by B. B. Easton
“I got those in Paris,” he answered, placing my jacket on a wooden coat hanger. “There are these street artists there who just sit on the sidewalks, drawing and painting famous landmarks all day. Their work is amazing”—Ken closed the closet door and turned toward me with a smile—“and it’s really fucking cheap.”
A strange sense of déjà vu fell over me as I held his gaze. Only, instead of feeling as though I were glimpsing into the past, I felt as if I were glimpsing into the future. Ken hadn’t decorated that house for himself; he’d decorated it for me. It didn’t make sense, but I felt it. I knew it. My soul saw that house and said home. My heart saw those paintings and said home. But, when my eyes beheld that introverted, intelligent, handsome, gainfully employed, responsible, tattoo-free man, they said, Home?, with a very distinct question mark at the end.
Ken wasn’t my type, but perhaps my type was ready for an upgrade.
The rumble of a car pulling into the garage shook me from my trance.
“Is that your sister?” I asked, feeling suddenly awkward about standing in the middle of the living room, doing nothing.
Ken walked past me toward the couch. “Probably not. She stays at her boyfriend’s most of the time.”
Probably not? Who the fuck is it then?
Ken sat on the couch and turned on the TV just as a door opened and closed somewhere in the kitchen. One second later, a tiny Asian girl walked through the entryway into the living room. She looked like she was around my age, maybe younger, and was no more than five feet tall. When she noticed that Ken had company, she sheepishly averted her eyes and scurried up the stairs.
I turned toward Ken with the universal expression for, What the fuck?, on my face.
He smirked, enjoying my confusion, and said, “That’s Robin. She works at the theater and needed a place to stay, so I’m renting out one of the other bedrooms to her.”
“How many bedrooms does this place have?” I asked, my tone surprisingly salty.
“Four.”
“Any other renters I should know about?”
Ken’s lopsided grin widened. “Not yet, but if you know anyone who’s looking, let me know.”
I rolled my eyes and joined him on the couch. “How old are you?” I asked, changing the subject to keep myself from volunteering to be his third roommate.
“Twenty-three.” Ken kept his eyes on the channel guide on his big screen TV. “Have you seen About a Boy? It’s finally on HBO.”
I shook my head. Both in response to his question and in disbelief that he was so young to be so damn grown.
“You haven’t? It’s so fucking good.” Ken selected the movie and placed the remote on the coffee table. “Hugh Grant’s my favorite actor.”
I snorted.
“What?” Ken gave me the side-eye.
“Hugh Grant isn’t anybody’s favorite actor.”
Ken laughed and turned to face me, doing a worse job at hiding his smile than usual. “I thought that, too, until, one day, I realized I liked every movie Hugh Grant has ever been in. Even Small Time Crooks, and I fucking hate Woody Allen. So, I was like, Holy shit. I think Hugh Grant’s my favorite actor.”
Ken’s smile was infectious.
“You’re telling me you liked Bridget Jones’s Diary?” I teased.
“Yep.”
“Two Weeks Notice?”
Ken nodded.
“Notting Hill?”
“Are you kidding? Notting Hill is the best one. We’re watching it after this. I mean”—Ken’s eyes darted around the room as he cleared his throat—“if you want to.”
I smiled, basking in the unexpected cuteness that was Ken Easton. Desperate to soothe his sudden nerves and charmed by his adorable love of British romantic comedies, I leaned forward and planted a chaste kiss on his chiseled mouth. I didn’t think about it. I just…did it.
And regretted it immediately.
The moment our lips touched, Ken froze—along with the very breath in my lungs as I waited an uncomfortable amount of time for him to do something.
One Mississippi, two Mississippi…
But Ken just sat there, suspended in time, unblinking, hardly breathing, with my lips pressed against his closed, slightly pursed mouth.
Releasing him from the awkwardness of that kiss with a loud smack, I tried to play it off like it was just an innocent nothing.
What the fuck was that? He just sat there! Why would he invite me here if he doesn’t even want to make out?
As I played with a string on the ripped knees in my jeans and tried to come up with an airtight excuse for why I had to leave that instant, Ken turned off the lamp next to the couch and started the movie. The gesture was subtle, but thanks to my downcast stare, I definitely caught a glimpse of him adjusting the crotch of his slacks once the lights were out.
I bit the insides of my cheeks to keep from smiling.
Maybe I’ll stay…just a little bit longer.
I woke up hours later in Ken’s darkened living room, horizontal on his microsuede couch. As I blinked up at the glowing TV, trying to get my bearings, I realized that my fully clothed body was lying across Ken’s lap. My head was on the armrest, and Julia Roberts was standing in a bookstore.
I was fucking mortified. I must have fallen asleep on him, but he didn’t seem to mind the contact. In fact, as I shifted and wiggled against him, trying to find a more comfortable position, I felt an unmistakable bulge swell and lengthen against my side. My hormones roared to life, ready for the action that usually followed such an appearance, but much to my surprise, Ken didn’t press it against me. Instead of feeling me up, his hands moved away, allowing me room to move.
By maintaining complete control of his body, Ken was allowing me to be in complete control of the situation.
It was a gift no one had ever given me before.
In my experience, boys were opportunistic assholes. Even the sweet ones. Give them an inch, and they’d take your hymen.
But, as I’d come to realize that night, in a multitude of ways, Ken was no boy. He wasn’t even a man. He was a rare subspecies, commonly referred to as a gentleman, that I didn’t even know still existed.
And he’d been hiding in plain sight.
As Julia Roberts faced Hugh Grant with tears in her eyes and a fake smile plastered on her pretty face, Ken’s quiet voice recited her next line from memory.
“I’m also just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her.”
I giggled and pushed myself up into a sitting position. Ken pulled his eyes away from the screen just long enough to meet my amused stare. His lids were hooded, features relaxed, lips upturned on one side.
“That was the best part.” He nodded toward the glowing screen.
I smiled, maybe even bigger than Julia Roberts, and shook my head. Ken was funny. And charming. And he’d just let me touch him for…I don’t even know how long.
“What time is it?” I asked, looking around the living room for a clock.
Ken shifted next to me, digging his cell phone out of his pocket. Glancing at the illuminated numbers, he read, “Twelve fifty-eight.”
“Shit.” I jumped up, the room tilting sideways from the head rush as I scrambled over to the coat closet. “I have class in the morning. I gotta go.”
Ken nodded sleepily and walked me through his immaculate white kitchen, past an adorable breakfast nook nestled in front of a bay window, and out the garage door. I noticed, as he led the way past his Eclipse and Robin’s little Honda Civic, that he must have kicked off his shoes while I was sleeping. I don’t know why, but seeing Ken in socked feet made me happy.
Stopping next to my car, Ken turned to face me. His mask of apathy was back in place, the one that hid his thoughts from me. Our breaths were visible in the frigid black air as they collided and swirled between us.
“So…” I stalled, trying to see inside his mind. “Karaoke tomorrow, right?”
A small smile broke through his serious exterior. “So
rry.” He shrugged. “I have a date with a salad bar.”
“Oh, right.” I laughed. “See you then.”
Ken’s smile faded. “See you then.”
Kiss him, dumbass! Don’t just stare at him.
No! I want him to kiss me first this time!
Well, I want to be the new lead singer of No Doubt now that Gwen Stefani is going solo, but it’s not gonna fucking happen, so just do it already.
“Should I…meet you at the theater again?”
Oh, nice. Perfect. Drag it out. That’ll make it less awkward.
“Sure. I get off at six.” Ken rubbed his frozen hands together and shoved them in the pockets of his black slacks. His black tie had been loosened but was still hanging from his neck.
Great. Now, his hands are in his pockets. That’s the universal sign for, Don’t hug me.
He’s just cold!
Which is exactly why you should kiss him and let him go back in the house, you selfish bitch!
He didn’t dry-hump me or try to convince me to spend the night or anything. What if he’s just not that into me?
Fine. Don’t kiss him.
I can’t just not kiss him!
“Sounds good. See you then.” I reached for my car door handle in slow motion, searching Ken’s face for some trace of affection, analyzing his body language for any invitations I might have missed, but the moment we’d shared on the couch was long gone. Ken was cold again, inside and out.
With a professional nod, my tie-clad crush turned and headed back through the garage and into the house.
What the fuck? Seriously? No hug?
Just as I was about to slam my car door shut loud enough to wake the neighbors, Ken called out from the doorway into the kitchen, “Hey…Brooke?”
“Yeah?” I replied from the driver’s seat, hope lifting my voice to a decibel that should have made the neighborhood dogs howl.
“Call me to let me know you got home safe, okay?”
“Okay.” I sighed, pulling the door closed with a gentle click.
“Haven’t you seen that Sex and the City episode? What if he’s just not that into me?” I exhaled a stream of smoke and flicked my cigarette ash in the general direction of the overflowing bowl of butts nearby.
Juliet narrowed her black-rimmed eyes and furrowed her drawn-on eyebrows at me from the other side of the bar. Her entire makeup kit consisted of one black kohl eyeliner pencil. If it wasn’t for her trichotillomania—an inexplicable compulsion to pull her eyelashes and eyebrows out—she probably wouldn’t wear makeup at all.
Juliet was fresh out of fucks. I guess having a baby when you were still a baby yourself would do that to you. Despite getting knocked up by a drug dealer at the age of fifteen, Juliet had still managed to graduate high school on time and get accepted into the College of Business at the University of Georgia. Sure, she would have fit in way better at Georgia State where everybody chain-smoked, wore black, and experimented with veganism, but I wasn’t mad about her choice. UGA had way hotter guys and way better bars, especially the one she worked at.
Fuzzy’s Bar & Grill was a shithole with no discernable theme other than the place where wooden things went to die. There was wood paneling on the walls. The most scuffed hardwoods you’d ever seen on the floor. And every table, chair, and flat surface was made from something brown and splintery.
But damn if it didn’t attract some fine-ass losers.
The ten-dollar pitchers of Pabst Blue Ribbon brought in the tattooed, working class crowd who didn’t give two shits about the college-town locale. They were just there to get drunk on the cheap. The regulars loved Juliet, which was hilarious, considering what a bitch she was to everyone, and nobody batted an eye whenever she let her underage purple-haired best friend drink for free.
So, basically, it was heaven disguised as the inside of an old coffin.
Juliet handed me a Coke with plenty of Jack Daniel’s in it, then snatched the cigarette out of my hand.
“You’re right,” she said, taking a drag as I took my first sip. “He’s just not that into you.”
“Ugh,” I scoffed, snatching my Camel Light back. “I knew you were gonna say that.”
“Hey, I call ’em like I see ’em.” She shrugged, completely ignoring the impatient glares from her patrons. “You’ve been to his house, like, five times now, and he hasn’t even invited you upstairs. That’s fucked up.”
“It’s fucked up, right?” I threw my hands in the air. “I would have just written him off by now if we didn’t have these fucking Cirque du Soleil tickets. Now, I gotta deal with this awkward bullshit for three more weeks!”
A man cleared his throat from a table behind me, prompting Juliet’s pencil-thin eyebrows to shoot up.
Glaring over my shoulder, she shouted above the noise from the rowdy hockey fans gathered around the TV at the opposite end of the bar, “I’ll be with you in a minute, sir.” Then, lowering her voice, she added, “Dickhead.”
“Explain to me again why you get better tips than me.”
I looked up as a man with a megawatt smile and a chestnut-brown faux hawk came to stand beside Juliet. He was wearing a white button-up shirt and dark gray vest, but the tattoos peeking out of his collar and sleeves negated the formality of his outfit.
And increased his hotness tenfold.
“They’re called boobs, Zach.”
“Oh, right.” He beamed at me even though he was talking to her. “I thought it was your glowing personality.”
I snickered as Juliet rolled her eyes.
“B, this is our new bartender, Zach. Zach thinks he’s funny.”
Zach winked at me. “Your friend thinks I’m funny, too.”
Juliet turned to face him. I don’t know how she could keep a straight face while looking at something that fucking cute.
“My friend is on her second Jack and Coke. She thinks everything’s funny.”
I shrugged as Zach met my gaze. “It’s true.”
Juliet pushed past him to go abuse some more customers, pretending not to be affected by the potent cloud of charisma he was emanating.
Propping both forearms on the bar, Zach leaned forward and asked, “Is she always that shy?”
I giggled. I actually fucking giggled.
“She’s…she’s a bitch, man. I can’t even sugarcoat it. She pushed me into moving traffic once.”
“Hey!” Juliet shouted from ten feet away where she was standing at a table full of bikers. “I pulled you right back onto the sidewalk. Don’t be so dramatic.”
I rolled my eyes and turned back toward the new bartender. “It’s an abusive relationship.”
Zach laughed. “Sounds like you’ve been having all kinds of relationship problems lately.”
I took a sip from my drink to mask my mortification. “You heard all that, huh?”
Zach nodded at one of the hockey fanatics who was holding up two fingers in our direction. Pulling down a couple of dusty glass mugs from an overhead shelf, he turned and began filling one from the beer tap behind him.
Glancing at me over his shoulder, Zach said, “It’s none of my business, but I have a theory, if you wanna hear it.”
“A theory about the guy I’m seeing?”
Zach set one mug down and began filling the second. “No. Just a theory about guys in general.”
“Dude, I need all the help I can get. Spill it.”
Tossing me a lopsided smile, Zach delivered the beers and returned to his spot in front of me. “You ready? I’m about to drop some serious fucking science.”
I grinned and nodded enthusiastically.
Casting a sideways glance in both directions, Zach leaned forward. “Dicks…are like golden retrievers.”
My face screwed up in confusion. “That’s your theory?”
“Yep.” Zach smirked, crossing his arms over his chest. “Think about it. They get excited when they see something they want. They’re shit at communication. And, if they like you, they’ll follow you
around until you finally give in and play with them.”
I snorted out a laugh that sent fizzy bubbles up into my nose. “And how is that supposed to help me?”
“Well, now that you know how dicks work, all you have to do is watch. If a guy is into you, he’ll find reasons to be near you.”
“In case I decide I want to pet his golden retriever?”
“Exactly.” Zach beamed. He had a dimple on his left cheek that I hadn’t noticed before. “You can’t pet it if you’re not there, right? So, he’ll want to keep you as close as possible.”
It wasn’t lost on me that, at that exact moment, Zach was the one who was close. Very close.
I dropped my eyes as a prickly heat scorched my neck and cheeks. Focusing on his thick, masculine fingers, which were laced together on the bar between us, I made out the words WORK and PLAY tattooed across his knuckles.
“So…” I swallowed and forced myself to meet his whiskey-colored gaze. “What if this guy finds ways to be near me, but then, when we’re together, all he wants to do is watch movies until I fall asleep on the couch?”
“Ha! That’s an easy one.” Zach chuckled. “He’s gay.”
“Oh my God!” I squealed, slapping the splintery bar with both hands. “Gay! Why didn’t I think of that? This whole time, I thought he was just a serial killer!”
“Hey!” Juliet barked as she rounded the corner at the end of the bar. “Gay people can be serial killers, too, asshole.”
Once, back when Ken was still just Pajama Guy, I’d gotten drunk at one of Jason’s parties—per my usual—and asked him why he didn’t celebrate holidays or birthdays. The conversation that had followed went something like this:
“I don’t believe in blindly buying things just because of a number on a calendar. Like Valentine’s Day. Who says we all have to uniformly buy heart-shaped bullshit just because it’s February 14? Hallmark made that shit up. It’s corporate brainwashing.”
I rolled my eyes. “How does your girlfriend feel about that?”
Ken shrugged. “Never had one.”
“So, let me get this straight.” I held up one index finger. “You don’t drink, you don’t smoke, you don’t gamble, and you don’t believe in holidays, religion, or evidently, commitment. Next, you’re gonna tell me you don’t eat chocolate either.”