by Strong, Mimi
Most of the stories were about people who were suing big companies for injury settlements, claiming they couldn’t work a forklift, when the truth was they had no problem parasailing. It made Cooper happy to bust the people who were faking, because it meant there’d be more money for people who were actually hurt. I appreciated how he took something that sounded seedy and made it sound honorable.
“Who’s the girl?” he asked. “And when did she tell you she was pregnant? Does she want money? With my rates, you might be better off with a settlement, which I can arrange.”
“Really, Cooper? That’s what you think of me?”
“That’s not what I think of you, Charlie. That’s what I think of your money, and the little fruit flies that sweet honey attracts. Buzz, buzz. Those little fruit flies sure can be pretty, with their push-up bras and their giggles, but you’d better use your tongue instead of your dick, or you’ll be blowing wads of your daddy’s money.”
“My mother’s money,” I corrected. “My late mother’s money.”
There was an apologetic pause, then Cooper said, “It is too damn early for me to be drinking this much. Strike my comments from the transcripts. Now, what can I do you for?”
“Her name is Skye with an e. I don’t have a last name, or I wouldn’t have called you. She’s got great legs. Amazing legs. She’s a dancer.”
“Shouldn’t take me long to check all the strip clubs.”
“Not that kind of a dancer.”
“Hell,” Cooper said, his voice rising in pitch. “There’s other kinds of dancers?”
“She didn’t have, um, breast implants. They were natural.”
“I’ll be a gentleman and not ask how you know that. Any other details? Height? Age?”
“Tall. About five-foot-nine. Great legs, as I mentioned. Straight, brown hair, and pale blue eyes that look like the winter sky.”
Cooper whistled over the sounds of typing.
I continued, “She said she was twenty-nine, and she drives a white Toyota Tercel. And… another thing… she might be in contact with my father. I hope she isn’t, but need to know if she is.”
“I don’t like the sound of this,” he mused. “Too damn easy! You could have left out that bit about her car and let me have a little fun.” More tapping. “Give me three days.”
“As long as it takes.”
I ended the call and took a long shower, putting the fresh memory of Skye to good use. The way she’d begged me to fuck her. I’d heard girls say that in videos, and it always tugged at me, but not like that. They were just saying the line, saying what guys wanted to hear.
Skye had meant it.
And now I wanted to hear her say it to me, again and again. I wanted to break down those walls she put up around herself. I wanted to break in and hold her. In bed. On the couch, watching a movie. Up against a wall while I fucked her, and she cried out, biting my shoulder.
~
After my shower, I went downstairs in search of lunch.
I found everyone in the kitchen.
All four of us—my father, my stepmother, me, and Klaudia, the full-time housekeeper—had wound up in the same place at the same time. This type of thing never happened without detailed planning and text messages.
“Pancakes,” Klaudia said, practically clapping her hands with excitement. “Like old times!”
Our housekeeper is a white-haired Russian lady who has a no-nonsense, ruthless approach to cleaning and shopping lists, yet is full of gaiety when it comes to weekend brunches.
My stepmother, Willow, blew across her mug of chamomile tea and gave my father a look—a look that said she was a fucking saint for putting up with so much. One of the things Willow put up with was our housekeeper’s constant reminders that she was a living witness to life in the Ward household BW—Before Willow.
Before Willow, there had been pancakes on Saturday afternoons.
Before Willow, my father never wore jeans.
And Before Willow, there hadn’t been a number of dents in the wall of the garage from someone being unable to park her BMW without banging into walls.
Willow had been twenty-five when she married my father, and she was thirty-four now. For the last year, she’d been having her brown hair dyed red. Bright red. She told me she’d always loved red hair, but had waited so long to change her hair color out of respect for my late mother.
I’d been twenty when they married—not that I remember anything about the wedding day. Duncan and I were either drunk or high or both for that whole summer. Nine years later, at least I’d grown up, even if Duncan hadn’t.
“Charlie, I heard something,” Klaudia said, whisking together pancake ingredients in a glass bowl.
I poured a cup of coffee and took a seat on a stool at the marble-topped island, equidistant between Willow and my father, who’d barely looked up from his tablet.
“What did you hear?” I asked Klaudia, playing along.
“Your father told me you were swimming in the pool at the club, and that you didn’t have any pants. No pants.”
Willow looked up with interest. “Does Charlie have a girlfriend?” She looked over at the housekeeper, a tight smile on her face. “What do you think, Klaudia? Is it time for Charlie to get married and move out on his own?”
My father made a smacking sound with his mouth to express his displeasure at this idea. He was the one who liked to know where I was at all times, who liked to have me at his beck and call, solving problems.
“I did meet a girl who seemed nice.”
The two women leaned in, waiting for more.
“Is she pretty?” Willow asked, the first signs of jealousy making her eye twitch.
Klaudia snorted and turned her attention back to the pancake batter. “Surface doesn’t matter,” she said.
My father spoke up without lifting his gaze off his screen. “Easy for you to say, Klaudia. You were the most popular girl in your whole village, to hear your husband talk.”
“Oh,” she said, her voice sing-song. “I don’t knoooow.”
“I trust you’re being cautious,” Willow said. “We should call Cooper and do a background check.”
“She can come for dinner Sunday,” Klaudia said. “I hope she’s not one of those girls who doesn’t eat meat. If she is, I’ll make chicken.”
“What’s her name?” Willow asked.
I turned my head so I could watch my father’s reaction.
“Skye.”
Still staring down at the screen, his brow furrowed. My mouth was dry all of a sudden, and my heart rate was elevated. I took a sip of my black coffee, still watching him.
He didn’t appear to be breathing.
“Dad, do you know anyone named Skye?”
He glanced up. “That’s a ridiculous name. Is that supposed to be a person? Was she born in a field with a bunch of midwives chanting around her?”
“You seem upset, Dad. Did you not get enough new members from the Open House?”
“I’m fine,” he said, his tone anything but fine. “No thanks to you.”
“What did I do?”
“I don’t know what you did, son, but you were naked, and not behaving in a manner worthy of a Ward man.”
“And you’re the expert on behavior, Dad?”
“Charlie,” Willow hissed. “Do not speak to your father that way.”
My father looked up from the tablet screen, his hazel eyes blazing with fury. “Do you have something you want to discuss with me in private? Some trouble you and that long-haired loser you hang out with have gotten yourselves into?”
“No. What about you?”
He pushed his chair back and stood, glaring down his nose at me. “A word of advice. Stick to the problems you can handle, like fixing an irrigation pipe, or making sure the staff use the timecards. You leave the grown-up business to the adults.”
I pushed my chair back and stood, so we were eye to eye and chest to chest. I’d worked out hard the night before, and my muscles w
ere aching with new strength. Never before have I wanted so badly to clench my fist and punch my father right in his arrogant face.
“Sit down,” he said.
“Or what?”
“Do not test me, or you will be sorry.”
I stepped closer, nearly bumping my chest against his. “What are you going to do? Fire me? Like you do to everyone else who stands up to you?”
“I won’t stop with firing you. I’ll take away everything you have. You’ll be nothing. You’re nothing without this family.”
“I am this family.”
“You’re nothing.”
“Don’t underestimate me,” I growled.
“I have bigger problems than your attitude. Perhaps you should take some of this new-found initiative of yours and close some membership deals. That is if you can take a break from your gym workouts and staring at yourself in the mirror.” He looked down at my arms and clothes. “You always were a vain one, even as a little boy. Your mother would take you shopping, just the two of you, and you’d come home in matching leather jackets, matching streaks in your hair. You looked ridiculous, the both of you.”
I couldn’t take another word. My hands flew up on their own and shoved him back, my palms striking his chest.
He hadn’t expected that, and staggered back. His mouth curved up at the edges. He thought he’d won.
“Fighting is for schoolboys,” he drawled, cracking his knuckles. “But if you’d like to step outside, we can indulge your fantasy of hitting your old man. You might not be so proud of yourself when I knock your teeth down your throat.”
“Same.”
He worked his jaw for a moment, thinking, then said, “Maybe it is time for you to leave the nest. You can find out for yourself what the world’s like. See how things are done, and get your hands dirty. You’ll see how some dirt doesn’t wash off, and nothing falls into place without force, and that maybe your old man isn’t the devil after all.”
“I’ll never be like you.”
He turned away from me, shaking his head in disgust. “No, you won’t,” he murmured.
I reached to grab his arm, to force him to turn around and face me, but someone caught my hand and slowed me enough to miss. My father kept walking, all the way out of the kitchen.
I shook off Willow’s icy fingers and glared at her.
There was fear in her eyes. She was afraid of me. So was Klaudia, her eyes wide and her face as pale as her hair.
“He had it coming,” I said to them. “Nobody stands up to him. He just does whatever he wants, and other people pay the price.”
“Leave him alone,” Willow pleaded.
“Like you do?” I asked. “I’m not like you, Willow. I’m not weak.”
Her nostrils flared, but she didn’t respond.
“This is fucked up,” I said, and I left the room before everything got worse.
Sometimes the only sane way to fix a problem is to walk away from it.
Chapter 10
Skye
I stared at the intercom.
Was it really Charlie down there, at my door?
The male voice came again, sounding apologetic. “Am I here at the wrong time?”
The voice was definitely a man’s voice.
Pressing the button with one clammy finger, I said, “Give me one minute to put my shoes on, and I’ll come down to let you in. As you can see, it’s an old house divided into apartment units, so we don’t have a high tech security system.”
“I can see that,” he said. “Also, your listing was quite detailed.”
I ran from the intercom and hurriedly pulled on some clothes and shoes, then stopped in the bathroom for three seconds of teeth brushing.
I rushed out the door and down the steps, pausing for a moment before opening the common area door.
“Don’t be fucking awkward,” I whispered to myself. “Be classy. Don’t yank down his pants and stick his cock in your mouth. Not unless you’re babbling like an idiot, in which case maybe you should.”
I pulled open the door.
A guy who looked like he worked on computers, in a basement, stood on the porch. Behind the lenses of his glasses, his eyes squinted against the daylight. It was a cloudy day, and not very bright, even for April.
He extended his hand. “I’m Charlie. You must be Skye.”
I shook his hand, which was very soft, and even more damp than mine.
He wiped his palm on his jeans immediately. “Sorry about the sweaty hands,” he said. “I always get like that when I’m nervous. I was so worried that you’d be pretty, and now I’m here, and I’m looking right at you, and…” He leaned forward, cocking his head to the side as he placed his hand over his heart. “This is just a panic attack,” he murmured to himself. “It’s not a heart attack. Your doctor says your heart is fine, and you can’t die from panic. You can faint, but you won’t die.”
I looked over the guy’s slumped shoulders, at some neighbors walking their dog. They waved, and I waved back. The great thing about living in one spot for a while is you do get to know your neighbors’ faces, if not their names.
This guy, whom I will refer to as Charlie Two, began to breathe audibly, still talking himself out of a panic attack.
I felt terrible for the disappointment that must have registered on my face when I’d opened the door and seen that he wasn’t incredibly gorgeous and tall—that he wasn’t Charlie One.
“Why don’t you come inside?” I offered.
His voice strained, he croaked, “I could use a glass of water. Even if you don’t want me as a roommate. I understand. I wouldn’t want me, either. Glass of water is all I need.”
Holding the door wide open, I waved him up the stairs, then followed him up. He moved hesitantly.
I passed him on the left, taking two steps at a time. “Come on, I don’t bite.” As soon as I’d said the word bite, I remembered biting down on Charlie One’s shoulder, in the pool. I guess I lied, because I do bite. Under the right circumstances.
Oh, man.
Why couldn’t it have been a different Charlie at the door? Where was he? What was he doing? Why wasn’t I pouring him a glass of filtered water instead of this schlub?
“Your apartment gets good light,” he said. “You’ll probably find a roommate in no time.” He pointed up to the ceiling, which peaked in the middle, following the roof line. “Look at those trusses. They don’t build them like this anymore.”
“Are you in construction?”
He scrunched his nose and pushed his glasses up. “Accounting. I wanted to be an architect, but so does everyone. It’s much easier to be an accountant, but you never get to make paper models of your work.”
I covered my mouth, trying to stifle a yawn. I didn’t mean to be so rude to this guy, but the nasal sound of his voice triggered some sort of latent narcolepsy. The poor guy.
As I showed him around the apartment and we made small talk about the neighborhood. Poor guy. That was all I kept thinking, over and over again. The poor guy. I pitied him more and more every time he made a self-deprecating comment.
“I wouldn’t even need that whole closet,” he said, practically begging me for the room.
The truth was, I’d made up my mind the instant I’d invited him in. All I needed was someone to pay the rent and stay out of my way, and Charlie Two fit the bill. He worked Monday to Friday and spent at least one weekend a month traveling to conventions. I wasn’t worried about any boy-girl issues, because the guy had all the sex appeal of a neutered hamster.
I showed him the fire escape, the thermostats for the electric baseboards, and the finicky button on the stove. Then I offered him the room, assuring him that he fit my requirements—leaving out the part about the neutered hamster.
He clasped his hands together and actually said, “Squee!”
I would have hugged him, but I worried the body contact would make him pee his pants.
~
My new roommate moved in on the fifte
enth of April and gave me a handful of cash, his half of half a month’s rent. I had always paid rent with post-dated checks. Seeing all that money as paper bills, in my hand, made me feel bitter about how much of my earnings went to simply having a roof over my head.
The ten dollar bill on the top of the pile made me think of the original Charlie, or Cute Charlie as I now referred to him by with Gloria. We still talked about him nearly every day, yet I hadn’t tried to track him down.
As the days of April went by, I convinced myself that the reason I wouldn’t call him was because of his behavior.
He was a slut. A manslut. He took off his clothes and had sex with some chick he didn’t know. I knew I was on birth control, but he didn’t know for sure. What kind of an idiot manslut was he? Not the kind of idiot manslut I wanted to have visit me at my work, in front of the impressionable kids.
I convinced myself it wasn’t that I already felt a connection to him—an invisible thread that linked my soul to his—because that was insane. Invisible thread? Soul mates? That was my mother’s territory, not mine. No thank you, spiritual mumbo jumbo. Keep your incense and your oil of oregano miracle cures.
~
Living with a roommate again wasn’t so bad. Charlie Two was much more tidy than any of the girl roommates I’d lived with, mostly because he never cooked… or did much of anything.
He seemed to have a very active social life, but entirely on internet message boards.
Sometimes, at night, I’d forget he was even there, until I heard him shout, “HAH!” from inside his bedroom. That meant he’d successfully trolled someone, or signed them up for BDSM catalogs mailed to their house, or whatever the new thing was.
A week after he’d moved in, I brought home some beer after work, because he’d mentioned this micro-brew label he liked. I felt bad for not taking more time to get to know him, and not extending him the same courtesy I would have with a female roommate. I’d started to think of him as a pet cat I lived with, or as a little raccoon who let himself in the window and doubled the rate I went through toilet paper.