Friends with Benefits

by Amy Brent

  Out of control in all the best ways.

  “I’m not in love with her. I’m not in love with her. I’m not in love with her.”

  I chanted it all the way to the cabana. I got out of my car and headed for the tent, and I could tell Chad was surprised to see me. He checked the schedule before shooting another glance over to me, and then he cleared a space off at the bar and ushered for me to sit.

  “What brings you around when you’re not working?” Chad asked.

  “Dude, I need some serious help.”

  “We all know this,” he said. “I got the number of a great shrink.”

  “I’m serious. No games. No gimmicks. I need help.”

  “All right. Calm down. What happened now?”

  “Remember Olivia?” I asked.

  “Hard to forget her. I’d be all over her if I wasn’t madly in love with Laura. What’s going on now?”

  I wasn’t sure how much to tell him. What could I get away with leaving out that would still communicate my frustrations? What could I leave out of Chad’s ears so I wouldn’t get into trouble? Chad knew. He knew what I was doing to these women. It was just that I never spoke directly to him about it, just in case I got caught.

  Like right now.

  “Let’s just assume I know everything,” Chad said as he threw a rag over his shoulder. “What’s the most recent thing that happened?”

  “Olivia’s not a real estate agent. She’s a private investigator.”

  Chad looked at me and blinked a few times. Like he was trying to process whether what had just been said was real. In a flash, Chad looked down and began preparing two drinks, one for himself and one for me. He handed it to me before we clinked glasses. Then, the two of us downed the drinks.

  “Holy shit, that burned,” I said.

  “Good. Let me take a break, and then you’re gonna have to repeat that sentence again.”

  He clocked out, and the two of us headed to the back room. The door shut behind us just as Chad turned on the light. I flopped down into the chair that Olivia occupied only days ago.

  “She’s a PI,” Chad said.

  “Yeah.”

  “I take it you did something to a woman, and she’s hunting you down for it?”

  “Apparently,” I said. “She posed as a real estate investor and developer to sniff me out.”

  “So, why aren’t you in handcuffs?” Chad asked.

  “That’s the problem. I’m not too sure.”

  “Well, start from the beginning of the evening this shit went down and tell me what happened, dude.”

  “It was all last night.”

  “Oh, so this is recent,” Chad said.

  “Very. I recognized the lawyer who signed off on the real estate purchase paperwork, so I placed a phone call to his secretary and got her jowls flapping long enough for her to tell me who Olivia really was.”

  “All right. Then what happened?”

  “I called her up and asked her to come talk. She seemed happy to come over, and I sat there waiting for her with the paperwork.”

  “Oh, dude, you fucking cornered her, didn’t you?” Chad asked.

  “Of course, I fucking cornered her. She conned me, man.”

  “Uh huh. And that makes you angry because?”

  “Because no one fucking cons Wesley Fox.”

  “I have another theory, but go on,” Chad said.

  “She practically spilled everything. How this chick named Destiny was coming after me. How she had all this information on me. She was calm, cool, collected. Just as confident as ever with her shoulders rolled back until I started to pull away. Then, she caved.”

  “Caved how?”

  “She started flying off the handle at how she couldn’t do this anymore. How she had been debating for days on whether to tell me what was going on. About how she enjoyed the time around me and how she was falling back in love with me.”

  “Wait, wait, wait. She told you she was falling for you?”

  “No,” I said. “She actually told me she loved me.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I laughed at her.”

  “You what?” Chad asked.

  “I laughed at her. I mean, what kind of bullshit is that? She comes strutting into my life with her lies and her fairy tales and then falls in love during her own fucking con? It’s perfect. It was the perfect karma for what she pulled.”

  “A woman you’ve been salivating over for almost two weeks now, a woman you can’t stop talking about, a woman who has single-handedly stopped you from hitting on middle-aged women before crushing their hearts, tells you she’s in love with you, and you laughed at her?”

  “What the hell else was I supposed to do?” I asked.

  “Tell her you love her back, moron,” Chad said.

  “I don’t fucking love her.”

  “Yes, you do,” he said. “I see it in your face every single time she comes around. Every single time you mention her name. Every single time some other woman comes around asking for a drink and flirting with you. You’ve asked for more advice about this one woman than you’ve ever asked in the three, almost four, years you’ve worked here. You love her, and it pisses you off that you love her.”

  “I don’t love her, Chad.”

  “Yes, you do,” he said. “You look at her the same way I used to look at Laura. Hell, I still look at Laura that way. Your sexual escapades, all this shit you’ve gotten into with her, you haven’t ever done this with any other woman. You’re not smitten with her, nor are you pissed that she fooled you. You’re pissed that you fell in love with a woman who you thought was perfect, only to figure out she’s not. And you’re pissed now because you still love her, and you can’t get her out of your head, despite what happened last night.”

  I sat there with fire in my eyes. What the fuck was my boss talking about? I couldn’t be in love with Olivia. Look at what she’d done!

  But then I looked down at the chair I was sitting in, and I remembered the kiss. The way her body had leaned into me. The way she was so quick to give herself over to me. I could feel the way her hands pressed into my thighs and the warmth that ricocheted over my body when her skin met mine.

  Then, I remembered the look in her eye. I hadn’t paid attention to it when it first happened, but it was glaringly obvious now. The pain and the confusion that peppered her gaze when she pulled back from me. The fear that had arisen behind them when she stood to push past me.

  The slight glistening of the tears just before she shoved her way through the door.

  “Fuck, I love her,” I whispered.

  “I know you do. The question is, do you still want to?”

  I closed my eyes before I pressed my palms deep into them. I wanted to force back the emotions. I wanted to compartmentalize all of it in the back of my mind. I was good at doing that, at splicing little moments and keeping them in their rightful boxes. But Olivia had come in like a whirlwind and knocked all of them down at once. I’d bent her over every single box I created and fucked her senseless while she rummaged through them, trying to piece back together my life while I lost myself in her.

  She was trying to help me. Fix me. Make me better.

  And all I’d done was laugh in her face when she’d uttered those beautiful, poetic words.

  “Holy hell, I laughed at her.”

  “Yeah, and that’s pretty fucked up,” he said. “If you still want her, you’re gonna have to do something. And quick. Otherwise, you’ll never get her back.”

  “You’re right,” I said. “I know you are. But how the hell do I do that? How do I come back from last night? For fuck’s sake, I told her to get the hell out and never come back. I told her I was conning her.”

  “You’ve messed with a lot of people, and I don’t know if someone’s gonna come after you or not, but whatever you do, it’s gotta be big. A big, selfless display of not just love but sorrow. Sorrow for laughing in her face when she was at her most vulnerable. She told you,
right? What she was doing? It’s not like you pulled it from her.”

  “Yeah, she spilled everything while she was crying,” I said.

  “Yeah, massive. Massive, selfless, and sorrowful. The love stuff can come later. Right now, you gotta find a way to apologize.”

  “When should I do it?” I asked.

  “Before this fucking weekend’s over, if you can.”

  “That doesn’t give me a lot of time,” I said. “There’s only, like, eight more hours in this damn weekend anyway.”

  “Then, I suggest you hurry,” he said. “But I gotta get back to the bar. Good luck.”

  The two of us walked out to the sounds of a woman yelling at the bar. Chad and I started jogging over, but the moment we barreled through the tent, I froze.

  There she was in all her plastic surgery glory.

  Destiny was yelling for me at the bar.

  “Where’s that piece of shit?”

  “I take it she’s one of yours?” Chad asked.

  “Fuck,” I whispered.

  I watched her turn around as her fiery eyes hooked onto me. She grazed her sight up and down my body, clocking all the things that were different about me before she began to stalk toward me. Her finger was pointed right at my face, and people were staring. Visions of my imminent arrest sailed through my head as she approached.

  “Whatever this thing is you’ve got going on in your life, it’s done,” she said.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You can play dumb all you fucking want, you piece of trash, but I’ve got proof. Not that the bitch’ll hand it over, but it’s there. I know it is. And when I’ve got it, I’m pressing charges that’ll keep you rotting in a cell for decades. You hear me? You’ll be gone forever for what you’ve done.”

  “I’m sorry, are you looking for someone else?” I asked.

  “What the fuck’s wrong with you?” she asked. “Of course, I’m not looking for someone else, Alex Ruth. I’m looking right at the pathetic excuse of a man I came to see.”

  “Sweetheart, I’m not sure if—”

  “If you fucking call me anything but my name one more time, you won’t need the police where I’m gonna put you.”

  “All right,” Chad said. “I believe you need to leave, ma’am.”

  “You know what you did!” Destiny yelled. “You know what you did, and you’re going to pay for it. You won’t get away with this, Alex. Not one fucking bit!”

  “I’m not sure who Alex is, ma’am,” I said.

  “Wesley, stop,” Chad said, shaking his head.

  “I’m going to kill you for what you’ve done to me and my son!” Destiny shrieked as one of the bouncers escorted her from the cabana.

  “Did you hear what she said?” Chad asked.

  “I heard a lot of things that crazy ass woman just said.”

  “That’s the woman who hired Olivia, right?” he asked.

  “Huh?”

  “Don’t play dumb. Come on, this place is gonna pick up in a bit, and I wanna see if you heard it.”

  “Heard what?” I asked.

  “‘Not that the bitch’ll hand it over.’ She was talking about the evidence against you, right?”

  My eyes widened as I thought back to what Destiny had just yelled. Chad was right. She could’ve only been talking about one person.

  And if what Destiny was saying was right, that meant Olivia, for whatever reason, wasn’t handing over the evidence she had against me.

  “Go find her, Wesley, and don’t fuck it up again. I’ve got this covered if she comes back.”

  I ran to my car and hopped in. I sped off back down the road, but I didn’t turn down the road I usually took to get to my home. Instead, I drove over to Nelson Wainwright’s offices and parked before I started looking around.

  If there was one thing I knew about Olivia, it was that she kept her friends close.

  Olivia was never one to have friends in high school, and being a private investigator would coop her up just like she liked. That meant the lawyer she used regularly would probably be within walking distance of her workplace. I looked around and walked a few blocks, looking for signs that pointed to her office.

  But even though I found her building, it was clear no one was there.

  “Shit.”

  I pulled out my phone and dialed Olivia’s number, but all I got was her voicemail. I tried her a couple more times before I finally left her a message, but I knew Olivia was a creature of habit. I assumed she wasn’t very close with her father, given what he’d done to her mother, but I did remember her talking all the time about things her and her mother did over the weekends.

  She was very close to her mother then, so I could only assume they were still close now.

  I searched for Louise Hart on the internet, but when nothing came up, I tried to think of what her mother’s maiden name was. I groaned as I racked my brain. Then, a conversation I once had with Olivia behind the school our senior year answered my question for me. She had been so distraught at the fact that her mother wouldn’t let her change her last name. Louise got to change her last name back to Barker, and Olivia wanted to as well. She was crying because she didn’t want the last name of the man who’d ruined their family.

  My chest clenched down in pain at the memory as I searched for Louise Barker.

  A couple of people popped up, but one particular address raised some red flags. I couldn’t quite remember Olivia’s exact home address when we were back in high school, but I did know the house sat on the same road as the address I was looking at did.

  So, I decided to take a chance. I got into my car, typed in the address into the GPS, and then got back onto the road.

  If a big gesture was needed, a big gesture was what she would get.

  Chapter 26

  Olivia

  I pulled up in front of my mother’s house before I cut off my car. For the first time since all this started, my head was no longer swirling. I was no longer picturing Wesley or wondering what he was doing. I was no longer feeling my nipples pucker at the idea of his lips on my body. I wasn’t even crying any longer over the loss of him.

  I felt numb, and I wanted to lean into my mother’s embrace and get away for a while.

  I climbed out of my car and dragged myself onto the porch just as my mother ripped the door open. Louise opened her arms for a broad embrace, and I stumbled into them before beginning to cry. My mother held me tightly before she shut the door, and then, the two of us maneuvered over to the couch and flopped down together.

  “Oh, my Olivia,” Louise said. “What’s going on?”

  “It’s so much, Mom. Oh, holy hell, it’s so much.”

  “With language like that, it must be. Come on, try to talk with me. What’s happened?”

  “Do you remember Wesley Wilton?” I asked.

  “How could I forget him? He was your first love in high school.”

  “I found him,” I said.

  “Found him where?” she asked.

  I started crying again and laid my head on my mother’s shoulder. My mother’s fingertips stroked through my hair, and it felt soothing. By the time I was done adjusting, my head was resting in my mother’s lap. I sniffled, trying desperately to keep my sobs at bay, but the more I allowed myself to relax, the more my emotions poured forth.

  “I took on a case tracking down a guy who had slept with a woman using a fake name and then stole her stuff. It was Wes, Mom.”

  “Are you sure it was him?”

  “I spent two weeks tangled up in him. Of course, it was him.”

  “Oh, sweetheart,” she said. “All right. Back up. What happened?”

  “I executed this plan to get close to him. I posed as a real estate developer and investor, wanting to purchase a piece of property he was selling. I was going to ask him a few questions, lead him on with some fake documents, and then nail him for the crime when I had enough evidence.”

  “So, what happened?” Louise asked.

 
; “He happened. Mom, the moment I saw him, all those memories and emotions came flooding back. We were looking at the property, and I just caved to him. Over and over again.”

  “Oh, honey.”

  “And I kept up the ruse,” I said, crying. “And I kept caving. And he was just like he used to be, Mom. Charming and witty. Funny and handsome. My gosh, he looks so incredible now. I fell back in love with him, and I had to cut off the investigation. And now, my only friend won’t even talk to me, and I’ve lost Wes again.”

  “How did you lose your friend?” Louise asked.

  “She was the one Wes did this to.”

  “Has he done it to other women?”

  “Not that I can prove. I assume so, but they never filed reports or complained or anything, so there’s nothing.”