“So let’s say, hypothetically of course, in a few months, I broke up with you, but wanted you to keep working here and for us to stay friends.” She pouted playfully, so I kissed her again, squeezing her hand. “Trust me. That’s not happening, but suppose it did. Could you do it? Would you be able to stick around, be my friend? Not just listen to me talk about the other women in my life, but see me with them?”
For a second, anger flashed in her eyes, but then she seemed to understand my point and was back to looking sad again.
“I know I couldn’t,” I said, searching her poignant eyes.
“I couldn’t either,” she whispered.
“I could be wrong, sweetheart. Your relationship with her is far more complicated than most. It’s not like you’re replacing her with someone you think is better than she is. She knows it’s not about that and that there’s always been a special place in your heart for her whether you were dating someone else or not. All I’m saying is be prepared. She may be licking her wounds right now by hanging out with her friends. She might think this is just pain over knowing things could never be the way she’d like them to be between you and her, but when she actually hears about or sees you with me, it may be too much for her. I’m just thinking about her reaction to her thinking you’d hooked up with that guy who helped you decorate.”
I wouldn’t say it because it didn’t feel necessary—yet. But I was also thinking about how I’d feel if this didn’t work out between Henri and me after today. I’d have no choice but to fire her if she didn’t quit because there was no fucking way I’d be able to deal with hearing about and especially seeing her with anyone else now, even a woman.
This was exactly why I needed her to be prepared to lose her friend once and for all. While I could be reasonable and go along with being discreet for a few weeks just to make her happy, I wasn’t doing this for too long. It made me nervous what she might do once Edi found out and cut her off.
If Henri was surprised I wasn’t more worried that my moving on so fast would be a slap in Mia’s face, she’d be even more surprised about what else I had every intention of doing. I’d had all week to ponder the “what ifs.” It was the only thing that got me through what felt like the longest week of my life.
Because I knew Edi’s parents were the ones paying for that apartment she stayed in, if things really went south in their relationship, I was prepared to offer to have Henri move in with me. I would have even if this hadn’t happened tonight but even more so now that she was mine. I’d never done this with Mia. The last thing I wanted was for Henri to feel obligated to move back home or, worse, compelled to try and work things out with Edi.
If moving my new girlfriend of just a few weeks in, when I hadn’t done so with Mia after all the years I’d been with her wasn’t a backhanded bitch slap, I didn’t know what was. But I knew exactly what my dad meant now when he said once he met my mom he knew she was the one and never once looked back.
I wouldn’t mention it just yet. It was too soon, but the moment she so much as sounded the tiniest bit concerned about her living arrangements, I was putting it out there. More than ever, I knew now Henri was the one for me and I’d made enough mistakes in my life trying to please everyone else. I was getting it right this time—moving on, not looking back—and I didn’t care how many feathers this relationship ruffled in the process. Not screwing things up with Henri was my first priority now.
Once she reluctantly and not very convincingly agreed she’d prepare herself for the possibility of losing Edi, she moved on to a much more pleasant subject. One that had me instantly hard.
“You wanna know what other fantasies I’ve had aside from you taking me on your desk?”
“Jesus,” I said, letting my head fall back with a chuckle, my heart already racing. “Can this night get any better?”
She giggled, already on her feet. “C’mon. I’ll show you.”
I took her hand, following her into the back room to the tables we did the packaging on.
“You’ve really fantasized all this time?” I asked skeptically. “Not that I don’t believe you, but this is just too damn good to be true.” I glanced down at the ridiculous-looking tent in my pants and her eyes followed. “That’s just from the thought of you fantasizing about what I’d to you.”
And there was that wicked smile again, one I hadn’t been privy to until tonight but I already loved. It only made me crazier about her. It should scare me how far gone I was, but strangely it didn’t.
“I really have.” She dug her teeth into her bottom lip. “Not all have been about what you’d do to me. This one’s about what I’ve been fantasizing doing to you.”
She turned to me with a twinkle in her eyes that wiped the smile right off my face. No way.
We reached the table, and she tapped it with her hand. “Up,” she said. “The night you and I were sitting here talking on these tables was when I first started thinking about this one.”
I gulped but did as I was told and sat up on the table, my heart still unable to believe I wasn’t dreaming. This night was actually happening.
“I wanna taste you,” my sweet Henri said as she stepped in between my legs.
I stared at her, speechless. She couldn’t be saying what I thought she was saying.
“So, I’ve never actually done this,” she said, looking up at me as she pulled down the front waistband of my sweats, and I sprung out again, more than ready for her. “But I’ve done some research, especially after I met you. I guess I can admit now that after seeing you for the first time in your firefighter sweats and getting a better glimpse of this outline, all the impressive muscle under here”—she ran her hand over my chest—“and other parts, I started thinking about it. But after the night we spoke here and I got an even closer look at certain parts, I couldn’t get the visual out of my head of doing this.”
She leaned down and licked the shaft of my cock so slowly and wickedly I would’ve never believed she hadn’t done this before. I felt the strength begin to drain from my legs as her tongue licked the slit and dipped in. Then she stopped and smiled up at me, licking her lips. “It tastes good already.” She seemed surprised by that. “I wanna swallow.”
I groaned, letting my head fall back. I didn’t think any man could have this kind of luck, least of all me. To have not just a girl so boldly admitting she wanted to do this but one I was crazy about. If I thought I was already losing control over Henri, this could be the end of life as I’d known it. She just may kill what little sanity and control I had left.
Then she took me all the way in so deep I leaned back on my hands, needing the support to keep the rest of my body from turning into one limp noodle. Oh, yeah, I was a dead man.
Chapter 17
Henri
Just over a week after officially and very secretly becoming Aaron’s girlfriend, things were still tense between Edi and me, though we had finally addressed the issue again. A few things were working out. Aaron had been right about not being able to get enough of being around the person you were truly in love with. He was now the highlight of my life, and while that absolutely terrified me, I couldn’t help feeling happy.
I could not get enough of him. When I wasn’t with or around him, I was anxiously awaiting his calls or texts, and he was all I could think of. The moment we were alone at his place we were all over each other. We’d made love in just about every room of his house. My heart, body, and soul were in heaven.
Yet at the same time, while my loyalty to Bea and Eileen had proved to have nothing on my need to see and talk to Aaron the fateful night I decided to show up at his place, it still ran very deep for Edi. I hadn’t told Aaron because I knew he felt the sooner Mia and Edi got over us and moved on the better. But when I’d spoken to Edi again about our situation and asked if she was still upset with me, she said she wasn’t and admitted she was just as much to blame.
“Believing you could change who you are for me was as naïve as my parents believing i
t was just a phase I’d get over when I first came out to them. It was wishful thinking.”
I’d been glad to hear her say it until she added, “But I’d be just as naïve to believe that just because you’re not gay it will make it easier to get over you. I’ve been in love with you for too long. I’d be lying if I said a part of my broken but hopeful heart isn’t still praying you’ll miss what we had those few months we were together as much as I do. Hopefully, I won’t have to spend another night wishing to God you were there next to me again.”
The conversation once again ended with both of us teary-eyed. There was no way I could tell her about the blissful time I’d been spending with Aaron and that my heart in that sense belonged to him unequivocally. Sadly, it appeared that what Aaron had warned me I should prepare for just might be inevitable. But like her, a selfish part of me was still holding out hope her love for me would make her want to keep me in her life, even if it could never be the way she wanted it.
In the meantime, the fact that Aaron had to be gone a few days out of the week worked to my advantage. Even before anything had happened between him and me, my willpower when it came to avoiding spending too much time alone with him was weak at best. It was why I had ended up at his place that night. My head had kept saying I shouldn’t ask him if what Bea had said was true. If it was and he asked, I’d readily admit the truth that I was in love with him and all bets would be off, which would only complicate my life further. But, as usual, my heart had won out. I didn’t even give him a chance to ask before I’d jumped in his arms and admitted how crazy I was about him.
So even though it’d only been a little over a week, if he didn’t have to be gone a few days a week, I’d be with him every moment I could. There’d be no way to hide what was going on between us from everybody. I now planned on making sure all my days off from work were the days he had to report to the station. Edi had no clue anyway what days I worked with him and what days I didn’t. Seeing me home several evenings out of the week would seem normal, especially since each day I’d hung out with him after everyone left, I’d stayed later and later. If Aaron noticed I was switching the days I usually came in around so much, I could tell him half the truth.
Thankfully, Bea had refrained from talking about the situation between Mia and Aaron. She’d also begun seeing someone new, and apparently, that served as a distraction because I often saw her giggling on the phone or smiling a little too big when responding to someone’s text. I seriously doubted Mia was up to silly banter yet.
Today we were packing up. Earlier this week, Aaron had taken us all to see the new office slash warehouse we’d be working at from now on. It was about eight blocks from my apartment, much closer than his house. I was already planning to walk there the days Aaron couldn’t pick me up so as to not bother Eileen or Bea. Edi and I hoofed it much further sometimes when running errands.
“Why are there two trucks outside?” Bea asked as she entered. “We really have that much to move?”
Aaron walked out of his office. “The second one must’ve just gotten here,” he said, headed toward the front door. “It’s a delivery truck, though they’re also picking stuff up.”
Bea and I exchanged blank stares. I had no idea what he was having delivered. Aaron and I had been there a good hour, and he hadn’t mentioned it. But then we hadn’t done a whole lot of talking since we knew Bea would be getting there soon.
Remembering that, I looked down to make sure I hadn’t carelessly left any buttons undone as I’d already done once earlier in the week. I’d gone back to concentrating on boxing up everything in my desk until I heard Aaron’s voice directing someone to take this and that.
Both Bea and I turned to see two guys navigating the hallway, carrying furniture. Then I saw it. The mattresses in his bedroom were being carried out as well.
“He got a new bed?” she asked.
I glanced at Bea. She still looked confused, and I pretended to be just as confused by shrugging then continued with my packing. I did my best to hide the excitement about this. Save for the fact that I still didn’t know how things between Edi and me would end up, it was impossible for me to believe this fairytale was actually happening to me.
Just two days ago I admitted this to Aaron, minus the part about Edi of course. We’d just gotten done fulfilling yet another one of my fantasies. This one completely naked in the hot tub out in his back yard after everyone had left for the evening. I had mentioned how it might be awkward—uncomfortable—to spend so much time and be intimate in a house where I knew my boyfriend had lived with another woman.
The fact that he’d been with her so long yet never moved her in was just dumb luck for me. One of my foster moms used to say, “Men make houses. Women make homes.” She had explained to my sister and me that, while her husband was the one who ultimately paid for the house we all lived in, the woman was always the one who provided the things that made it a home: from the decorations to the smell of Mom’s cooking throughout, even the neatly folded stacks of fresh smelling laundry all over the front room or her bed on laundry day. It stuck with me because it rang true in every foster home we’d been placed in before and after that. It would’ve definitely been weird making love to him in a house I knew Mia had made a home—their home. That made Bea’s sarcastic comments about Aaron’s house being so un-homey ironically satisfying.
Of course, being the brilliant man Aaron was, he immediately picked up on how much it bothered me. I hadn’t realized I’d been so obvious about it.
“Is that why every time I suggest we go into my bedroom you come up with another place we can fulfill a fantasy of yours instead?”
Once again, he’d rendered me speechless. I had no choice but to admit it. I knew Mia had never actually lived in his home, but I wasn’t naïve enough to think she’d never spent the night there or that there might even still be things in there that were hers. It’d only been a little over a week since he’d broken up with her. I’d since found a bottle of nail polish in one of his kitchen drawers and a pair of earrings. I was certain there were plenty more things to be found in that massive master bedroom and its equally massive master bathroom. I didn’t even want to think about how I’d feel having him do things to me in the same bed where I was certain he’d made love to her many times.
I should’ve known when he quizzed me later that same evening on his way to drop me off about wood stains colors. He’d even casually asked if I’d preferred the dark cherry wood like the desk in his office or the lighter weathered oak like his kitchen cabinets. He’d said he wanted a new desk for the new office we’d be moving to.
It never dawned on me why else he would be asking until I watched as the delivery men carry in a brand new fancy dark cherry wood bed frame—my preference—into his bedroom. The matching furniture pieces followed. Apparently, he’d redone his entire bedroom, complete with brand new mattresses.
“Didn’t you just buy that other bedroom set when you moved into this house?” Bea asked as Aaron walked back into the back room.
“Yeah, but I never really liked it,” he said as we exchanged knowing smirks.
I went back to packing when I noticed Bea had caught our exchanged glance.
“As soon as you two are done,” Aaron said, “let me know, and we’ll get those desks and your boxes onto the truck then head out to the new place and start unpacking.”
“I can only do this until three,” Bea reminded him. “Myles and I have to be in Kalamazoo by six, and we don’t want to get stuck in rush-hour traffic.”
“Kalamazoo?” Aaron asked curiously. “What are you going out there for?”
“NASCAR race,” Bea said but quickly added, “not for the race itself. His younger sister plays in a band, and they’ll be playing on one of the stages there.”
“Is this the guy Mom says doesn’t approve of you smoking?” Aaron asked with a pleased smirk. “I thought I noticed you cutting down.”
Bea rolled her eyes and I couldn’t help but chu
ckle. Aaron had been just a little too satisfied when he told me what his mom had said about Bea’s new boyfriend.
“Yes, Aaron,” she said, tossing a few more things into her box. “But he’s not the reason I cut down. I’d started to even before we became a thing.”
“Well, whatever the reason,” Aaron said, starting towards his office, “I’m glad you are, Bea. Don’t know how many times I have to say it. Smoking kills.” He turned his attention to me. “When they’re done putting the new bedroom set together, come check it out and tell me what you think.” My heart started to speed up at his obviousness until he turned to Bea and added. “You girls can tell me if I did well with the color I picked for the wood finish.”
I nodded but didn’t comment. It wasn’t until he’d stepped out of the room that Bea brought up Mia for the first time since the day she’d confronted me to ask if anything had happened between Aaron and me in Milwaukee.
“I wonder if that’s his way of symbolically removing any part of Mia left in this place. Not that she’d ever felt like this place was hers.” She sighed, shaking her head. “I was really hoping this was just like the last time. He’d try to stay amicable and eventually he’d come to his senses and get back with her. Mia did say he told her he still wanted to remain friends with her.”
“It’s only been two weeks,” I offered, not sure how else to respond to that.
She shook her head again, looking a little too miserable. “This time it’s different,” she explained. “Last time he actually did try to stay friendly with her, even calling her or texting often to ask how she’d been. I thought for sure, especially with her cousin’s wedding still coming up where he’s the best man and she’s the maid of honor and they’ll have to spend time together, he’d do the same. Stay in touch. Not only has he not called or texted her once since the breakup, she told me the other day she’d just noticed he’d unfriended and stopped following her on the only social media sites he’s active on. Then today she said that he canceled on that dinner they’d planned weeks ago with the bride and groom to discuss what can and cannot be mentioned in their toasts because Mia’s cousin is being so anal about it. Instead, he took Luke, the groom, out yesterday for lunch alone to give him the gist of his toast. It’s like he’s really trying to make it a point and make sure there’s no lingering hope for her to cling to that there might still be a chance for them. It just makes me so sad. I don’t even know what to tell her anymore.”