by Shen, L. J.
Hiraeth.
A home that wasn’t mine but that I couldn’t, for the life of me, stop trying to worm my way into. A place I missed without ever visiting.
A place of my own I could call home.
Maddie: How many women have you slept with since we broke up?
Chase: Really?
Maddie: Really.
Chase: Ladies first. How many men?
Maddie: No, you.
Chase: I feel like this is highly counterproductive to what I’m trying to achieve here.
Maddie: Which is?
Chase: Your lips wrapped around my cock as I examine the top of your head for stray grays.
Maddie: I actually have a few. My mom said it runs in my family.
Chase: I can have the tweezers ready if you want.
Chase: (my romance game is strong today.)
Maddie: Thanks, but I wouldn’t trust you with a stress ball.
Maddie: Also, grays are natural.
Chase: I’ll take your grays. All fifty shades of them.
Maddie: Now stop stalling and tell me.
Chase: Four.
Maddie: Wow.
Chase: I’m guessing it is not a good wow.
Maddie: Correct, Sherlock.
Chase: You?
Maddie: Zero.
Chase: Wow.
Maddie: I’m guessing it’s a good wow.
Chase: Yeah. Although it is beyond me how you managed to withstand the tights-and-tie-combo charm.
Maddie: Ethan is exactly the kind of man I want to fall in love with.
Chase: Love doesn’t work for your ass, Mad. You can’t tell it who to fall for.
Maddie: You really think you’re immune to falling in love?
Chase: Yes.
Maddie: Elaborate.
Chase: Yes, I really am immune to falling in love. I’m unable to. It’s a nonproblem.
Maddie: Why?
Chase: I’ve seen the ugly side of love and now I’m all sober when it comes to the other sex.
Maddie: Tell me about Amber.
Chase: Only if you come to the engagement shoot with me on Monday.
Maddie: Do I get to shoot my fake fiancé?
Chase: Har. Har. Yes or no?
Maddie: This is blackmail.
Chase: I’d rather call it negotiation.
Maddie: I hate you.
Chase: You wish.
Maddie: What are you doing tonight?
Chase: You, hopefully.
Maddie: Try again.
Chase: Out on the prowl, since my soon-to-be temporary girlfriend is refusing to see me.
Maddie: Back to being a cheater, I see.
Chase: We’re not exclusive. You kiss Ethan all the time. I bet Ethan kisses other women too.
Maddie: Forget it. Go have your fun. I hope you catch hispes.
Chase: Hispes?
Maddie: Herpes, pour homme.
Chase: Fuck, I’ve missed you.
Maddie: I actually stole this from Ray Donovan.
Chase: You can untwist your little (patterned?) panties. I’m currently at my parents’ house, playing chess with my father. And losing. Thanks to you.
Maddie: Strawberries (re: panties). How is he feeling?
Chase: Good (re: panties). And not good (re: Dad).
Maddie: I’m really sorry. There is nothing I can say to make this better, but I’m thinking about you and your family all the time. I’m seeing Katie next week for lunch. I want you to know I’ll be there for her.
Chase: The end-ness is unfathomable. Today he is here, but tomorrow, who knows?
Maddie: My mother began to write me personal letters when she first found out about her breast cancer. Little anecdotes about me as a child, about her as a mother. We bonded over flowers. I always got excited when she took me to work and there was a big order for a wedding. When she beat cancer the first time, she didn’t stop writing me letters. When I asked her why, she said it didn’t matter. Just because she didn’t have cancer didn’t mean she wouldn’t die. And she wanted to remind me she’d always love me. I think maybe telling him how you feel now is a good idea.
Chase: How did it feel? I mean, afterward.
Maddie: I felt betrayed by her. I kept thinking how could she do this to me, even though it didn’t make any sense. I knew she didn’t choose to be ill. I felt robbed of something. Tricked. Cursed. But then, slowly, I got back on my feet. You will too.
Chase: What if I don’t?
Maddie: I’ll make sure you will.
Chase: I won’t let you stick around and help me.
Maddie: I won’t ask.
Chase: So you’ll save me, but won’t fuck me?
Maddie: Precisely.
Chase: Monday. I’ll pick you up at six.
Maddie: Monday.
Chase: Mad?
Maddie: Yes?
Chase: Thanks.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHASE
It was the same studio.
Of course it was the same fucking studio.
An industrial loft on Broadway.
I wasn’t surprised. Mom had one assistant on her payroll—Berta—who was approximately eighty years old (not an exaggeration for the sake of making a point). She should’ve retired about three decades ago, but Berta was a widow, no kids, and Mom said the job kept her busy. Berta had a personal, ongoing feud with technology and used the Yellow Pages whenever she had to book anything outside the usual service providers the family used. Which meant that the studio—Events4U—was the same one she’d booked for every family occasion in the last century, including engagement shoots, Christmas cards, condolences, virtually every official picture taken of Booger Face, my college graduation pictures, and Katie’s Himalayan cat’s funeral photos (more on that never; I still hadn’t forgiven her for wasting everyone’s time while providing the feline with a proper burial).
I opened the door for Mad, dangerously close to crawling out of my own skin and bolting to the other side of the planet, thinking about the last time I’d been in this studio. Who I’d been with in this studio. It wasn’t that my family hadn’t visited here afterward, but I’d flat-out refused to set foot in this studio ever again on the grounds of I WASN’T A FUCKING MASOCHIST.
Until now.
Madison breezed in, her movements, like her being, swift and sunny. She leaned her entire upper body against the counter, greeting the person at the reception like she’d known her her entire life. Her pixie hair was growing a little longer than usual, sticking out playfully. It was fuck hot, and I wondered if she was going to let her hair grow and if that meant hair yanking during sex was in the cards for me.
Madison laughed at something the receptionist said, then fished her phone out of her bag and showed her something. The receptionist, I realized, was the same woman who’d taken my picture all those years ago. The memory slammed into me like a truck in a busy intersection. This was a one-person-operation business. The woman had been the one cooing at my (real) ex-fiancée and me—two nervous postgrads who’d made a fatal decision to get married before they’d known who they really were—to smile at the camera.
She won’t recognize you. She owns a studio on Broadway. She sees hundreds of people every week, some of them remarkably ugly, some of them remarkably beautiful. Your face doesn’t chart.
“Oh goodness.” The woman, who introduced herself as Becky, pushed her glasses up her nose, blinking up at me. She was fiftysomething, athletic looking, with a gray, conservative dress, hair the same color as her dress, and enough jewelry to sink the Titanic. “It is you again, Mr. Black.”
For fuck’s sake.
“Again?” Madison smiled politely, her gaze ping-ponging from Becky to me. “Is this your second engagement shoot here?” she inquired, processing as her suspicions received validation.
I wanted to pull Becky’s, Berta’s, and Mom’s guts out of their a-holes and make trendy scarves out of them. Rather than physically assaulting women triple my age, I took Mad’s ha
nd in mine (third time, and it was growing on me—kind of) and let the comment roll off my shoulders.
“This one’s gonna stick,” I clipped.
“Don’t be so sure,” Mad muttered.
“Oh, it will. The girl before”—Becky shook her head, rounding the counter to show us to the studio—“she was no good for him. I knew it wasn’t meant to be. I have a feeling about those kinds of things. I do.” She stopped in front of a white screen that had been heavily lit by projectors. A stool and camera equipment sat across from it in the darkened corner of the room. Becky flicked the camera on the tripod alive, squinting as she adjusted it. “I wasn’t at all surprised seeing her back with someone else. You two, I just couldn’t see it. When a couple walks in, I don’t even have to talk to them. I see their body language and know if they’re going to make it or not. Never fails.” She tapped her manicured fingernail to her temple. I flashed her a polite, can’t-fucking-wait-to-get-out-of-here smirk. I’d have dodged this entire shoot if it weren’t for the fact it put a smile on Dad’s face.
When Mom had told me she’d booked us an engagement shoot as a present, I’d initially turned it down, but then Dad had looked so disappointed I’d had to say yes.
“And what do you make of our relationship?” Mad asked, standing with the white background behind her. She had a gray blouse, pearled neckline, and pink, peach-patterned pencil skirt I wanted very badly to rip off her body.
“You are definitely in it for the long run. This is your happily ever after.” The woman smiled behind the camera. Madison flashed me a pshhh look. She was amused by her. Off-base Becky wasn’t. I didn’t think it was all that funny.
Becky instructed us to stand close to each other, using excessive hand movements to make her point. She asked me to drape a hand over Madison’s shoulder while standing behind her (“Look at that height difference, whoa!”) and then asked me to put both hands on her shoulders and look into her eyes. It was cornier than popcorn, and every sarcastic bone in my body wanted to snap with rage, but I did it, knowing my parents would take great pleasure in seeing the final products and keeping in mind what Mad had told me about showing Dad how I felt.
We did as we were instructed, smiling painfully wide to the camera as Becky clicked away. Both our gazes were locked on the black eye of the camera as it flashed. Realizing we could be there for a while, Madison struck up a conversation.
“So. You’re here . . . again?” she asked through a teeth-closed smile.
“Lean over and kiss her cheek, Mr. Black!” Becky yelled behind the camera. I did as I was told, pressing my lips to Madison’s apple cheek. A jolt of something hot and unfamiliar ran between us when we made contact. Like her body swelled in my arms, becoming rounder and hotter and more alive, somehow.
“Drop it,” I murmured into her skin.
“You said you’d tell me about Amber if I did this shoot with you. Spill it,” she hissed, her smile still bright.
“Madison, turn around! Hug him! Look like you mean it. No, this is all wrong. It looks like you are trying to tackle him in a football game.” Becky continued her commentary. Mad turned around and circled her arms around me, placing her cheek against my heart. I stared at the top of her head, and sure enough, there were two grays. They glittered against her otherwise-brown hair.
“Are you nervous?” she whispered.
“No.” I scoffed.
“Your heart rate is through the roof.”
“Coffee.”
“When’s the last time you had coffee?”
Noon, probably. Still, I was allowed to have a goddamn heartbeat, especially when I had a gorgeous woman pressed against me. “Right before I picked you up. Two shots of the good stuff.”
“Liar.” I could feel her grinning through my shirt. “So, Amber.”
I wanted to shove her tiny frame into my pocket and zip it. She was infuriating.
“Mr. Black! Hug her back. I don’t remember you so frozen your first round.”
“Which you may want to stop mentioning for the sake of my current relationship,” I countered loudly.
She waved me off. “I’m too old not to be blunt.”
“I’m too hotheaded to have this conversation without a stiff drink,” I growled. Madison laughed. I put my arms around her, my lips brushing her hair. She smelled of flowers and coconut and my potential demise. I needed to rethink the whole pretend-real-girlfriend idea before she caved to it.
“So. You dated Amber,” she started, her warm breath tickling my chest.
“Was engaged to Amber,” I corrected.
“Get out.” She swatted my chest, looking up at me with shock.
“Madison! No battery in the studio. That’s why I don’t allow couples to drink before photo shoots. Things can get rowdy,” Becky shrieked, unplugging the camera from the tripod and circling us with it. “Whisper sweet nothings to her, Mr. Black.”
I put my lips to the shell of Madison’s ear, feeling her shivering in my arms. “We were fresh out of college. Amber was different back then. Pretty, natural, sane. Believe it or not, she wasn’t completely superficial. We took some classes together and always ended up on the same side of the argument. Although in retrospect, she’d have agreed that drowning babies as a form of contraception was a good idea if I’d promoted it. She was riding a full scholarship and wanted to marry up. That she did.” I chuckled bitterly.
“Did she cheat?” The air around Madison crackled with fury and surprise and delight, and fuck, fuck, fuck, why was everything about her so expressive? I wanted to lean down and bite her lower lip until she moaned, but I doubted that was what my parents had in mind when they asked for formal engagement pictures.
“Not that I’m aware of.” I ran my thumb across her cheek, knowing she was too engrossed in our conversation to push me away.
“What happened, then?”
“I was taking a few minutes to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. Julian was a fully formed person. He bragged about becoming the next CEO of Black & Co. Said he’d been groomed and prepped for the job. Julian and Amber got close. I drifted apart from them.”
I brushed my thumb along her lower lip. She let me do that. I continued talking, but my mind was far away from the Julian-and-Amber story.
“I never corrected his assumption. Amber wanted to be at the top of the food chain. She asked me if I could promise her I’d be the CEO. That I’d give her the life of luxury she was after. I said I couldn’t. I also mentioned I might want to become a teacher. Julian made her believe he was calling the shots.”
“Was he? Is he?” Her eyes implored me.
I shook my head.
“Did you really want to become a teacher?” She sounded surprised and delighted by that. I couldn’t blame her.
I shrugged. “I thought about it, for half a minute. I was a bit of an idealist back in the day. Anyway, Amber broke off the engagement. I took a few months off. Traveled the world. By the time I came back, I knew I wanted to join Black & Co. Realized becoming a teacher wasn’t my calling. Amber was already engaged to Julian and heavily pregnant with Clementine. Having their son bring an out-of-wedlock baby into the world was going to kill my parents, so Julian and Amber tied the knot as soon as I landed back in the US.”
I could see her doing the math in her head, arching an eyebrow. “The pregnancy. It was a close call between you and Julian.”
I nodded. “That’s why I said I don’t know if she cheated.”
“You never asked?”
“I didn’t want to know the answer. Julian was my brother, and we’ve always had this bond. I let it go, but I stopped believing in marital love as a concept.”
“Did you go to the wedding?” she asked quietly. She looked destroyed on my behalf, and I wanted to slap my own face. Because to me, it didn’t really matter. It was water under the bridge. The Amber-Julian blow was nothing more than a faded scar these days.
“I was the best man.” I smirked. “Showing them I gave a fuck wasn�
��t on the menu for me.”
“Mr. Black! Miss Goldbloom! Would you mind?” Becky yelled in the background, and I realized, albeit belatedly, that we’d been having the last ten seconds of conversation with our lips hovering against one another. I pulled back, feeling flushed like a middle schooler who had been caught trying to figure out the ins and outs of masturbation. Madison looked down at her feet, turning deep red.
“Sweet nothings,” Becky repeated sternly, waving her camera in her hand. “Save the PDA for the honeymoon. Where is your honeymoon, by the way?”
“Malta,” Madison said.
“Fiji,” I said at the same time.
We both frowned at each other. I fought a smile. “Malta?”
“I want to take the Game of Thrones tour. You know, where they filmed big portions of the show. Fiji?”
“Yeah, I want to get a tan, get drunk, and bury myself inside you on the sand.”
“Oh, Lordy.” Becky looked like she was about to faint. “Focus! Sweet nothings. Not dirty nothings. Sweet.”
I moved my lips back to Mad’s ear. The thing about us, Madison and me, was that our bodies seemed to be in complete sync with one another. She turned around again and pressed against me, the curve of her ass touching my erection, and I stifled a curse, breathing through my nose and trying to think about sad things to stop myself from grinding all over her.
Children living below the poverty line.
Climate change.
Starving bears.
Dad.
The last one did it. Becky returned to her place beyond the bright light aimed at the white screen, click-clicking her camera from the shadows.
“So Amber broke you,” Mad whispered.
“I think I was already broken, but yeah, she was definitely the final hammer to smash any romantic bone I had in my body.”
“I hate her,” Mad said.
I didn’t. I felt nothing toward my ex-fiancée, whom I’d spent the majority of my college years with.
I had to do something to take the Amber edge off. I didn’t want to talk about her or Julian. It wasn’t even the heartbreak that had made me swear off love. It was the embarrassing aftermath. The gossip mill. The humiliation.