by Marata Eros
Kiki leans forward, her hair tangling a little around the tea string. “You didn't bargain on Bunce.”
We sit in swollen silence for a moment.
“True, but there's more.”
Kiki flops against my couch, tea forgotten on the coffee table. “God, what now?”
My eyes aren't dry anymore. The mist of my sadness hangs on tenaciously... but I'm not inviting her to the pity party. Instead, I face it head on. “Remember when I got hit by Mick's motorcycle?”
“Mick, huh?” One side of her mouth lifts into an amused tilt.
I slowly nod. “Yeah.” I meet her dark eyes, and something she sees smooths out her features.
“Okay...” She snaps her fingers. “You were seeing the headache doc.” Her brows rise.
“It's more than a headache.”
Her eyes search my face, her posture tense. “What?”
I spit it out like a chunk of barf. “Brain tumor.”
Kiki had been leaning forward, but she slumps back again. I know then that it's more of a stunner than I thought. Nothing shuts up Kiki.
Finally she looks at me. “Why the hell didn't you tell me, Faren?”
I look at my hands, the left scarred from many surgeries, the right smooth and perfect. I lift my shoulders. “I... it was too much.”
Kiki blows out a breath that sounds like a deflated balloon. “Oh my god. Jared McKenna... the job… Your mom!”
I don't wince at the tone. Those are the same things I considered though not in that order.
“Yeah,” I say, taking a sip of my cool tea, grimacing, then setting it down.
We sit in silence, Kiki staring at the solid sheet of black that meets my window, midnight fast approaching. She looks at me. “I know this sounds hard... and shitty...”
“Months.”
Kiki puts her head in her hands and cries. “That's not long enough!”
I nod. Hell yes, it's not. I reach into the almost-empty tissue box and pluck out three tissues. They float and settle on her thighs like discarded clouds of sadness.
Kiki crumples them, her eyes pegging me with such intense sadness that I have to breathe through my own grief. Her wet face, the snot mixing with her tears, is too much. The reality is worse than what I’d envisioned.
“Are you sure, Faren?”
Her hope nails my sadness to the walls of emotions. It squirms for freedom.
“Yeah.”
“This is how you want to spend your... time? With a billionaire strip club owner, running from your stepfather, and dancing on laps?” Kiki shakes her head, trying to make sense of my reasoning.
Anger boils inside me. “It's about my mom. They'll put her in a state home!”
Kiki stares at me. Then slowly nods as my angry eyes beat the hell out of her. The situation makes me so mad, but Kiki's here, and she's asking the questions I don't want to explore
“True. So what's your excuse with Jared McKenna?”
I can't stop the blush that rolls over my skin in a hot wave of recall. “Wow, you've got it bad,” she says, watching my reaction.
“He has something I need,” I reply, not meeting her eyes.
Kiki leans forward. “I'm really sorry, Faren. You're my best friend, and I can't stand... can't even think...” She hiccups another half-sob.
“Don't,” I beg.
She nods, struggling with her emotions. Finally, Kiki wrestles them into submission. “Any guy has a cherry picker, Faren.”
I get a visual of a giant penis with a gizmo at the end- virgin slayer. I frown.
“He's your boss, he's...” She rolls her eyes as if the whole scenario is unbelievable.
Because it is.
“He's Jared McKenna. So far, you've been lucky the hunk-o-love moneybags hasn't put two and two together.”
Not yet but soon. “Not so far.” I put my hands under my butt and jiggle my legs.
“When he finds out you're a dancer, that your mom was... hurt by Bunce—”
“He knows.”
Kiki's brows shoot up. A laugh escapes my throat, which is so tight with grief I didn’t think it was possible to laugh. “He's had me investigated. I mean, he googled me.”
Kiki narrows her eyes. “That's just weird. I don't know if I should think that's flattering or you should run like hell.”
I laugh again. “I kinda told him that.”
“And?”
“Mick doesn't think there's such a thing as coincidence.”
Kiki shakes her head. “No guy believes in fate.”
I just stare at her.
Kiki whistles. “Huh, he's a different dude.”
“A different, filthy rich dude.”
“Yeah.” Kiki shoots me a significant glance. “Let's address the filthy part.”
I sigh. “I don't know why he peddles visual flesh.”
Kiki barks out a laugh and points at me. “Making me laugh in the middle of this revelation is pretty smooth.”
We fall silent again.
“He didn't get rich by accident,” I say. “He wanted to fly airplanes but invented some fuel-saving thingie, and now he's got his own planes, pilots, the works.”
Kiki's nose scrunches up, then she wags her finger. “Uh-uh. No.” Her expression tunnels down to skepticism. “So he makes bank with the invention. He was a real guy before—”
“Kinda a real guy now too,” I say, somehow keeping a straight face.
“Stop with the sarcasm, ya witch,” Kiki says.
I smile. She can almost make me forget.
Almost.
“He's Mr. Right Now?”
I cross my arms in a huff. I can’t explain the enigma of chemistry. I've never felt it before, and I've had tons of opportunities. Why does it have to be Mick? Why couldn't losing my virginity happen with some anonymous fool who can give me the experience without caring about anything more?
My shoulders sag.
“I don't know. I can't explain it. I just know that it's not fair for me to offer him what's not there.”
“Faren,” Kiki says, as serious as a heart attack, “you gotta know he wants more than a few fun humps.”
Kiki thrusts her hips back and forth with a cocked brow, and I laugh again.
I know Mick and I share something. I keep saying we don't need to go further, that we can be casual. Somehow, he nods and says the right words while his body moves against mine like ownership, forever... and maybe the promise of something I can't contemplate.
Love.
The L word is worse than a curse right now. It's a have not.
“He can have anyone for a fuckfest, Faren. He doesn't need you.” Kiki folds her arms, deep in thought. “This is going to sound awful because you know I think you're a little hottie, but”—her eyes apologize—“he can have any hot piece of ass he wants. Experienced tail.”
“I know.” I shrug with a small, sad laugh. “I don't understand it either. The more he knows about me, the more he seems determined to have me.”
“And?” Kiki says.
Truth time. “And I want to let him.”
Kiki stands, and I do too. She walks over and hugs me, some five inches shorter than me. “You don't have to do this, Faren. You want an anonymous guy to take your virginity? Done. You want to quit the laps? I'll give you the money. You want me to make an anonymous call to the cops and let them know their local high-end pimp is wanted for attempted murder?”
Her eyes hunt in mine so deeply I feel as though she's mining my soul.
“I'll do anything to make this better.” Kiki cups my face and swipes the lone tear that tracks down it, pulled by gravity, eased by her finger.
“Tell me what I can do. Because, god damn, you don't want love mixed in the witch's cauldron here.”
I'm so overwhelmed by her generosity, I can't speak. The lump in my throat chokes me. Our eyes lock.
“Don't tell me you're falling for... Mick?”
I say nothing.
I don't have to.
; “Oh shit, honey...”
Kiki wraps me in her arms as I sob. The pity party's begun, and she’s crashed it. Just like I knew she would.
What are friends for?
~ 7 ~
Bryce again.
One-two-three, he huffs through his leg extensions and for the first time, my mind wanders during a session. It could be because Doc Matthews is pressing for protocol.
I have big decisions to make about radiations, chemotherapy and the rest.
I don't like “the rest.” I know the counteractives will make me sicker than the actual progression of the tumor's growth. They'll screw up the things I want to gain from the short life I have left. I can't allow it. So I'll go in and sign a novel's worth of release forms.
They don't want to be responsible for my decision.
My phone chimes with a text just as Bryce finishes his set.
He stands and grabs a terrycloth hand towel from a peg that reads Bryce, and he gives me a penetrating look that's part glare, part inquisition.
“You're not all here today, Miss Mitchell.” He wipes sweat off his forehead then drags the towel up his forearms.
You're not all here...
True. Definitely not all here. I don't answer with the whole truth. “I have a doctor's appointment, and I'm... thinking too hard.”
“Huh,” he says, staring at me.
“Headaches,” I supply, and Bryce's brows cock to his hairline.
I sigh. “Y'know, migraines.”
He nods, and my shoulders drop as my mind skitters across things like another therapist taking my patients when I'm gone. I shove the thought away, latching onto the conversation at hand.
“Yeah, my mom gets those once in awhile,” he says.
We stand awkwardly for a moment. Then Bryce asks, “Am I about done?”
I am.
I push through my emotions. “Yes, you've got almost full extension now.” I narrow my eyes, thinking about how hard he must have worked to finish his sessions early. My brows arch. “I guess you were doing your homework?”
Bryce grins. “For this? Yeah.”
I hear the part that he doesn't say—not for school.
“Listen, Bryce—”
He gives me the hand. “Nah... don't need a lecture about my future from my physical therapist.”
I smile. “Okay.”
Bryce nods and turns away. No limp anymore. He pivots back, and I see the light bulb of a question on his face.
“Yes?” I ask.
His eyes travel to my hand. The left.
“Is that why you do this?”
I don't look at it, but I feel the subtle tremble. “Yeah.” I give him steady eye contact.
“Can I see it?” Earnest. Young. Leave it to a teenager to go where adults fear to tread.
“Okay.” I don’t want to show anyone—ever.
I hold out my hand, and he towers over me. Bryce was a lineman on the football team before he wrecked his knee, and I feel the acute disparity in our sizes.
He’ll play again. We made sure of it—together.
Bryce's large hand opens my left hand. My fingers slightly curl, but the pinky sticks straight out, frozen. The twisted pucker scar on my palm is just off center. He runs a finger over it, and my entire hand convulses.
His eyes sweep to mine. “Why does it do that?”
I swallow hard. “It...” I collect myself as he hangs on to my hand. “There was nerve damage from the wound.”
His eyes darken. “Who did this to you, Miss Mitchel?”
I try to lighten the moment. “I thought you hated me?” I give a small smile, and he frowns. He doesn't take to my effort at distraction.
Bryce shakes his head. “No, I never did. I hated the therapy.”
I nod. I knew that. I gulp again. “My stepfather.”
“Jesus,” he whispers in horror. He looks at my messed up hand, a raw ball of pink flesh stares back at us.
It’s pretty horrible, bare to the scrutiny of a teenager whose main gripe is not playing football.
“Can you use it?” he asks.
Not much. “Yeah, some.”
His anger is palatable. It beats the air between us into a thick trench of emotion. “Where is this dick nozzle?”
I burst out laughing, and he lets go of my hand. “Dick nozzle, huh?” I grin, the tension evaporating.
He replies, totally serious, “I was editing that.”
My brows quirk. Wow, editing. Must've had a really choice comment.
“I hope they find that bastard,” Bryce says.
I hope so too. My palms sweat. I have laps tonight in a new location. I don't know what I'll do if Ronnie shows. Somehow, I don't think Thorn will give two shits who Ronnie is. Why does Mick have that prick in charge?
More questions than answers. Ones I can't ask without giving away what I'm doing.
After Bryce leaves, I reach into my smock and pull out my phone.
A text from Mick.
Of course.
A thrill shoots through me with dread at its heels. Mick is circling so close to the truth. Truths I don't want him to know.
Before I leave the clinic, Sue asks how my visit to the doctor went.
I thank her for the recommendation and say it went well. It's just another of many lies. I'm becoming expert at sinning by omission.
I have the papers to sign and my mom to see.
And money to collect off the lust of men.
But... I look at the text from Mick. Apparently, no circumstance in the universe can distract me from him. I'm getting sucked into the vortex of Mick.
I want to see you.
I want to see him too. My hand shakes as I text back the most important word of the day.
When?
*
I load ice into a washrag that I press against my eyes. It'll take the swelling down to something I can hide with makeup.
The tears come no matter how hard I resist them.
My mom's situation is worse. They’re talking of moving her to the state facility. The discussions have moved to down payments for retention.
Like my finances are incontinent.
I have two weeks to come up with ten percent of the year’s care of my mother, or she'll be moved.
My right hand throbs from the papers I signed at the hospital. Do I hold them liable since I don't want drugs that lengthen my short life but make what's left diminished?
Yes. I sign anyway. After thirty signatures, Faren Mitchell is a parody of who I am. White pages with blue mock me.
I slip on another work outfit. They all blend together now. I twirl in front of the mirror with no admiration for how it makes me look. Deliberate calculation stares back as I go through my mental tally.
Is it short enough? Does it show just enough skin? Did I remember to coat my nipples with edible strawberry lotion in anticipation of a stranger’s suckling?
Can I shower fast enough before Mick arrives to scour the filth of other men's mouths and fingers from my body? A burn begins behind my eyelids. I widen them, and the feeling passes.
I will not cry. I will work, dance, and collect money. Above all else, I will not contemplate what it means if Ronnie Bunce is psychotic enough to reappear.
I drop my cell inside my purse, along with my keys and lip gloss. I slip through my door and turn the bolt with a swift click. I turn and scream, my hand flying to my neck.
Mick stands there, a wicked look on his face. My startled gaze drags over him. His outfit is impeccable but more causal than I've ever seen.
I'm in my stripper outfit. Thorn is expecting me.
Shit and double shit.
Mick had told me he'd be here at midnight, not nine. I moved heaven and earth to get off work early, and here he is.
I'm so mad that Mick can't keep to our arrangement.
I get a physical reaction of pleasure that he ignores it.
My nipples harden, and a sliver of his neck holds my eyes as his heartbeat pulses in the expos
ed hollow. My body remembers him perfectly, reacting in a predictable, pulse-thudding surge of desire that hits my core like a typhoon. The fingers of lust touch every intimate spot on my body. Awakening it for him.
“Surprise,” he says, his deep rumble threading through my body.
~ 8 ~
My hand lowers from my chest, my heartbeat undaunted as we stare at each other. “I thought we agreed on midnight...”
Mick's deep auburn eyebrow arches. “You agreed.”
I swallow, and his eyes catch mine.
“Where were you going?” he asks, his eyes driving up my body like a whip of heat.
Oh god. “Out of milk.”
“Really?” He folds his arms.
My gaze shifts to his bulging biceps. He probably gets those sleek muscles from counting his money and throwing the extra into his built-in incinerator. I realize how uncharitable I'm being and laugh at myself before slapping my hand over my mouth. I'm living a surreal existence, and I keep finding pockets of humor at the strangest times. At least it gets me out of my insta-lust problem.
Mick strides to me, and my mouth closes. His athletic fluidity makes all of my other senses step back as my vision narrows to only him. His shirt sleeves are rolled up to his elbows. The material stretches taut over his chest and arms. The fine muscles in his forearms ripple as he puts one against my locked door and presses against me. I feel his hardness through the thin material of my outfit. It should trigger every alarm I have from the soulless job I perform... but it doesn't. Everything to do with Mick seems too real.
“Are you laughing at me, Miss Mitchell?” he whispers, pressing against me deeper.
I gasp when his mouth moves from my earlobe to the soft skin underneath it. His mouth swings back and forth, making me shiver uncontrollably. I lose every thought of work, timing, and my inappropriate milk-fetching outfit.
In his arms, I come alive.
My hands creep to Mick's broad shoulders as I beg with my mouth, rasping against the stubble that peppers his jawline. He doesn't make me wait, taking my mouth in a sweep of brutal ownership that makes me stop breathing. He ravishes me with a kiss so simultaneously deep, hard, and tender, I let go of him through sheer self-preservation. Mick sweeps his arms behind me and draws me into him, disallowing my escape. When his fingers plunge into my hair and my lipstick is worn away, Mick finally lifts his head.