by Portia Moore
“I’d absolutely love to be a part of that,” Megan says, her voice almost giddy, and I relax completely, happy that she and my parents have found common ground. She’s so busy talking to them that she doesn’t even have time to be thrown off by how elaborate the brunch is—something that I’d worried about previously. There’s fresh fruit and shrimp cocktail and two different kinds of omelets, waffles and French toast and fruit topping, smoked salmon and bagels and cream cheese, four different cakes and pies—my mom getting more sweets than she normally displays for Megan, of course. It’s more food than any of us could eat, although my dad, Blue, and I definitely do our best. Katie and my mom keep the conversation going all throughout brunch, telling Megan embarrassing stories about me as a kid and cute ones about Katie and I too, and it keeps going all the way until my Uncle George appears in the open French doors, looking out towards the spread.
“George, you’re here!” my mother exclaims as he walks towards us.
“You couldn’t keep me from Ellie’s brunch,” he says as we all stand, and I tense. I was hoping that George wouldn’t be here. If there’s any member of the family bound to make Megan uncomfortable, it’s him, and the afternoon has been going so well. I’m afraid it’s about to take a sharp left turn, which is the last thing I want.
“Megan, this is Uncle George,” I tell her, trying to smile, but it’s more tense than I wanted. Megan picks up on my mood and glances nervously up at me as George’s eyes light on her.
“Why, aren’t you striking!” he exclaims, looking her over as he reaches out to take her hand.
“Where’s Aunt Marilyn?” Katie asks quickly, and I’m glad for her interruption.
“Some charity thing,” he says, shrugging dismissively. Blue is tense too, on the other side of me, and George is still looking hard at Megan, her hand still clasped in his. I put my arm around her waist, pulling her protectively to me, and hope he takes that as a signal to back off.
“Yes, our Kam certainly has excellent taste,” George says. Megan smiles awkwardly, leaning against me as if she wants to burrow into me and hide. I don’t blame her at all. The energy changes immediately, everyone tensing as George thankfully turns towards my father and starts discussing business. Still, none of us feel able to relax anymore. I look at Blue as George talks loudly with my father about the seven-figure profit that his and my father’s shared ventures have made this year, and I see him and Megan exchange a look that doesn’t need words to be understood. George is the kind of overblown, rich, pompous man that makes everyone not at his level of wealth—and a few that are—uncomfortable, and that’s exactly why I’d hoped he wouldn’t show up. I don’t want Megan to think that of my family.
Megan excuses herself to go to the bathroom, but George stops her before she can leave, and I grit my teeth. He just won’t quit.
“Megan, I have to say you look familiar,” he says, narrowing his eyes. “Maybe I’ve worked with your parents?”
It’s the wrong thing to say. I see her tense all over, and I hate George in that moment for putting her on the spot like that.
My father saves the day, as usual, shaking his head. “I don’t think so, George,” he says quickly before Megan is forced to respond.
“You know I have an excellent memory, Richard.” George presses the point, as if he can’t pick up on everyone in the room wishing that he would just stop. “And with a face like Megan’s, she wouldn’t be one I’d forget.” There’s an innuendo to his words that makes me want to punch him. If he wasn’t family, I would have.
“You’re mistaken, Uncle George,” I say sharply, trying to shut the conversation down before it can get any worse. “Megan’s family isn’t in finance.”
He ignores me, still studying her face. “You’re a full-time student? Have you done work in the city before?”
I step closer, almost shielding Megan. “No, she hasn’t,” I say harshly, glaring at my uncle. Leave her alone!
My mother’s voice cuts through the conversation, trying to break up the tension in her usual sweet way. “Have you given Megan a tour yet, Kameron?” she asks, giving me an excuse to leave with her, and I’m grateful for it.
“No, I think I’ll do that now,” I say quickly and graciously, reaching for Megan’s hand.
“We’ll join you!” Blue says eagerly, and he and Katie are quick to follow us into the house. I can see George still watching Megan as we leave, and my skin prickles angrily.
“You have to excuse my uncle,” Katie says gently to Megan, trying to soothe her. “He’s a bit of a prick sometimes.”
“Sometimes?” I look at her sharply. “I thought he was meeting us tomorrow, not coming over today.”
Katie looks sheepish. “I thought it’d be easier to talk to him about the bar today.”
I grit my teeth. I wish Katie had at least warned me, or thought through what it would be like for Megan to meet George, today of all days. At least I could have prepared her, if I’d known. But I also know Katie didn’t mean to be malicious about it. She doesn’t know as much about Megan as I do, or how difficult these things can be for her.
“But we’re not going to let him ruin our day!” Katie says cheerfully, leading us through the tour of the house. It takes at least thirty minutes, and by the time we’ve gone through it all, I can feel Megan starting to relax and go back to the way she was before George appeared. She loves the house, wide eyed and awed as Katie leads us through room after room, telling fun anecdotes about our childhood here.
Once the tour is done, Katie tells me that we need to go talk to George before he leaves, and I leave Megan in Blue’s hands, kissing her quickly before I go back downstairs.
The conversation is quick. I let Katie do most of the talking, not trusting myself not to ruin the work she’s done to get the deal with the bar completed. It’s taking everything in me not to punch him in the face and tell him to keep his eyes to himself the next time he sees Megan. I’ve never been a violent person, but the way I saw him looking at her makes my skin crawl.
Megan is talking to Blue when Katie and I round the corner again upstairs, and she beams at me as Katie announces “All clear,” dramatically. Blue grabs her hand and heads down the hall with her, and I smile down at Megan, hoping that she’s managed to relax while I was gone. She leans up on her tiptoes and kisses me softly, her hand on the side of my face, and I can feel that she’s happy again.
“Want to see my old room?” I ask suggestively, raising my eyebrows at her. And just like that, whatever nervousness that was left in her face is gone. She smiles broadly at me, leaning her body against mine as she whispers in my ear:
“Absolutely.”
9
Alana
I wake up the next morning beside Ian, and my first thought is that I can’t believe I’m still here. I’ve spent the night! I was supposed to leave once we were done, to avoid the morning “walk of shame” and just head back to my apartment, my mission complete. One virginity, lost.
Except I don’t really feel as if I’ve lost anything. I feel like I’ve found something—pleasure that I never even imagined was possible, sensations and an experience that was so different than I had thought it would be. And when we fell back onto the bed together, his body next to mine, I was so relaxed, so completely drained of worry and anxiety, and exhausted…that there was really nothing I could do but fall asleep next to him.
He must have woken up before me, because when I glance at him, he’s lying there looking at me. Not staring, exactly, not in a creepy way—just observing me, as if he’s glad I’m here. And as if he can’t quite believe I’m still here.
I can’t believe I’m still here.
I shift next to him and he quickly looks up at the ceiling, like a kid caught stealing cookies.
“I already caught you staring,” I whisper huskily, looking at him sideways, and he rolls towards me, looking straight into my eyes.
“Can you blame me?” he teases, looking down to the swell of my breast
s just covered by the sheet, and everything underneath it that he’s seen now.
I grin at him and roll my eyes up to the ceiling, as if considering. “I guess I can’t blame you for that,” I reply, laughing softly.
“How are you feeling?” he asks, biting his lower lip awkwardly. I wonder how often girls stay the night in his bed. He doesn’t seem entirely sure how to react now that I’m still here. Or maybe it’s just that the ones who do find their way into his bed aren’t usually virgins.
“I haven’t melted and turned into a witch, if that’s what you’re implying,” I tell him as I roll my eyes. I sit up, pulling the sheet modestly around me, and he laughs as if I’ve said something funny.
“I meant about last night. I was wanted to…”
Well, time to go before things get awkward.
I start looking for my clothes, feeling the impending need to run. This is where he says to me that he wants to be friends with benefits, or where he gets clingy and wants more. None of those things are possible. I’ve done it. I’ve had sex with a man I’ve chosen, and a particularly hot one at that. Now I need to move on—and if I want to do it again, it has to be with someone else. I glare at him, the warning clear in my eyes. “Well, this was fun,” I say shortly, and he looks at me as if I’ve blown a fuse.
“Are you brushing me off?” He stares at me, so confused that it’s almost comical. Just like a man, to think his dick’s so good that a girl can’t want it to just be one and done.
But the truth is, I do want more and it was that good. But I’m trying to be logical about this, sensible. Stick to the rules I set out for myself beforehand.
I make my voice as cold and emotionless as I can. “Let’s not prolong this,” I say shortly, crawling out of bed without caring about my nakedness. I gather up my clothes quickly, speaking as I get dressed. “You did me a favor. It was good for you, right?”
“Wait!” He leaps out of the bed, clearly not noticing that he’s still naked, and jumps between me and the door. I stiffen, fixing him with a frigid stare. “Hold on, chill!” he says quickly, holding up his hands. “What’s wrong?” He reaches out to touch me, but I push his hand away sharply.
“Get out of my way, Ian,” I mutter, not looking at him. “I have to go,” I whisper, my voice dropping even lower. I can see him giving me that same confused look, but I can’t bother with this. I can’t stop to make sure his feelings aren’t hurt, because that’s going to put mine in danger. “Move!”
I shove past him and I’m almost to the front door when he yells again, his voice clear and angry.
“Why are you always running? What are you afraid of?”
I stop, my hand almost at the doorknob. What do I say to that? Not the truth, I can’t. I want to snap something angry back, something bitter and harsh, but then I remember him asking me last night why I’m so mean.
And I said I wasn’t mean.
I don’t want to be mean to him. But I don’t know how to protect myself if I’m not, and if I admit it, I’m trying to protect him.
I feel him come up behind me. He touches the back of my neck softly, brushes the hair away from my face and behind my ear. I can feel his soft breath at the rim of it, and it makes me feel slightly dizzy, makes my skin tingle all over. “What are you afraid of?” he whispers again, his voice very close to my ear. I turn then, looking up at him, my grey eyes full of every emotion that I can’t express.
“Myself,” I say simply.
We just look at each other for a moment. Outside, the morning sounds of traffic and street vendors and sirens and people walking past collide together, but in here it’s just us.
“Let me feed you,” he says, looking down at me without giving an inch.
I sigh. It seems like a simple thing, breakfast, but it’s never that simple, really. If we go out to breakfast after sex, what does that mean? Does it mean we’re friends? Does it mean he’ll still chase after me, rather than accepting this as a one-night stand, which is what it was meant to be?
My stomach grumbles—I can’t actually remember the last time I’ve eaten. I could do worse than letting this man buy me breakfast.
“Just breakfast,” he says convincingly. “And after that you can make your dramatic-ass exit if you still want to.”
I can’t help but smile at that. “Fine,” I relent, grinning at him. “Breakfast. Just breakfast.”
He takes me to an old diner called Judy’s not far from his apartment. I wonder if he’s waiting for me to flinch at it or ask to go somewhere nicer, but he has a lot to learn about me—that he never will, I remind myself. This sort of greasy spoon is just my sort of place. I slide into the powder-blue booth across from him and give the heavyset waitress with the terrible haircut straight out of the eighties a friendly smile. She puts two sticky, laminated menus on the table in front of us, snaps out “Coffee?” and then turns on her heel when we both nod in the affirmative, wheezing as if she’s smoked three packs a day for her entire life.
I can see Ian watching me, every move I make. It makes me unusually aware of the things I do—the little tics like biting my lip or twirling a piece of hair as I think. He keeps looking right into my eyes, and when he grins at me in a way that he means to be seductive, asking, “You know how gorgeous you are, right?” I can’t help but roll my eyes.
“Get over yourself,” I tell him, focusing on the menu. One night of making me come over and over, and he’s turning the charm on full blast. He said just breakfast, but he’s already trying to turn this into having me for dessert, and I’m onto him.
A spider crawls across the windowsill and I flinch, beginning to reconsider the appeal of this place, and shoot a glance at Ian to see if he noticed. He’s looking at my breasts. I did forget to put on my bra before I was going to storm out, but still. Men.
The waitress returns with two chipped mugs of coffee, and Ian smiles at her despite her grim attitude. “Thanks, Rhonda,” he says, and she glares at him.
“I hope the food is better than the service,” I can’t help but say, in a low tone that she still overhears.
“What’ll it be?” Rhonda asks grouchily, and I sigh. I don’t have high hopes anymore.
“Sausage and eggs, with a side of bacon,” Ian says, then winks at me. Jesus. If I grabbed him under the table, I bet he’d be half-hard. Although his arrogance does something to me. I like it more than I want to admit, just like I liked the way he was the boss in bed last night. The way he made me work for it.
“And you?” Rhonda snaps, startling me out of my thoughts.
“As bad as it looks, the food better be awesome,” I tell Ian under my breath, and then louder to Rhonda, “Strawberry pancakes.” I grimace as she walks away. “God, she’s a bitch.”
“If she spits in our shit, you’re paying for it,” Ian says dryly.
I look at him for a moment, really sizing him up for the first time since I saw him at the club again last night. There’s something beneath his careless attitude and witty retorts. “You like me,” I say, smiling, eyes twinkling at him. I expect him to snap back, to deny it with some cutting remark, but to my surprise…he blushes.
“Not as much as I like this place,” he says quickly, leaning back in the booth. “It’s got more…character.”
There it is. The short comeback. “If you only knew,” I mutter, glancing away.
“There’s a lot I don’t know about you,” he says, shrugging. “Why don’t you tell me?”
I glare at him. “Why, Ian?” I ask sharply. “Why do you care?” I fold my arms over my chest, glaring at him defiantly. If he wants to keep playing games, I’m the master of that.
He runs his hands through his hair, that familiar frustrated expression coming back as he sighs. “I wish I fucking knew!” he snaps, keeping his voice low. “Jesus, you’re frustrating.”
I can’t help but smile a little. I enjoy frustrating him. He drops his voice because people are starting to look our way, although from the appearance of the diner I’m sur
e plenty of fights have been had here.
“Look, I like you. I like you a lot. Don’t ask me why, or how, or what this means, because I’m gonna be real with you…I don’t really get what’s happening to me. This isn’t me. I’m not like this. But to be completely honest, and not a fucking cliché…I’m totally crazy about you.”
Well, there it is.
I look at him, trying to find the sarcasm, the joke, the prank that he’s pulling on me. The other shoe that’s going to drop any minute. Where’s the sharp retorts and scathing remarks now? Can he really be serious?
“I don’t care if you’re crazy as hell,” he whispers, reaching across to take my hand, and against all my better judgement, I let him. “I don’t care if you’ve got a fucked-up past, or a guilty conscience. I want to know it. Everything about it.”
He has no idea. No idea what he’s asking for, or what baggage comes with me. What would happen, I wonder, if I just threw it out there? If I let him see me, all of me—more than just the physical nakedness that I showed him last night—what would he do? Well, I know the answer to that. He’d run, because that’s what everyone does. But where will I be when he does? Exactly where I’d be if I’d gotten out the door this morning. Alone and on my own, as usual. So what do I have to lose, exactly?
I flush, pushing my hair behind my ear as I give him a small smile.
And then the moment is broken by Rhonda wheezing and coughing as she sets down our plates of food. Ian tears into it as if he hasn’t eaten in weeks, but I pick at my pancake, sniffing at a piece suspiciously.
“So,” he continues, clearly not about to let this go. “Give it to me.”
I frown at him, confused.
“Help me understand who you are.”
I sigh. Am I going to do this, really? Am I going to tell this man who I am? Give him more insight and access to me than I already have? “I’m me,” I say flatly. “Unapologetically.”
“What, you a daddy’s little girl?” He smirks at me. I look away, then back at him with a frown on my face.