by Zelda Reed
He looked at me. Our eyes locked and he kept fucking her. “I’m close,” he said.
I couldn’t tell if he was talking to me or her, but she moaned in acknowledgement. “Me too,” she gasped.
I ran out of the room, my stomach twisting into knots, bile rising in my throat, the world spinning on its head. My feet caught on the steps and I almost stumbled forward. My hand on the railing saved me. Panic, sadness, rage, and sickness swirled beneath my ribcage, behind my chest, and under my skin.
I couldn’t go home in that condition, my father would never have it; I plopped down on the bottom step, waiting for Justin to “finish”.
Sasha caught me sitting there, my back hunched over my knees, sobs wracking through my body. Carefully, she stepped past me, not a word or look shot my way. Stinking of sex and sweat she walked out the front door, one pink sock on, the other balled in her hand.
Justin refused to leave the second floor landing. Arms crossed over his chest he said, “What are you still doing here?”
I looked over my shoulder. “I thought we were gonna have lunch.” It was a pathetic response and if I could go back in time, I would smack some sense into myself.
“We’re not having lunch,” he said.
“Why not?”
Justin sighed. “What are you not getting about all this? Jesus, Caitlin, you caught me fucking another girl. How clearer do I need to be?”
I stood up, wiping at my eyes with the back of my hand. “You wanted me to catch you fucking her?”
He ducked his head. “I think you should go.”
In a fit of rage, I stormed up the stairs, my entire world bleaching into white.
“I don’t remember much after that,” I say to Neal, a pathetic smile pulling at my lips.
“Shit,” is all he can say. Then his hand is on my knee. “Hey, you wanna get out of here?”
“Are you asking me to ditch my own father’s repass?”
He smiles. “That’s exactly what I’m doing.”
I throw a look over my shoulder. Darlene’s picking her son off the couch, placing him on her hip as her husband stands behind her. Ashleigh’s near the kitchen, face in her hands as the blue-haired women gently pat her hair between sips of wine. Gina’s on the porch, smoking with a gaggle of wives, well-dressed, bored and talking shit about their husbands.
Neal raises an eyebrow, awaiting my response.
“Sure,” I say, finishing my drink. “Let’s go do something fun.”
Seven
I’ve always been a little obsessed with other people’s idea of fun. Growing up with a father who rarely smiled will do that to you.
My father’s idea of fun was a night out with “the boys”. Grey-haired and wedding bands tight around their fingers, they knocked back glasses of scotch until they were stinking of alcohol, ready to terrorize whoever’s driver was in charge of them that night. My mother’s a knitter, a television watcher, a talker. She and her friends buy meat and cheese trays from the grocery store and sip iced tea while watching whatever soap opera is on at ten a.m.
My idea of fun is constantly shifting. One year it’s going out to a bar and talking until the bartenders kick us out. The next it’s getting up early in the morning for a good run before sucking down an expensive cup of coffee. It fluctuates, like I’m sure it’s supposed to at twenty-five.
Neal’s idea of fun involves holding my hand the second we step into the elevator. “Gotta keep up appearances,” he says, but Suzanne and Justin are still in the condo.
The doors open to the lobby and we pass the man at the front desk who asks, “Are you two with the Wheeler party?”
“Yes,” I say.
“Be careful out there.” He motions towards the door. “There’s press all up and down the street.”
I’ve almost forgotten about them, the vultures in waiting.
Neal pulls a pair of sunglasses from his jacket. Aviators with dark green lenses and a gold frame. They’re expensive and stylish and make him all the more handsome. “Thanks,” he says, and leads me towards the revolving door.
“Shouldn’t we go out the back?” I say, tugging on his hand.
He throws me a grin. “If you think the press doesn’t have every exit covered, you’re very naive. We’ll look better going through the front, then trying to sneak out the back like we’re doing something wrong.”
We are leaving my father’s repass early, but the press already knows I don’t love him. What more can they say?
The second we step onto the sidewalk we’re hounded by the shutter of cameras. The incessant click-click-click-flash, like a mountain of cicadas mating all around us. Neal’s fingers tighten around mine and I trust him to lead, ducking my head as he hails a cab.
“Mr. Dietrich! Mr. Dietrich!” the reporters shout.
“Henry!” Neal says with a laugh. “You’re still doing this? I thought you were going to get yourself a real job.”
Henry laughs. “I’m a writer you fuck. That is a real job.”
A cab pulls up.
“Not when there are bloggers doing what you do for free.”
Neal opens the back door and ushers me inside. I try to keep my head down but my curiosity gets the better of me. Reporters, some news crews, and photographers are across the street. They peek into the backseat, their lenses zeroing in on me and my widened gaze. I can see the headlines now: WHEELER’S DAUGHTER LEAVES REPASS EARLY WITH RIVAL FINANCIER.
The cab makes a right and heads towards Burnham Harbor, Neal settling into the backseat comfortably, pulling his phone from his pocket.
“You handled those reporters really well,” I say.
He smiles. “That’s one thing I learned from Lee and your father.”
My eyes narrow in thought. “I thought you didn’t know my father.”
Neal types furiously on his phone. “What?”
I shake my head. “Nothing.”
The sound of a new message fills the cab. Neal immediately responds before stuffing his phone back into his pocket and throwing me a smile. His hand rests on my knee and for a second, my shoulders lock up. He removes it but I grab his hand and place it back. His smile transforms into a grin.
“So,” I say, leaning into his touch. “What are we doing at the harbor?”
______
You can see all the museums from Burnham Harbor – the Shedd Aquarium, the Field Museum, and the Adler Planetarium. When I was a teenager I knew them all like the back of my hand, could draw you a map of their floor layouts with my eyes closed, but it’s been years since I stepped inside any of them. Exhibits have come and gone, renovations started and finished. Nothing’s the same except the architecture. Much like my father’s condo.
My father was never the type to want for a boat. He grew up in Brooklyn, riding trains and swimming in the murky water at Coney Island. Only the rich kids with apartments in Manhattan and estates in upstate New York owned boats. On my father’s block you were lucky if your parents owned a car.
I don’t ask if the small yacht belongs to Neal or the man waiting in front of it. Bald and aging he wears khaki shorts and a white polo, dark sunglasses covering his eyes. He introduces himself as, “York. York Skinner,” lazily shaking my hand until Neal informs him that I’m Julian’s daughter.
He raises an eyebrow in interest before he throws a look over his shoulder and says, “Well you won’t be the only woman on this voyage, that’s for sure.”
I turn around. A group of bikini-clad women rush towards us, all of them tall and thin, wearing sunglasses or hats or shawls around their hips. They giggle as they run, a heavy-set man chasing them with a water gun, aiming for their perfect asses.
Neal smiles sheepishly and motions towards the women. “I hope you don’t mind.”
I glance down at my dress. Black and sophisticated, perfect for a repass, not so much for a ride on a yacht. I smile. “I don’t mind at all.”
The men spend a ma
jority of the voyage in the cabin, the doors locked as they lounge on leather couches and drink and talk. It’s business. I know it and the women around me know it.
They’re actresses and models and college students and lawyers. They urge me to peel off my dress and laze around in my underwear (“What’s the difference?”) but I decline and sip on a beer, soaking up the sun.
I imagine this must’ve been what my father’s life was like. Middle of the day yacht trips, beautiful women awaiting his return. For a second I think something foolish - Am I turning into my mother? Into Gina? Darlene? Waiting around for Neal? - I swallow the thought instantly. We’ve just met.
The door to the cabin opens and the atmosphere instantly changes. The women are up and on their feet, pushing drinks into the men’s hands, fiddling with the stereo until a blast of pop music fills the boat. Much like the women at my father’s repass, the women on the yacht are taken with Nate. They play with his tie, run their fingers through his hair, all while he passes me a look. The same one from before – save me – and I do.
For the first time since high school, I dance. The radio switches to a Latin station and all the women shake their hips, hands and drinks in the air. Neal stays with me, one hand resting on my back as the other takes my hand, carefully leading me along with the music. I can feel him pressing against me but ignore it in favor of staring at his eyes, a glittering blue in the sun, his sunglasses pushed in his hair.
“Where’d you learn how to dance?” I ask, amazed I’m keeping up.
“My mother’s from South America,” he says. “It would be a crime for me to be a terrible dancer.”
He spins me. I stumble over my feet and he releases a full laugh. My cheeks light up with red but he pulls me close and says, “You wanna try that again?”
“No, I don’t think I do.”
“Come on.” He nudges me with his hips, his slightly hardened cock bumping against my thigh. “One more time, you can do it.”
He spins me again and this time I’m careful, aware of my heels sliding against the deck and my hair whipping in the wind. I land in his arms and he dips me, my hair brushing against the floor before he lifts me up. Our mouths are inches apart.
A few of the women applaud. Neal throws them a grin.
“There,” he says. “I told you, you had it. You’re a natural.”
We dance until the sun begins to set and Neal leads me to one of the couches.
“I feel like I know you,” I say.
“You might. I’m not that complicated.”
“You haven’t even told me your last name. I’ve heard it multiple times today but it hasn’t come from you.”
“Dietrich,” he says. “My full name’s Neal Raul Dietrich.”
The sky blends into a mix of purple, yellow and pink. I feel flirty. I pull my legs onto the couch, my knees pressing against his thigh as I ask, “And are you from Chicago, Mr. Dietrich?”
He nods. “Born and raised. You’re from Baltimore?”
“No, I’m from New York. My mother moved to Baltimore after she divorced my father.” Neal nods and shifts closer to me. “So what do you do? I know you work for Lee Geon but are you a financial analyst?”
“I do a little bit of everything,” he says. “But in simplest terms, I make people’s money work for them, instead of the other way around.”
“And all this?” I say, motioning towards the yacht, the booze, the women. “Perks of the job?”
“I would think Julian Wheeler’s daughter of all people would know the answer to that question.”
I duck my head, fingers picking at the strap of my heel, wrapped around my ankle. “My father and I weren’t very close. I don’t know anything about him aside from a vague description of his job, and that my mother said I should never trust him or men like him.”
Neal’s hand lands on my knee, one finger slipping beneath my dress. “Do you think I’m like him?”
In truth, I don’t know enough about Neal to make a full assessment but I’ve been around men like my father enough to make confident snap judgments. The other men on the boat are like my father, dancing with two women at a time, swapping kisses and licking their necks. Men who use women like toys and throw them away when they’re bored. Like children with millions of dollars and no parental supervision. But Neal? If he was like my father I would be sitting on the couch, alone, drinking solemnly as he danced with a woman much more beautiful than me.
“No,” I say, carefully. “I don’t think you are.”
Eight
The boat pulls into the harbor around seven, the sky a vast navy blue, the lights from the city shimmering across the water. We’ve been out here for hours. The repass has ended and we’ve drunk all the alcohol on the boat.
Neal and I have paced ourselves, we’re light-headed and giggly but more composed than everyone else who stumbles off the boat, tripping over their own feet. With Neal’s arm around my waist I shamelessly lean into him, my nose pressed against the crook of his neck, inhaling the sharp and clean scent of him, addicted to it already.
Wordlessly we pile into the same cab and I give directions to my hotel. Neal repositions his arm around my shoulder and I can feel what’s going to happen next, right at the bottom of my stomach and scratching against my bones.
Room key in hand, we ride the elevator up and up, Neal’s hands in his pockets, mine anxiously hanging by my side. My excitement suffocates me, making it hard to move from the elevator to the hallway to my hotel door. My hand is on the knob when I remember – eight oh six. I look up and down, searching for Anthony Serafin or any other reporter who may be lurking around the corner or crouched behind a potted plant. There’s no one but me and Neal.
Neal who pushes me into the room the minute I crack open the door. Neal who slams the door behind him and tugs off his jacket. Neal who strides over to me like an animal to his prey, his eyes fixed on my lips before he devours them, mouth against mine, hands cradling my jaw, as he presses our hips together.
At some point, during our ride on the boat, the entire mood shifted, like someone had flicked on a light and all that was weightless became weighed down with lust. York Skinner slow danced with a group of women before he chose two and led them into the cabin. The sound of slow moans filled the air, drugging the rest of us.
The conversation between Neal and I transformed from harmless – What is it like growing up in the city? How did you handle traveling so much as a kid? – to sexually charged. We knocked back another drink and I told him about the night I lost my virginity to Justin, how he kept chanting that I was so, so wet and lasted all of two minutes. Neal revealed a list of women he wouldn’t call his girlfriends, but he fucked them long enough they thought they were together. “We weren’t, I don’t…I don’t tend to do the whole girlfriend thing.” It was very matter-of-fact. I don’t do the whole girlfriend thing, like, I don’t care for French toast.
I didn’t mind.
My days in Chicago are numbered and if there’s one thing I need it’s something without strings, without complications, like Neal’s mouth trailing from mine, dropping a kiss to my jawline and down to my neck.
His hands slide down my back, palms flat against my dress. I tilt my head back, revealing a long stretch of unblemished skin. He cups my ass and pulls me closer, a gasp rushing from my throat as his teeth sink into my neck. My hands find his shoulders, fingers curling and pressing into his shirt as he decorates my skin with small nips, bite marks trailing down my neck and to my shoulder, stopping at the scoop neck of my dress.
Neal’s fingers crawl up my spine, my back arching in time with his touch. Two fingers grip the zipper at the top of my dress and slowly, it becomes undone. Black flaps fall open like wings, the cool air from the room sliding across my newly revealed skin. I leverage myself against his shoulders as I kick off my heels, instantly losing a good five inches of height.
Neal grins as he stares at me, peeling my dress down in the
front. “I was wondering how tall you really were,” he says, revealing my bra-covered breasts.
“I’m not that short,” I say, my words barely above a whisper.
He pushes my dress to my hips, leaving the rest for me. I shimmy out of it, discarding the pricey piece of fabric near the window, standing in front of Neal in nothing but my bra and panties.
“No,” he says, taking a step back, drinking in all of me. “You’re not that short at all.”
He steps closer and I undo his shirt, the buttons popping out of their holes, one by one by one, until I’m tugging his shirt out of his pants and he’s undoing his belt. The undressing is less frantic than the last six times I’ve had sex but there remains a sense of urgency in our fingers. Neal slips and kicks off his pants, I push his undershirt up to his armpits and up it goes, over his head, mussing up his hair, until it lands on the floor.
We kiss again, our lips sliding together in perfect rhythm.
We’ve known each other for less than a day and yet this is all native to us, the way my head tilts to the side and his tongue slowly snakes between my lips, gently lapping against my own. The air conditioning kicks on, a guttural noise disrupting the silence, kicking our feet in gear as I walk backwards towards the bed, Neal in front, our mouths connected, my hands in his hair.
Neal removes his lips before he shoves me on the bed. I land on my back, my body bouncing against the mattress, my breasts moving up and down. They catch Neal’s gaze and his tongue swipes against his bottom lip, eyes darkening as he says, “Sit up for me.”
I do as I’m told, back straight and eyes level with his torso. He runs a hand through my hair, the other toying with the strap on my shoulder. He slides his finger beneath it, his other hand dropping to the back of my head, then my neck, the pair of them meeting at the hook of my bra. He snaps it open with ease, the miniscule pop, almost loud enough to be heard over the groan of the air conditioning. He tugs off my bra and my breasts spill out, freely resting against my chest, pink nipples hard and erect.