by Dark Angel
“I’m saying Sociable’s infrastructure needs a serious upgrade if we want to move forward with the influx of users.”
I shake my head and sip my beer. I haven’t had enough alcohol yet. I’m still aching for Dana. Too drunk to stop myself from wanting her, too sober to stop thinking about it. “Can we not talk about work tonight?”
Mason shrugs. “I can’t help it, man. It’s because of you I have this job at all.”
“You know what?” I say, nodding. “You’re right, and you know what you’re talking about. I wouldn’t have suggested you as a candidate for the IT department interviews if I didn’t think you were worth it. But I’m sick of hearing about Sociable.”
Mason shakes his head, chuckling into the beer bottle he lifts to his lips, taking a sip.
“Well, it’s going to be hard getting away from it, since you created it.”
I shrug and take another sip of my drink. I created a new social media platform, and it blew up. I am almost as big as Facebook and Twitter, and I landed my ass in butter almost overnight. I didn’t expect it to take off like that. I worked on a concept, and the right people saw the idea.
My friends refer to me as the Master because where they’re all scrambling, I have it made. If I had Dana, I would consider that the truth.
Sociable is a big company, now, with different divisions, a turnover that’s growing exponentially as the rest of the world is getting on board, and I have an IT team that works feverishly to stay ahead of the technological curve.
Mason’s on that team.
I glance over at Dana again. Something about her is different tonight. She arrived after I had a few drinks down, and she blew me away. She’s wearing a low-cut top that shows off just enough cleavage without looking slutty, and her eyes are made up with smoky eyeshadow that makes her blue irises pop. She’s wearing a skirt. Easy access. I like that.
Her hair. That’s what is different. Her brown hair is cut in a shoulder-length bob, now. Before, it hung over her shoulders. The new cut frames her face and brings out her freckles. Freckles that she never covered with makeup. It was what I fell for when I’d seen her in the fifth grade. Besides her curves and her breasts that’ll make a man sit up and beg, her freckles are one of my favorite features.
She glances at me. Our eyes meet, and she smiles, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. I smile back. I wonder what’s wrong. I’ll ask her. We’ve always been close, just not in the way I want to be. We’re only a year apart, and we shared friends our whole life. I wish it was just the two of us, though. I want to be alone with her.
I imagine leading her to the restrooms, locking the door behind us and pinning her against the wall. I would hike up her one leg, move her panties aside, and push my dick into her, making her scream my name. Hearing my name on her lips would push me over the edge in a second. I want to fuck her. I’ve always wanted to fuck her.
I shift, rearranging my cock in my pants. It would be poor form to stand in the bar with a visible hard-on.
It’s so fucking unfair that I can’t have her. The only girl I want. Forbidden fruit and all that shit.
“So, who will it be tonight?” Mason asks.
“What?”
“Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about,” Mason says. He nods toward the girls. “I can see you ogling. Which one do you want to take home tonight?”
Dana. But I can’t say that. Instead, I shrug. “I don’t know, man. I don’t think I’m going to make a move tonight. I just want to relax.”
“Sure,” Mason says, not believing me. I sigh but he keeps pushing. “You should go and talk to them. You know Dana’s friends all have the hots for you, now that you’re famous and shit. And you’ve been single for far too long. It will be easy to get into any of their pants.”
He’s right. It would be. But it’s not their pants I want to get into. And I don’t like him referring to my ex, Lisa. We dated for three years in college, and she damn near ripped my heart to pieces in the process.
“You better make a move fast,” Mason says. “It looks like someone else is moving in for the kill.”
I look at the girls again. Mason is right. A guy with black hair and an attitude walks up to them. He’s smiling ear to ear, and he’s got the Latino thing going for him, with a shirt that’s unbuttoned way too low. The chest that’s showing is smooth.
“What a prick,” I say.
“A prick that’s getting what he wants,” Masons says.
I watch him introduce himself to the girls, and they’re practically swooning.
“What do you wanna bet he has an accent?” Mason asks.
I don’t respond. Mr. Perfect is smiling at Dana, his teeth too white to be natural. She’s smiling back at him in a way that shows her dimples. She only smiles like that when she’s flirting.
I’m jealous right away. He’s not the right guy for her. None of them are. I want her, and if I can’t have her, fuck everyone else.
I’m being an asshole. I know that. But I’ve had too much to drink, and I don’t want anyone close to her. The other girls? Sure, he can have them. But Dana? She’s mine.
I watch while he flirts with her. He turns his back on the others, leans on the bar, and shows off his chiseled chest. Just because he’s showing it off doesn’t mean there aren’t other people here with better bodies. Like me. I can show Dana what a real man looks like.
And I have fucking chest hair. I’m not a naked mole rat.
I’m being unfair. I don’t care.
Dana is smiling and laughing when he speaks. He can’t be that funny. Not unless she’s laughing at him because he’s failing. Judging by the dimples in her cheeks, that’s not the case.
She reaches into her purse and pulls out a business card, and I down the last of my drink. My head spins a little with the rush of alcohol, and the gas bubbles in my chest. I want to do something violent. Instead, I watch him walk away with the business card.
“Someone should take him into a dark alley and strip him of that business card,” I say.
Mason raises his eyebrows at me. “A little too protective, aren’t you?”
I shrug. Dana’s face has fallen. The dimples are gone, and she’s not even smiling, now. She’s nodding at what one of the others are saying but she looks bummed out.
“I’ll be right back,” I say and walk over to her. When I get closer to her, I swallow.
“Are you okay?” I ask, putting my hand on her shoulder.
She looks up at me, and her eyes are brilliant. “I’m fine,” she says, flashing me a smile that seems forced.
“What’s wrong?” I ask anyway.
She shakes her head. “Nothing, Keagan. Really. It’s fine.”
I look at her for long enough that she gets irritated. She shakes her head at me and shrugs my hand off her shoulder.
“Really, go back to your friends.”
Right. She doesn’t want me to crowd her.
“I’m just asking,” I say. “You don’t have to be a bitch about it.”
She rolls her eyes, irritated. When she gets upset, she does this thing with her bottom lip that looks like a pissed off pout. It makes me want to kiss her. It makes me want to do dirty things to her. Every time. I force myself to turn around and walk back to Mason, instead.
He’s watching me with a lopsided grin on his face. “Do you want to tell me what that was all about?”
“What?” I ask, waving at the bartender for another beer.
“You being jealous when someone hits on Dana? I saw that.”
I shake my head and put money on the bar when the bottle arrives. I suck down a couple of gulps before I come up for air. I want to get wasted. If I can’t get her in bed, I don’t want to remember the rest of my night.
“Don’t be ridiculous. She’s my sister.”
“Stepsister. Which doesn’t count. And she’s fucking hot.”
I glare at Mason, but I say nothing.
“Don’t tell me you haven’t thoug
ht about it. Doing her? A piece like that, right under your nose?”
“Shut up, Mason,” I say.
Mason laughs. “I knew it, you dirty bastard. You have a thing for her, don’t you?”
I shake my head, but I know he’s onto me. I become transparent when I drink, and Mason has known me since college.
“So, what are you going to do about it?” he asks.
“What I always do about it. Jack off to the idea of her body and leave it at that. Come on, man. What the fuck am I supposed to do?”
Mason shrugs. “How about you do her? You can, you know. You’re not kids anymore, and it’s not like you’re related, technically. It’s just in theory.”
“Fuck off with your theory. It’s not like she wants me, anyway. She doesn’t see me like that.”
“Have you asked her?”
Of course, I haven’t. I don’t know how I’m supposed to broach that topic with her.
“Just leave it, okay?” I say and down more of my beer.
Mason laughs, shaking his head. “You’re old enough and established enough to do whatever the fuck you want. You’re twenty-nine. You’re both consenting adults, and there’s no law against.”
I keep shaking my head until he stops talking. The thought of her naked against the bathroom wall is pinned to my frontal lobe again, and I don’t think I’ll be able to shake it. Not when Mason keeps going on about it.
“Drop it, okay?” I say.
Mason shrugs. “I’m just saying,” he says.
But he does drop it, and I’m relieved. It’s bad enough that my fantasies are the only things that make my lust for Dana bearable. I don’t need someone like Mason egging me on to do something I might never be able to do. I don’t need his voice in my ear. I already have a little devil on my shoulder, urging me to misbehave.
Dana
“What are you doing here?” my mom asks when I walk into her studio on Monday morning. “Don’t you have to be at work?”
Her hair is fiery red this time. She changes it every other month. She wears tights and a loose dress. She’s paired it with bohemian jewelry, and instead of looking like a hippy, she looks eccentric and elegant.
I shake my head. “Jen sent me out to run errands. I decided to take a detour.”
My mom smiles at me. “Coffee, then,” she says and walks to the small kitchen they installed in the back to put on the pot.
I sit down in one of the waiting chairs at the front of the studio. I feel guilty about the lie, but I can’t bear to tell her the truth. Everyone knows choosing creativity above a solid degree in business or science makes it harder to succeed. My mom and stepdad started an art studio, and they are successful. I chose to be an interior designer, and I’m not successful at all.
In fact, I don’t have a job to take a detour from. It’s been nearly a month, and none of my searches have come to fruition, either. I’m here because I’m starting to get desperate. Stress is gnawing away at my insides.
“Where’s Chris?” I ask when my mom joins me in the waiting area. The sun falls through the large windows, and it feels the same way it always feels at home, calm and peaceful.
“He’s at a meeting with a prospective artist,” my mom says. “I think we’re going to get this one.” She smiles.
Chris is a good man, and he supports my mom no matter what, even though he’s less creative and less eccentric than she is.
I can’t imagine what it must be like to work with your soulmate every day. I can’t imagine what it must be like to have a soulmate, period. At twenty-eight, I’m still young enough to find one. I keep telling myself that and ignore the hollow feeling that opens in my chest when I think about a forever kind of love.
I smile. “That’s great, Mom. You guys have really built this place up.”
My mom looks around the studio and nods. She and Chris started the studio after Keagan and I finished our studies and moved out. Until then, they’d both worked dead-end, nine-to-fives that drained them of all life to put us through school and college. Now that we’re on our own, they could take the risk, and it paid off.
Chris is my stepdad, and he’s a great guy. He’s the only dad I’ve ever known. Mine took off before I can remember. Chris brought Keagan with him. The two of them changed our lives for the better. My mom was happy and Keagan and I knew each other from school. It wasn’t always easy to live together. At first, we were strangers thrown into a boat called family, but we made it work. We’re so close now, some of my friends with siblings are jealous.
Once upon a time, he was the popular guy at school that my friends urged me to date. When he became my brother, things changed. You can’t date your brother. Even if, back then, you might have wanted to. Now he’s a pain in my ass like any big bother, even if we’re practically the same age.
I glance at my watch. My stomach turns with stress, twisting into a knot of nerves. I don’t think the people from the last interview I went to are going to call me back. They’ve all been dead ends. My landlord is on my case about rent. If I don’t fork it out soon, I don’t know where I’ll go.
“What’s wrong, honey?” my mom asks. Her eyes are on my face, and she looks concerned.
I shake my head. “It’s nothing to worry about.”
I look out of the large windows. The street is quiet in the Art District. I don’t want to burden her with my problems. Even though the studio is doing well and my mom and Chris are happy together, they have just enough for the two of them. I don’t want my mom to feel like she should support me again. And she will, because she’s my mother.
“You know you can talk to me, sweetheart,” she says. “What’s going on?”
I take a deep breath and let it out slowly. I put my hands on my knees and try to pull myself together. It’s hard to keep things from my mom. She’s always been my best friend. It stems from a time when all we had was each other.
“I’m not really here because Jen sent me,” I say, carefully.
Mom waits for me to say what I need to say. Her hands are folded in her lap. She’s the epitome of patience.
“I lost my job.”
She doesn’t freak out. She only raises her eyebrows.
“A month ago,” I finish.
My mom shakes her head. “Honey, why didn’t you say anything? A whole month. What happened?”
I shrug. “Jen says that I don’t have the right ‘energy’.” I make sarcastic quotation marks with my fingers in the air, and my mom rolls her eyes.
“That’s just a hippy way of saying she’s intimidated by you. I told you, you’re so much better than she is.”
I nod. “Yeah. The problem is that there’s a very small demand for interior designers in LA. Apparently, the market is pretty saturated, and I can’t find another job.”
“So, start your own company!” my mom says and smiles at me. “You have your mother’s business mind. I know you can do it.”
Thanks, Mom,” I say. I know she believes in me. “It’s a great idea. It just won’t happen fast enough for me to pay my bills.”
I swallowed, trying to get rid of the nerves that have become a constant fist in my stomach.
“How much do you need?” my mom asks.
I shake my head. “I’m not here to ask for money. I was just feeling lost. Really, I need a lot more than you can afford to give me, and I really don’t expect anything.”
My mom looks concerned again.
“If I don’t come up with my rent by tonight, I have to move out.” A lump rises in my throat. “I don’t know where to go.”
I didn’t want to cry in front of my mom. Not because she would mind it, but because I’d told myself I would be strong. Tears well up in my eyes, anyway. I’m angry at myself for buckling.
“Sweetie, don’t cry,” my mom says, leaning over and squeezing my hand. “It’s going to be fine. Everyone has dips. Remember how bad things were for the two of us just before we met Chris? And look how good things are now? You just keep faith.”
>
I nodded, sniffling. Faith. It was easy to talk about faith when things were going well. Not so much when times were desperate.
“Why don’t you call Keagan?” my mom asks. “You know he’ll help you.”
I shake my head. “I can’t do that. I don’t think he’ll like me invading his space. You know what he can be like.”
My mom laughs. “He’s not that bad. Sure, he’s full of crap sometimes, but he’s just like Chris. And it’s more than lovable.” She smiles at me. “Give him a call. You know he adores you. He’ll be more than happy to help. You two have always had a special bond.”
I nod. “I was a bitch to him on Saturday,” I say.
I feel bad. I was rude to him when he kept asking me about what was wrong. I didn’t want to tell him why I was in a bad mood. Julie, one of my friends, was already paying for my alcohol because I had no money. It’s hard for me to accept cash from others.
“So, apologize,” my mom says. She’s got answers for everything. Like it’s that easy. “Don’t let your pride get in the way. We can’t always be strong all by ourselves.”
That’s easier said than done and my mom knows it. She’s as stubborn as I am, although she’s not as independent.
“Keagan’s life is just so put together,” I say. “Especially with the company, now. I don’t know how to call him and tell him my life has fallen apart.”
My mom shakes her head. “He’s not going to turn you down. Trust me.”
“What makes you so sure?” I ask.
She smiles at me, and I don’t like her expression when she does. Her smile is secretive, and I hate it when she gets like that.
“Just a hunch, honey. Call him. You don’t have other options, anyway. And he’ll help you. I’m not saying you should mooch off of him. Just stay with him until you get back on your feet. Some bonding time might do you good, anyway.”
She smiles at me again. I shake my head. I don’t want to call him and admit defeat. It’s hard to do when he’s so successful. But my mom is right. I don’t have much of a choice anymore. I don’t have anyone else I can turn to.
When I leave the studio, I get in my car and dial Keagan’s number. It plays over the car’s stereo so I can talk while I drive. The phone rings for a while. I expect the call to roll over to voicemail, then he answers.