Nervous

by SM Johnson

  Five minutes later there was a warning tap at the door. The handle rattled, and I heard the jingle of keys.

  Avery opened the door.

  He paused, just looking at me. The laughter seemed to bubble up from deep inside him. And then he sighed, “Oh, Jules. Whatever am I going to do with you?”

  I expected him to untie my hands and leave me to put myself together.

  I guess I didn’t know Avery-fucking-Phoenix all that well, did I?

  He said, “Oh my. You’ve got yourself into a jam, haven’t you? Okay, let me help.”

  He pulled me to my feet and stood there, just looking at me. And there I was, my private bits hanging out all over the place, red-faced nearly to the point of tears. He pulled my underwear up my legs and shimmied them over my hips, then ran his hand over the outside of my shorts and patted my dick. “Pretty nice equipment,” he murmured, as he smoothed my jeans up my legs, pausing to unbutton and unzip them, and almost lifted me off my feet as he tugged the waistband around my hips. “If you can drop your jeans without unfastening them, you need new jeans. Or you need to eat more.”

  “Yeah, okay. Fine.” I muttered, kind of angry at him.

  This was almost like a brand new emotion for me. Not anger itself, but expressing any kind of anger out loud, without rehearsing a hundred times over, practicing words and speeches I’d never deliver.

  “Jules. What’s in that tone? Are you mad at me?”

  I looked at him. There was a war inside me. I wasn’t allowed to be angry. I’d never been allowed to be angry. I was stupid and awkward and everything was always my fault anyway, so the only person I had free reign to be angry with was myself. My mother was allowed to be angry and my father was allowed to punish, until he crossed the line after drinking too much and left a bruise on my face. And that was when the child protection workers pulled me out of pre-school, took pictures of my bruises and my split lip, and my father got angry at my mother. How dumb are you, you stupid cow, to send him to school looking like that? They treated me like a criminal and threatened to deport me back to Mexico. But I told them you hit him. You’ll take the fall. That’s how this is going to go.

  Except it didn’t. It went that she got a restraining order, and he did get deported, although I suspect there was more to it than I ever knew. I never saw him again. I learned when I was older that they hadn’t been married, which is why I had my mother’s last name. When I looked mad or said anything mad, she’d throw something at me or slap me and remind me what happened last time, how I’d already driven away one parent with my brand of crazy.

  If you get angry with my mother, you lose everything. So you bite back anger and unfairness, and learn to identify and accept that everything is your own fault.

  That much I figured out in therapy. Which didn’t help my nervousness, but it did help me figure out how to map the development of my nervousness, and for a while that was all the help I could stand. I kept telling myself that I’d go back to therapy as soon as I was strong and brave enough to commit to changing my self-destructive habits. Which wasn’t yet.

  “It’s okay to be angry, Jules. And it’s okay to tell me you’re angry.”

  Avery-fucking-Phoenix just gave me permission to be angry with him. I had a startled thought that “not yet” or “as soon as” might suddenly be now. I had permission to be mad at Avery. And it felt… it felt good.

  I answered without rehearsing a word.

  “Fine. Yes. I’m angry. First you laughed at me, and then you did… did all that, when you could have just untied my hands and let me do it myself. There.”

  I cringed away from him, my breaths too shallow and coming too fast. If he punished me for what I said, for what I felt, so be it.

  “Julian. Jules. I’m not going to hit you. Is that what you think? Why? Who hits you?”

  “No one. Anymore.”

  He wrapped his arms around me, forced a hug on me that I didn’t want. “I’m sorry I laughed. And I’m sorry I took advantage of you. That was incredibly rude. I confess I did it so I could look at you.”

  “You didn’t do it to embarrass me?” My words were muffled into the front of his suit, but he heard them, and pulled back.

  “What? No. I was being a bossy perv. I thought you liked that.”

  Oh! The anger went out of me so fast I was surprised it wasn’t accompanied by a whooshing sound.

  I leaned forward so I could rest my head against his dark gray shirt, the knot of his tie against my cheek. “I do kind of like it.”

  His arms came around me again.

  “Have you ever been kissed?” he asked.

  That struck me as the dumbest question of all. “Today,” I whispered, and stared at the soft grey of his shirt. And even though I wasn’t looking at him, I could feel the stare of the fox looking at the rabbit again.

  “Are you gay?” I asked. I could hear his heartbeat beneath my ear.

  “Absolutely, positively, extremely gay,” he answered, giving me a tight squeeze.

  “So this is a kinky sex game, like Evan said?”

  He didn’t say anything immediately, but his heart seemed to beat faster. I could feel his chest moving under my skin, feel him inhaling and exhaling. I counted them. In, out. One. In, out. Two.

  He asked his own question instead of answering mine. “Does it feel like a kinky sex game to you?”

  That wasn’t the real question, though, was it? What I wanted to know was if I was just a game to him, a casual someone to play with. I didn’t expect him to be in love with me, or even to fall in love with me, but if two people were playing a game, wasn’t it only fair if they both knew the rules?

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve never been good at games.”

  I could feel his breath in my hair. “Well. This one is easy. You be yourself, the way you’ve been doing, and I’ll be me, the way I’ve been doing. And for the record? I think you’re great at this game.”

  He sent me to my hotel after work, for the last time. I figured I’d better seriously step up my reading pace, because at the rate I was going, I wasn’t going to make my contracted quota. Well. No. It was nearing the end of the month, so I’d probably already been through at least a hundred submissions. Still, the quagmire of Avery Phoenix slowed me down considerably.

  Since I didn’t know when I’d be alone again, I figured I’d better call my landlady and my mother. At some point I would need to decide if I was staying in New York, and then I’d have to deal with the stuff in my rented room, but in the meantime I should be able to find a branch of my bank here and send a cashier’s check for next month’s rent. That should give Avery plenty of time to lose interest in me and the game.

  Talking to my mother would probably upset me and wear me out, so I called my landlady first. I told her I’d be out of town for a while, but I’d be sending a check.

  After that it was deep breath. Pace one fast circle around the room. Another deep breath, and then it was time to get it over with.

  My mother answered with her usual, “Julian, how nice to hear from you.” Except she sounded like she’d just swallowed something bitter, and I could almost picture the expression on her face. She called out to my step-father, “Dear, Julian’s on the phone.” I heard a muffled reply from him, but couldn’t make out any words.

  “I’m in New York,” I blurted, skipping the expected pleasantries. “I got called into the office for a meeting.”

  “Oh, good God, and you went? How could you even know it was a real company, working over the internet like you do? Anything could have happened to you. You could have been mugged, or raped, for God’s sake. They called you in? Why? Did you do something wrong?”

  “Mom, they send me money every two weeks. Paychecks. It’s a real place. I knew it was a real place. It’s not like I walked here. I flew in an airplane.”

  “I bet that made a nervous wreck of you.”

  Did it? My travel day felt like eons ago, and I could hardly remember being nervous abo
ut the flight. I suppose I was. I do remember worrying I might do or say the wrong thing at the TSA checkpoint and panicking about the possibility of being strip searched. Except then there was the pilot who walked me to my gate and made sure I was taken care of. I was hustled right through the line, as if I were someone special.

  “What are you in trouble for? Reading too much?” She forced out a short bark of laughter.

  “I’m not in trouble. I found a really good book, and they sold it for a lot of money. It’s called ‘This Terrible Juncture’. I’ll let you know when you can buy it.”

  I would, but she wouldn’t buy it, because she didn’t read. She thought reading was for boring people, and nervous people, and denigrated it for not being a social hobby.

  “That’s nice, dear. I wonder what they think of you? You’re so high strung. Did you embarrass yourself? You didn’t mention me, I hope.”

  “Why would I mention you, Mom?”

  “Well, you know. The way you are. I know you blame me for it half the time, but you’ve always been a nervous wreck. I had nothing to do with it. I swear you were born like that. Colicky and unhappy, impossible to soothe.”

  “Thanks, that’s reassuring.” Impatience crawled along my spine. Of course she’d be worried that I’d tell ALL OF NEW YORK that my mother made me a nervous wreck. I changed the subject. “My boss, Avery Phoenix, is really nice. I was surprised, because he has a reputation. The other employees call him the dragon.”

  “Avery is a beautiful name. Is she married?”

  “Him. Avery is a guy, mom.”

  She grunted into the phone. “Well, don’t sound so pleased,” she said. “That’s just like you, run off to New York and decide to be a homosexual.”

  “I don’t think the city itself would make me homosexual. And I don’t think it’s something you decide.”

  “Pshh. Of course it is. Is that what this phone call is about? Telling us you’re gay? You think we don’t already know that?”

  Well. I hadn’t been exactly sure myself, but whatever. “Of course not. I was calling because… oh never mind.” Because if I hadn’t called her from New York she’d be mad at some later date that I never called her from New York. This was a stupid phone call. “Tell Hank I said hi. I’m going to eat something and go to bed. The days start early here.”

  “Okay dear. Call me when you get home. Ciao.”

  Ciao. As if she was on vacation in Italy instead of living in Florida.

  chapter five

  pause…1…2…3…4

  I was waiting outside with my suitcase and laptop bag by seven-twenty in the morning. If you’re not five minutes early, you’re late. A cab pulled to the curb three minutes later, and Avery got out.

  “You’re on time, thank you,” he said, and grabbed my suitcase. The trunk lid slowly bobbed open, and Avery lifted my bag and set it inside the trunk. It wasn’t a huge suitcase. I’d expected to be in New York for a couple of days, at the most, and didn’t bring much more than a few changes of clothes and some toiletries. I’d still struggled with awkwardness while dragging the case along, losing my grip on the handle, tripping over it forty-five times at the airport.

  Avery lifted my suitcase like it was filled with feathers, in one simple graceful movement, as if he did this all the time. Maybe he did. Or maybe he was stronger than he looked.

  He wasn’t a large man, but his body was all long, lean limbs, even in a suit – maybe especially in a suit – and he carried an air of, well, I wasn’t exactly sure how to describe his general demeanor. If I’d just seen him in passing I would have said he was arrogant, made a judgment based on his self-assurance, the way he moved through the world with his head up, eyes forward, telling people what to do and expecting them to follow his orders. I imagined him telling the cab driver, “Pull over here and pop the trunk.” And it happened, that easy, without any fuss or apology. I liked that about him, how direct and straight-forward he was. Which was why I was seized with panic when the other Phoenix, Evan, suggested Avery was playing a game with me. I didn’t want to be a game. I already knew Avery viewed breaking me of my nervous habits a challenge. Wasn’t it scary enough to be someone’s challenge without it also being some kind of sex game?

  I told myself I was being a paranoid anxiety ball about that part, except Avery had kissed me.

  Avery Phoenix kissed me.

  Sometimes I almost seemed to forget that, and then the memory of his kiss would come back to me in a rush, so real and clear it was like it was happening all over again, and I’d feel my face get warm and my dick react.

  I didn’t want to react to Avery like that.

  But I still wanted him to kiss me while I was tied to my desk. What the hell was wrong with me? I told myself I was being a total freak, but it didn’t help. I still indulged in that fantasy about twenty times a day.

  Avery took charge of my suitcase when we reached the offices of Phoenix & Phoenix, and waved away my offer to tow the stupid thing myself. I thought maybe it had shitty wheels or something, but he didn’t have any trouble with it. I guess traveling just wasn’t my thing.

  I watched him walk blithely down that long hallway, suitcase handle in his left hand, briefcase in the other. When we reached the door to his inner sanctum, he tucked the briefcase under his left arm, reached into his right pocket for keys, and unlocked the door.

  Competent. That was the word I’d been looking for.

  If I’d been the one trying to manipulate the key into the lock, the suitcase would have fallen over and the briefcase undoubtedly would have dropped to the floor and spewed its contents across the hallway. It wasn’t even that I was clumsy, not in my own space and when I stick to my routine. But I was so nervous of looking like a fool that it made me tense, and that tension made me so clumsy I looked like a fool.

  I set up my laptop while Avery called Stephanie for coffee.

  I didn’t realized he’d locked us in until there was a loud bang on the door, and a muffled curse from the other side of it.

  Avery chuckled, then got up from his desk and opened the door.

  He accepted the coffee from his assistant, setting one on his own desk, and bringing the other to mine.

  Stephanie followed him in. “Why is the door locked?”

  “The door will be locked from now on. I’ve asked you at least four times this week alone to wait for my response before barging in, but you never do. I’ve fixed that.”

  “E said he needed my key. I thought I was going to get it back, but I’m not, am I? Why must you insist on complicating my life?”

  I spun my chair around so I could look at them. They stood toe-to-toe, and I noticed for the first time they were the same height. It gave me the impression that Stephanie was a very tall woman. She had one hand on her hip, and the other toying with her necklace, as if she were intimidated, but unwilling to back down. No one else talked to Avery with a tone like hers. Or at least I hadn’t heard anyone talk to him that way. Even when Evan Wolters chided him, there was discernable humor involved.

  “Well, feel free to find a new job if you don’t like this one. Bitchy assistants are a dime a dozen.”

  I laughed to myself. Avery being direct, again.

  “You like me, and you know it,” she answered him. Her hand dropped away from the necklace, and she winked at me. “Admit it, you were relieved when I reached the thirty day mark without storming out of here. Unlike your last three assistants, or so I’ve heard.”

  Avery waved a hand, dismissing her. “Whatever. Go check your email. I need contract offers for Phillips, James-Ricco, and Alexander Anderson. Oh, and ask Alex if he can come up with a punchier pen name, would you?”

  She spun on her heel toward the door. “Yes, boss. Right away, boss.” It was sarcasm at its finest, and I think Avery was right in his assessment of her. She liked him. Very much.

  Avery grinned at me as soon as the door closed behind her. “That’s what I like to hear from a personal assistant.”

 
We worked in near-silence for the next couple of hours. Avery made two quiet phone calls, but other than that was only the click of computer keys and mouse devices.

  I sighed and stretched, a little bored. I usually worked with music blasting. Music kept me calm and kept me interested in what I was reading. Avery was leaning back in his chair, legs propped on the corner of his desk, his hand over a cordless mouse on his thigh. “Are you working on something interesting?” I asked.

  He glanced up at me. “This novel has a couple of problems. Something’s off in the structure and the pacing, and I think if I figure out how to fix one, the other will fix itself. The answer is eluding me, however, and re-reading doesn’t seem to be helping. How about you? Find anything that’ll knock my socks off?”

  “Not so far today,” I said.

  “Hmm. We’re both having a rough start.”

  “Everything I’ve read is just crap. It never ceases to amaze me what amateur writers consider ready to publish. Some of them are so bad it makes me squirm.”

  He laughed. “I know. I used to read the slush pile myself, but my letters started getting mean, which is why I hired people specifically to do it for me. You write beautiful letters. You tell the truth, but somehow manage to be kind about it. It’s a skill I wish I had.”

  Avery had read my letters? And he thought I had a skill he didn’t have? “Um. Thank you, I guess? I just try to remember the person receiving my letter has sent their baby for judgement. And rejection is going to hurt, even if the manuscript is a messy, ugly bastard.”

  “You have a kind heart. I like that,” he said.

  I think I was glowing. I wiggled in my chair, grinned at him, and chewed on a fingernail.

  “Really, Jules?”

  I realized what I was doing, and flung my hand away from my mouth with the kind of speed born of guilt. “I didn’t mean to.”

  “Of course you didn’t. Would you like to use the restroom before I tie your hands?”