“Okay, okay,” Olivia said, waving her hands to silence them. “Let’s make a list of who everybody wants to be. Then…we’ll go from there.”
If only to say that she had tried, Olivia detoured to walk past the Internet café on her way home that day and the next, dragging herself inside the dim interior and paying the fee to use a computer for an hour. There were approximately sixty computers in the cramped space, lined up in rows of eight, and Olivia found a free one next to the window. The guy beside her was wearing a headset and muttering furiously as he glowered at the screen where a car was careening through town, gunfire exploding out the windows.
She waited for the computer to start up and pretended to ignore the curious stares, eventually logging in to her e-mail and finding three new messages and two hundred junk e-mails. It had been weeks since she’d last come in here; she remembered the days when not an hour would pass without a text or an e-mail or some social media update. Now she had two messages from her parents—the last from a week before—and one from Willa Jetz, her college roommate, who now taught kindergarten outside of Boston.
She clicked on Willa’s message and read through, feeling guilty that she wasn’t keeping in touch more frequently. Willa was one of the few people who hadn’t shied away from her in the past year—perhaps due to the fact that she lived in another state, but maybe not—and she’d faced her own difficulties recently, though the e-mail said she was doing better.
Olivia typed out a reply, apologizing for being an absentee friend, recounting the tale of the four Spidermans and a few other events, but omitting any mention of Jarek. What would she say, exactly? He gave me the best orgasm of my life yesterday, just hours after humiliating me in front of all the people he works with? Please tell me I’m not desperate and pathetic for letting him in, even though he refuses to spend the night?
She hit send, then skimmed the messages from her parents. The usual inquiries, updates about things Olivia no longer cared about. She signed out and sighed, strumming her fingers on the desktop. Back when she’d been popular, her days had been jam-packed with things to do, people to see, and she’d liked it. She liked having friends. She liked going out and meeting new people. She’d been upset at the bar, but it was nice talking to the newcomers. Marcus, the geologist or geographer or something, had been really funny. She wanted that again. She wanted to go places and do things. She had a trip to Thailand booked for early June that she both anticipated and dreaded in equal measures. She’d bought a ticket for the week of her birthday, naïvely believing she would overcome her fear of the unknown by moving to China, then spend a week in Thailand, confident and carefree.
As she had so many times before, Olivia looked up pictures of Thailand and tried to imagine herself wandering around happily, but couldn’t. She could barely envision herself in China, and she’d been there for months. She had to get out more, learn how to get around strange places, gain confidence. A surge of inspiration hit and she typed “Shanghai” into the search engine. She hadn’t been back since her plane had landed and she’d taken the bus to the train station. She’d conquered Lazhou, surely now she was ready for a day trip to Shanghai.
“Do you want to come with me to Shanghai this weekend?”
“No.” Normally Jarek would have let the conversation end there, but Olivia looked so surprised—and so stung—that he gave in and explained. “I’ve traveled a lot. I’m over it. Too many people. Too much hassle. It’s not for me.”
“Then why’d you come to China?”
“To get my brother off my back.” At her perplexed look, he elaborated again. Too much of this and he’d become a proper conversationalist. “He’s friends with Brant, and I’ve done work for him before. Brant needed a carpenter because his usual guy couldn’t come for some reason or another, so here I am.”
Olivia shrugged and snagged a piece of shrimp from the plate between them. “Okay.”
Jarek watched her across the small table as he finished his beer. She didn’t seem upset, which was a relief. He didn’t want to go to Shanghai, but if she’d pushed him he’d have agreed. Lately he’d started feeling like she was getting him to do a lot of things he didn’t want to do, and making it seem like his idea. Apologizing when he was an asshole. Inviting her over to his apartment. She was coming over tonight for the first time, and he was dreading it. He never brought women home, no matter where home was at the time. He always went to their place, that way he could leave when he was ready, no awkward small talk, no strained excuses as to why they couldn’t spend the night.
Still, Olivia had seemed different this evening, reserved, telling him stories about her students without her usual dry humor. “Something else bothering you?” he asked. Shit. He hated being this guy. If she poured out her heart about something, he wouldn’t know what to say. He’d never been a caretaker. Jonah was the nice brother, everybody knew it.
“Not really.”
He relaxed an iota, relieved, then ate the green peppers she’d shunted to the side of the plate. “Did you accidentally eat a green pepper?” Where had that come from? She’d said she was fine and he was still prying? He didn’t. Want. To know.
“I talked to my mom yesterday.”
“She all right?”
“Yeah, she’s fine. Everybody’s fine.”
“Then what’s the problem?”
“Nothing.”
“Homesick?”
Her smile was sad. “No.”
“You want to tell me why you left Michigan? Beyond not being popular anymore?”
She shrugged and poked her bowl of steamed rice with her chopsticks. “I did something a lot of people didn’t like. It was the right thing to do, but…they didn’t think so.”
“You going to tell me what it is?”
She straightened in her seat and shook her head as though clearing it. “No. It’s in the past. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“You look like you need to.” He gave himself a mental kick. Shut up, ass hat.
“Thanks, Jarek. You don’t have to do this.”
He frowned. “Do what?”
“This.” She gestured between them. “Be nice, or whatever.”
“I can be nice.”
She patted his hand. “I know you can. What’d you do today?”
Relieved, he let her change the subject. “Worked. Same as always.” He decided not to tell her he’d spent the better part of an hour drawing trees, trying to figure out how much wood he’d need to make her a little forest for her class play. He couldn’t decide if he was doing it because he wanted to, or because he still felt bad about what had happened at the bar. And he really couldn’t decide which reason was worse.
The server came by and dropped the bill on the table without pausing. They watched her stroll off, bemused. “Guess we’re done,” Olivia said.
“You go now!” Jarek whispered in a high-pitched voice. “You stay long enough!”
She giggled. No one had ever actually said those words, but the service at the delicious-but-unwelcoming hole-in-the-wall restaurant was never exactly friendly. They’d take it personally, but everyone seemed to receive the same level of disinterested service, Chinese or otherwise.
Something in his chest loosened up when she laughed, showing all those white teeth. “You actually ready to go?” Jarek asked.
“Yeah. I’m ready.”
He put his hand on her back when they left the restaurant, the closest he’d ever managed to come to holding her hand. Stacey had always insisted on holding hands but Jarek hated it, and after they broke up he’d never done it again.
It was only seven o’clock, so they stopped in a couple of stores on the way back. Olivia bought more DVDs, including the fourth season of Parenthood, which she’d forced him to start watching, and now they were both hooked.
He was worried his feet would start to drag when they approached his building, or that his hands would tremble when he unlocked the door, but the worst thing that happened was running
into Dale in the hallway when they stepped out of the elevator.
“Hey,” Dale said, looking between the two of them. He was wearing a red muscle shirt and looked ridiculous.
Jarek felt the irrational urge to explain the situation. I’m just going to show her something. She’s not staying. She’s not my girlfriend, except she is.
“Hey, Dale. Working out?” Olivia nodded at the towel in his meaty hand.
“Yeah. Training Ritchie. He wants to be in shape for that teacher friend of yours.”
“Be nice to him.”
“Me? Always.” Dale got into the elevator and Jarek took the keys out of his pocket.
“You ready for this?” he asked.
“I don’t know. Am I?”
He opened the door and she gasped as though he’d revealed a treasure trove of gold. Olivia braced a hand on the wall for support. “Is this really happening?” she breathed.
“Shut up and get in before I change my mind.” He swatted her ass as she sauntered past. The place didn’t look too bad with the light from the setting sun coming in. It was minimally furnished, but what was there was nice, modern. Better than everything she had.
“I like it,” she said, peeking into the bathroom. “Do you ever use the kitchen?”
“Not really.”
“Ooh. A television.” She stroked her fingers along the top of the screen reverently. “Imagine watching Parenthood on this.” To date they’d watched everything on her laptop, since her apartment had come with neither a television nor a DVD player. It was cramped in her twin bed, but he’d gotten used to sitting close beside her, the computer balanced on her knees as they watched.
“I got you something,” Jarek said, feeling a pang of discomfort.
She looked at him with interest. “Yeah? What?”
He plucked a DVD from behind his back. He’d bought it at the store when she wasn’t looking. “Your favorite movie star.”
Olivia wrinkled her nose, but not in distaste. “Julia Roberts? She’s not my favorite.”
“Look at that smile. Those teeth. It’s you.”
She laughed. “I like Julia Roberts, I don’t look like Julia Roberts. Also, she’s playing a prostitute here.”
“What about those boots you wore the other night? You could clomp around in nothing but those, smiling, and you’d be a dead ringer.”
“Good to know you fantasize about prostitutes, Jarek.”
“You want to watch it?”
She looked at him. “Do you want to watch it? You always complain about my movies.”
He shrugged. “I’ve never seen it. Whatever. It’s your call. We can watch something else.”
“No.” She squeezed his fingers and took the DVD, plucking it from its sleeve. “Let’s watch. I like this one. Thank you.”
For some reason he didn’t know how to respond. She wasn’t making a big deal about it—and it wasn’t a big deal, the thing had cost, like, a dollar—but he’d done it to cheer her up, and thought maybe he had. And there she went again, making him do things he wouldn’t normally do, without asking him to do anything at all.
“You want a beer?”
“Sure.”
He grabbed two bottles from the fridge and joined her on the couch. They sat a full two feet apart as the movie started. “This is kind of a novelty,” Olivia remarked.
“What?”
“Not sitting in your armpit. Having an actual couch, and a television.”
“It’s a palace.”
She had a bed, a wardrobe, and a nightstand in one room, a desk and chair in the other, and the dining room table in the third. They spent a lot of time in bed, not all of it fooling around.
“It’s kind of a luxury.” She stretched out, crossing her feet on his table, then glanced at him. “Do you mind if I look in your bedroom?”
“Ah, sure.” He paused the movie, but didn’t move as she headed toward the closed door.
“This is it?”
“Yeah.”
“Why’s the door closed?”
“No reason.” He’d left the window open, and it must have blown shut. No doubt she thought he’d done it to keep her out, which, four weeks ago, he probably would have.
She turned the knob and pushed open the door. If she was expecting something awful, she wouldn’t find it. He had a king size bed covered in a black comforter with some sort of abstract silver print on the bottom, a basic bedroom set, and a picture of the ocean hanging on the wall over the headboard. The place had come furnished, and he’d never given much thought to how it looked until now.
Olivia disappeared into the room for a minute, then came back out, beer bottle dangling from her fingertips. “Pretty harmless,” she said, rejoining him on the couch.
“Get over here.” He patted the cushion next to him.
“What about all the space this couch affords us?”
“You think I watch these movies for fun?”
“I thought they were teaching you how to be romantic.”
She scooted closer and he put his arm around her shoulders, dropping his hand onto her breast. “I’m trying.”
By the time the movie ended, they were both breathing hard. She liked to torment him sometimes, insisting he not disturb her while she was watching, demanding that he rewind if he made her miss a part. Today had been no exception, but her damn hands had been wandering pretty freely, and when Julia Roberts informed the snooty saleswoman that she’d lost a big commission, Jarek started repaying the favor.
As the credits scrolled down the screen and the familiar theme song played, he pinned Olivia against the cushions and yanked off her pants. She straddled him as he freed his cock and rolled on a condom, then dragged her down where he needed her most. Her eyes sank shut and she bit her bottom lip, taking him deep. He watched her face, stroking her neck and her back, eyes settling on their joining bodies. He heard her breath hitch and looked up to see her flushed cheeks as she watched him watch them. She smiled and he kissed her, thinking that he’d been doing a lot of kissing this past month. Maybe more than he’d ever done in his whole life, all combined.
It didn’t take long before they were both groaning, Olivia’s hands tangled in his hair, pulling so hard his scalp ached. Jarek didn’t complain as the orgasm was wrenched from him, hips pistoning upward as he held her in place. She came then, too, muttering incoherently into his ear, some strange combination of his name and God’s that made him feel fucking amazing. Since the night at the bar, he’d been making her come the way he’d tried so hard to do for the first month. He’d had to open up to get the results he wanted, but it hadn’t killed him. The trade-off had been worth it. The harder she came the harder he came; quid pro quo. Or something like that.
She made a silly, strangled sound as she eased off and stood, and he held her still for a second so he could look at her intimately. She squirmed and pried at his fingers but he didn’t let her go, giving her a filthy look as he leaned in and swiped his tongue through her swollen folds. She shuddered and pushed him away, picking up her panties and quickly dressing.
“You in a rush to be somewhere?” he asked when she glanced at her watch.
“I have to make some signs for tomorrow,” she said, sitting down on the edge of the coffee table as she laced up her sneakers. “I’m going to turn my desk into a store, and let the kids come shopping.”
“Yeah?” Jarek found his own shoes and put them on. “What are you selling?”
“Oh, the usual. Toothpaste, tissues. Bananas and pencils. Whatever previously learned vocabulary items I can find.” She straightened and picked up her purse, noticing that he was waiting for her. “What are you doing?”
He walked to the door and held it open, avoiding her eyes. “I have to go get something. You reminded me.”
“Get what?”
He hesitated. “Milk.”
She folded her arms under her breasts as they waited for the elevator. “You have to get milk at ten o’clock at night?”
; “So? I drink it at breakfast.”
“Ah. Another piece of the puzzle.”
“Just get in, Olivia.” He shoved her into the elevator and she elbowed him in the stomach, laughing when he subdued her easily.
“You don’t have to walk me home, Jarek.”
“I’m not.”
“You are too.”
“Am not.” He absolutely was. But he knew what she was doing, too. He didn’t want her to stay, and she was making up a reason to go so he didn’t have to. And now that the situation had been reversed and she was the one bolting after sex, preparing to leave him alone in that big, empty apartment, he didn’t like it one bit. What kind of immature asshole did that? He did, obviously.
So he did the only thing he could think of to appease the guilt, and walked her back to her door, bypassing all the stores on the way, insisting he needed milk from the place at the far end of the street. He walked her upstairs and kissed her good night and waited until both doors were locked before going home. He bought milk in case she was watching, though he already had some in the fridge. Then he stripped down and lay in his king size bed and asked himself what the fuck he was doing.
Chapter Eight
JAREK’S PHONE RANG at ten o’clock the following night. He usually saw Olivia on alternating days, so tonight he’d spent the rainy evening alone indoors, watching television and reading. He’d found a show hosted by a tall Canadian man who promised that learning Mandarin was fun and easy, but it had turned out to be neither of those things.
He gave up on languages and tried to read one of Olivia’s sappy Chicken Soup books, but he wasn’t in the mood to have his heart strings tugged. He was pretty sure those grasping fingers would find nothing to hold onto, anyway. He was so bored he was almost ready to cross the hall to knock on Dale’s door—the guy talked a big game, but every time Jarek saw him he was in the gym or at home, not out banging “hot Asian chicks,” as he liked to boast. Then his phone rang.
He stared across the room for a second, half-hoping it was Olivia. After their fight he’d given her his number and punched hers into his contacts, though he’d never once called her. And, because she knew he was an emotionally destitute moron, she never called him either. There was pretty much only one person on the planet who chose to call Jarek, and he knew what he’d hear when he answered. Still, he picked up.
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