by Jolie Day
“That’s usually people’s first guess. If anything, I’m the opposite of a day trader. Day traders try to get rich quick by immediately acting on market fluctuations, buying and selling stocks the same day as soon as mergers, consumer reports, or press releases make their prices rise. Short sellers play the long game. Essentially, we bet on companies that are bound for failure.”
I felt my brows hike to my hairline in surprise, despite my inner monologue to be cool, look knowledgeable. I didn’t have the first idea about how the stock market worked, and I could already hear that Ethan was dumbing it down for me.
“Isn’t that a little… counterintuitive?”
Ethan raised his thumb to his mouth to suck off a bit of the sticky batter, and I was surprised by how envious the gesture made me.
“Not if you apply a little out-of-the-box thinking. Traditional investing goes like this: you buy stocks when they’re cheaper, the company appreciates in value, and you sell them later when you can turn a profit on them. Right?”
“Right.” That seemed intuitive enough to me and was the general gist I got from my cursory glances through Ethan’s copies of the Wall Street Journal. I would never grasp the concepts as well as Ethan, but I liked to stay informed whenever possible.
“Flip that idea on its head and you get short selling. You borrow a stock when you suspect that its value will worsen, you sell it immediately, then buy it back when the company tanks at a low price. You turn the stock back over to who you borrowed it from, and you get to keep the difference.”
“Sorry, you lost me.”
He flicked his gaze toward me. “You’re essentially betting on a company to fail.”
“Isn’t that risky?”
“Very. But it’s about playing the long game, and the profit can be huge if you successfully short a stock. Times that by five hundred if you short that many shares in one go, and, well…” Ethan gestured vaguely around his apartment as though that demonstrated his point, and it sort of did.
“Well, that’s not so strange. Confusing, sure, but not really strange. Why don’t you ever talk about it?”
Ethan rubbed the back of his neck. He almost looked like he was apologizing. “Some people confuse it with insider trading, and I don’t like having to justify my actions to everyone who asks what I do for a living. I guess I didn’t want you to think I was some kind of criminal.”
I cocked my head to the side, regarding him curiously. “I didn’t realize you cared so much about what other people thought of you.”
“Only some people,” Ethan said.
I became immediately aware of our closeness, how his chest was so near to mine that I could practically feel the heat radiating from his body. I could feel my nipples harden. There was a smudge of finely ground sugar on his cheek, and I was overwhelmed with the urge to lick it off, tasting the sweet crystals melt under my tongue and his skin underneath.
“Do you do it all yourself?” My voice had become lower without my meaning it to, more inviting.
Ethan nodded. “It’s a very individualistic line of work. And I’m pretty much self-taught. I’ve had mentors along the way, and for that, I’m grateful, but this isn’t exactly the kind of thing you can learn in school. Not that there’s anything wrong with going to school,” he said with assurance. “It just wasn’t for me. I think your degree is great.”
“My degree was expensive, and it hasn’t translated into a job yet, but I appreciate the sentiment. Guess we both ended up getting what we wanted, huh?”
“Probably,” Ethan murmured.
My breath was shallow in my chest as Ethan leaned in closer. His flour-dusted fingertips came to rest on my wrist, and in one fluid motion, he dipped his chin down and kissed me.
For a moment I was frozen in place, stunned by the sensation. I remembered the kiss in the car, how it had been so perfect and electric but had ended in my broken heart. I knew I should push him away, but sheer animal instinct and his inviting presence won out, and I pressed myself against him. I slid my arms around his neck and pulled him closer, deepening our kiss with a little moan of pleasure. I would be lying if I said I hadn’t considered what it would be like to kiss Ethan again, and how I would impress him with my maturity and self-confidence after having plenty of years to grow into a self-assured woman. This was a teenage girl’s overheated nighttime fantasy come true, and as much as I knew I was breaking my promise to better protect myself against Ethan’s charms in the future, I intended to make the most of it.
Ethan abandoned his brownies and slid his hands down to my hips, tugging me tighter against him. I smiled against his mouth, feeling a little drunk on the effect I seemed to have on him.
The kitchen faded away into a hazy dream, the tip of Ethan’s tongue scalding my own, the urgency of his hands roaming along my hips and waist. The old fire, so neglected by my busy schedule and general disinterest in hooking up as an urban sport, flamed up inside my belly, and I was overtaken by desire. I couldn’t remember ever needing anything but Ethan’s mouth on mine, his heat pressing into me, and yet, it wasn’t enough. I wanted every inch of him to touch and taste and savor. I wanted my legs wrapped around his waist and his teeth sinking into the juncture of my shoulder.
“Maya,” Ethan breathed into my mouth, then slid his hands under my ass and lifted me up so I was seated on the marble countertop. I wrapped myself around him like a vise.
Ethan pressed me closer, cupped my breasts in his hands, and the touch was enough to make my breath catch. When he squeezed, rolling my erect nipples between his fingers, I whimpered like a needy animal. Usually, I was restrained in my lovemaking, and good at keeping my voice down when things got heated.
That wasn’t the case now.
I felt like I was already naked and on the edge of losing control. No man had ever had me coming undone so quickly. Ethan ran infuriating light kisses up my neck, stopping to suckle on my earlobe in a way that sent a shiver all the way down my pussy.
“I’ve been trying to keep from doing this since the moment you moved in,” he said, his voice a low rasp of desire.
“Why didn’t you?” I shot back, bolder than I would have been if his growing arousal wasn’t pressed against my most intimate of places. I raked my fingers through his hair, my short nails digging into his skin when he nipped at my earlobe.
“I play the long game, remember?”
I felt as though I were melting into him.
Part of me wished he would drop his pants and get to it right there in the middle of that huge kitchen, and another part of me wanted to slow down and savor every second of this experience, unsure if it would ever come again. A voice in the back of my head told me that I should take a step back from this situation and reevaluate, that sleeping with Ethan would complicate our position as roommates and compound our messy history. But that voice was small and distant, and it was easy to ignore it in favor of listening to Ethan’s breath in my ear.
“Maya,” he said again, this time less as a worshipful explicative and more as a proper address.
“Mmm?” My hands were on either side of his face, my mouth drowning in his banquet of kisses. I didn’t particularly feel like talking at the moment.
“Come to the Gala with me.”
That fire inside my belly flickered in the presence of a strange, cold wind. I drew a few inches away from him, coming to realize that my hair was laughably mussed and that my tights had probably split at the seams from all the exertion it took to get me onto the counter. Reality started to descend around me, brutal and mundane, and the absolute insanity of what we were doing settled in along with it.
“What?”
“I want you to come with me. Nothing serious, you don’t even have to go as my date if you don’t want to. You deserve the experience, and I deserve a proper guide. Reconsider.”
His voice was gentle, taking on the plying tones of a lover asking for just five more minutes in bed together until their significant other got up to dress for work. Hi
s offer was so sweet, and so was his mouth, and for a moment, I was tempted to accept. But the amount of oh-God-what-did-I-just-do in this room was piling up by the minute, and I wasn’t sure how to handle it. Suddenly, I became very aware of our stations in life. Ethan, a man so cultured and wealthy, he donated to the Met for a tax write-off and sense of having done his good deed for the month. And me, an art school grad with nothing to show for it but an empty savings account and coffee stains on all my favorite jeans.
This was crazy. It was too much. I couldn’t just go from watching Ethan turn me and my brother’s lives upside down to showing up on his arm at one of the most elite parties in New York. I was supposed to have boundaries. I was supposed to be smart.
I wiggled out of his grasp and pushed myself awkwardly off the edge of the counter, landing on my bare feet. Ethan made no move to stop me, just watched me with a genuine baffled look in his eyes. His mouth was raspberry-red from our kisses, and his expression had a dark hunger to it that made resisting him all the more difficult, but somehow, I managed.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea… I’m sorry.”
Ethan sagged against the counter, all that pent-up energy leaving his body. If there was any hope of either of us getting laid tonight, it evaporated from the room at that moment.
“Why? I know how much you want to go—you told me yourself. You shouldn’t be sitting alone watching it on TV the night of the Gala.”
“Believe it or not, Ethan, I can take care of myself. Listen, I appreciate everything that you’ve done for me, but I don’t need you holding my hand all the time.”
Ethan crossed his arms over his chest, the universal sign for believing yourself to be in the right. “You’re being purposefully withdrawn.”
“I’m withdrawn? Sorry, but I’m not the person who takes weeks and weeks to share even the tiniest detail about their personal life, or who refuses to talk about the past for love or money.”
Ethan’s eyes narrowed. “I don’t see how my need for privacy has anything to do with this.”
“It isn’t private if it already involves other people.” I could feel myself starting to fume, the starry-eyed endorphin rush of moments ago transforming into a slightly nauseated anger in the pit of my stomach. Mostly, I was confused. What did Ethan even want from me, anyway? Was this all some kind of game to him?
“You didn’t keep anything ‘private’ from Ricky and me until the night you decided to split town without telling anyone, and whatever happened between us in your car that night, certainly wasn’t very ‘private,’ either. Or do you even remember that?”
“Of course I remember it. What kind of person do you think I am? I just don’t see any point in bringing up past mistakes now that we’re more mature.”
Hurt flashed across my face, and Ethan recognized his error immediately.
“Maya, no, I don’t mean… You’re not a mistake… What just happened wasn’t a mistake… that whole situation in the car was just—”
I held up my hand, silencing him. I was certain if he tried to dig himself out of this hole anymore, he would come out on the other side of the world.
I massaged my aching temples and tried not to raise my voice. “I don’t think we’re getting anywhere with this tonight. I’m tired. I think you can find your way around the oven without me. The batter is pretty much done, anyway.”
“Maya, come on, don’t do this.”
“I just want a little space, Ethan.” I plucked up my phone and my shoes, turning toward the stairs and the non-judgmental embrace of my own bed. I felt like I’d messed up somehow, or that he had, but I wasn’t sure how to fix things. I just knew that everything suddenly felt awful. “We can talk about it in the morning.”
“I leave for Tokyo in the morning, you know that.”
It was true. I’d agreed to a cozy long weekend, watching the house while Ethan jet set around Japan, meeting with potential business partners. I tried to tell myself that maybe this was a good thing. Maybe we’d just gotten too close to one another and needed a little time apart to assess things.
“Then I’ll see you when you get home. Travel safely, okay?”
With that, I was halfway up the stairs to my own bedroom, leaving Ethan standing shell-shocked in our kitchen with a congealing bowl of brownie batter.
9
Ethan
I swirled the lime rind around in my cocktail with one of the ridiculous elaborate stir sticks that were handed out at establishments like this one. The sleek blue glow of the nightclub-esque lighting, shimmered off the faces of my associates as waitresses rushed past in the high-end contemporary fusion restaurant. I’d eaten at enough of these bank-account-busting experiment cuisine spots over the years to know that eventually, you could only have octopus served to you in so many ways until it got tiring. I enjoyed fine dining, and there were plenty of restaurants that could still impress me, but I felt like I’d spent the last two days bouncing from rooftop bar, to cocktail lounge, to sushi bar, and I was getting tired of it.
My potential business partner, a formidable short seller in his own right, with a portfolio he was looking to diversify, continued talking enthusiastically. He was oblivious to the fact that I’d tuned him out about ten minutes ago, despite still nodding at the translator when she relayed his ideas in English. Picking up a little Japanese probably wouldn’t hurt me in this line of work, but I tended to bounce from Dubai to Tokyo to Shanghai to Geneva, and I could never pick which language to put in the time with.
“Do you find these terms agreeable, Mr. Gladwell?” the translator asked. Her English was perfect, with a light accent, and she wore her hair in a sleek bob. She’d been carefully watching my interactions with her employer, probably taking mental notes. I wouldn’t be surprised if I heard her name in a couple months in conjunction with a big International short sale. You could learn how to do almost anything if you listened long enough.
I put away half of my artisanal gin drink in one swallow and then nodded.
“Yes, it’s fine. Please express my gratitude and how pleased I am to be doing business together.”
The interpreter conveyed my excitement, so I didn’t have to. My mind wasn’t here, it was back in New York, mixed up in the predicament that was Maya. I’d barely been able to sleep for the past two days, kept up by jet lag and the nagging feeling of regret. I shouldn’t have kissed her. Or, probably I should’ve kissed her until she didn’t know her name and taken her to bed. Hard to tell. I was good at anticipating what people wanted, and what they were willing to do to get it—but Maya was an enigma. The attraction was mutual, it was obvious, but she still seemed to harbor a resentment toward me I couldn’t figure out. Well, she wasn’t wrong about my being unwilling to discuss the past. It was better if Maya never knew why I left town in the first place, even if not knowing hurt her. I’d made a promise, and I intended to keep it.
My new business partner stood and extended his hand, which was a method of communication I understood well. I responded with my best smile and a hearty handshake, then motioned to the waitress for the check. I would pay for the night and leave a generous tip, and my partner would leave our meeting feeling like he’d gotten the better end of our deal. I’d always been good at entertaining and had only gotten better at it as my bank account had ballooned. I liked to treat people. It was a weakness, but one I’d learned to leverage to my advantage.
“Very exciting,” my Japanese business partner said, using what I assumed was one of the few English terms he knew for business purposes. He had agreed to lend his expertise in International shipping in order to help me short a mega seafood conglomerate I suspected was about to go under for safety cuts onboard their ships and the illegal hunting of whales and dolphins. “A pleasure to do business with you.”
“Pleasure’s all mine,” I said, and he smiled back his approval before the translator had an opportunity to relay my sentiment. We exchanged small, elegant bows, and then I slipped out of the restaurant to the car wa
iting for me outside. Any other night, I might have strolled through the city in order to admire the local color or looked up a nearby social lounge on my phone and made an appearance for a nightcap and chat up the pretty locals. But I didn’t feel like talking to anyone tonight. Well, not anyone in this city, anyway.
I rested my head against the cool, leather headrest and let my eyes slip shut as the chauffeur pulled out into the Tokyo street, jam-packed even at 11:30 at night. I wondered what Maya was doing, and if she was still angry with me. I remembered the velvet softness of her lips, the pineapple scent of her shampoo in her hair. I’d promised myself when she moved in that I was going to be a perfect gentleman, that anything that may have transpired between us in the past wasn’t going to get in the way of our friendship now.
In hindsight, it was idiotic to give myself that much credit.
I turned my phone over in my hands as the neon and glass cityscape flew by outside my tinted window. Countless late-night emails and- texts from clients wanting to discuss the latest dip in the market flashed across the screen, vying for my attention, but I ignored them. Instead, I pulled up my contacts and scrolled through until my thumb hovered over one four-letter name.
I should leave her alone. Give her the space she was obviously angling for. I shouldn’t call her when I was abroad in a strange city, especially not after being gone only a couple of days. I knew better than that. I knew how to hold my hand close to my chest until the very last moment, to wait out people who just needed time to simmer, and of course how to back off when someone just wasn’t interested in what I had to sell.
All those skills had gotten me to the position I currently enjoyed in the world of finance, and I was usually good at implementing them in my personal life as well. I generally had the good sense to wait a while before calling a woman back after we’d shared dinner or had sex, even if I had genuinely enjoyed her company. It was better that way, to hold people at arm’s length and to be cautious about who you let in your life. Even better if you could keep them more interested than you were, never giving away too much to any one person. I knew the odds, and I knew the advantages.