Beautiful Monster: a standalone age-gap romance

by Sara Cate

  Did he want to protect me or preserve me?

  Super gross thought, Sunny.

  Finally, by 9:00 a.m. Friday, I can’t take it anymore. While Mom and Cadence are still sleeping, I wrap the canvas in paper to protect the texture of the paint and walk it through the backyard, between the hedges and up to Alexander's house. It occurs to me as I reach his back porch that I should really be going through the front door, but I'm already here. I could just leave the package by the door, but what if the wind knocks it over or he doesn't notice it?

  This was a terrible idea.

  When I reach the sliding glass door that leads to his kitchen, I find myself about to knock.

  "For a girl named Sunny, you move a little more like a black rain cloud."

  I jump, letting out a howling scream. He steps out of the pool house on the other side of the porch, and I spin toward him nearly tossing the painting in the pool as a way to defend myself.

  He laughs. "I scared you again, but you are on my back porch, so you can't blame me this time."

  "I'm sorry," I stammer. "I just finished early, so I wanted to bring this to you."

  "Bring it in, let's see it."

  He turns toward the pool house and beckons me to follow. The expansive room is mostly windows, large shades keeping the sun from roasting the inside, but all of them are up at the moment, so I can see that he seems to be renovating it. There are boards across the floor and a table saw in the corner. Is he working on it by himself?

  He catches me looking at the scattered mess.

  "My little project," he says, and when I look up, I realize for the first time that he's shirtless. In only his shorts, sweat beads across his tan body, down his sculpted pecs and over his abs.

  I've seen men shirtless before. Hell, I've seen them naked, but I've never felt like a speechless idiot in front of them before.

  "What are you doing?" I breathe.

  He looks confused as he stares back, catching my eyes on his chest.

  "I mean with the wood. On the floor. What are you building?"

  "Oh," he laughs. "I'm redoing the moldings and building a bench seat across that window. I don't know if it'll be enough. This room is so boring."

  Looking around, I can see what he means. It has plain windowed walls, a small kitchenette, bathroom, cabinets. But it is just a pool house, and our house doesn't have one, so I'm impressed anyway.

  "Okay, let's see it," he says, motioning to the painting again. Taking it to the large work table, I pull off the paper and bite my lip. If he says it's nice, then he hates it. Anything less than speechless means he hates it.

  His eyes don't change as he looks at the painting, and I can't stop looking at the curve of her lips.

  Meanwhile he lets his gaze drift over every inch, absorbing each brush stroke like I bled into each one. I wait.

  Finally, they settle on her eyes, and his lips turn up into a smile.

  "Fuck, Sunny. This is good."

  "Really?"

  He looks at me like I just called him ugly. "Really? Come on. You have to see how good this is."

  I shrug. "I don't know. I can't see what you see. Everyone sees something different, right?"

  "If anyone sees anything less that fan-fucking-tastic, they're insane."

  A laugh escapes my lips.

  He looks at me again. Then, his gaze drifts to something behind me, and I have to turn to see it's nothing more than a blank wall along the back of the room.

  "I want it there," he says decisively.

  "You want to hang it there?"

  "No. I don't want to hang it there. Sunny, I want you to paint it there." He steps away from me, standing in front of the blank wall and staring at it like he's picturing it. "Paint this girl on my wall."

  What? He wants me to repaint the whole portrait on his wall? Is he insane?

  "Are you serious?"

  "Do you know how to do a mural?" he asks. I let out a heavy breath.

  I nod.

  "Good. Will you paint her on this wall? As a mural?"

  I've wanted to do a mural for as long as I can remember. I used to try to paint my bedroom walls when I was little, thinking that if I just painted one square at a time, I could cover the whole thing without anyone really noticing. My mother nearly broke my backside when she found it.

  "I don't know," I mumble.

  Of course I wanted to paint a fucking mural in the most famous guy in Pineridge's pool house, but this wasn't a good idea. What would my mother say? Would she think I was getting in Cadence's way?

  Then, I realize...he would pay me. How much I don’t know, but probably enough to finally get out. Quickly, in my head I do the math. I think most artists work for $40 to $50 per square foot. This is probably a twelve-by-fifteen-foot wall. I can’t add it up fast enough, but definitely feels like enough to start up in my own place.

  Then, there’s the exposure. If he shared it with his friends, I could do murals all over town.

  "What do you mean you don’t know? You have something better to do?"

  "I've never done one before."

  "So just paint this...bigger." He motions toward the wall. "I'll give you the keys to the pool house. I won't bug you. You can come and go as you please. Get it done in your own time."

  Questions swirl around in my mind. Mostly it's doubt. I can't do this. What if I royally fuck it up? Am I even good enough to paint a mural that big?

  I'm biting my lip furiously, staring at the painting and the wall like they'll give me answers. Permission to say no.

  Then a hand lands on my shoulder. "Hey there, little rain cloud."

  When I look up at him, he has a crooked smile, but his eyes bore into me with a fierceness. "Breathe," he says quietly, so quiet his voice doesn't travel anywhere but straight into my ears. Straight into my heart.

  So, I do. I take a deep breath and look at the wall again.

  Reasons I should take the job: I deserve this. I need the money. He wants me to.

  Reasons I should not take the job: none.

  "Okay," I say finally. "I'll do it."

  He steps back, crossing his arms over his chest. "Now wait a minute. Never accept a job without asking questions first, understand?"

  "What questions?"

  He walks over to the fridge in the corner of the room and pulls out two sodas. "Anything, but least of all, you should always ask how much you'll be getting paid."

  "But I don't care how much," I lie. I care very much.

  "How does ten sound?"

  "Ten." My mouth repeats his words without registering in my mind. Ten...thousand?

  Suddenly, my heart is picking up speed, but I try to maintain my composure like it means nothing to me. He hands me one of the sodas, and I stare at him, biting my lip again.

  What does he want me to say? Does he want me to accept it?

  "Fifteen," I blurt before I can stop myself.

  Finally, his poker face melts into a smile. "That a girl."

  Squaring my shoulders, I pull my lip from between my teeth and keep my eyes on his face, which is desperately hard when the sweat beads on his shoulders, I'm suddenly so desperate to touch it. To rub my body against it. To absorb every drop.

  "Twelve, final offer," he says, and I nearly gasp. Instead, I lock the deep breath in my chest and take a drink of my soda. It's ice cold which helps with the fire that seems to be seeping from my pores at this moment.

  Finally, I reach out a hand. "Deal."

  He takes his time shaking my hand. Slowly, he sets down his drink, every one of his movements so deliberate and driving me wild. He reaches forward and grasps my hand in his, squeezing just right.

  "Deal."

  As I walk back to my house, my thoughts are so clouded I can't react properly. Twelve. Thousand. Dollars. The keys to Alexander Caldwell's pool house. A real mural.

  Fucking pinch me.

  When I reach the back porch, it's not even eleven in the morning, and I can already hear the slur in my mother's voic
e. As I walk through the patio door, she's standing there watching me. Cadence is sitting at the table, leaning over a cup of coffee.

  "Good morning," I say with a smile before my mother aims her angry eyes on me.

  "Where were you?"

  "I had to take something to Alexander's house."

  Mom turns her face and stares at my sister with her mouth hanging open. "What is she talking about?"

  Cadence shrugs.

  "He bought my painting," I mumble, trying to walk past her and out of the kitchen, away from this mess.

  A loud laugh echoes through the kitchen. “Gosh, I wonder why he would do that?” My mother is vicious with her words when she's drunk.

  For some reason, I’m in the mood to fight. I want to defend him and prove something to them. So, I open my big fat mouth. "He's hiring me to paint a mural in his pool house."

  Silence fills the room.

  Cadence speaks with the cup up to her lips. "You can’t be serious."

  My face flips up to see hers and betrayal clouds my vision. She's acting like Mom. Is she drunk, too?

  “Sunny,” she says, trying to explain herself. “You know what he’s doing, don’t you?”

  I squint my eyes at my sister. She knows I'm not sleeping with him. She knows I'm not like that...like her. But I won't stoop to this level. I won't join this circus of misery and act like them.

  So, I refuse to answer her. "He hired me to paint a mural in his pool house because he liked my painting, not because he’s trying to sleep with me. I'll have keys, and he's paying me."

  "How much?" my mother asks, and I cringe. She won't touch my money. Not a fucking dime.

  "I don't know. I didn't ask. Maybe a couple hundred."

  "Cadence, you should go with her. Spend some time over there with him. I swear if you're lying, Sunny..."

  "I'm not lying." My voice is cold and angry.

  Cadence won't look at me. “Yeah, sure. Someone has to keep an eye on Sunny.”

  My sister...the ultimate traitor. This isn’t about protecting me. If anything, she’s jealous. Jealous that I can hold a conversation with a man that doesn’t end in sex, and I want to tell her that, but I’m not cruel. Not to her.

  Before anyone can say another word, I rush out of the kitchen and up to my room. As soon as I get that mural done, I'm out of this house. Forever.

  Alexander

  She moans against my ear as I slam into her again and again. I like the way Lea purrs, but I wish she'd move a little. Grab my ass. Run her nails down my back. Through my hair. But she doesn't. She just lays there and mews.

  I said I wasn't going to do this anymore, but after working in the pool house all morning, I needed to indulge in something. Lea is one of my go-to calls, and man does she answer. It's never a bad time for her. She was over in fifteen minutes; on her knees in less than twenty.

  But now, I'm over it. Sinking into her on my bed in my brand-new bedroom, still cluttered with boxes, I look out the big window that overlooks the backyard, and I wish I would have just jacked off instead.

  "You feel so good, Alex," she whispers as she wraps her legs around me. Grabbing one of her ankles, I try a new angle, hoping it will light the spark I need. She digs her fingers into her own hair and starts gasping like I'm pounding her lungs or something.

  Fuck, this is not what I wanted.

  Movement across the yard steals my attention for a moment. Sunny is walking out to the pool in one of her little bikinis. Chills run up my spine. She lets her hair out of a ponytail and shakes it free. Through the trees I can just make out her long legs before she dives under the water. Dropping Lea's ankle, I crash against her body and try not to watch the nineteen-year-old cross the pool in slow strokes while I fuck a thirty-year-old cocktail waitress.

  But my eyes find her anyway.

  And I think about the way she bit her lip this morning, standing in my pool house.

  I think about her leaning over the easel in those silk pajama pants.

  Fuck, my skin tingles with electricity as I slide into Lea. I'm a fucking monster, but I can't help myself. Looking up, I find her again, climbing out of the pool, water cascading down her back, over her hips, and the perfect round shape of her ass.

  I lose myself, eyes squeezed closed as I come, imagining it's someone else kissing my lips. I picture someone else moaning and getting off instead of faking her orgasm because she thinks it's what I want.

  When I open my eyes, Lea is looking out the window, too, and I tense, afraid she'll see what I see and know my secret. I just thought about that teenager while I was fucking her.

  She lets out a deep breath and plants a kiss on my cheek before she climbs away. "Thanks, babe. That was fun."

  "Yeah," I say collapsing on the bed, pulling off the condom and wrapping it in a tissue. "I needed that."

  She leans down and ruffles my hair then fishes her underwear out of my bed.

  "What you need is to unpack your boxes."

  "Yeah, I know."

  "You wanna go grab a drink?" she asks without really meaning it.

  “Nah. I have work to do. Thanks, though.”

  “You got it.” She slips on her dress and fixes her hair in the mirror. I catch her watching me cautiously as I lay back in my bed. “I feel a little bad leaving you here. You sure you’re okay?”

  I climb out of my bed because that’s clearly what she wants to see. That I'm okay. That I didn’t have a nervous breakdown and leave my old life behind for this suburban fantasy. Everyone seems to have the same worry these days.

  Kissing her on the side of the head, I smack her ass. “I’m fine.”

  After she’s gone, I open up a bottle of bourbon and pour a glass. I should probably order dinner, but I don’t have the energy to even look up anything. Instead, I walk out onto my patio and plant my ass in one of my lounge chairs. Sunny isn’t swimming anymore, but I watch her yard like I’m waiting for her to come back. Counting the windows to her house, I try to guess what each one is, based on my drunk night at the party stumbling through the rooms and finding Sunny sitting on her floor like a child. There’s a large window overlooking the yard on the right and a couple smaller ones on the left. I’m pretty sure the one on the right is hers.

  God, I hope it’s hers.

  Fuck. What is wrong with me?

  I’m not the barely legal kind of guy. Horny teens were never my thing, and I certainly don’t get off on the idea of being anyone’s first anymore. That ship has sailed.

  So, what the fuck was that shit in the bedroom? It wasn’t about Sunny’s age. But man, I’d like to fuck someone who actually feels things. Who makes me feel things. I can’t remember the last time I met someone who oozed passion the way Sunny does. Not just in her art, but in the intensity of her eyes.

  I’m tired of these emotionless lays, like mutual getting off and moving on. I’m over it. I’m not making any more booty calls. It feels like a weak resolution, but I repeat it to myself over and over. I’m not calling anymore girls over here for a quick romp just so I can feel like shit about it afterward.

  I mean, I’m not giving up sex entirely. But the next person I fuck, I want to feel something. Someone with life in her eyes.

  Sunny’s eyes pop up in my mind again.

  Fuck.

  Looking over at empty wall in the pool house, I realize this is probably a very stupid idea. If I have her over here every day, sweating in that hot little room, in those silk pants, I’m screwed.

  I should probably cancel the offer.

  But I’d be lying if I said it was about the mural. I want those eyes of hers—even for just a few minutes every day. I want to see her in my space, looking at me, quiet and nervous with the whole fucking world behind her stare. I want it.

  And it’s not sexual. I’m not trying to get in a teenager’s panties. I just can’t handle empty stares anymore. No more fake tits. Fake eyelashes. Fake orgasms.

  Sunny is real, and right now, I’m craving something real.

>   Sunny

  By the next morning, I'm standing in Alexander’s backyard with my paintbrushes and other supplies loaded into my backpack. Just like yesterday, he's there waiting.

  "Good thing there's space to get through the hedges in the yard."

  I smile at him as he lets me in. He's shirtless and sweaty again, and I wonder if he realizes what a distraction that is.

  The interaction with my mother yesterday had my head spinning all day. Could they be right that this is all a ploy to get me into bed? I didn't talk to Cadence at all yesterday, and I never go that long without talking to my sister. She's my ally. Without her, I have no one. But the way she looked at me yesterday, with spite and bitterness, and...jealousy, had me feeling betrayed.

  Alexander is forty—a man. And while his face is the sculpted kind of beauty that makes my heart pitter-patter right out of my chest, I don’t see myself with someone like him. To him, I’m a scrawny, quiet kid. Next to my sister, that’s what I feel like.

  When I came out to the pool yesterday afternoon, I swear I saw someone else in Alex's window—a woman. I tried not to stare, but with the way the sun sets behind his house, it's so easy to see in his window from the pool. I wonder if he can see in my bedroom that easily. I wonder if he wants to.

  He unlocks the door and guides me into my workspace. It's hot in here, hotter than I think it was yesterday.

  My breath catches as I take in the scene. There's a two-level scaffolding in place next to the wall. On the first level, there are new brushes, a new apron, drop cloths, paper, mixing cans, palettes. My jaw hangs open. He bought me all new supplies.

  "I went out this morning. I hope this stuff works."

  "Yeah," I breathe as I look through it all.

  "I know you don't have the paint yet, but let me know what you need, and I'll order it."

  Looking at him, my mind is reeling. He's bought everything for me.

  Today, my plan was to set everything up, take stock of what I need, and make a few sketches, but now that he's done everything, what will I do?

  I look over at him, the sweat glistening, yet again, on his shoulders. He tenses as his gaze stays on my face. I break the spell by looking back at the supplies.