by C. C. Piper
Shit. If some guy’s harassing her, we’d better get a restraining order against him ASAP. That, or I could give him a solid thrashing. Or both.
What guy?
Fantasy guy. I want to tell you who he is.
I almost heaved a sigh of relief until I realized she was about to confide in me about who she wanted to sex her up. I didn’t need to know that. I shouldn’t know that. Yet, my fingers must’ve had a mind of their own because before I knew it, I’d sent her the reverse of what I should’ve.
Who is it, then?
I waited with bated breath, watching those three dots appear that told me she was typing.
It’s you.
After Alaina’s bomb of a revelation, I nearly swallowed my own tongue, and while I’d heard the expression, I’d never realized that could actually be a thing.
Now, I put my phone on the vanity by my bathtub and switched on the faucet. Taking one last glimpse at the screen to see if she’d written anything else, I stepped in, twisted the nozzle on the showerhead and stepped under the steaming spray. Then, clutching a hand around my erection, I imagined that I was with Alaina. That she was with me here in the shower.
I could see myself licking all that flawless skin of hers and sucking on her neck, her bottom lip, her breasts. I pictured her circling her fist around me, then pumping me for all she was worth. It didn’t take long for my fantasy to have the desired effect, and I felt all the tension leave my body as I gushed into my hand in a series of long, sticky bursts.
It took me a while after that to recover enough physically to go about the business of washing myself. And only once I’d dried off was I capable of thinking with any sort of discernible brainpower.
I made up a tally, listing the events that had transpired between us up to this point. We had kissed, and it’d been passionate as all hell. We had sexted in her family room with her mom and dad right there within feet of us. And now, I’d jacked myself off while thinking specifically about Alaina touching me.
Yeah, that about summed it up.
Guess there was nothing else to do but lay in my bed and stare at the ceiling all night. Which I did.
It had dawned on me that there were two trajectories we could take. We could either ignore what was between us and pretend it wasn’t there, or we could explore it further. I couldn’t deny that the second option was the one I wanted. I wanted to be with her and see how far down the rabbit hole this whole chemical attraction thing went. But that, of course, was a terrible idea.
The only way any relationship we might have could end was in a crash and burn.
There were too many strikes against us. She was still in college and while I’d be twenty-nine on my next birthday, she’d only recently passed the legal drinking age. She was about to begin a new career while I was already well established in mine. She was on the rebound from that asshole in London, while I hadn’t been serious with anyone in over two years. And the most damning, she was part of the family that I’d essentially made into a surrogate for my own.
Alaina and I wouldn’t ever work out. We couldn’t. And we’d be foolish to try, even though tonight she’d shown me in terms I couldn’t misconstrue that she was interested in me. If she was someone else – anyone else – we could attempt something. We could become fuck buddies or friends with benefits. We could even give a real relationship with all the bells and whistles a go. But Alaina wasn’t anyone else. She was her, and I was me.
And never the twain shall meet, at least not biblically.
Then, though, I engaged my imagination. I visualized her smile after we kissed. I saw her laughing as we hiked along one of the local mountain trails, that wavy golden hair of hers surrounding her head like a halo. I saw her coming home to me after kicking ass and taking names with her handbag business. I imagined myself coming home to her after a long day at the firm and feeling instantly better the moment she was in my arms.
I saw us making love, falling asleep together and rising the next morning ready to tackle the day side by side. And the thought of such a future made me yearn for it. Made me yearn for that life. The life with her in it.
Yet, it was a life that could never be.
Sometime after the sun came up, I lumbered out of bed without having received even a wink of sleep. I’d been too restless. I still was.
Needing to move, I changed into my running shoes and workout clothes and went for a long jog. I ran along Lake Washington north through Capitol Hill and up past Madison Park toward the University District. I’d run long and hard enough now that I’d reached the campus at Seattle University where Alaina would go in a couple of hours to one of her marketing classes.
I felt such a pull towards her, but I felt an almost equal push to race the other way. It was like being ripped in two. I needed advice yet I couldn’t ask for it. My mom and dad were gone, and the other people I might go to – Andy or Bryant – were too directly involved to appreciate my perspective.
So, I’d have to man up and not let the temptation to be more than distant friends with Alaina take hold. I’d just have to be careful and set some strict ground rules for myself. There could be no more sexting. There could be no more kissing. And I’d need to keep hanging out with her to a minimum, too. Lead me not into temptation, right? I could be strong as long as I respected my own limits.
I could do this. All I had to remember was to stick to the plan.
9
Alaina
I was never that much of a risk taker, even though deep down, I always wanted to be. Still, when my friends in high school went skydiving, I gave them a hard pass. Then there was the skinny dipping and the rock climbing and all the sex, drugs, and rock and roll. I’d witnessed all of those activities without ever once participating in them myself.
And where had that gotten me?
Nowhere.
So maybe that was why teasing my oldest crush was so tantalizing. I’d never allowed myself to play with fire like this before and observing his reactions to it was priceless. The night we’d basically sexted in my parents’ family room had been the highlight of my week. No, my year. It’d been nerve-racking and titillating and more fun than I’d had in a long time. Maybe ever.
During our racy little exchange, I wasn’t the woman Auggie had cheated on. I wasn’t the moronic student who’d failed to become a recipient of the grant I’d been after. I wasn’t that loser who’d flown home from England with her tail between her legs. I wasn’t a boring virgin with no consequential life experiences worth sharing. I wasn’t merely Andy’s baby sister or Bryant and Caroline’s daughter. Instead, I was a bad girl. A naughty nelly. A seductress. And I liked it.
Shit, I adored it.
I’d never been sexually adventurous, and I’d certainly never tried to act as an aggressor before, but I had that night. And even though my heart had been galloping in my chest like a team of prized stallions, it’d given me a taste of something hitherto unknown to me up until that point.
Empowerment.
Though I’d felt my face heat, and my mother had even commented on the fact, I felt invincible after telling Mason that I’d fantasized about him. It was the truth, too, although I’d never meant for him to know that. I’d been running on nothing but sheer reckless bravado at the time and trying to get his goat more than anything else. It was hilarious witnessing his reactions to my R-rated banter.
But then I got a little too into it.
Those visuals in my head of him licking and sucking on me were powerful. I wasn’t making it up on the fly. I’d pictured him doing that to me thousands of times. And letting him know something so personal about me made me hot enough that I thought I might combust right there on the spot.
Once Mason had made his rather abrupt departure, I hurried up to my bedroom with desire, anxiety, and this need to be more fearless battling it out for supremacy within me.
So, I made a decision. I decided that I was tired of being the same old boring me. I wanted to stop making nothing but safe c
hoices and start living more brazenly. I could admit to myself that I no longer had a crush on Mason King. I genuinely and sincerely liked him. I’d enjoyed revisiting what I already knew about him, and I enjoyed getting to know this grown-up version of him even more.
After three years abroad, I’d lost contact with pretty much all of my high school friends, but something they’d all said to me at one time or another was that meme. YOLO. You only live once.
I’d blown them off at the time, secretly thinking of them as immature. But they were right. You do only live once. Living life to the fullest does matter, and I hadn’t been doing anything even close to that. Sure, I’d been attempting to assert more independence from my family, but I hadn’t done very well in that regard.
Not only had I not done enough research to realize that my proposal to the Washington Graduate Venture Fund wouldn’t match the organization’s goals, I’d gone back to living at home. My mom had thrust me back under her thumb again. My dad still saw me as nothing more than his little girl. And Andy only thought of me as the baby sister he needed to keep an eye on.
It was time for me to start being my own woman and to make my desires known. So, I would. Technically, I already had. I’d flirted with Mason over text messaging, but now came the ultimate test. I wanted to make it clear to him that flirting and sexting weren’t the only things I was interested in. I didn’t want to just play around. I wanted something real with him, or to at least attempt something real with him.
The trick was going to be that I now needed to say that to his face.
The problem was that over the ensuing two months, Mason stopped attending the family dinners. My mom would ask each time about where he was, and either my dad or my brother would provide a reason. Mason had to go out of town for a conference, or he’d been on a call with a client. After a few times, I could tell that he’d begged off and they were only attempting to placate her.
But I suspected his sudden absence at our table had nothing to do with his work and everything to do with me. Especially since not only had the sexting between us stopped, all texting came to an unceremonious halt, as well. For the first time in my life I’d initiated something with a man, and it scared him off. I didn’t exactly feel encouraged by this.
So I did what every girl who feels defeated does. I contacted the only woman here who’d started to become my friend. Josie Watson invited me to her studio apartment to commiserate over ice cream. I purchased large quantities on the way.
Over a pint of fudge ripple – yes, I really did love fudge – I told Josie my miserable tale. She and I may not have been besties as of yet, but I needed a feminine point of view that wasn’t my mother’s. Not that I could ever tell my mom about any of this. She’d likely just provide me with a laundry list delineating how I wasn’t good enough for Mason.
Josie listened obediently to my story, making soothing noises at all the right places. Then, she peered over at me with her big blue eyes and nailed me to the wall.
“What is up with you, girl?” she demanded, and I gaped at her.
“Huh?”
“You want him, correct?”
“Yeah.”
“And he’s shown definite interest in you.”
“Yeah. But I made my play and it didn’t work,” I said. Hadn’t she heard that part?
“No. You sexted him and when he cut off contact, you let him. Did you text or call him to see what the deal was?”
I dropped my chin. “No.” I’d listened for any morsel of news I could gather from my family, but I hadn’t reached out to Mason myself.
“Communication is key, Alaina. Men are… What’s the word I’m looking for?” She stared up at her ceiling as she gathered her thoughts. “Oh yeah. Men are dumb.” I snorted at her. “You have to spell things out for them, or they won’t get it.”
“Josie, Mason is a partner at my father’s law firm. He’s far from dumb, I promise.”
“I’m not talking about his IQ. Some men think they have to make these unilateral decisions without involving anyone else. That may be why he shut you out. He might not respond to you if you’re taking a nuanced or subtle approach. That’s why if you need to determine what’s going on with him, you’ll probably have to get right in his face and ask him. Possibly at a yell.”
She wanted me to yell at him? “I don’t know about that,” I murmured more to myself than her.
“What? Can’t hear you, Peach,” she said, referencing Finding Nemo.
“I don’t know if that’s such a good idea. Maybe he changed his mind and assumed I wasn’t worth the trouble.” I honestly didn’t know why I was playing devil’s advocate here. “It could be because he’s my brother’s best friend.”
Josie simply waved her hands as if shooing a fly. “Such things can be overcome. You told me just a couple of weeks ago that you wanted to take life by the horns and stick up for yourself. You started to subscribe to the whole Girl Power initiative, right?”
“Right.”
“Then you’re going to have to strap on a pair and do this thing.”
She made it sound so easy, but taking another crack at Mason after he’d rejected my advances caused my stomach to turn into the weight and consistency of a bowling ball.
“What if I tell him I want to build something between us beyond friendship, and he says he doesn’t want to?” I asked her.
She pursed her lips. “At least then, you’ll know either way. You’ll be able to move on and stop obsessing. But you have to tell him how you feel in no uncertain terms first. You have to give this your best shot. Otherwise, you’re giving up before you ever even started.”
“Josie?”
“Yes.”
“Has anyone ever told you that you’re a wise woman?”
She snickered. “Mostly, I get told that I’m a know-it-all and a smartass.”
“I think you’re fine multi-tasking. You strike me as someone capable of being all three.”
She raised my pint of ice cream until it hit the tip of my nose in retaliation, then squealed when I turned the tables and did the same to her. After our ice cream war, we stayed up watching chick flicks while hanging out in our jammies. I slept over at her place as if at a middle school slumber party, and even though my surroundings were unfamiliar, I proceeded to sleep like a baby.
When I woke the next morning, I contacted my brother.
“Andy, I need some legal advice.”
“Shoot,” he said.
“You know how I’m planning to create a startup selling my specially designed handbags?”
“Sure.”
“I need someone to walk me through the proper process of establishing myself as the owner of the business.”
“Dad and I both dabble in entrepreneurships a little bit, but if you want to go to an expert, see Mason on that. He’ll set you straight.”
I smiled right there on the phone. I certainly hoped so.
10
Mason
“But I don’t see why we can’t change the terms of the will,” Edmond Smythe said for about the billionth time.
“We can’t change the terms because your brother was of sound mind when he had his will drafted and notarized, Mr. Smythe. Now, that he’s passed, the will cannot be changed unless some proof that he was not of sound mind comes to light.” I took a nanosecond to pray for patience. “Do you have such proof?”
“No. But there has to be something. Some loophole you missed when you looked last time.”
I’d been going around and around with this particular client for a week now. Every day Smythe had called me and demanded that I alter his brother’s will so that he would gain full ownership of their co-owned used car dealership. The problem was that his brother had declared that his wife would be the new part-owner. And Smythe and his brother’s wife did not get along.
Not even a little.
“I can assure you that your brother’s will is perfectly binding,” I told him, just like I’d told him for the past seven
days.
I didn’t want this guy holding me up since today was a half-day. Tomorrow was Thanksgiving, and I was looking forward to having the afternoon off. Still, I knew if I tried to rush him, he’d only become more obstinate.
I also knew not to mention going to his sister-in-law to see if they could reach some kind of agreement on their own. That suggestion had been met with thirty minutes straight of bellowing disagreement. At long last, I was able to hang up. I’d closed my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose when Andy popped his head into my office.
“Mr. Smythe?”
I didn’t even bother to glance up. “However did you guess?”
“I’m just psychic like that. Hey, got a favor to ask.”
“Whatcha’ need?”
“Got someone who requires some hand-holding with their new business. The client will need to be walked through the IP agreement, bylaws, articles of incorporation and the whole shebang. You up for it?”
“Sure,” I said, more than ready to free my mind of the likes of Mr. Smythe. “When?”
“Well, I know we’re all trying to get out of here, but Kyle just added her to today’s itinerary.” Kyle was our receptionist. He made all the appointments and had the unique and special gift of keeping us on track. “Oh, and don’t fuck up with this one or you’ll have to answer to both Dad and me.”
I frowned. “This a VIP client you haven’t told me about?”
Andy quirked his mouth into a half smile. “She’s a VIP, all right. It’s Alaina. Catch you later, bro’.” Then, he vanished from my threshold.
Fuck.
I’d been doing my level best to push his baby sister out of my mind. I’d been putting in lots of overtime and trying to stay so busy that I fell dog-tired into bed every night. But despite all my efforts, my strategy hadn’t been working overly well. And when it did, I simply dreamed about her instead. Talk about a catch twenty-two.
Now, I was pinching the bridge of my nose again. I took a couple of deep breaths before pulling my schedule up on my computer monitor. Alaina had been plugged in this afternoon at one-thirty. That gave me precisely five minutes.