Cocky Nerd

by Kayley Loring

  “Are you acting now?” A whisper.

  “No. Are you?”

  “No.” She lifts her shirt up so her bare breasts can press against my bare chest.

  Nothing but trouble.

  I fumble with her shorts and push myself inside her, hard and deep. She lets out a loud sigh. I cover her mouth with one hand, pressing down harder when I feel her lips open wide, another loud sigh is barely muffled. She can’t bend her legs because her shorts are around her thighs, but it makes her so tight I am losing my mind.

  Both of her hands suddenly cover my mouth—I must have let out a groan without realizing it. She has already started convulsing, her head tilted back. I can only hold on for a little longer. The bed is thankfully creaking quite softly, but I feel a volcanic rumble and a monstrous roar inside of me.

  Her breath is hot and wet against the palm of my hand. She shudders, and says something that I can’t quite hear, I only feel it on my skin. When I come she clamps one hand against my mouth and the other against the back of my head for a tighter grip, knowing that I’m going to release everything into her. I love you, I love you, I love you. Can you hear me?

  After returning from the upstairs bathroom, tiptoeing so slowly and quietly, I am back in bed with Olivia, her head resting on my bare chest. The room smells like sex and puppy and paint and glue and I am hopelessly in love and terrified.

  “What can I do for you?” Her voice is soft and unusually unsteady.

  I laugh. “I think I’m done for the night, but thank you.”

  “No, I mean…what do I do for you?”

  “You dazzle me.”

  “It’s not enough.”

  “You’re enough.”

  I put my hand on her face, swipe my thumb across her cheek. It is damp. She’s crying. This girl. What does it mean? She doesn’t say anything else, and neither do I. I close my eyes.

  When my eyes open again, it’s still dark, and I’m on my side, facing away from Olivia, but I can feel her right behind me. I don’t move. I can feel her uneven breath on my back. Am I awake?

  “I love you,” she whispers.

  I still don’t move. I keep my breaths as even as possible. I feel her kiss my neck, ever so gently, and then she turns around to face the other way.

  I feel like a thief. She has given me something precious and I’ve taken it without giving her something back. Or maybe she’s the thief. She has stolen my breath, my heart, my body, my mind, my life, and left me with three quiet little words in a darkened room. It’s more than enough, but it’s also far too much.

  I wake up with a weird feeling in my stomach. Like I used to feel before an exam. If I weren’t me, I’d figure I’m coming down with something, but I only get sick every few years. I outwit germs and viruses. I haven’t felt like this since the morning I went on pitch meetings for Brainy Biz funding. I have no idea why I feel this way, and then I remember.

  Olivia has already gotten up. I think this is the first time she’s gotten out of bed before me. I hear scratching at the bedroom door, which is closed, hear whimpering. It’s the puppy. I hope.

  I get out of bed, “Coming, coming,” and open the door. Bob the baby Cocker Spaniel scampers in without waiting for an invitation. I don’t usually pay much attention to cute things, but this guy is really fucking cute. He sniffs around at my feet, nudges my leg with his wet nose and looks up at me. “Hi. How are you?” He looks disappointed. He turns around in a circle, then sits down and raises his paw in the air and huffs. Well, fuck me. I guess you want me to touch you or something.

  I bend down to rub the top of his head and he rests his front paws on my knees, licks my face all over. I pick him up and sit with him on the bed. He keeps licking my face and wagging his tail, and there’s something about it that makes me feel so sad. I’ve never held a puppy before. How is that even possible? How does someone go twenty-seven years without holding a freaking puppy in his arms? What have I been doing with my life?

  Working. Making hundreds of millions. If I had a puppy I wouldn’t be able to focus on my business. That’s true. Is it? Yes, it’s true. There’s a reason I haven’t turned my offices into a playground with desks, like so many of the “cool” startups. I don’t make my employees work round the clock, and they can do whatever they want in their free time, but I draw the line at houseplants and a ping-pong table in the workplace.

  I put Bob back down on the floor and wipe my face with the back of my hand. Olivia may be deeply distracting, but at least she doesn’t leave my face slimy.

  I don’t even have to check my phone to know that I need to get to the hotel to get some important work done this morning. My portable wireless printer stopped working when we were in New York, and I don’t have time to get a new one here. I will print out some documents at the hotel business center, even though I usually refuse to use public office equipment. I will check in with my business manager to make sure I’m still as wealthy as I think I am. Then maybe my stomach will feel the way it’s supposed to by lunch.

  20

  Olivia

  I am eighty-five percent certain that my parents didn’t hear Johnny and me boning last night, and ninety-five percent sure that John didn’t hear me say “I love you” an hour later. I can live with those odds. “Probabilities!” snaps Johnny’s voice in my head. “Probabilities are given as percentages, odds have a value of zero to infinity and represent a ratio!”

  What if the nerd virus has infected my brain via his penis? What if I start thinking of music in terms of mathematics and dance movements in terms of physics? What are the odds of John becoming more like me? Do I even want him to? When did I start questioning things?

  From the upstairs hallway, I can still hear John and Nathan in the dining room, trying to explain the cloud to my Dad. John is the only one still eating my Mom’s banana-zucchini bread and he looks so happy and comfortable today I’ve felt my heart nearly explode multiple times. I love how much he loves my family. I love how happy my Mom is because this is the first time Nathan and I have brought a date home for a meal. It feels like a new chapter in all our lives.

  I have come upstairs to get my phone so I can show Katie pictures from Shanghai. If today’s lunch is any indication, I can tell that Thanksgivings are going to be a thousand times better now that she’s part of the family. Well, she’s not officially part of the family yet, but I can tell. You can just tell when two people are going to marry each other. Unless the two people are me and John.

  When I see that the door to my old room is open, I am filled with dread. I don’t have to hear whining or growling or grunting to know that Bob the Cocker Spaniel is in my/his room. Which one of us forgot to close the door? Hopefully he hasn’t chewed up anything important of mine or John’s.

  I find Bob on top of the bed. I didn’t realize he could even get up that high without help. He has gotten into John’s leather messenger bag. “Shit.” I check the leather for bite marks. That sounds sexual, but it’s not. Fortunately, the puppy does not appear to be into leather. But he is into the little blue bag that he is currently nuzzling with his nose.

  Holy shit.

  I grab the bag from him. A Tiffany’s bag! From John’s bag?! With a little blue box inside! Should I open it? What if I accidentally drop it and it opens on its own? “Oops!” I turn the bag upside down and the cardboard box drops onto the bed. Bob has already moved onto some papers, so he’s not going to chew on it. Now I have to open the box to make sure it’s what I think it is. What is it about a robin’s egg blue box that makes a woman get all crazy pants? I remove the lid of the cardboard box and snap open the box inside.

  “Oh my God.” I cover my mouth. An engagement ring. Stunning. Perfect. My eyes tear up. This fucking better be for me. Yes. I would say ‘yes.’ It’s so crazy, but yes!

  That must be why he was being weird at the airport. He didn’t want to hide this in his luggage in case it got lost or stolen, and he didn’t want to risk me seeing it in his messenger bag when we went
through security. He is a genius.

  And then I realize that Bob is chewing on the papers that he’s pulled out of the leather bag. I yank them from his mouth. “No chewing. Bad Bob! But good Bob for finding this!”

  Shit, I hope these aren’t important documents. Surely he can just print whatever it is out again. It looks like…Is it a prenuptial agreement? Or is it…I snap the ring box shut, put it back in the cardboard box and back in the Tiffany bag, my hands shaking like I’m freezing to death.

  I scan the papers. This is another contract, like the one he had me sign for our one month fake relationship, but this is for an engagement?

  What?

  He is an idiot. He is an asshole. He is crazy.

  I almost had unprotected sex with him and this is all still just some kind of arrangement for—for what?

  “What are you doing?”

  He’s standing there in the doorway, looking at me like I’m the one who’s inappropriate.

  I don’t even stop to think. As soon as I see his face, I take two steps towards him and slap it. It hurts my hand. He’s lucky I don’t know the physics of Bruce Lee punching, but damn that hurts.

  Bob whimpers, almost as though I slapped him, then slides down the side of the bed to the floor and scampers out of the room. Good survival instincts. Can’t say the same about John. I can just tell that every single thing he’s going to say from now on is going to make me want to slap him again.

  “Did you not like the ring?”

  I glare at him.

  His hand covers his pink cheek and I watch his eyes move from the Tiffany bag to the document in my hand and I hate that it only takes him a second to assess the situation when my brain is still spinning out and I barely have a handle on what’s going on. Scratch that. I have no idea what’s going on.

  “I was only going to use it if you didn’t say ‘yes’ when I asked you to marry me. Like with the other contract.”

  His voice is so steady, and I want to run around screaming.

  I hold up the papers. “This is an insult.”

  “I don’t see that. I’ve known that I wanted to marry you for a long time—this arrangement was just the quickest means to the end that I knew would be best for both of us.”

  “What are you saying? That this was a fake fake relationship?”

  “That’s one way of putting it. Actually, when you put it that way it sounds stupid. It isn’t stupid. I’ve had a lot of success in life when I turn ideas into business deals.”

  “So this was just a business deal for you?”

  “No, not at all. That’s not…Listen. My PR consultant really did advise me that I should bring a female companion along for those events. Those events happened to coincide with your brother mentioning that I should reach out to you. I don’t believe in fate, but I do believe there’s a right time for things. There was no other female on Earth that I wanted to accompany me other than you. Carefully-worded contracts are a controllable form of execution for ideas that could be either brilliant or disastrous. It’s a necessary evil.”

  “Do you really not see how weird that is? Why didn’t you just ask me out on a date?”

  “In case you don’t remember—I asked you to be my date and you laughed—just as I had anticipated you would.”

  “Because you wanted me to go to Shanghai and New York with you before taking me out for coffee first.”

  “I don’t have time for that kind of dating. Don’t look at me like that—every planet in the universe follows the shortest path, using the least amount of energy. This is no different. This was the most effective and efficient way that I could think of to get you to spend time with me, get us back on the same path, with the end result of us being a married couple.”

  “We aren’t planets, you nerd, that doesn’t make any sense—you sound like a crazy person.”

  “It makes perfect sense, you just don’t get it—you’re ignorant and you’re being stubborn and reactive and overly emotional.”

  I can tell from the way his eyelashes flicker that he immediately regrets saying that, but it’s too late. He has crossed back over to the arrogant intellectual side. I have crossed back over to the emotional dancer side. There is no way for those paths to cross.

  I hurt all over but I’m so angry, I know I won’t cry for days. “Jesus Johnny. How on earth, after the time we’ve spent together, after the way we’ve been together this past week, how is it possible that you could consider presenting me with an engagement ring and a fucking contract for a fake engagement?”

  “It’s not a contract for a fake engagement—did you read it—it contains terms for our engagement. It’s not the same thing. Not to me, anyway.”

  All I want to do is see him hurt like he’s hurt me. That can’t be love. Can it? “Wow. I know you’ve always wanted to be a part of my family but maybe you should just ask my parents to adopt you.”

  “That…Wow. That was mean.”

  I look down, sorry, but not going to say it.

  “You do realize that a fake fake relationship is a real relationship?”

  “I don’t think that’s true.”

  “I don’t think I’m wrong.”

  “I don’t think it really matters right now if you’re right or wrong.”

  He snorts. His posture gets straighter, his lips tighten into a straight line. He is either closing off the part of himself that was real and open, or he’s stopped acting and gone back to being himself, I don’t know which. And that is why it is crazy for either of us to be thinking about marriage. That and the twelve hundred reasons why we’re totally wrong for each other.

  “This contract is just a way for you to keep me at a distance. You’re a coward. You’re hedging your bets.”

  “Yeah. Like not telling your regular fuck that I’m your boyfriend in case he finally one day magically decides he wants to hire you for a gig. Or like telling someone you love them for the first time when you think they’re asleep. You’re only angry right now because you would have said ‘yes,’ so why can’t you just focus on that?”

  “On what?”

  “The fact that you would have said yes if I’d asked you to marry me. For real.” His jaw is clenched. His fists are clenched. His whole body is a rigid mass of stubborn nerd.

  He is right and I hate him.

  I can’t stop shaking my head. “You’re still not ready to be in a real relationship with me.

  “Are you ready for that?”

  “I don’t know. I thought I was.”

  “I would never ask you to love me more than you love ballet.”

  “I know. I wouldn’t ask you to love me more than you love your work either.”

  “So what’s the problem?”

  “We’re too different. I can’t be with you like this anymore. It hurts too much.”

  “So you do have a weak heart.”

  I nod. “Sorry.” I cover my face. Maybe I will cry.

  I feel his arms around me and my body betrays me by leaning into his. Why can’t it just be this? Just our bodies.

  “Tell me what you want.”

  I pull away from him, shake my head and start packing my bag.

  “Where are you going—this is your house. I’ll go.”

  “Right. You leave.”

  He picks up his messenger bag and zips up his suitcase. When he picks up the Tiffany bag, he pauses and makes a sad little throat noise.

  “Go. I’m so mad at you, I can’t be around you anymore.” I say it to make it easier for him to leave.

  “I’m going.”

  “Give me back my key.”

  I fumble around my purse for my keys and start to take his house key off the ring.

  “Please keep mine.”

  I look up at him.

  “Please.”

  I keep his key. He gives me mine.

  “Olivia. I don’t understand you.”

  “I don’t need you to understand me. I’m not some math equation to be solved.”

 
; He looks mad now. It’s not what I wanted, but it’s something. “I don’t think you understand Giselle enough to dance the lead.”

  He didn’t say it in a nasty way, but I’m so mad at him I don’t even have words. I lunge at him and raise my hand to slap him again, but he grabs my wrist midair.

  “Slap me once, shame on me. Slap me twice…”

  “Fuck you.”

  He starts to walk out of the room, then turns and says: “The thirty days aren’t up yet—you’re breaking the terms of our agreement.”

  “So sue me! You’re breaking the terms of humanity, you robot prick!”

  “So you want me to use the matchmaking service to find me a date for the wedding?”

  “I don’t care what you do. And do not make a donation to my ballet company for me—I don’t want your help!”

  “Don’t sabotage your career too, Olivia.”

  “Too? What else have I sabotaged?”

  “This.”

  “You did that.”

  “Agree to disagree. But don’t complicate things. This should have nothing to do with your ballet career.”

  “You should have nothing to do with my ballet career.”

  “That’s just stupid.”

  “That’s the worst thing you can say to a person, isn’t it? I’m not afraid of being stupid.”

  “Then what are you so afraid of?”

  Oh my God, isn’t it obvious?! “You!”

  21

  John

  I don’t understand how this happened.

  I fucked it up.

  I had her and I fucked it up.

  I can’t believe I left my bag out on top of the bed.

  Things probably would have gotten fucked up eventually anyway, but this all happened too fast.

  In business we’re trained to embrace our failures as launchpads for future successes, but I’ve never really failed before. This fucking sucks.