by Violet Blaze
I wish I could describe my week to you, but then this site would be rated with a big fat R for racy. Let's just say, I had a chance encounter with a stranger that made me feel good about myself, made me feel sexy, warm, wanted. It was a chance meeting, something that was never supposed to mean anything. But now I've met the man, now I know who he is and I'm not sure how to deal with that.
I lean back in my computer chair and eye the web browser with twitching fingers. Looking up pictures of Rhoden Richards on the internet is a really bad idea. I've already tried that and let me just say, the man hardly takes any photos with his clothes on. It's all abs and muscular thighs and sculpted backs. I've never even really given thought to a man's back before, but seeing these pictures in a new light, with the carnal knowledge of the way those muscles felt beneath my hands, has changed everything.
I click off of my blog and onto the Google search for Big Dick Richards which seems to bring up the best shots. The one I'm staring at is a full body shot of Rhoden's back, etched from neck to the tight curve of his ass in a black and gray tree, its branches stretching across his shoulder blades, the leaves so finely detailed they look like they could float off with a change in the weather.
My breath hitches and I close the window before I get too excited. The longer I look, the more rapid my breathing becomes. My hand starts tracing a path along my thigh towards the heated center of my core. With a massive amount of restraint, I refocus on my work.
I got engaged a few days ago. But not to the man that made me feel whole, warm, the man that smelled like vanilla and oak and bourbon. I got engaged to a different man, a more practical man, a man that makes sense.
I pause again and put my head in my hands. Clearly, I can't publish any of this. Although it's highly unlikely that anyone I know actually reads my blog, I can't take the chance that my dad or Walter or—God forbid—Rhoden could see this. My cursor highlights the words and obliterates them from existence.
I start the post over again.
Remember how I said I have a thing about my arms? Well, I wore a dress with no sleeves the other night and I felt fabulous! In fact, I felt prettier that night than I have in a long time, and it had nothing to do with my outfit and everything to do with the company I kept. The thing is, it felt good to dress up for once. Presently, I am still in the camp of comfy clothes, but I've decided to experiment with my wardrobe and not just my shoes (you know how much I love a good pair of heels, comfortable or not). So, starting tomorrow, I'm going to document my outfits and #lovemycurves with every single piece I wear. Because you know what? If a stranger could make me feel beautiful, then I should be able to make myself feel beautiful.
Goal of the Week: try on something that scares the crap out of me … and then wear it out.
I plug my phone in and upload the group selfie that Ariana, Hal, and I took when we first got out of the car. After typing in a quick description of the outfit and uploading it, I find myself staring at Rhoden Richards' naked backside again.
“I cannot believe I slept with you,” I groan and then jump when the front door opens suddenly, glancing over my shoulder to find Ariana in a blue pantsuit and towering black heels. Before she can see what I'm doing, I close my browser window and spin to face her.
“I brought Chinese. I know, I know, it's probably loaded with MSG, but I can't seem to think beyond kung pao chicken today. It's infiltrated my brain.”
“Ariana,” I start before I can lose my nerve.
“I brought chopsticks. I know you don't use them, but I figured it'd be fun to at least try. It's like the food tastes better somehow if you have to work for it, you know?”
“I slept with Rhoden Richards,” I blurt as Ariana freezes, one arm inside the paper bag on the counter. Her green eyes look like they're about to topple out of her face.
“You … did you already have that date?” she asks, blinking confusedly at me, kind of like Rhoden did at the park today when he first realized I was his mystery date. His lioness. An all over shiver wracks my body, the good kind that makes the thighs clench tight. I can't believe how fiercely I want to see him again.
“No, Ariana. It was him. I slept with Rhoden at the masquerade party.”
There's a good thirty seconds of silence there. And then Ariana tosses her head back and laughs hysterically.
“This is so GREAT!” she screams and I cringe, crossing my arms over my midsection as I try to figure out exactly what makes this so amazing. Personally, I think it's kind of an epic disaster. When Ariana starts bouncing up and down like a schoolgirl, I lose all respect for her. Seriously. I'm having a crisis here.
“This is not helping.”
“Helping?” she asks as she pulls out a fortune cookie and shreds the plastic. Then she feeds the whole thing—fortune and all—to the dog. Great. Guess who's going to have to clean up a pile of poop with You Shall Fall in Love with a Mysterious Stranger written on a tiny piece of paper inside of it? That's right: me. “What are you talking about? This is exactly what you needed, Della. This is your wake-up call.”
“Finding out that the first man I've slept with in six months is a douche-y football dick is a wake-up call?”
Ariana sighs and comes over to kneel on the carpet in front of me, folding her legs underneath her and sitting back on her heels. Her red braids dangle loosely over her shoulders.
“You know how you told me that there was something magical in that man's touch? Like you were on fire?”
“It was sex, Ariana. Not a life altering revelation.”
“That's not what I'm talking about, Della. Shut up and listen. There are about a hundred things that come together to determine whether a relationship is meant to work or not. Sex is just one of them. Chemistry is just one of them. And guess what? You have both with this guy.”
“It doesn't mean he's my soul mate or anything,” I tell her as Wisdom taps her back feet in annoyance. She still isn't used to the dog yet. To be fair, the puppy sort of acts like he wants to tear the poor bunny's throat out, but I still think I can make this work. The three of us, we're going to be a family, damn it.
“Noooo, but it's at least one thing you have in common. One more thing than you have in common with Walter.”
I sigh. Here we go again.
“You don't like the man, don't have any shared interests, and his touch grosses you out. Look, I've been trying to be supportive here, but it's been like, a year since your dad started forcing him on you, and you haven't done anything about it. And you want to know what the really sad part about all this is? Your entire family thinks that this wedding is on. Hal texted and told me that your stepmom is interviewing wedding planners already.”
Well that's news to me.
“You hate Walter.”
“I don't hate him,” I respond automatically.
“You hate him,” Ariana repeats again.
A long pause.
“What do I do about Rhoden Richards?” I ask instead because oddly enough, this feels like the more pressing question.
“Do?” Ariana asks and then her face melts into a drooling smile. She clasps her hands by her chest. “Didn't you already do him?”
“Hilarious,” I say as I cross my legs and bounce my foot in frustration. “He lives around here, Ariana.”
“So?”
“And I won a date with the guy.”
She wrinkles her nose at me, like I'm some sort of crazy person.
“You are the only person I know who runs so hard and so fast from something they like. You won a date with him, yeah. So go on the date. Sleep with him again. It's not really that hard of a thing to figure out.” A long pause as she stares dreamily at the ceiling. “Tell me about the sex again, from start to finish. I need to vicariously sleep with him through you.”
“Do you know how gross that sounds?” I ask as I stand up and move into the kitchen to grab some food. “I'm not going on that date, Ariana. It just … I don't think I can handle it.”
“Suit yours
elf,” she says, but I can tell she's pissed at me. “Marry Walter then and make little GMO babies.”
“Maybe I will,” I shoot back at her, but admittedly, the thought kind of freaks me out. I decide how to best segue into the dog park story. “Did you know the puppy crapped on Walter's ten thousand dollar loafers this morning?”
Ariana's face breaks into a rictus grin, and I know I've started off on just the right foot—pun intended.
Dinner at Dad's.
Not exactly the highlight of my week. No, that would be when Rhoden Richards drove me into the mattress with his giant …
“Hi Dad,” I say cheerfully as I come into the house and find him already seated at the dinner table. My stepmom gives me an evil glare, like I've somehow destroyed her life by being six minutes late. It's not like she actually cooked anything on the table anyway. No, that was her chef, Uma, a woman who puts up with enough crap to fill the city's sewers ten times over.
“Hal, Reagan, Emery, Mom.” The word grinds out between my teeth from habit. Ever since they got engaged, both my father and my stepmom forced me to call her Mom. I used to get spankings or time-outs if I didn't. I might be a little beyond the belt and the grounding at this point, but it slips out without my meaning it to sometimes.
“You look hot,” Hal mouths at me as I pass by and take a seat across from her. I've got on a georgette button-front dress with a white cardigan over the top. Paired with some gold and cream winged heels, it's a winner of an outfit. I feel free and flirty and fun. It's part of my new dress for success mantra that I came up with for the blog yesterday. I usually just write about how I feel, how I want to feel, my plans for getting there. It's not like I'm famous or anything, but I make enough off ad revenue to support myself. Well, the fact that Dad paid off my car and condo helps immensely.
I feel like a complete asshole in that moment.
“Della,” Dad finally acknowledges when he feels like I've suffered enough. “How's Walter?” I have no idea what to say since the last time I saw the guy, my dog was shitting on his shoes. I make myself smile anyway as Hal makes gagging motions across the table. My stepmom slaps her on the thigh and she cringes.
“He's great. Really excited about the fact that you're selling the Adders to him.” I pause when I realize I've just blurted it all out. Oops. I'd meant to ease into it carefully, tactfully. Guess I'm not a very good public speaker. “Dad, you can't sell the team.”
“We've discussed this, Della,” he tells me as he reaches down and picks up his napkin. His gray hair makes him look fierce and patriarchal, like some kind of wiseman or something. The way he says everything makes it feel true, like he orders liquid confidence and injects it into his voice. It made it hard to defy him as a child; it feels impossible now. “You'll be married to Walter anyway, so what does it matter?”
“It matters because …” Because the Adders have always been my team. Not his. Not Walter's. “Look, if you have to sell, I understand, but could you maybe pick somebody else?”
There's a loud clinking of silverware as my stepsister, Reagan, drops her fork to her plate and fixes me with an evil stare. She's just like her mother, an East Coast bred blue blood who thinks the world owes her. Too bad her family's out of money, too. Reagan knows that her future also depends on my decision here.
It makes me sick to my stomach.
Why couldn't Walter have fallen for her? Or for Emery? Either one of them would have leapt at the chance to hang on Walt's arm for the rest of their life. But he chose me. He only wants me.
I swallow hard and fiddle with my napkin.
“What is going on here?” my dad asks as he folds his own napkin and sets it on his lap. “You're not acting like yourself.” Which is a funny thing to say since I'm pretty sure he doesn't know me at all anymore. My dad still refers to me as unemployed even though I make more from my blog in a month than Reagan has ever earned in her entire life. P.S. She's earned herself a net worth between negative one and one. Meaning zero. Meaning zilch.
“I just …” I look up and find everyone staring at me again, all of their eyes narrowed and critical (except for Hal's, of course). The heat of the spotlight glares down on me again, making me sweat. “I guess that date thing with Rhoden Richards is in November? Saturday, two days after the game against the Titans. It'll be good publicity.”
WHAT THE HELL AM I SAYING?!
There's a long, agonizing pause, punctuated only by my stepmother's careful sipping of her wine. She even fans her throat with a napkin.
“That's nice,” my dad says, like he's already forgotten my rare moment of defiance. “Although I can't fathom why anyone would want to go on a date with that man, for charity or otherwise.”
“He's the best quarterback this team has ever had,” I snap, suddenly enraged and desperate to protect Rhoden's honor. Um, overreacting much? “Without him, we'd be sopping up a last place ranking in the NFL and licking our wounds between games. The man's a goddamn prodigy.”
“Whoa, there,” Hal says with a snorting laugh. “Talk about defensive. You got a crush on Rhoden Richards or something?”
“Language, Della,” my stepmother says as I feel my skin getting hot and itchy. The urge to run is there, sneaking beneath my skin. I duck my head and force myself to eat Uma's admittedly delicious cooking. It's the only reason I make myself stay and be polite. If anyone else in this family had cooked the meal, I'd be out of here already.
After dinner, I make one last attempt to talk my father about the Adders. It feels imperative that I get him to listen to me.
“Please don't sell the team,” I beg when I find him sitting alone in his office. The room is massive, a towering conservatory of windows, wood and books. I've loved this place since the moment we bought the house, when I was eight years old and Mom was still alive. She didn't even get to enjoy all the luxuries her hard work and sacrifice had given us; she died about six months later. Less than two years after her death, my dad was moving the Wicked Witch of the East into my house.
Our relationship never did recover from that.
“Don't be ridiculous, Della,” my dad says as he shuffles some papers around on his desk. “You always fixate on the smallest things.”
My lips purse tight as the condescension rolls over me like water off a duck's back. I'm used to it. But I don't want to be. I want to get the hell out of here.
“Dad, the Adders are … that was mom's team,” I say, mentioning her aloud for the first time in what must be years. My dad stiffens in his expensive suit, a far cry from the man who used to scrub floors for a living. A lot of the time—most of the time—I miss that man with a fierceness that scares me. Doesn't money and success make everyone happy? Sometimes I feel like I was happier when we were poor. “If you sell to Walter, he'll probably fire Rhoden and we'll never make it to the Super Bowl.”
“What are you even talking about, Della?” he asks without bothering to look at me. I feel two inches tall in that moment, but I force myself to keep going. This is important to me.
“If we waited until the end of the season—” I start, but my dad interrupts me. Just like Walter did yesterday.
“It's done, Della. I've already had my lawyer draw up the papers. Walter Virgil is the proud new owner of the Arcata Adders.” He finally looks up at me, blue eyes flashing with frustration and then softening a little when he sees the expression on my face. In a rare moment of tenderness, my dad moves over to stand next to me and puts a hand on my shoulder. “Della, you'll marry Walter. The team will still be yours, honey.”
I feel tears prick my eyes, but I have no idea what they're for. Am I really crying because my daddy sold my NFL team? No, no, that's not it all. Not by a long shot.
“Dad, I … I don't think I … I don't love Walter.” The tears get more jiggly, beading on my eyes before they start to leak down my face in salty streaks. I'm twenty-nine years old, but I feel like a little girl right now.
My dad smiles softly, the wrinkled skin of his face crinkli
ng with the motion.
“Walter is a solid businessman, Della. He has connections, money, family in all the right places. He can give you anything you want, anything. Della, you can have the world if you want it.”
I stare up at my dad and shake my head, trying to figure out how to put what I'm feeling into words. Can Walter really give me everything? Can he give me what Lion Man … er, Rhoden Richards gave me the other night? That warm tingly feeling in my skin, the vibrations of pleasure in my bones? Somehow I can't imagine it. Chemistry. Maybe you either have it or you don't?
My dad kisses me on the forehead and turns back to his desk, ignoring me as he gets to work on something on his computer.
Walter owns the Adders.
I'm his fiancé.
And I just fucked his star player.
I can't imagine any of this turning out well.
“Come on, Dickhead,” I plead, trying out a name for the dog. It seems to fit his stubborn personality as he sniffs around the grass and refuses to go to the bathroom. The second I take him home though, he'll go on my carpet. I know he will.
“Rough night?”
The sound makes me jump and I turn at the creak of the gate as Rhoden Richards lets himself into the dog park, his husky bounding and leaping and running circles around me and Little Dick.
“How could you tell?” I ask, too tired to argue. The scant hour and a half I spent at my dad's drained all of my energy.
“Tears usually give that kind of thing away,” Rhoden says, rubbing the rough pad of his thumb across my cheek. The touch scolds as I bite back a gasp. Wow. Whatever molecules make me up really seem to like Rhoden's molecules. There's some kind of weird charge between us, like we're sharing electrons or something.
“I hadn't even realized I was crying,” I say as I swipe my hands down my face. “I think they're tears of frustration.”
“Yeah, well, if I was engaged to that dildo, I'd be crying, too.”
I cringe at his crude language as I glance over and take in the sharp lines of Rhoden's face, limned silver-blue with moonlight. He's wearing a leather jacket over a brown button-up, his pants a dark denim that's nearly black. The man looks like he's either on his way to a party or on his way home from one.