All I Want is You_A Second Chance Romance

by Carter Blake

  I can’t say I blame him. Some days just call for jubilation.

  I can’t say that this is one of them for me, but that doesn’t mean he should hold back.

  “May I help you, sir?”

  I guess he did see me here.

  Fuck it, why should he care about swearing in front of customers? What the fuck do we know, anyway?

  “Yes, I’m here to pick up a print order. It’s a poster.”

  That should be specific enough, right?

  Fuck. If you hadn’t guessed, I’m still not sleeping that great.

  “Name?”

  “Ethan. Ethan fucking Barrett.”

  Hey, it’s what some people like to call me, right? Plus, this seems to be one of those office supply stores that encourages f-bombs.

  “Yes, Mister Barrett, we have your order ready. And it looks like you paid online?”

  “Fuck yeah, I did.”

  “Okay, terrific. So, here’s your fucking poster. Have a great weekend.”

  It’s about half an hour until it’s time to give my presentation.

  Yes, I will be competing against established presentation guru Kallie Fern, but I decided to not let that throw me.

  No, I kept my creative process pure. So pure, that I waited until I left for work this morning to even think of something.

  The design consisted of some text typed into an email to the office supply store. It took ninety seconds.

  A pure, unaffected creative process.

  I unroll the poster to check the printing before leaving the store. It came out perfectly: a dollar sign, followed by a very large number.

  That’s my entire presentation: a dollar amount.

  My dollar amount.

  No, no my net worth or some shit.

  This is what the firm should think of as my dollar amount: The amount of capital I’ve raised as a hedge fund manager throughout my time here.

  It’s a fucking lot of money.

  My plan is to unroll the poster, hold it, stand there without saying a word, and…

  Kallie Fern, presentation guru, is browsing the aisles of the same office supply store that my procrastinating ass is about to leave.

  She doesn’t notice me. She’s much too focused on the shelves full of colored markers in front of her.

  Maybe they’re better fresh or something.

  Maybe her mad presentation skills are reliant on improvisation—and this is part of her process.

  Maybe this is all just a fucking farce.

  Or maybe, I just don’t fucking care anymore.

  ***

  “Mister B! How long has it been?”

  According to the wall clock at the deli, it’s now four minutes to nine. I check my wristwatch, and it tells me the same.

  That might be enough time for a cup of coffee. And an egg sandwich.

  “Too long, Rodrigo, I need to start coming here more often.”

  “You need to, Mister B. We’ve got plenty of tourists stopping by, but not enough loyal customers.”

  “That’s this neighborhood—for better or for worse.”

  “Right you are, Ethan.”

  Rodrigo doesn’t use my first name very often. This might be his first time doing that, in fact.

  It takes me more than four minutes to enjoy my large coffee and my egg sandwich. Glancing at my wristwatch on my way out, I’m on track to be twenty minutes late for the presentation.

  So, I stop dead in my tracks and turn around. I walk over to Rodrigo, who’s cleaning the counter by the register.

  “How long have you been doing this, Rodrigo?”

  “Doing what? Cleaning?”

  “Working.”

  Rodrigo laughs. “I don’t even remember when I started. I was probably born working.”

  “When was your last day off?”

  Rodrigo laughs even harder.

  “Are you talking about a day of not working? Maybe on my wedding day…my memory’s not so good, but I was running a diner uptown, and I may have only done some light bookkeeping that day. Just a couple hours.”

  “On your wedding day?”

  “Yes. In nineteen sixty-seven.”

  Unable to wrap my head around that, I stare silently down at my shoes on the linoleum floor for a second.

  “Do you enjoy working so much? For decades on end?”

  “Eh, since I came here, I’ve only worked for myself, so...it hasn’t been so bad.”

  I check my wristwatch. Even if I were to somehow magically teleport up to the boardroom at this moment, I’d still be over fifteen minutes late.

  “Speaking of work, shouldn’t you be getting to work soon, Mister B? I’ve never seen you here this late. Not on a weekday.” Rodrigo laughs again.

  “I know it’s a little late, Rodrigo...”

  “Hey, I’m not your boss…”

  “No, I mean for a wedding gift. But, I’d like to give you one, anyway.”

  I slide off my wristwatch and leave it on the counter by the register. Rodrigo freezes, stunned, staring at it. “What’s this?”

  “I know you know what a watch is—and that’s a Bulgari Diagono. You can use it, or you could probably get a few grand for it if you wanted.”

  Rodrigo picks it up, delicately, his face still halted in shock.

  “I’ll see you around, Rodrigo.”

  When I get to the corridor outside the boardroom, I can hear Kallie’s voice in presentation mode. I probably forfeited by chance to go first. That’s understandable, seeing as I’m twenty minutes late, at least.

  Without a wristwatch to check, I pull out my personal phone to look at the time.

  It’s 9:25 a.m.

  I listen to what I can hear of Kallie’s presentation outside the boardroom—and I realize that I left my presentation at the deli.

  I decide to take a page from Kallie’s book and improvise.

  There’s no time to overthink it, so I let instinct take over.

  With my personal phone in my hand, I call the last person I spoke with on that phone.

  This is supposed to be a visual presentation, so I make it a video call.

  Two seconds later, those electrifying emerald eyes, which I had resigned to never seeing again, appear on the screen.

  “Ethan, what are you doing?”

  She looks so fucking beautiful.

  “Madeline, I’m so happy you picked up.”

  “I’m at work, Ethan. It looks like you are, too.”

  “I am. I just wanted to show you something...”

  “Could it wait? I was about to leave, actually.”

  “I don’t know. I’m already running late.”

  Maddie looks around quickly. “Okay, Ethan, but it needs to be brief.”

  Angling my phone so only I can see the screen—and Maddie can still see me—I burst through the boardroom door.

  Kallie stops mid-word, pointing at a whiteboard mounted on the wall. Rosen, Barrister, and Phil turn to look at me.

  “Nice of you to join us,” Barrister says.

  “I don’t know what’s on,” I begin.

  “I’ll say,” Phil comments.

  “I don’t know what’s going on with the company,” I continue, “or what kind of farce this presentation thing is, or why you’re moving. And I could fucking care less.”

  I allow for a dramatic pause. There’s no response, but all eyes are on me.

  I continue.

  “I’m finished. I’ve given this firm and this job enough of my life. I’m out. Out of the competition, out of whatever the hell this job is supposed to be now. I’m finished, and I’m not giving any of this another fucking second of my time.”

  Making good on my word, I’m out the door and on my way down the hall before anyone can respond.

  The only response I care about is Maddie’s. On my phone’s screen, it looks like Maddie is also walking down a hallway at her office.

  “Hold on, Ethan, I’m going to be outside shortly so we can talk.”

  I walk
faster and faster until it starts to turn into a run.

  If I get on the elevator, I would risk losing the connection to Maddie, and that is a risk I can never afford to take again—not in a million fucking years.

  So, I run into the stairwell.

  “Maddie, I love you.”

  And I start running down the stairs.

  “I’m in love with you, Maddie. I’m so fucking in love with you”

  And I keep running down flight after flight of stairs.

  “I love you, Maddie!”

  And my voice rings through the stairwell—and so does another voice.

  “Ethan...”

  Running down the last flight of stairs, I see Maddie’s angelic face. She’s now outside, and her cheeks are bright red.

  “Ethan, I’m on speakerphone, on the sidewalk, and there are tour groups all around me...and I love you, too.”

  After exiting the stairwell, I tear through the lobby and out onto the sidewalk at breakneck speed.

  Running down Broadway, I hold my phone as steadily in my hand as I possibly fucking can. I can see Madeline so vividly, and I can hear her voice so clearly—including those last four words—that I can hardly believe it.

  “You started breaking up,” I tell Maddie. “Could you repeat that?”

  “I said I love you, too!”

  “I’m in love with you, Maddie,” I say, now sprinting west down Vesey, “and could you repeat that?”

  “I’m in love with you, too, Eth!” Maddie’s yelling, and crying, and it looks like she’s racing up the West Side Highway sidewalk. “I’m so fucking in love with you I can’t stand it anymore, and I can’t hide it anymore, and I missed you so fucking much.”

  At the intersection of Vesey and the West Side Highway, I can now see Maddie, in person, standing across the intersection.

  And she’s no longer looking at her phone. She’s looking at me across the highway.

  And I’m looking at her.

  “Could you repeat that?” I ask, softly, putting my personal phone back in my pocket.

  The light at the intersection changes. The traffic—trucks, taxis, city buses—stops speeding up and down the highway.

  My feet cannot carry me fast enough, but I try.

  Bolting out into the highway, I reach into my pocket and grab my other phone, my business phone, and lob it straight out into the street.

  Maddie does the same thing with the phone she’s holding as she runs towards me.

  And we reach each other. We’re the only two people in the small island in the middle of the highway, with tiny patches of grass just north and south of us.

  Just as the light changes again, and the buses and trucks start moving again, we fall into a kiss on our little island.

  And we stay in our kiss until long after both our phones are surely demolished by countless tons of moving steel.

  After the light changes once more, or twice more, or three or four more times, we fall sweetly and slowly out of our highway island kiss.

  “Could you repeat that?” I ask.

  “I said I’m in love with you. And I just quit my fucking job, too. So, what a coincidence...”

  “Why?”

  “Because it was killing me, and they were letting my case go cold.”

  “Is there anything I can do to help, though? I was at the firm for years.”

  “Nah, the SEC is finished with it. But I have a feeling that the Swiss authorities may not be so forgiving.”

  We share another kiss as the traffic barrels north and south around us.

  The light changes again, and the highway traffic halts for us, and without saying another word, Maddie and I cross the highway and head back east—back towards Ten Barclay and my apartment.

  Ethan

  “Did you even give notice?” I ask while watching Maddie walk into the apartment in front of me.

  She’s wearing a turtleneck sweater, jeans, and the same jacket that she had on last weekend—which she takes off and leaves in the middle of the living room floor.

  I love this woman.

  I’m in love with her.

  I’ve made that clear, right?

  “I gave a bit more notice than you did, Ethan—but not much.”

  “I’m in love with you.”

  “Same.”

  My feet carry me to the middle of the floor where she is, and my lips meet her lips, and hers meet mine.

  And our tongues start dancing—not drunkenly, like at the karaoke lounge, but with a midday, sober sense of purpose.

  Our hands seem to share that purpose as well. Maddie’s round, firm cheeks feel especially nice through her denim jeans, and she seems determined to get as much of my ass in her hands as possible through my trousers.

  We keep kissing as Maddie’s hands move from my clothed butt cheeks up to my suit jacket. Together, our hands work busily at the jacket until it’s off my shoulders and on the floor.

  Doing a sort of waltz towards the sofa, our lips take a break from each other, and Maddie pulls her sweater off over hear head with one hand while her other hand is clamped on the middle of my shirt between two of the buttons.

  “You know what happens next, right?” she asks assertively once her sweater is off.

  Honestly, I’m not sure, but I decide to let whatever happens happen.

  And it happens fucking fast. Maddie tears my shirt the fuck open, with buttons soaring in every direction. Just like with my jacket, Maddie and I finish the job of removing the shirt with all of our hands working in an excited, vaguely clumsy frenzy.

  As Maddie undoes my belt, I feel softly around her breasts as they rest in their turquoise bra cups.

  We start kissing again, and our tongues resume their caffeinated daytime dance, but it doesn’t last for long.

  With one hand, Maddie pushes the center of my chest hard enough that I land on the sofa. She deftly undoes my belt while sinking to her knees, and both my hands are already gripping the sofa cushions in fevered, almost nervous anticipation.

  This is already too fucking much.

  When Maddie pulls my trousers and boxers quickly down to my ankles, my cock snaps up and hits my undershirt with rock-hard force.

  Of course it’s that fucking hard already—everything is happening so fast right now, and my mind is reeling to catch up, but my cock is way ahead of me, and it’s more than ready.

  Maddie licks slowly up the underside of my shaft, stopping about halfway and starting over again.

  It’s fucking torture, but it feels so fucking good.

  I hear the sound of myself breathing heavily as my hands grip the cushions so tightly I might end up fucking ripping them apart.

  With the next run of her tongue up my shaft, Maddie goes further than hallway—but then stops just before she reaches the tip.

  “Oh ha, hoo, hee, hurghhh.”

  No, I’m not laughing. I’m just making weird, senseless sounds as Maddie’s tongue melts my brain.

  When Maddie brings her tongue up over the tip of my cock with her next run, my eyes shut tight, and I see bright rays of color.

  “Oh, bloo blah blorg!”

  And I make more strange noises.

  Maddie stops, and I feel her moving away from me slightly, and I nearly stop breathing.

  “Remember,” she whispers, “showmanship.”

  The next thing I know my cock is inside of Maddie’s mouth, and her tongue is doing some kind of fucking sorcery as it moves in deeper.

  On top of the wizardly fucking magic she’s performing with my cock, feeling Maddie’s tits pressing against my knees is nearly enough to make me come forcefully right then and there.

  Instead, I increase my grip on the cushions on either side of me even more tightly, and I start to lift them off the sofa.

  As Maddie lifts her head, and I feel her lips running slowly up my shaft, I throw one of the cushions straight across the living room.

  When I feel my cock going gradually back into her mouth, I throw the other cus
hion across the room in the other direction. It lands somewhere in the hallway to the bedroom.

  Groaning dumbly, with no more cushions to grab, I grip the back of the sofa as Maddie moves up and down a few more times.

  After Maddie releases my cock entirely, I’m able to get out a couple quick words.

  “My turn.”

  “Is that so? Better come and find me, then.”

  I don’t know if the double entendre is on purpose. Either way, Maddie is laughing loudly as she runs into the hallway.

  The best I can do is lumber after her. All I want to do is make her feel the crazy amounts of pleasure she just bestowed upon me, and then even more pleasure than that—if possible.

  Maddie’s giggling when I arrive at the bedroom door. She closed the door behind her, so I knock.

  “Yes? Who is it?”

  “It’s Ethan. I’m here for my turn.”

  “Oh, maybe I wasn’t so hard to find after all...”

  I open the door and step inside to find Maddie reclining on the bed. Her eyes are on my throbbing, starving cock the moment I step inside.

  “...although, I think you might be taking up all the hardness.”

  When I hobble into the room, Maddie notices that my pants are still down around my ankles, which leads to her laughing so hard that her face starts to flush.

  Maddie’s still giggling softly when I pull down her panties. When I lightly graze my fingers around the edges of her pussy, her laughter fades into a breathy, high-pitched squeal of enjoyment.

  Maddie shifts up and down subtly on the bed as I kiss her inner thighs, moving back and forth between left and right, working my way closer.

  As I get even closer to her pussy, I slither the tip of my tongue lightly around her thighs.

  “Oh, Christ, yes! Keep this going where it’s fucking going, please!”

  Oh, I feel ya, Maddie. I want to keep going so fucking bad I can’t even put it into words.

  So, of course, I don’t.

  Instead, I do something else with my tongue.

  Maddie is just fantastically fucking wet as I move my tongue towards her cunt. Still, I start slow, with a classic—widening my tongue and beginning a gradual, enveloping lap starting at the bottom of her lips and inching upward bit by painstakingly slow bit.

  Maddie moans, and I stop.