I hoped Jenny would come over to see how Phaedra’s tattoos were coming along, but she never did.
Between day and night time, it was hard to say when the best time to find Ryan at his house would have been. He was out of the house most nights. He liked to party. I knew he wasn’t working at my shop anymore, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t working somewhere else.
I decided the morning was my best bet. He didn’t live that far away from where I did, but he had roommates. I had told him over the phone that he was not coming back and he had listened.
That was good, and it should have been enough, but it wasn’t. I was having a little trouble accepting this new information about a person I thought I had known. Ryan was the sort of friend I had thought I’d always be able to have. If we ever stopped being friends, it would have been because of something else, not this.
I knocked on the door and waited. There was no answer. I knocked again, louder, calling his name. I heard someone on the other side unlocking the door and pulling it open. It wasn’t Ryan. It was Dionne, one of his roommates. Short girl, standup comedian or infomercial actress—one of those fake LA jobs.
“He’s not here,” she said.
“I have to talk to him,” I said. “Let me in.” I called his name again, louder.
“Shut up; Cate’s still sleeping.”
“Is he sleeping too?” I asked pushing the door open. Their place was fairly big. Three bedrooms and they split the rent three ways. Dionne and Cate were sisters, and Ryan had moved in here after he had moved out of my place.
I pushed his door open. He was passed out, face down in his bed, alone. The room was dark and stuffy. He had blackout curtains in there from whoever used to live there before him. The floor was covered in clothes and trash, not that different from how his room at his parents’ house used to look when we were kids.
“Rise and shine,” I yelled, pulling the curtains open. I heard him stir on the bed, but he didn’t wake up. I went over and yanked the pillow from under his head. His face hitting the mattress woke him. He looked around disoriented.
“Ash?”
“You want to tell me where you’ve been?” I asked, throwing the pillow at him. He slowly pulled himself into a sitting position. He had fallen asleep in his jeans.
“Where I’ve been? You fired me!”
“I told you to come back to the shop so you could give me your fucking key.” His face was sleepy, but right then he looked shocked.
“You were serious?”
“You aren’t shop manager anymore; you don’t need it.”
“You’re overreacting, Ash.”
“Are you trying to deny that I saw what I saw?”
“I just don’t know why you’re all chopped up about this.” I didn’t know how he wasn’t. I hadn’t made him sign a contract with a morality clause to work at my shop, but keeping him honestly felt like aiding and abetting a criminal. I couldn’t do it, and the fact that he didn’t seem to understand why just made me hate him.
“At least try to act like you know what you did was wrong.”
Ryan smiled, scoffing. He looked down laughing to himself.
“The fuck is so funny?” I demanded. He shook his head and looked up at me.
“A girl, Asher? All this because of a chick?”
“No. Because of you, you piece of shit.”
“It’s not like I took her from you. I saw her first.” Trying to hit him now would have been a bitch move. He wasn’t ready; he wouldn’t have been able to defend himself. I tried to remember that as I thought about how much I wanted to do it.
“Have you done that before? Tried to force a girl even after she said no?”
“They don’t mean it when they say no. They want you to take it. They like it,” he said.
“She was screaming, Ryan. She was crying.”
“It doesn’t matter what they say. If their pussy’s wet, then they want it.”
I looked at him just wondering how. How? How did you do something like that to someone? What the fuck kind of animal did you have to be to rationalize that in your brain?
I felt sick. Ryan had always told me about his conquests. Fuck, how many of them had been scared, crying like Jenny when he was on top of them. It made my skin crawl. I couldn’t stand to look at him. When I’d tell him his bodybuilding was him trying to compensate for something, I’d been kidding. Obviously, it was.
I’d come to LA because I’d run away from home. I’d run away often, usually just far enough from the noise. A lot of the time to Ryan’s house. Every time I went, I’d lie to his parents about what was happening at home. When they found out, I’d begged them not to tell the police because I was afraid I’d end up in foster care and Mom would be alone.
They did, eventually, but that wasn’t what made me run away. It wasn’t my mother’s house I’d run from. It was a foster home. I was close enough to eighteen for them not to come looking.
My mother was a bestselling author, living in an embarrassingly huge house in Calabasas. She was a motivational speaker and activist against domestic violence. Before she was that, she was one of those women who had been hurt by a guy who was supposed to love her. One of her books was a survivor’s memoir, and it was only after reading it that I found out my stepdad used to rape her.
Ryan knew because he’d heard it from his parents, and they’d heard it from some other people who knew, and them from some other people. Ocala wasn’t that big.
I couldn’t pretend it was me he’d done wrong, but I felt like an idiot for ever having held him to any sort of higher standard. That wasn’t even a high standard; it was the bare minimum. The bar could not be lower.
Some numbskull somewhere said bros before hoes, but there had to be some fine print somewhere saying when your bro tries to rape someone in your house, you are free to break his neck yourself if you really want to.
All it made me think about was Jenny and how much I didn’t want anything to happen to her. Our relationship had been getting muddier in my head the past few days. Now she was one of my employees, and I had done a horrible job at realizing what having her close to me all day would do. I could close the door when we were at the apartment and do what I had to do, but at work, I could always feel her, or hear her, or glance up and see her.
She had been doing great. The difference at the shop had been night and day since she’d been there, and the guys seemed to like her, but something in me didn’t like to share her. She seemed happy like she was settling in, but I felt the more she did, the less she needed me somehow.
I went back to my apartment after seeing Ryan to hang out there before work. He’d given the key back, eventually. I walked in, and Jenny was walking out of the bathroom, telling me hi, and that she hadn’t known whether to wait for me, so she’d gotten a ride. She said there was coffee in the kitchen and headed for the door.
“Jenny?” She stopped and turned.
“Yeah?”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m great. Are you?” she asked.
“How was work yesterday?”
“It was good,” she said shortly.
“I need you to tell me if anything’s wrong.” She nodded.
“I will.” She was looking at me waiting for me to say something else. Her lips were sort of parted and her eyes wide and attentive. I wanted to talk to her, but this felt like one of those times when kissing her would probably say what I wanted to say to her better than my words. She was really beautiful. If I could kiss her, maybe she would feel comfortable enough to tell me how she got here and feel how serious I was about being there for her.
I’d been at a hundred seeing Ryan and seeing her slowed me back down. She turned me on, but I enjoyed being around her. I liked knowing where she was. I would have liked it a lot more if I didn’t feel like I had to hold myself back all the time. I didn’t know whether showing her what I wanted would be more damaging or not, and I wasn’t going to gamble with something like that.
&n
bsp; She had obviously seen some shit. She wasn’t a child, but she felt so… precious. Fragile. Everything about her compelled me. I didn’t want her to be hungry, or tired, or even vaguely irritated if I could prevent it.
“I’m serious, Jenny,” I said. “Anything.” She nodded.
“Okay,” she said, stressing the two syllables like she wanted me to leave her alone already because she didn’t want to talk. I sighed.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Go ahead.”
“Why were you in rehab?” I saw her chest rise and fall with the deep breath she took. I had researched the Bermuda ranch, and I knew what they treated. All of it was terrible, but I hoped like shit she wasn’t there because someone, a man, her boyfriend or whoever had hurt her.
“I was in a really dark place. I couldn’t take care of myself anymore and it wasn’t something moving back home could fix.”
“Did someone hurt you?”
“No,” she said shaking her head. “I just needed help, and my family saw that, so they got it for me.”
“Then why are you afraid to go back?”
“I’m not afraid. If I’ve overstayed my welcome, just tell me.”
“It’s not that. You can stay as long as you need to, Jenny. I’m not chasing you away.”
“Then what do you want?”
“I need to know what happened,” I said simply. “I can’t help you unless you tell me.”
“You’re already helping me, Asher, and I’m so, so grateful,” she said. “I’m just not-” she sighed. “I just want to have something first. It’s still too soon. I still don’t feel like I’m on solid ground yet.”
“You can talk to me, Jenny. I want you to.”
“I know, and I will, but not just yet.” I clenched my jaw, feeling like I was hitting a wall. I couldn’t make her talk to me if she didn’t want to, but I didn’t know what else to offer her. What was there? What could I say or do to make her fucking know I was serious? She came up to me slowly.
“Thank you, again. For everything.” She leaned up and wrapped her arms around my neck, hugging me. My arms went around her small body with no hesitation. I closed my eyes, smelling her hair and feeling her close to me. She disengaged too soon. I still had my arms around her, but she was leaning slightly away from me, looking at my face. She leaned forward again and kissed me softly on the cheek. She used her hands to gently remove herself from my grasp.
“I’m getting a ride to work today with Mal. I’ll see you there,” she said, walking away again. One confession at a time, she had told me. That was two. I didn’t know how I was going to make it to three.
10
Asher
I hated sharing my bed. It usually didn’t happen, but this girl… Bethany… Brittany? Whatever her name was had been too drunk to tell me where to send her Uber. I might also have been too drunk to get her that Uber in the first place. Error on both our parts. I’m sure she wouldn’t have wanted to stay if she could have left. I sure as hell would have wanted her to leave rather than stay.
I didn’t want Jenny meeting her in the kitchen on her way out. She would get up early, and it had already happened once before. We were supposed to go to her place, but I didn’t remember what happened to cause this. It had been a nearly endless stream of pussy since Jenny had told me why she had gone to rehab, and I was still waiting for the point where it made me feel less shitty.
I’d been awake for a little while, but was waiting for the worst of my hangover to fade before I got up and went to the gym before work. We were open on Sundays, but only for appointments. I was pretty sure that I had at least one today. I estimated it was about ten in the morning. I pulled my arm out from under Barbara so I could roll over and check my phone for the time. It was completely asleep since she’d been lying on it.
I checked the time. Nine thirty-nine. Better than I thought. I sighed, rolling onto my back. My head hurt, but that was it. I’d definitely had worse. Belinda rolled on top of me so her head was on my chest. She sighed, rubbing her hand up and down my stomach.
“We fell asleep,” she sighed, leaning up to look at me. Her makeup looked the same as it had the day before. Mostly. That stuff was a bitch to wash out of pillowcases.
“Looks like it,” I said, “should I call you a car?”
“Did we even fuck?” she asked. I looked at her unimpressed. She’d been drunk, but she hadn’t been plastered. The fuck she didn’t remember me dicking her down.
“Maybe try and be coy when you aren’t naked in my bed.” She put her head back down, running her hand up and down my stomach again. She went up to my chest, down to my navel where she stopped, before going lower.
“What’s this,” she said playfully, wrapping her hand around my tip. “For me?” she asked, pleased with herself. I’d gotten morning wood since my balls had dropped, but if she wanted to claim responsibility, fine. Whatever she wanted.
“Yep, all yours,” I said sleepily. The hell was I supposed to do? Tell her to stop. Maybe I’d enjoy it this time. She grinned at me before throwing the comforter off of us and sliding down to dick level.
I felt her lips wrap around the head of my cock. I had a good half chub of morning wood, which I felt swelling up as she swallowed. I watched her. Her hair was a mess. It was dyed bright pink. I hoped none of that had bled into my pillowcase either.
I held the back of her head and guided her the way I wanted to be sucked. Balls deep, really make it count. She cupped my balls, a little tight, moaning like a porn star as she sucked my cock. I groaned because I could feel it. She sunk her mouth down on me so far her nose hit my pubes, then slowly went back up, sucking hard as she went. That felt good.
“I want you to fuck me,” she said, looking up at me. She reached over to the bed stand to look for a condom. “Where are they?” she asked.
“They aren’t in there?”
She pulled the box out and held it upside down. Yup. Empty. Bummer. We’d used the last one the night before.
“I’m on the pill. Are you clean? We could do it raw,” she suggested. I narrowed my eyes at her. No, we could not do it raw. I wasn’t nearly horny enough to make as bad a decision as that.
“Wait here,” I told her, walking to the bathroom. I was steady, and the room wasn’t spinning. Minimal damage the night before. I opened the medicine cabinet and looked for another box of condoms, turning up nothing.
Fuck. Was I out of rubbers? No way, I’d bought some just the other day. Where the hell did I put them?
“You find them?” she called from the bed. I closed the cabinet and walked back out into the room.
“Wait for me,” I said, walking towards the door. She was on her back with her legs spread wide, two fingers plunging in and out of her pussy. Shit, she couldn’t wait.
“Hurry up,” she said, bringing her wet fingers to her lips and sucking them clean. Alright, that was hot. I felt my cock twitch and remembered what I wanted to do. I left the room walking towards the kitchen. There was a chance I’d left them in there, put them in there by mistake when I was putting groceries away.
I went through the drawers and cabinets quickly, agitated because I knew they were in there somewhere. I pulled boxes out of the cabinets onto the countertop.
“Did you lose something?” I heard Jenny ask behind me.
Shit. Shit. The only thing worse than this would have been her catching me actually fucking someone in the kitchen. I froze like I’d been caught in the act. I felt the overwhelming urge to apologize for some reason. I couldn’t hide that I brought girls home from her. I knew she knew that, but she didn’t know the reason I did it was because I couldn’t do her and I preferred to keep it that way.
I was hard too. Fuck.
“Rubbers. Had a whole box. You haven’t been using them, have you?” I asked, casually. “I mean, you can. Just replace them if you use them up.”
“Haven’t seen them. Sorry. I didn’t realize I was allowed to bring people over,” she said. I fo
und the box behind a pack of elbow pasta. I turned to face her.
“You know what? A bunch of random guys’ ball sweat on my couch… that’s pretty gross. Don’t bring anyone over.”
“You just said I could use them.”
“You can. Why are you saying that like you live alone?” I asked. She’d been doing a pretty good job of not looking down at my cock, but I saw her eyes glance down before she looked at my face again.
“Between all the other girls, I don’t know when I’d get a chance with you alone.”
“That’s why you double up,” I said. I motioned to my room. “You two can start. Get each other warmed up and I’ll jump in later.”
“Tempting offer, but I can’t. I want to go to the shop.”
“We don’t open until noon.”
“No, you guys don’t start tattooing till noon.” She walked up to the sink where she’d been heading in the first place and rinsed her mug out. She had had coffee.
“You turn down this offer you won’t get it again,” I said to her. It was a lie, but I didn’t know what else to say. I knew what I was feeling was guilt, and I knew why and I didn’t like it.
“Don’t make the poor girl wait on my account,” she said, smiling. “I’ll see you at work.”
“Stay. We can leave together. I’ll drive you,” I offered. She shook her head.
“I’m not hanging out to listen to you fuck that woman,” she said with another smile. Her tone and her facial expression weren’t doing the same thing. I wasn’t sure what she was feeling when she said it.
“You’re welcome to take her place,” I said hoping she’d hit back with some line, but wishing like hell that she’d actually do it.
“I don’t know how I feel about getting in the way of another girl’s orgasm.” I was about to say something back when Bailey yelled from my room for me to hurry up. “Your appointment’s at one thirty; try not to let her make you late,” Jenny said, walking out of the kitchen.
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