His Secrets

by Bishop, K. M.

  “Darcy, get out of the way. What are you doing?”

  “Tell me you don’t miss it.”

  “What?”

  “Do it! Tell me you don’t miss me. You can’t… can you?”

  “Get out of the way.”

  I was getting sick of her. Darcy was a strong-willed woman, but at this moment she was acting ridiculous.

  “No,” she said. “Not until you admit that you need me. You miss being with me. I know we always said we’d never work as an actual couple, but why not give it a try?”

  Darcy leaned against me and tried to kiss me. Her hands were around my neck pulling me closer to her. She smelled amazing. She felt even better. I wanted her. My body was reacting in ways that I had little control over, but this was not going to happen. I had to get out of there. Darcy was fighting so hard though. Would I be able to resist? I just wasn’t sure, but I had to try.

  “Let me go,” I demanded.

  “Tell me that you don’t want this. I know you can’t do it. That’s why you won’t.”

  Darcy ripped her blouse open to reveal her large, beautiful breasts shackled back by a sexy, black bra. She continued to try to kiss me. I was moving my head back from her as far as I could. I didn’t really know what to do here. This was insane.

  I finally managed to step away from her. I figured I might try the back door.

  But before I did, Darcy reached up and slapped me across the face. It hurt. The strength of her slap was strong and stung in the shape of her hand print. I wondered how long that mark would last.

  I was so shocked that all I could do was laugh. This woman needed professional psychiatric help. I was convinced of it. How had I never seen it before? Maybe that was the real reason I’d never wanted to be in a real relationship with her.

  “Get away!” I yelled. “It’s over.”

  Darcy turned around and pulled her skirt up to reveal that she was not wearing any panties. She reached behind and spread her cheeks open. I could see her pussy and her tight little asshole, all primed and ready for me. It was hypnotic for a moment.

  “Take it. Fuck me in the ass, even. I want you. I’ll give it all to you,” Darcy said. “You can have whatever you want.”

  The absurdity of it all began to get to me. I laughed at this idiotic notion and was able to snap myself out of the daze and confusion that Darcy had thrown me into.

  “You need help,” I said.

  I quickly walked out of the kitchen, through the living room, and out the back door.

  Darcy was yelling at me as I made my way around the side of the house towards my car.

  “You need me! You can’t just throw me aside! You will pay for this!” Darcy yelled.

  I ignored the rantings and ravings and got into my car. I checked my face where she’d slapped me (it still stung) and then drove away. I was never going to see that woman again. The insanity had finally revealed itself and wow… you just never knew what was inside of someone else’s mind, did you?

  I laughed about the experience as I drove home. I was tempted to tell Tina about it, but I wasn’t sure if she would be angry or if she would share in the chuckle about it with me. I decided for the moment to just keep it to myself.

  I was going to tell Dane and Peter. They would appreciate the hilarity of it all.

  As I drove home, I wondered what had finally gotten to Darcy to get her to go insane like that. Had she always loved me? Did she not want to be just friends with benefits as we once were? Or did she think that this thing with Tina would eventually go away and things would go back to the way they were before?

  I decided by the time I got home that I didn’t care at all. I was with the love of my life and I wasn’t going to waste time wondering where I went wrong with some crazy woman that I used to know.

  But I also felt guilty. I felt guilty about lying to Tina about my family. She was going to find out and she was going to be crushed.

  I parked the car in my garage and went inside. I poured myself a drink and sat down to watch a good movie on my favorite streaming channel. Tina was hanging out with Donna or Amy tonight, I believed. So, I figured I’d take advantage of the quiet evening and have some time to myself. It had been a while since I’d actually done that.

  Every so often Tina and I would take the occasional evening away from each other, usually to see friends or family, or just to give each other a break. We both found that it reinvigorated the relationship and kept things from getting stale. It was important to each of us to have some alone time. I’ve always felt it was necessary to facilitate growth within oneself.

  But after a while of watching television in that big empty house by myself I started to feel a bit lonely and bored. I was mostly feeling guilty though, not only about the Darcy thing, but also the family/dad thing. The guilt was eating me up inside. Why did I keep doing this to myself? Did I really think that Tina would tell me that it was all over because of who my father was?

  I hadn’t even told her my father’s real name, because it was too easy to pull things up online nowadays. I told her my father’s name was Tobias, which was his middle name. This was just enough to disguise that he was once known as Larry, The Hammer, Maynard.

  My father had always hated that nickname anyway. It made him sound like some insipid cartoon character, he said. I remembered very little from those days when he was still in the mob, but I still did have the occasional flashback.

  He’d gotten out of the life and didn’t need constant reminding of the horrors he’d once been involved in. And that type of life is not designed to let you just walk away from it. Usually, you get murdered or you go to prison. There is no “I don’t feel like it anymore”. My father had to go through a lot to get out and even to this day he wouldn’t tell me what that entailed. I suspected he had to tie up a lot of loose ends, and probably in very violent ways.

  It used to give me nightmares, thinking that my father might have gone back to the life. I mean, he could have easily any time he wanted to. Getting in was always easier than getting out.

  But so far, he’d kept his promise to my mother. And my father was a good man at heart; I knew that. He just got caught up in a bad situation.

  I wished I had as much courage as my father did. Here I was afraid to tell my fiancé about my family’s dark past. My father had gone through hell and back to keep a promise to me and my mother.

  I felt like a failure, a fraud. I didn’t deserve Tina. I had to tell her the truth. Why the hell couldn’t I just open my mouth and say it?

  Fear. That was it. I was afraid, a coward. I kept forgetting this, but it was always right there. I was scared to death of losing her. But the irony was that if she found out some other way, I was much more likely to lose her. Yet, I still couldn’t bring myself to face this.

  Chapter Six

  Tina

  “He is cute,” I said to Donna.

  She refilled my glass and I leaned back on her sofa. The two of us were hanging out at her place and having some wine. Tori was lounging out in the pool. She didn’t have much to add to the conversations that evening, so she decided to go outside and pout because we weren’t giving her enough attention, as if this mattered to us. Yes, our friend acted like a four year old sometimes. But she was our friend, so we put up with it.

  Donna and I had been talking mostly about our new jobs and about Donna’s new boyfriend, Roy Helms. She’d only been dating Roy for a few weeks, but she was already talking like she thought there was something special there. I was happy for her. Donna rarely got serious about any guy, especially one she’d only known a few weeks. So, for her to get this excited, this fast—it had to be something.

  The guy was gorgeous. He looked like some kind of Calvin Klein model, or Zac Efron, if he were about five inches taller with shoulder length, brown hair. The guy looked just a little bit dangerous, too. He had a dark, brooding quality to him and the tiniest scar on his chin.

  I felt a bit weird noticing all of this, but just because I wa
s engaged did not mean I’d become blind to all the attractive men in the universe.

  “Right?” Donna asked. “And he is so sweet to me. I mean, he is pretty cold to most people and he is very blunt, but I kind of like that. It’s reassuring, like he isn’t pretending for anyone. What you see is what you get, right?”

  “Yeah, totally. I get that. What does he do?”

  “He is a personal trainer, but he is saving money to open his own gym with a friend of his. And he has a fairly popular YouTube fitness channel, and through that he has developed a decent list of clients for whom he designs online coaching plans. He also uses it to sell supplements, and other affiliate products. The guy is doing pretty well for himself.”

  I nodded. I was impressed. “Nice.”

  I was happy for my friend. Donna had always seen guys as a bit of a joke, and she’d never been the type to take a man seriously, even if she was supposedly in a relationship with him. I always knew that one day she would find a great man to settle down with, and while it was too soon to call this “the one”, I had a good feeling. She was a lot more tame than she normally was. Typically, Donna had a biting tongue and sarcastic wit which tended to get out of hand depending on who was around her. I was used to it, and sometimes it could be pretty amusing, but now that she was dating Roy, she seemed so much calmer and more put together.

  I wondered if the strength of my relationship with Blake had inspired her to take a good guy seriously and work on her own love life. Probably not; it most likely had just happened randomly, as most things in her life did.

  “So, what’s Tori’s problem” Donna asked.

  We both glanced out the window at Tori who was laying in the pool on a floating chair. She had her sunglasses on (even though it was just past dusk) and she had the most depressed look on her face I’d ever seen.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe she feels a bit left out.”

  “But it’s been seven months since Tyler,” Donna said. “Can she please grow up already and get over it?”

  I nodded in agreement. “I know, but despite Tori’s tough and outgoing exterior, I believe she sometimes feels insecure.”

  “I heard a rumor…” Donna said.

  I was instantly curious, but I didn’t want to hear at the same time. It felt wrong somehow. I knew how rumors were, and that they were often completely false, they could do a lot of damage.

  “You know what they say about rumors…” I said.

  “Yeah, I don’t care. I’m bored and this is interesting.”

  I laughed. Donna was being totally straight. She often didn’t see how funny her bluntness could actually be.

  “But I heard that towards the end of their breakup, Tori and Tyler were expecting…”

  “What? You are joking. That can’t be true.”

  “That’s what I heard from a few people,” Donna said.

  “We are her best friends; if there was a baby involved then we would have known.”

  “Well, the people that knew, were not supposed to know,” Donna said. “Anyway, I heard that Tori miscarried and lost the baby. That was right before she and Tyler broke up. I’m not sure if that’s why they broke up, or if it was just the timing.”

  “Do you really think that happened?” I asked. I was now genuinely concerned. That would have been a nightmare to go through, and if Tori ever confided in me about this, I would have done my best to be there for my friend. But I didn’t want to bring it up based off a rumor.

  Donna shrugged. “I don’t know. I hope not. But it would explain a lot about why Tori has been so up and down lately. I’m sure you’ve noticed. She is the life of the party one moment and then she is depressed beyond approach the next.”

  “Yeah, I have noticed.”

  “Well, let’s just hope she has a drug problem, and that didn’t actually happen to her,” Donna said.

  I hit her playfully. “You have issues.”

  “So, I wanted to ask you if you and Blake would be interested in going to Snowbowl with me and Roy next weekend.”

  “I’d have to check with Blake, but I’m free, so that would be fun. I hope we can make it.”

  “Great. I hear that Roy is an amazing skier. Supposedly, he won a bunch of amateur contests and was on his way to train for the Olympics, but he broke his ankle. After that it was never quite the same.”

  “Wow, he sounds great then. Maybe he will put on a good show for us.”

  “Oh, I think he only shows it off for me,” Donna teased.

  “You know what I mean,” I said.

  “Well, he used to be a stripper,” Donna replied.

  “Shut up. He did not,” I said.

  Donna pulled out her phone and pulled up some video. There Roy was stripping on stage. His hair was even longer then.

  “Wow, I can’t believe it!” I said. “That’s hilarious. You can never let him live that down.”

  “Oh, he is so proud of it.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, the only reason he stopped doing it was because he started getting weird stalkers after him. Some of these women were psycho. He eventually just decided there were better ways to make a living.”

  “Wow, I never realized that stripping was that dangerous.”

  “Yep, apparently,” Donna giggled. “He still has some of the costumes. He’s done a few strip teases for me.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, Magic Mike, eat your heart out!”

  We both burst out laughing.

  “This is too much fun,” I said. I finished my glass of wine, thought about filling it back up, but decided against it.

  “So, what is he into?” I asked. “He sounds like a riot.”

  “No, he is actually pretty serious,” Donna said. “He has his goofy moments, usually when it is just the two of us, but he mostly is pretty quiet and intensely brooding.”

  “Ah, that sounds hot.”

  “I know it’s a cliché, but there is something about the strong, silent type who are intimidating that gets me wet.”

  “You have issues,” I said. “But yeah, you are totally right.”

  “So, how are things with you and Blake?”

  “They are good,” I said. “We are meeting with the wedding planner later this week.”

  “So, he finally talked you into that? I told you it would be a waste to not take that offer.”

  “Right. I talked to my mom about it and she agreed,” I said. “So, I figured if that many people are telling me to do it, then why not. But still, I wanted the satisfaction of everything coming together perfectly, designed and orchestrated by me. I might be crazy, but that’s always been important to me. I’ve dreamt of it since I was a little girl.”

  “Ok. I can see that,” Donna said. “But you aren’t superwoman; it is impossible to do all that by yourself, especially the way you want to do things and hold down a full-time job. I mean, I know you could do it, but you’d be ready for the asylum afterwards.”

  “Well, they say marriage is an institution…” I said.

  Donna looked at me a moment and then started laughing her head off. The wine was obviously getting to both of us. When the two of us got together, the silliness started.

  “Oh, I wanted to show you something,” Donna said.

  She got up and went into the other room. When she came back a moment later, she had a card in her hand to show me.

  “What is this?”

  Donna giggled. “It is the delights that await you.”

  “What?”

  “Open it up,” she said.

  I opened the envelope and there inside of it was a small card, like a business card. It said “Trevor Stark, male exotic dancer.”

  “What is this?”

  “It’s for your bachelorette party…” Donna purred in my ear. Then she got up and started dancing to no music.

  “No, I am not having a stripper at my bachelorette party,” I said. “No. There is no way I will go for that.”

  “You
have to.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Yes, you do. I already ordered and paid for it; you can’t back out now,” Donna informed me.

  “Well, then you are out of luck, because I can’t do that. What would Blake say? This is the type of thing that I definitely do not want.”

  Donna looked sad and annoyed. “Ugh, why are you being such a downer?”

  “You know that it’s weird,” I said. “Blake might even be cool with it, but I don’t think that I would be ok with it. I would feel so freaking guilty. I can’t… I just can’t…”

  “Fine. I’ll see if I can cancel him. I doubt I’ll get a refund. Maybe he’ll do half, or maybe I can book him for a private show here just for me?”

  “What? You think that Roy would appreciate that?”

  “Roy doesn’t have to know about it,” Donna said with an evil cackle.

  “You are warped. I know you haven’t been in a relationship for a while, but stuff like this—it usually doesn’t go over well.”

  “Then that is not fun,” Donna said. “And I want to have fun. Just fun, fun, fun…”

  She stumbled back to her seat.

  “How many glasses of wine did you have before I came over?” I asked.

  Donna thought a moment and then shrugged. “I have no idea.”

  She grabbed the bottle and poured herself another drink and then offered more to me. I declined.

  Donna stuck out her tongue at me and then drank a big gulp.

  “So, what do you think we should to perk up Tori?” Donna asked.

  “I wasn’t aware she was all that bad off,” I said. “I mean, I’ve noticed her moodiness, but if she had any real issues, I’m sure she’d come to us.”

  “You think? …… I know!”

  Donna jumped up and started getting excited.

  “What?” I asked. I was already worried.

  “We will get this stripper to give her an extra private dance…”

  I let the words sink in. Was she saying what I thought she was saying?

  “Wait… they do that?” I asked.

  “They will do anything if the price is right,” Donna said. “And I might just make this price right for our friend.”