by R. R. Banks
“Sure. I could always use a drink,” she says. “You’ve figured out my constant need for distraction, haven’t you?”
“Hey, you’re the one who just said it.” I shrug. “Meet me in here at eight?”
“Sure thing.” She grabs a spoon from the drawer and finally digs into her yogurt properly. “I have to get back to work, but I’ll be back here by then.”
She gives me a look over her shoulder on her way out, and this time her expression is clear — lust, mixed with her lingering smile. She’s definitely still thinking about last night, and what these drinks will mean for us.
I wish I knew.
Chapter Seven
Simone
I can’t believe I’m out here with Jay. It’s not a date, according to him, so I’ve kept it casual with high-waisted jeans and a deep green T-shirt. My hair’s up and off the back of my neck because of the humidity in the air. It’s only April, but the dampness of summer is already here, even in the evening.
He’s driving us to the tavern I walked past in my first few days, the one that looked like fun. He’s a better driver than he was back then, thank God. He got his license before I did, but he barely passed because of his lead foot.
It’s weird being in the car with him again. His parents bought him a car when he got his permit, and it became our make out spot. We didn’t go past second base in the year or so we dated (with one or two exceptions), even though I know he must have wanted to all the time, based on all of the boners I felt against my body.
He definitely wanted to take things farther last night.
I roll my eyes at myself. As if his foot massage turning into him eating me out better than anyone had in my life wasn’t taking it from zero to a hundred. I know that if I hadn’t gotten up and left after that, I would have gladly let him fuck me into oblivion.
Once I got back into my own bed, I was able to sort out my tangled thoughts. The problem isn’t that I don’t like him like that. The problem is that I like him a little too much. Yesterday was great, my fucked-up ankle aside. I haven’t laughed like that in ages, or felt so attended to, like he really gave a shit about knowing me as a person. God, that’s depressing. Max, the one person who should have cared, never seemed like he truly gave a shit whenever I was sick.
But that’s it — we’ve had one day. I can’t leap into dating a guy after one great day, especially after all the shit I’m dealing with Max. I’m not ready to be a decent partner to anyone. And who’s to say that he wants to actually date? He’s a bit of a recluse, his friendships with Holly and Andrew aside. And I’m leaving in a few months anyway. I doubt he would want to go back and forth between here and the city, even to see me.
And that leads to the second problem: Max. He’d lose his shit if he knew I was dating someone else. The realization hurts my heart. Will I feel like this forever? Like I’m being held down by an invisible weight everywhere I go?
When Jay walked in on me standing over the sink earlier, I’d been moments from puking. I’ve never had an anxiety attack, but I think I was close to having one when I heard about the fire. In retrospect, this should have been a red flag, but Max told me he used to get in trouble as a kid for lighting stuff on fire. When I asked him what ‘as a kid’ meant, expecting him to say that he was maybe eight or nine, but he said he was eighteen. Yikes.
My brain leapt from local fire to Max trying to kill me in an instant. Am I paranoid now? Yes. But when I left, he was well on his way to being full-on physically abusive. Who’s to say he wouldn’t kill me? I’ve seen enough shows about people getting murdered after not taking a partner’s threats seriously to know that I should be worried.
He’s the type of person who likes to be flashy, and I have no doubt that he’d do some crazy shit like burn some houses down to intimidate me. Intimidate me into doing what, I don’t know. But if by some stretch of imagination he actually was involved, he did a good job of scaring the shit out of me.
I stare at the road in front of us. I’m not helping myself by dwelling on this shit. I’m thankful Jay picked up on my need to put my mind somewhere else.
In a few short minutes, we arrive at the tavern. Some people are standing outside, smoking, and rock music is streaming outside. I like the dive bar vibe. My friends back in the city like to go to fancy cocktail bars a lot of the time, when in reality, we could have just as much fun in a place with five-dollar beer and shot specials.
When we step inside, the scent of beer and smoke washes over me. Everyone looks like they’re having an amazing time, empty drink glasses cluttering the little tables. This town is not good for my health. Between our day filled with eating trash, and this booze, my nutrition has been a bit of a mess. I haven’t even worked out in days. Not that I often do without Gigi dragging me to whatever hellish boutique fitness place she’s fallen in love with, but still.
Clearly my body’s still looking pretty good, if Jay’s ogling of my tits and ass is any indication. I can see him staring in the reflection of the mirrored jukebox in the corner he’s guided us to.
“What do you want to drink?” he asks.
“Uh, anything is fine.”
“Is there anything you definitely don’t want?” A little smile appears on his lips.
“No whiskey or rye. And no beer, or anything. And nothing too sweet.” I bite my bottom lip. “Okay, maybe just a rum and diet coke.”
“You got it.”
He walks over to the bar. He’s still wearing the same jeans that he usually wears, but his ass looks particularly good today. My face goes hot when he looks back at me and catches me staring, giving me a little smile. He comes back a few minutes later with our drinks — he got himself a beer and my rum and diet coke, as requested.
I expect our conversation to flow like it did yesterday before our hook-up, but we’re both just sipping our drinks, unsure of where to start. At least yesterday we had the TV to talk about. That’s basically the extent of our non-sexual interactions.
“So, what happened to you?” I blurt after taking a sip of my drink. They went hard on the rum and light on the coke, and the burn takes me by surprise. I’m way too used to watered down and overpriced drinks.
He raises an eyebrow, amused. “What do you mean? Needs a time frame.”
“Just… After you moved. Everything from then to now…” I shrug. Hearing what I’ve been curious about for years will be a good enough distraction.
He leans back in his seat, sighing.
“Well, you didn’t keep in touch with me,” he points out.
“You dumped me. I wasn’t going to text you all the time, especially since you were moving to super cool Manhattan from our little town in New Jersey,” I reply. I watch the way his Adam’s apple bobs up and down as he downs half his beer in one go.
“True.” He drums his fingers on the wooden table to the beat of the song. “I didn’t want to move. Which I think you knew. My parents were already fucking bonkers, and having money only made it worse. Our apartment was huge, and we had all this staff and shit.”
He looks away from me, his focus clearly somewhere inside his head. It looks like he’s going to leave it at that or not elaborate, but he continues.
“Even though I had everything anyone could ever want, I was a little punk asshole who hated his parents and being told what to do. On top of that, when my parents weren’t having fancy parties with guests they didn’t even like all that much, they were in constant screeching matches over money. We had so much of it, but they acted like we were living paycheck to paycheck. We were always well-off, but it’s like something just snapped. At least before the money really took off their relationship was cool at best.” He takes another long swig of beer and lets out another sigh that’s so heavy that I expect him to slide right to the floor.
“Long story short, I go out partying at some club that my sixteen-year-old ass shouldn’t have been in and get in a fight with another kid whose parents were even richer than mine,” he continues. “That�
��s the only reason I had to go to juvenile hall. Two sets of rich parents trying to free their children from responsibility is like two bulls trying to fight for dominance. One had to go down, and that was me.”
“Wow.” I sip my drink more slowly this time. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. I deserved it for being a little shit.” He smiles a little. “I got my GED while I was in there and graduated early, then I was out on my own. My parents were so ashamed that they disinherited me entirely.”
“Holy shit.” So the rumors were true.
He gives me a look that’s like, ‘yeah, can you believe it?’ but leaves the subject alone.
“Meanwhile, my parents were finally starting their drawn-out divorce, which was awkward as hell, considering that Mom didn’t want to move out of their apartment. In the few times they did call me, it was to try to get me to give them ammo for their divorce. So much fucking screaming. So much of my mom trying to plant fucking ideas in my head.”
“That’s rough.” I remember his mom being the definition of over-the-top. She was beautiful, with the same steel grey eyes that Jay has, and loved being the center of attention. Even though they hadn’t yet been quite so super-duper-rich when Jay and I were dating, she was already well on her way down the plastic surgery rabbit hole. She basically morphed into a reality TV star with the attitude to match.
“Yeah.” He looks down at the table, picking at his bottle’s label. “It put me off families entirely — having one, hanging out with cousins or whoever. Fuck it. No kid deserves that kind of home life. The smallest point I can give my parents is that they stuck together until I was out on my own. So, I guess they tried. It’s better that they had their meltdowns when I was more emotionally capable of handling it. I would have been even more fucked-up if I were a kid when all that went down.”
I get where he’s coming from, even though I know marriages don’t all end up like that. But then again, it’s like when one person gets food poisoning from a restaurant while their friend doesn’t; just because one person didn’t have a bad experience there doesn’t change the fact that their friend did, and rightfully doesn’t want to go back.
But Jay’s so alone up here, since I’m guessing his parents are still back in the city. Then again, the alternative would be a lot worse. He never liked being in noisy places or around a lot of people anyway. I can’t imagine him even having a roommate.
“How are your parents? Do you see them at all?” I ask.
“Not since I cremated them both,” he replies.
“Oh no, Jay. I’m so sorry.” I want to touch him, but I hold myself back.
“They died in a car accident but didn’t suffer. It happened right before I moved up here.” He seems at peace with it, so I don’t want to press further. I know he didn’t like his parents at all, but he loved them. That must be a strange mix of emotions.
“What’d you do before that?” I prod, since I’m not sure where to go from here.
“Honestly, most of my early twenties were spent making poor financial decisions and hanging out with terrible people,” he continues. “It took me a long time to realize that I’m not that kind of guy. The city type, I mean. I mentioned that I went to prison again, right? That was when I knew.”
I nod. His expression doesn’t betray much of what’s inside of his head, but I can tell that it’s hard for him to talk about.
Despite his discomfort, he continues. “At least the second time I went, I got in trouble for defending someone.”
“Another fight?”
“Yeah. I got jumped by this guy when I was trying to get him to back off of a friend of mine.” He swallows. “I got a little carried away, so even though it was technically in self-defense, I still got screwed. It was the second full on fistfight I’d gotten into in my life. And I had a bunch of weed on me, so that didn’t help.”
The idea of him beating some guy to a pulp is scary, but the fact that he did it for a friend (and in self-defense) somehow makes me less worried.
“On the upside,” he comments, finally draining his beer. “I learned about craftsmanship in there, and here I am with my own business and my own land. And I got my anger more under control by learning to channel it into constructive things”
“Wow.” I love the proud smile on his face, so different from the insecure teen who would never admit that he was happy with anything he did. “That’s impressive, Jay.”
“Thanks.” He fiddles with his bottle. “What’s been going on with you?”
I laugh. “Nothing exciting. I followed the typical roadmap. Graduated, went to college for fashion design, and after some internships, I ended up with Katya, my boss.”
He nods, those grey eyes burning into me. I can tell he wants more, and I feel guilty for resisting. I have no reason to not trust him, at least as of yet. But everything feels a little too raw. My high school and early college days weren’t nearly as tough as his, but still. I can’t tell him about my wild insecurities about my looks and abilities. I definitely can’t tell him my string of failed relationships, each one less promising than the last.
Every last one ended up with my hopes and deepest self feeling crushed like a little bug under a boot, even if the breakup was somewhat mutual. Like clockwork, I would open my heart and the guy would end up not liking what he saw. I was too introverted, or not warm enough, or too eager. Shouldn’t I have learned how to not drive men away by now? Max is the only outlier, and I’m sure he just wants to get back with me to mold me into the “perfect” woman. He’s damn good at exploiting what he knows about me to scare me, so I guess that’s yet another backfire in my attempts to open up.
Beyond my inability to have a lasting healthy relationship, there isn’t much else to report on — no landmark achievements. No triumph over obstacles. I’m thirty years old and running from my problems. I may or may not be killing it in my career — it all hangs in the balance for now until I meet with Katya. I just don’t know anything. So much for the soul searching I’ve been meaning to do. I’m just as lost as I was before.
“And what else brought you up here, besides the job? And the alpaca?” he asks. The questions sound loaded.
“Nothing,” I shake my head, swirling my ice cubes around. “Want me to get the next round? What do you want? Another beer? Another type?”
“Sure, I guess.” He slides his bottle over. “Just this again.”
I hustle over to the bar and order for us, asking for the same thing again. I feel queasy with nerves, like I can’t back out of this conversation. I make a little small talk with the bartender to pass the time until I can’t anymore.
“You’re avoiding my questions. Why?” he asks the second I return. He doesn’t seem mad, but his voice has a command behind it. I put down our drinks and sit down across from him.
“What’s with the grilling, Jay?” I shoot back. “I’m just… I don’t know.”
“I’m just curious as to why you were so freaked out earlier. You’re normally pretty calm and collected. I thought starting with easy questions and graduating to the one I really wanted to ask could maybe work. I swear to you, I won’t judge you. I’ve been to prison, for fuck’s sake. I doubt anything you’ve done is worse than some of the shit I’ve seen with my own two eyes.” His presence, with us in the corner and his huge form as a barrier to the rest of the bar, makes me feel trapped. Did he do this on purpose?
“Jay.” I can’t think of what else to say, even though I believe him when he says he won’t judge me. “Please.”
“From a practical standpoint, is there anything I need to worry about? Like about my property or my physical being that’s at risk?” he asks.
Damn it.
“Um, maybe,” I admit.
“Shit, Moni.” He leans forward a little. “Are you in danger? Seriously, tell me. I’m the last person to judge you for any fuck ups you might have had or who you might be tangled up with.”
I shake my head slowly in response to his question. He a
ccepts that answer, even though I’m not sure if I’m correct. That alone terrifies me. I know he could help me, but that’s the scary thing. I don’t want to be this person who needs protection or be in this stupid situation that could last for ages, for all I know. I just want to do well at work, go back home to the city, and resume hanging out with my friends. I want to start my own line, and eventually have a family. Running away from a crazy ex-boyfriend is not a part of my five-year plan.
“It’s just… A bad relationship. Had a bad breakup a little while ago,” I mumble, staring down at my drink.
The world doesn’t end around me for telling him a partial truth, but my heart’s still racing. The look of sympathy in his eyes brings my heart rate down a little.
“I’m sorry. That sucks.” He lets his knee brush mine. “If it makes you feel any better, I went through one recently, too. Well, last year. And I’m pretty sure she’s on the other side of the bar with her friends, who aren’t fans of me.”
“Seriously?” I resist the urge to looking around over his broad shoulders.
“Yeah.” He smiles, and it warms me up inside. “And I can tell you’re dying to know who I’m talking about. She’s the blonde to your left, with the other blonde who’s a little shorter and the girl with the curly brown hair.”
I pretend I’m stretching and look over his shoulder. The women are facing away from us, but I can see who he’s talking about. She’s very pretty, in a girl-next-door sort of way, at least from the side, and I can tell she’s tall even though she’s sitting. Thankfully, they don’t notice us.
“You’re the least smooth person ever. Jesus…” Jay laughs.
“What am I supposed to do? Just stand up and look?” I reply, catching his laughter.
“I don’t know, but you’re the last person on my list for any sort of espionage mission.”
“Hey!” I step on his foot, without malice.
“You’re so small,” he mocks, smirking. “What was that little foot tap supposed to accomplish?”