by LK Collins
“Okay,” she responds, using that mocking tone again, and I walk away feeling like a bit of a weirdo for gawking at her when I thought she didn’t notice. But I can’t help it.
Opening my laptop to try to look busy, I have to learn to let go of the feelings I have for her. She doesn’t feel that way about me at all, and now that we are living together, I really have to keep myself in check.
Maybe it’s a good thing that she’s going to go and get her nails done. I can catch up on some work; then maybe rub one out, and hopefully, that’ll help keep my cock down.
“You mind if I shower?” she asks me from the doorway.
Motherfucker!
She’s not helping one bit. I thought she was leaving, but instead, she’s gonna be naked just on the other side of the wall from me.
“Parks?”
“Yeah, whatever, you don’t have to ask. You can help yourself to anything you want.”
“Thanks.” I hear her call out from her room, and I fight the urge to look in after her. I break, and my eyes find her just as she bends over to dig through a suitcase. Her tight ass in the air makes my cock throb. Slamming the lid on my laptop, I storm into my bedroom and sit on my bed. Looking down at my cock, which is rock hard, I let out a deep breath.
She’s gonna be the death of me. I swear to God, I will not be able to keep my hands off her for long if she’s living here. What was I thinking asking her to move in?
I close my eyes and try to stop all the blood from rushing to the tip of my shaft, but all I can picture is her tight ass. Dropping my shorts to my knees, I give in. Gripping my shaft tightly at the base before I pull up on myself, stroking toward the head. Pleasure pulsates throughout my entire body, and I turn around, resting back rubbing slowly up and down my length. My eyes are still closed, and the vision of her ass is as clear as day.
Oh fuck.
I imagine Fallon looking back, stripping naked as she begs me to fuck her. I toss her on the bed, her legs are spread open, and her sexy pink pussy is wet and ready for me to take. With our eyes locked on each other’s, I rub her clit with my shaft and then slowly enter her body.
Fire radiates to my balls, wanting to explode, and right as I do, she knocks on the door. “Do you have some toothpaste I can borrow?”
Cum blazes out the tip of my dick, and I tense, trying not to make a noise. Seizing my shaft sternly, I bite back a groan as my orgasm—more like a fucking halfgasm—is cut short.
“Parks?”
“Yup! I’ll bring it to you,” I say quickly and in one swift breath. Looking down at my unsatisfied dick, still hard in the palm of my hand, I shake my head, knowing there’s no point to keep trying.
I adjust myself back into my shorts and wait for my shaft to go down as I wash the cum away from my hands. The tube of toothpaste mocks me from the countertop next to the sink.
It’s all your fault.
I flip it off before taking it to Fallon, and as I hear the water running from her bathroom, I decide to leave it on her bed instead of actually knocking. That is the last thing I need to see. I mean, I’d love to see what she looks like naked, but it would probably have me dropping my shorts. Fuck, I need to get away and clear my mind.
I take out my cell phone and shoot her a text.
Me: Had to meet with a client. There’s a key under the mat you can keep. See you later.
Admittedly, it’s a bit callous, but right now, that’s how I feel.
Driving across town to my parents’ house, I hope my dad can help. I spot him talking to Roger, Fallon’s dad, out front when I pull up. They both see me and wave. “How are you, son?” my dad asks at I walk over to them.
“Good,” I respond and give him a hug before shaking Roger’s hand.
“You seen my daughter lately?” he asks.
“Yeah, I’ve seen her.”
“How is she doing?”
“She’s good.” I don’t bother telling Roger about anything that’s going on with her. When he finds out what Leo did, he’ll be pissed, but it’s not my place to tell.
“What are you up to?” My dad asks me.
“Nothing, I had a client I had to meet over this way, so I thought I’d stop in and say hi.”
Roger’s cell phone rings, and I smirk when he pulls out his huge iPhone and excuses himself before answering it.
“What are you really here for?” My dad questions as soon as Roger is out of earshot. He knows I don’t just drop in without asking, ever.
“Can we talk inside?”
“Sure.” He turns and I follow him inside, kicking my shoes off as I enter.
“Mom home?”
“No, she’s out shopping. You want a beer?”
“Yeah.” My dad is the best person in the world to come to for advice, just having him listen to my problems all my life has given me the answer to so many things.
“So, what’s bothering you?” He hands me a beer from the fridge. I happily crack it open as we stand in the kitchen.
“It’s Fallon,” I tell him, and he gives me a knowing look. “Leo cheated on her.”
“Again?”
“Yeah.”
“When are you going to tell the girl how you really feel about her?”
I give him a crooked glare, and he chuckles. This has been a long-standing push and pull with us. He knows I love her, but he also knows all the reasons why I can’t tell her I’m in love with her. So he’s not helping one bit.
“Dad,” I scold him, and he raises his hands, signaling defeat.
“I can’t control my mind.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s hard to explain. When I used to see her once a week or when we just talked on the phone daily, it was different. So now that break from her I normally have to give myself time isn’t there. And my mind is spinning. I can’t control how I feel for her; my feelings are as intense as they’ve ever been.”
“How long is she staying with you for?”
“As long as she needs. She was so upset after it happened, she walked in on him fucking some chick, Dad.”
“Oh, Jesus, poor girl.”
“Yeah, and here I am with a hard-on all the time like some weirdo.”
“I’m sure you don’t want to talk about this. But do you really think if you tell her how you feel, she’s not gonna reciprocate?”
“I don’t know what I think. I’ve told you before; I don’t want to risk our friendship though . . . not after losing Meg.”
Saying my sister’s name brings an eerie silence to the conversation. We don’t talk about her much anymore. She drowned when I was a teenager, and my parents have never forgiven themselves. Hell, neither have I. It was my idea to lie and tell our parents we were going to the movies instead of the beach, which had been too rough that day, the riptide too strong. We thought we were invincible.
That day we found out just how vulnerable we were. It took Mother Nature less than a minute to pull Meg so far away we barely heard her screams, and by the time I finally got to her, it was too late.
I was her older brother and should’ve been able to save her, but I didn’t. It will always be my greatest regret. It also solidifies my reasoning for not being honest with Fallon about my feelings. She’s all that got me through losing Meg, the guilt was literally fucking eating me alive, but Fallon made me go on, and since then, she is what keeps me going.
“I’m sorry, Dad,” I tell him for bringing Meg up.
“It’s okay. Just consider this, Parks. Telling Fallon could possibly be the best thing that’s ever happened to you. All your stress stems from this elaborate lie you’ve spun, but you don’t actually know what she would do if you told her.”
“I can’t. I won’t risk losing her. Besides you and Mom, she’s all I have.” And that’s the truth. Trust me; I don’t want to be in this situation. I’ve tried to move on with my life. I’ve dated other women. It always starts off great. Then I find myself comparing the girl to Fallon, and things fall apart. No matt
er how hard I try, I can’t stop myself. It isn’t fair to be with someone and not really care about them, but I just keep trying to move on. It’s wrong, but it has helped me to keep my distance from Fallon.
“So what? Are you gonna live your whole life loving her and never tell her?”
“Yeah. I am.”
“Then I don’t know how to help you, son.”
I don’t know what I was expecting him to say, but that wasn’t it.
5
Fallon
“Hey, where did you run off to?” I ask Parks when he finally comes through the front door. It’s close to midnight, and I haven’t talked to him all day. He bailed earlier and sent me some uber strange text that he had to meet a client. I could have sworn he told me that he had today free.
“I don’t answer to you, woman!” he slurs and slams the front door. He’s completely blitzed out of his mind.
“Holy fuck! Did you drive home like that?”
“I told you. I! Don’t! Answer! To! You!” He flops down on the couch next to me and leans his head back, reeking of liquor and resting his arm atop of his head. I pat his pockets searching for his car keys, but he pushes me away.
“Where are they?” I ask him aggravated. This is so not like him.
“I don’t know. I think I might’ve valeted earlier.”
“Where?”
He reaches in his pocket and hands me a yellow ticket for the valet. But it doesn’t have a name or anything on it. “So what? You walked home and left your car at a random club?”
“I! Don’t! Answer! To! You!” he repeats again, and I have no clue why he’s acting this way. His eyes are closed, and as I sit here next to him, waiting for a response, he falls asleep. Within a few seconds, he’s snoring loudly.
Dickbag!
I snap my fingers in front of his face, but he doesn’t move. It’s then that I realize there is something sticking out of the right pocket of his coat. Gently, I reach over and pull it out. It’s a napkin that has some woman’s number written on it.
What the fuck kind of name is Cocoa?
I’m tempted to text her and tell her that he’s not interested. For fuck’s sake, he has a girlfriend, and they’ve been together for years. I don’t know much about her, I only met her once, but from what I saw and he tells me, they seem really happy. So, what is he thinking going out and getting some chick’s phone number?
Fuck, this is the same shit Leo did to me, how could Parks even think this is okay? Looking at his drunken demeanor, I hit his arm to try to wake him, but he doesn’t move.
I pull my mind back to reality. There has to be a reason for it . . . right? Parks is the most honest guy I know. Maybe he’s just having a bad day, and that’s why he disappeared. Regardless, whatever it is, he’d never cheat on Mallory. And he’s never interfered in my love life, so I drop it, but looking down at her name written all swirly and shit, it’s annoying. A part of me is jealous, and it’s not for defending his girlfriend. It’s for my own feelings that I have for him, feelings I’ve been hiding for years. I shouldn’t feel that way about him . . . but for some reason, in this moment, it really bothers me.
“Parks.” I shake him hard, trying to wake him so I can get him to his bed, but he mumbles and angrily pushes my hands off his body.
What the fuck?
“Parks.” I try again but get the same response.
Asshole!
So, I leave his drunk ass on the couch and head to my room. Flopping down on the bed, the exhaustion immediately hits me hard. God, what a shitty day it’s been and as I stress about everything that’s happened, the exhaustion of my body takes over my mind sending me into oblivion.
“Fallon!” Parks calls for me, waking me from my comatose sleep state. This bed is amazing. It feels like I’m wrapped in a million feathers, and I don’t want it to ever end. But he calls me again, and I know I have to answer.
“What?” I holler from my room and hear him groan. It’s that noise that forces me to my feet and into the living room, where I find him still on the couch.
“You okay?” I ask, and he shakes his head.
“Can you please get me some Advil from my bathroom?”
“That bad?”
He nods, and I almost feel sorry for him as I head to get him some medicine. I grab the bottle from his medicine cabinet and fill him up a cup of water from the fridge. He gives me a half smile as I hand him both before lifting his feet so I can sit on the end of the couch with them in my lap. At least he kicked his shoes off sometime last night.
“I tried to get you to go to your bed last night, but you were nasty.”
“I was?” He looks horrified as he says it.
“Yes! And when you got home all you kept saying was, I! Don’t! Answer! To! You!”
“Shut the fuck up,” he says and rubs his hands over his face. I nod, looking at him dead serious.
“You think I made that all up? It’s the truth. Oh . . . and I found this, too.” I hand him the napkin from the coffee table with Cocoa’s name and number on it. He drops it to the floor and rolls over. His large body barely fits on this couch.
“I’m sorry if I was rude,” he mumbles into a pillow.
“It’s okay. I really don’t care about that, but I am worried about you. You didn’t seem yourself.”
“Don’t be. I stopped to have one drink and got carried away.”
“Parks, come on. You don’t get carried away. You’re the most responsible guy I know.”
“No, I’m not,” he tells me, and I hear my phone ringing in the distance. “You can get that,” he says, and I drop the conversation he and I are having; then scramble to my bedroom to answer my phone before the call gets sent to voice mail.
“Hello?”
“Hi, Fallon, this is Marla.”
“Good morning, Marla.” I glance at the clock, wondering why she is calling since my shift today doesn’t begin until noon.
“I was calling to see if you could come into work a little early?”
“Uh, how early?”
“As soon as you can get here would be great.”
“Oh . . . okay. Yeah, I’ll get ready and head on in.”
“Thanks.”
We hang up, and as much as I don’t want to go in today at all, much less early, it’ll keep me busy, and I need the money to be able to move out on my own. Plus, I owe her. She gave me yesterday off, so the least I can do is return the favor.
6
Parks
“Feel better,” Fallon says to me, walking out the front door.
I wave from my spot on the couch as she leaves. I’m still so pissed at myself for getting so drunk. But after I talked to my dad and he was zero help, I couldn’t come back here. So the bar sounded like a good idea, but really . . . it never is.
My stomach is somewhere between starving and chucking up the rest of the alcohol that is eating a hole in the lining. I force myself to get up. I have to eat something; the Advil on an empty stomach was such a bad idea.
Fuck, why did I get so messed up last night? I need to learn to handle all this better and control myself.
I have to get over this shit and let go of the feelings I have for Fallon. She is my best friend, and that’s fucking it—end of story. Especially now that we are living together, I can’t be secretly liking her. I have to keep up the lie about my fake girlfriend, even though it’s wrong on so many levels. But I made the decision a long time ago to keep things between us just as friends, and it’s going to stay that way.
I stand and immediately feel light headed. Once the dizziness fades, I wander to the kitchen in a half-drunken daze, grab a jar of peanut butter from the pantry, and pull a spoon from the drawer. Leaning over the bar, I brace my weight on my elbows and try to stomach down a spoonful. The room is spinning, and I almost don’t manage it.
Fuuuuuuuuck!
I swallow some more peanut butter and then stagger into my bedroom falling face first on my mattress.
I’m pre
tty sure I still have peanut butter in my mouth when sleep takes me.
“Parks!” I hear my name yelled loudly and is causes me to sit up so fast I almost topple off my bed. The time on the clock reads ten fifteen—shit did I sleep the day away?
When Fallen walks in, she’s still in her work clothes, so maybe I did.
She stands in the doorway to my room, visibly upset, and . . . I have no clue what to do. So, I open my arms to her, and she crawls on my bed, laying her body along mine.
As I collect my bearings, I ask her, “What’s the matter?” She nuzzles her face in my neck without saying anything. If Leo did something to hurt her again, I’m going to kill him.
I’ll kill him; I swear I will.
“Talk to me,” I urge her, needing to know what has her so upset.
“I got fired.” That isn’t what I expected.
“What? No way!”
“Yeah, Marla called me in early today to fire me!”
“Shut up! How can she even do that?”
“I . . .” She trails off and then sits up, obviously angry as she recalls the events from the morning. “She had human recourses there when I got in. She’d been keeping track of my every move and claimed I falsified my timecard.”
“Did you?”
“I might’ve taken an extra five minutes on my lunch here and there or left a couple of minutes early. But there were more times that I skipped my lunch or stayed late and never reported that. They didn’t care, though.” Fallon bites her bottom lip, thinking about what she’s been through and I have to keep my eyes on hers, not her mouth. “She said what my previous manager let slide was not her problem; she couldn’t allow me to work there if she can’t trust me.”
“What a fucking bitch, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I haven’t gotten along with her since she started, so I guess it was inevitable.”
“Still, you didn’t deserve to get fired.”
“No, I didn’t. Talk about kicking me when I’m down.”
I chuckle at her analogy. The poor girl has been through so much shit lately and, somehow, she keeps going with a smile on her face. It’s one of the many reasons why I love her.