, it’s already done! I’ve already fallen! That’s what I’m saying. I’ve fallen so far over it’s not even funny.”
“It’s kind of funny, admit it.”
“It’s not funny! I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. I’ve been working out nonstop to try and push her out of my mind. All of my photo shoots suck. Everything is terrible.”
From the other room, Otis whined.
“See? Even my dog knows how bad things are. Stop smiling!”
Jake wiped the smile from his face, but I could tell he was still laughing at me inside.
“It’s just funny seeing you like this,” he said, tossing the suit on the bed next to me. “You were the last guy I thought would ever fall in love with a girl.”
“I shouldn’t have fallen in love with her. This is miserable.”
“You’ll be fine. Now get into the bathroom and change into this suit.”
I looked at the charcoal suit.
“This looks like one of your suits,” I said. “I’m going to look like you.”
“And I have impeccable taste,” Jake said. “Trust me.”
“Why should I trust you?”
“Because my girlfriend said yes when I proposed to her.”
“Ouch.” I put my hand to my chest. “Knife to the heart, man.”
“Sorry.”
“Talk about kicking a guy when he’s down.”
“Then get up and get ready for this date,” Jake said.
I eyeballed the charcoal suit.
“Alright,” I said. I blew air out between my teeth and grabbed the suit. “This had better work.”
Chapter Five
Steph
I pulled the dress on as Rachel and Lacey played. It was the cream and gold one Lucas had bought me in Paris. I’d gotten a dark eggplant lace wrap to go over it. I tried to see all of myself in the mirror.
“How does this look?” I asked.
“You’re asking the wrong person,” Lacey asked. “For me, dressing up means putting on the jeans without holes in the knees.”
“I’ve seen you in quite a few dresses recently,” Rachel said.
Lacey blushed.
“Jake buys me those. If he didn’t tell me what to wear, I’d be lost.”
“Maybe we should call him up, then,” Rachel chirped.
I rolled my eyes.
“Hello? Mr. Carville? Remember me, Lacey’s friend? Yeah, I’m going out on a date with your best friend. Do you know what he likes his dates to wear?”
“Come on,” Lacey said. “All guys like the same thing. Tight and sexy.”
“Remember, you don’t need to impress him,” Rachel said. “He’s the one who has to impress you.”
“I don’t want him to impress me,” I said, smoothing out the wrinkles at my waistline. “I just want to go on a normal, boring date.”
Andy poked his head into the room.
“I’m going to the store,” he said. “Need anything?”
“We’re almost out of almonds,” I said. “And—ooh, nice dress.”
“It’s date night tonight,” I said.
“Oh! With… Lucas?” He waggled his eyebrows.
“Yes,” I said, narrowing my eyes at him.
“Well, have fun,” he said, giving me a not-so-hidden wink.
“Thanks,” I said, breathing out only when I heard the apartment door click shut and he was gone.
I didn’t want to tell my friends that I was going out on a first date with a guy who’d already proposed to me. They would think I was crazy.
Maybe I was crazy.
“Alright,” I said. “Dress done. It’s makeup time, come help.”
“You don’t want me to help,” Lacey said. “Unless your big date is at the clown convention.”
“Rachel can help,” I said. “You just have to provide moral support.”
“Rah, rah, rah! Go team!” Lacey shook pretend pom poms over her head as Rachel pulled out her makeup bag. I sat on the edge of the bed as she dabbed foundation under my eyes.
“You’ve already been with this guy, though, right?” Rachel asked. “You don’t need to be nervous about this.”
I bit my lip. I wanted so badly to tell my friends that Lucas had proposed to me, that that was the real reason I was nervous. But I didn’t know if he had told anyone, or if he wanted anyone to know. And if I told Lacey, Jake would definitely know about it.
“We hooked up in Paris,” I said. “But we never had a date, you know.”
“That sounds so metropolitan,” Rachel said, brushing back my eyebrows to shape them. “Oh, we just hooked up in Paris, lah dee dah.”
“Speaking of metropolitan, why are you in New York again so soon?” I asked Rachel to change the subject.
“Oh, I have a thing,” she said vaguely.
“A thing? What thing?”
“Nothing.”
“What is it?” Lacey asked, perking up from the bed.
Rachel looked flustered and put down the eyebrow brush.
“It’s a singing thing. I don’t want to talk about it, okay? I’m already nervous enough.”
Inwardly, I smiled. I guess we all had our secrets, but I wasn’t going to let Rachel get away without telling me hers.
“Is it an audition?”
“No.”
“Are you singing on stage somewhere?” Lacey asked.
“No! I mean, well, no, it’s just a little night club.”
She said it like it didn’t mean anything, but I could see the excitement in her eyes.
“Which one?” I asked. “I want to come see you.”
“Yeah, we’ll be a great audience!” Lacey said.
“I don’t even know if I’ll be on tonight. Really, it’s nothing. I’ll let you guys know if it turns into anything. Right now this is just practice.”
“That’s so awesome!” Lacey gushed. I nodded in agreement.
“Really, it’s not a big deal.” Rachel went back to my eyebrows.
“I think it’s a big deal,” I said. “You’ve been talking about becoming a singer forever, and now you’re finally doing it! Rachel, that’s great!”
“Well, thank you,” she said. “Now hold still and let me get this liner on you. You’re going to look so pretty for tonight. Oh, you’re going to have so much fun!”
I closed my eyes and waited patiently as she worked on my face. I was so happy that Rachel was getting into singing again. It had always been what she loved to do, and I hoped it would work out for her. And Lacey, getting ready for a wedding!
All of my friends were figuring life out, it seemed. I was only a tiny bit jealous. After all, my business was doing well. But sometimes it seemed like all I ever did was work. If I could hire on an assistant…
I pushed those thoughts away. Tonight, I did not want to think about work. I wanted to have fun with Lucas, and that was it. I imagined his arms around me, his lips pressing against mine.
And I remembered the first time he’d come into my bakery, what he’d said.
I’d like to tame you.
I smiled. Yeah, I think tonight was going to be very fun.
Lucas stood in the doorway and held out a bouquet of daisies tied with a yellow ribbon.
“Ooh, pretty!” I said, taking the flowers and giving him a short hug. “Should I worry about the symbolic significance of the color yellow?”
“No symbolism,” Lucas said. “Mrs. Norberg said that she thought you would like them.”
“Well, thank you,” I said, holding the bouquet up to my chest. “It matches my dress.”
“Hey, that’s the one you bought in Paris!” Lucas said.
“You mean, the one you bought for me.”
“I was right to get it for you. You look absolutely stunning.”
I expected him to make some quip about the lingerie he’d bought me, too, but he didn’t. His eyes didn’t even linger at the top of my dress. I don’t know what I’d been hoping for, but it seemed somewhat of a disappointment.
“Let me put these flowers in water,” I said, expecting Lucas to follow me into the apartment. But he stood at the doorway patiently until I came back.
“Shall we?” he asked, holding out his arm. I hooked my hand into the crook of his elbow and closed the door.
How weird. He hadn’t even tried to kiss me.
Lucas seemed like a different person than the man who I’d known before. He was polite and courteous. He held the car door open for me. He held the restaurant door open for me. He pulled my chair out for me to sit down. And he never once tried to grab my ass, not even with all those opportunities.
It was super weird to be treated so… politely. I felt like he was keeping himself back, at a distance from me. He didn’t touch my arm or hand when he talked, like he had before. Fortunately, he was still his same funny, charming self. Soon we were trading stories about our pasts like we were comfortable friends.
“Tell me about your business.”
“You’re not going to try and help me out with it, are you?”
“Not unless you want me to.”
“I don’t,” I said quickly.
“I was more interested in how you got it all started. Why cupcakes?”
“Oh, you’re going to laugh at me.”
“Probably.”
I laughed and took another bite of my roast duck. The dinner was amazing, but I’d been so distracted by watching Lucas that I’d barely tasted it.
“I’m not going to tell you, then.”
“No, tell me. I’ll try not to laugh.”
“Promise.”
“I promise to try. What is it?”
“Okay. So at my elementary school, they had this thing. When it was your birthday, the whole class got cupcakes to celebrate. Everybody would sing happy birthday, and the teacher would bring you your cupcake with candles in it, and you would blow it out, the whole shebang.”
“And you liked the cupcakes so much…”
“No! The cupcakes were terrible. They were these shitty cupcakes from the supermarket. Boring cake mix, frosting that was just sugar paste. No, the cupcakes themselves weren’t anything special.”
“Then why?”
“Well, everybody else got to have the cupcake celebration. But my birthday is in June.”
“Ohhh.” He gave me a sympathetic look.
“And everybody was always gone on summer vacation. And so I never ever got a cupcake celebration.”
“How awful.”
“It was awful! I was so jealous of the kids who had a whole day in school with these cupcakes—”
“Shitty cupcakes.”
“Shitty cupcakes nonetheless, but they were cupcakes, and I never got one. So I decided when I grew up, I would be a baker and make cupcakes every day.”
Lucas smiled.
“That’s a long time to hold a grudge.”
“Yeah, well, it helps that I just fucking love cupcakes, too.”
He burst out laughing.
“What about you?” I asked.
“What about me?”
“How did you get started with your business? Is it a family thing? Walking in your dad’s footsteps—”
“No!” Lucas shook his head vigorously. “No, not at all.”
He’d lost his smile, and I wondered if I had stepped into a sore spot.
“So how did you get started?”
“I was a photography nut. Same like you, I started in school. I took art as an elective, and part of it was a photography semester.”
“And you just loved photography?”
“At first? No.”
“No?”
“No. But then I realized that cute girls liked having their picture taken.”
“Oh.” I crossed my arms on top of the tablecloth. “I see where this is going.”
“And if I told them they looked like a model, they would fall for me like that.” He snapped his fingers.
“Are you for real?”
“Don’t judge! This was high school. Tell me you didn’t make any mistakes in high school.”
“Okay,” I admitted. “Flared jeans were a mistake. Have you learned from your mistakes?”
“I’m still learning. I’m trying. Is that okay?”
“That’s… acceptable.”
“Anyway, so I got a lot of practice shooting portraits that way, and then I graduated high school. My mom wanted me to go to college and get a business degree. Her side of the family has always been kind of upper-class, and she wanted me to succeed.”
I didn’t ask about his dad’s side of the family.
“But you didn’t?”
“I decided to start my own photography business instead. I freelanced for a bunch of magazines, and I think I was about twenty years old when I realized that all of the people who owned the magazines had no idea what they were doing.”
“Not arrogant at all, hmm?”
“We’re all arrogant at twenty. But I thought I could outdo them. So I took all my savings and started a magazine.”
“And it did well?”
“No. Not at all. It failed miserably.” He laughed. “I didn’t know how to talk to advertisers, and so it flopped hard.”
I raised my eyebrows.
“But you’re here.”
“Well, yeah. I wasn’t about to let a little thing like losing all of my life savings get in the way of my idea, was I?”
I chuckled. I don’t know if I could be so cavalier about failing that much. Then again, this was the past, and the past was the past.
“So then what?”
“So I focused on learning more about
business, and soon I had a new magazine that made a little money. Then a little more money. Then one of the photo spreads I did got picked up by Oprah’s website, and BAM, things took off. It was nuts. We just kept expanding and expanding, and I learned more about fashion and fashion photography. Now, though, I run everything. It’s mostly business meetings and negotiations, that kind of thing.”
“Would you want to go back to being a full-time photographer?”
A smile lit up his face.
“Maybe. I like photo shoots more than anything. There’s something about finding the best way to make a model look great. I liked it even in high school, even when the girl obviously wasn’t attracted to me.”
He grinned.
“I know it’s hard to believe. What girl wouldn’t be attracted to me?”
I laughed.
“Just so you know, you’re not the only one who rejected me completely,” he said. He was still grinning, but I could see a hint of something in his eyes, something that searched mine for an answer. Before I could say anything in response, though, he jumped out of his chair and held out his hand.
“This is a great song! Dance with me,” he said.
Chapter Six
Lucas
I didn’t want to come on too strong, but the date was going well. Steph seemed to be having a good time. I had to slap my hand back every time I saw her gorgeous ass in that cream gown, but I thought that I was doing a pretty damn good job at being a gentleman.
She let me escort her to the open dance floor. Nobody else was dancing, but the four-piece orchestra was playing one of my favorite classical pieces.
I slid my hand around the small of her back. God, just that one touch was enough to ignite a white-hot desire in my groin. She was so soft, so supple. It was like she was silk, flowing under my hands. The violin bow danced across the strings, and she followed my lead as I pulled her into a circular waltz.
“I’m impressed. Have you been practicing since Paris?” I asked.
Her laugh was like honey. She shook her golden hair, her hand warm against mine.
“Not unless you count dancing naked in the mirror to ABBA every morning,” she said.
The thought of her dancing around naked made my cock stiffen. I struggled not to pull her closer as we turned on the dance floor. She really moved perfectly to the music. Some women tried to lead, tugging me along. Other women were way too passive, and I ended up stepping on their feet.