Undersold

by B. B. Hamel

  A huge part of me thought eventually Shane would be fine with me telling people, which meant I wasn’t completely lying to her. I mean, we couldn’t be secret lovers forever, could we? I didn’t think so, but anything was possible with a man like Shane Green.

  After brunch, Darcy left to catch her train back to the city, and I went back to my apartment to get ready. I didn’t have much time, so I threw on the first outfit I could find, jeans and a navy blouse, a little angry that I hadn’t given myself more space to get dressed. By the time I was finished changing, my buzzer rang, which meant the car was outside.

  It felt strange going back to Shane’s place. Before, I would have been all nerves and excitement, but now I was confused. I had no idea what was waiting for me, whether he was furious with me still for having broken his rules, or if he was having me over to make amends, or if this was some kind of weird booty call. I had no idea, but I preferred the latter two options.

  We reached his house, and I rang the bell, which buzzed me in immediately. I found him alone in the kitchen, drinking something red from a tall glass.

  He looked up as I walked in, and his face brightened immediately. It caught me off guard how happy he looked to see me. His handsome eyes and stubbled face took my breath away, and I realized exactly how much I needed him in that moment. Every guy from the night before was a shadow of this man sitting before me.

  “Bloody Mary?” He gestured toward his drink.

  “No, thanks. Why are you drinking?”

  He shrugged. “This is tomato juice, but I thought you might need a little help with your hangover.”

  “I’m not hungover,” I said. “And how did you know I was drinking?”

  “Darcy was over, and you were texting me late. And your texts weren’t exactly grammatically correct.” He grinned.

  My stomach did flips. I pulled out my phone and checked last night’s messages, and he was right: what seemed like cogent thoughts then were more like drunken scrawls, full of emboli and typos. Autocorrect was not my friend, and I cursed my phone silently.

  “Alright, this is a mess,” I said, face red.

  “Don’t worry about it. Take a seat.” His grin softened and he gestured at a chair.

  I walked over and sat down across from him.

  He took a deep breath and sighed. “I feel like all I do is apologize anymore, and I hate apologizing.” He paused and met my gaze, eyes fierce. I felt myself shrink away from his passion, overwhelmed and surprised. “I’m sorry, Amy. Again, I’m sorry.”

  I nodded but stayed quiet.

  “I know it was wrong of me to leave like that,” he went on. “Janice walking in on us really ... upset me. You know how important my privacy is, but more than that, you’re an employee, and performing sexual favors for your boss is usually a huge ethical issue. I know you weren’t doing it for that reason, but to Janice it may have looked that way.”

  I blinked. I never imagined it could have been taken that way. I definitely wasn’t doing it to get ahead. If anything, I was the one benefiting from his body. “Did she say something to you?”

  “Yes and no. I talked to her about it, and we’re all fine there. But it scared me, how much I was willing to risk for you, just to be around you. I had to get away if I was going to be able to think clearly. I should have told you this sooner.”

  “I understand, I mean, I get it. But where did you go?”

  “Nowhere. I was here, running through my options. And I decided something.”

  “What did you decide?”

  “First, can you forgive me for the way that I acted?” His flint eyes stared deeply into mine, and I didn’t have any other choice.

  I hesitated, and felt my self-doubt. “Are you sure this isn’t my fault somehow?”

  He looked taken aback. “No, Amy. Absolutely not. You did nothing wrong.”

  “I forgive you.” I felt a little breathless, but the truth was I couldn’t say no to him, now or ever.

  He took a deep breath, as if relieved. He stood and moved around the island. I watched him come toward me, broad shoulders slumped, with bags under his eyes as if he hadn’t been sleeping. He stopped in front of me and took my hand.

  “I want to be with you. That hasn’t changed,” he said.

  “I want that too.” My heart was pounding.

  “Amy, there are things about my past that you don’t know. Things that very few people know. And I will tell you all about it one day, I promise.”

  What did he mean by that? A thousand questions ran through my mind. Why was he even mentioning some mysterious past if he didn’t plan on telling me? More secrets blossomed inside of him, and he felt like he was always just out of reach.

  He must have read my confused look. “I’m saying that only because I trust you, and I want you to know how serious I am about this. I am trying to open myself to you, but it’s taking longer than I expected.”

  I nodded. I understood that. I hadn’t told him every detail about my family yet, either. And the pressures of his life were still foreign to me, although, from having been around him the past few months, I was starting to see the immense burdens he carried, and the serious way he carried them. He asked everything of himself, and gave as freely as he could. It was part of what drew me to him so fully.

  “I understand. I’m okay with that,” I said softly.

  “I want to tell you at least one thing about me. You know I grew up here, in this city. What I never told you was that my dad was an alcoholic, an old school blue-collar kind of guy. Beer in hand as soon as he got home, and passed out drunk by midnight. Every single night, and sometimes during the day, too, he drank. Things got bad, toward the end. My brother hated him, more than even me and my mom did. My father hit him sometimes, and my brother would fight back.

  “One day, he drank himself to death, and was gone. I was fifteen. It was hard on my mother, his death. She said he hadn’t always been that way, but all I remember is him, drunk out of his mind, yelling at my mother about the laundry. He never hit her, at least, but he never made her happy, either. We spent our days afraid of him, and I felt glad when he died. I’m ashamed of that, but I did.”

  I had never heard any of this. I knew his father died when he was young; that was public knowledge. But I had no clue he was an abusive alcoholic, and I didn’t know he grew up poor, like me. I realized that nobody else but his family and me knew these details. He didn’t have anyone else close to him in his life, as far as I could tell.

  I held his hand as he spoke, and didn’t interrupt him.

  “I grew up poor. I’m not ashamed of that, but I don’t advertise it. I use it as a driving force, a desire to succeed. I want to give my mother the life she tried to give to us, which is why I worked so hard all my life. Success is a tool for me to provide for her. And that’s also why I stayed in Philly and made my company’s headquarters here. I wanted to give back to the city that gave me absolutely nothing. I want to make this place better for all the kids like me. That’s also why your app is so important to me personally. I want to improve the lives of low income families, particularly the kids.”

  That explained a lot about everything. That’s why he wanted to spend so much time working on my app when he didn’t normally devote himself to new projects. It explained why he was so secretive and successful, and why he was a dominant force in everything he did. More than that, though, I realized how similar we were. He worked to make his mother’s life easier, while I worked to make my father’s illness as comfortable as possible.

  “I guess that’s why you gave me so much attention,” I said.

  He laughed. “No, that was entirely for your body.”

  I blushed. “Thank you for telling me all that,” I said and squeezed his hand.

  He squeezed mine back. “I want you to know me.”

  I felt something inside of me break in that moment. I could feel the tears well up in my eyes, and Shane’s face dropped in surprise.

  “What did I say?”r />
  I wiped at my face and felt stupid. “Nothing, at all. It’s just, I haven’t been completely open with you, either.”

  “You don’t have to tell me anything you’re not comfortable with.” He looked concerned, and he reached out to brush my cheek.

  “I know. But I want you to hear this.” I took a deep breath. I hadn’t told anyone this story in a long time, but something about this moment compelled me to speak. He knew about my father’s cancer, of course, but I kept this from him. I don’t know why I did, maybe I was afraid of how he would react. But it was a defining moment for me, and a large part of who I was.

  “When I was a kid, I got in a car accident. I know I told you that much already. What I didn’t tell you...what I couldn’t tell you...was that my mother was driving. It was late, and it was raining. I had been out at a friend’s house drinking, and she came to pick me up when I missed curfew. I was sixteen at the time, way too young, and she was pretty pissed. Well, I don’t remember how, but she lost control of the car. The police said she probably hit some water and aquaplaned. According to them, we hit a tree going pretty fast. Next thing I remember, I woke up in the hospital with my brothers and my Dad, and they told me she had died.”

  I took a deep breath. He was listening attentively, and his face was a mask of concern and sadness. He squeezed my hand and that simple gesture gave me the confidence to continue my story.

  “I blamed myself for a long time. It’s maybe why I don’t party much, and why I push myself to work so hard. I feel like I have to make up for her death, because if I hadn’t been such an idiot teenager that night, she never would have been out on the road.”

  “You can’t think that way,” he said softly.

  “I know. I know I can’t. I don’t really blame myself anymore, or at least as much as I used to. I’ll always think about it. It still drives me in a lot of ways, and it makes me the person that I am. And I wanted you to know about it, because she’s always a part of me, part of why I work so hard. Just like you work to take care of your mother, I work to remember my mother, and to make her happy, wherever she is.”

  He nodded, but didn’t say anything. I could tell he understood. His body moved closer, and his warmth and strength were comforting presences against me.

  “And now you know, I guess.”

  “I’m glad you told me, Amy.”

  “I’m glad I told you too, actually. I feel...lighter, like I was carrying that around, and now you have a part of it.”

  His smile broke across his face like waves against a lifeboat. He wrapped his arms around me, and kissed me deeply, more deeply than he ever had before. I could sense the tenderness he felt for me, and something inside of me cracked fully open and began to well up to the surface. I couldn’t name it yet, but it was there, waiting. The majority of my mind melted into him and was lost in the smell of his body and the warmth of his chiseled arms.

  But even during this, one of the calmest moments of my life, when I felt safe and secure in Shane’s arms, there was a small section in the back of my brain that kept wondering: What exactly was he still hiding from me?

  18.

  After that, we spent the rest of the day in and out of bed. The hours blended into each other, and it scared me a little bit how fast the time could melt away when I was in his arms. But it was good, and comfortable, in a way I hadn’t experienced before. So much of my life was spent in anxious work, trying to get the next project finished, but that lazy Sunday turned into a lazy Monday. There were some benefits to dating the boss. One huge benefit was getting time off. Lazy Monday turned into lazy Tuesday, and suddenly it was Wednesday, and we hadn’t left his house in three days.

  We laid together in his bed in the morning, partially dressed. I ran my fingers along the contours of his chest and stomach as he played with my hair.

  “I need to go home soon,” I said.

  “No, you don’t. Anything you need is here.”

  I laughed. “Do you have a change of clothes for me?”

  He considered that for a second. “No, I don’t. But we can buy some.”

  I shook my head. If we kept this up, I’d never leave, and I think we both knew it.

  “I need to go home for a few hours, Shane. Just to get some stuff, freshen up, and make sure my place hasn’t burned down. I’ll be back tonight.”

  He sighed and stretched. “I guess that’s reasonable, but I’d still rather you stayed.”

  “No more than a few hours. Promise.”

  After that, I got dressed. He called his driver, and fifteen minutes later I got into his towncar. The driver was pretty familiar with me by now, and he smiled and nodded as I climbed into the back. The car dropped me off at my apartment. Compared to Old City, my neighborhood was dingy and dirty, and I felt a little nervous. I was wearing the same clothes I wore Sunday afternoon, but freshly laundered. Still, I had an odd sense of déjà vu as I went upstairs.

  Inside, nothing had burned down. I dropped my stuff in a corner, and started packing another bag. We hadn’t talked much more about our family lives after Sunday, and the idea that Shane was hiding something from me was a constant, nagging presence. Fortunately, we did other things that kept me distracted, and I hadn’t had much of a chance to obsess too much about it. Even more than that, on Monday morning I found a small necklace, gold and silver interlocking lines, with a string of three small diamonds at the end. I had no idea when he found the time to buy it for me, but it was perfect. I hadn’t taken it off since, and treasured its weight. I couldn’t tell if it was an apology gift, or a bribe, or just because, but I loved it anyway.

  As I was shoving clean clothes into my old suitcase, my phone buzzed. I smiled and assumed it was Shane checking up on me.

  Hey, are you home right now? It was a text from Jim. I hadn’t heard from him since my congratulations party those few months ago, which was odd, but I was happy he messaged me. I had been thinking about him recently.

  I am actually, what’s up?

  I know this is a little weird and random, but can I stop by? I need to talk to you.

  He had been to my apartment once awhile back when he walked me home after working late. He hadn’t been back since, or even mentioned he remembered where I lived, let alone wanted to come visit. It was a little strange, and definitely out of the blue, but I had some time to kill, and it would be nice to see him.

  Sure, I’ll be here for an hour or two. Stop by whenever.

  See you soon then.

  I had no clue what this was about, but I was too lost in Shane to think much about it. I assumed it had to go with the café; maybe he wanted me to pick up weekend shifts or something. The issue with Shane was much more pressing, though, and it consumed me. I didn’t want to snoop or come on too strong, so I seemed to let the issue drop completely, and he hadn’t picked it back up since. But what was this dark secret he was keeping from me? What could be so bad that he was embarrassed to tell me about it? Hundreds of things spun through my mind, from a murder to time in a cult to weird sexual fetishes I didn’t know about yet. I was hoping for the fetishes; at least that could be fun. Definitely no murders and cults, I hoped. Maybe he had children with another woman, or an ex-wife hidden away somewhere. Or, maybe he had another real name, and the fake identities continued on forever. I kept packing and daydreaming, and by the time I was done, the bell to my building rang.

  I had forgotten about Jim as my mind wandered over the possibilities. I buzzed him into the building, and a minute later he knocked on my apartment door.

  “Hey Jim,” I said, glad to see him.

  He looked terrible. He was in his usual tight jeans and converse sneakers with a random band t-shirt, but he looked tired and worn out. His hair was shaggy and hadn’t been cut since I last saw him, and there were bags under his eyes. He still looked cute in his boyish way, but there was something behind his gaze, something worn out and older.

  He stood at my apartment’s threshold, and looked uncertain. “Hi Amy, mind if
I come in?”

  “Sure, of course.” I moved inside and he followed me. I was suddenly very aware of my messy apartment. Clothes were left everywhere, and dirty dishes were left in the sink. Gross, I thought, when I realized they were a few days old.

  “Sorry for the mess,” I said, embarrassed. He laughed.

  “It’s about what I expected, based on your cleaning abilities from Swirl.”

  “Hey, I was your best employee.” I laughed, and remembered the few nights I refused to clean the toilets.

  “Oh, more like third or fourth best. You were decent. Maybe top ten,” he said, teasing. We moved over to the couch and sat down together.

  “Please, that place is barely standing without me.”

  He laughed. “We’re managing to limp by without you.”

  It felt nice being around him again. We had always been comfortable, and I missed talking about our lives together. He was one of the few people I told everything to, back before I sold the app and met Shane.

  “So how are things, seriously?” I asked.

  “Things are decent at Swirl.”

  “No, I mean with you. How’s the band?”

  He shrugged. “We had a gig on Saturday, went pretty well. Andy is still being a dick, George is George, and Tom has been MIA since Sunday. All in all, pretty typical shit from those guys.”

  “I hate to say it, but I think you’re the most stable one of the group.”

  “I know, it’s amazing. I never dreamed I’d be the normal one.”

  We both laughed. His bandmates were notoriously insane guys. None of them were bad people, but they were wanderers and partyers. Their music was good, but they hardly ever practiced because most of them were too busy picking up girls at shows or going on weeklong benders. Jim was the only one working a full time job and supporting himself. The others were either living off of part time gigs, a girlfriend, or the charity of strangers. Or, in George’s case, his mom.