Third.
Fourth.
Fifth.
Come on, come on, come on.
“No,” I said flatly, when I realized he was still staring at me, waiting for my response.
“Why?” Another hiccup.
“Because you’re not my friend, and I don’t like you.”
“And why is that?” he pushed, smirking.
Because you broke my heart and I pieced it back together all wonky and wrong.
“Because you’re a hopeless manwhore.” I gave him reason number two on my ‘Why I Hate Dean’ list. That thing was long with a capital L.
Instead of feeling embarrassed or disheartened, Dean leaned in my direction again and pressed his index finger to my cheek with the hand that held the unlit blunt, his face cool and collected. He produced an eyelash he had picked from my face, his finger so close to my lips I saw the round pattern of its print swirling around my curly eyelash.
“Make a wish.” His voice was satin wrapping around my neck, squeezing softly.
Closing my eyes, I bit my lower lip. Then opened them. Then blew the eyelash, watching it rock back and forth gradually, like a feather.
“Don’t you want to know what I wished for?” My voice came out hoarse. He leaned into my body, his lips pressing against my cheek.
“Doesn’t matter what you wished for,” he slurred. “What matters is what you need. I have it, Rosie. And one day—we both know—I will give it to you. In spades.”
I was coming back from a six-hour stint volunteering at a small children’s hospital downtown, which I ran to right after finishing a full shift at the coffeehouse. I was tired, hungry, and my feet had blisters the size of my nose. I shouldn’t have felt a thousand little fingerlings swimming in my chest, but I did. I did and I hated that I did.
“Brunch,” he murmured into my face, his hot, stinking breath fanning my skin. “You’ve been living in my apartment for almost a year. It’s time to reevaluate your rent. My place. Tomorrow morning. Ready when you are, but you better be there. Capiche?”
I gulped, averting my gaze, and when I looked up again, the elevator door slid open. I leapt forward, practically sprinting out, pouring myself into the hallway, and fishing my keys from my backpack.
Space. I needed it. All of it. Now.
His laughter still carried to my door all the way from the twentieth floor, his penthouse, where he ended his journey for the night with two gorgeous women.
After I bathed, poured myself some wine, and had a healthy, balanced dinner consisting of Cheetos and an orange-colored dip with an unknown origin I’d found in the back of my fridge, I parked my ass on my couch and started flipping channels. Even though I wanted to watch Portlandia, because it made me feel a little more sophisticated than my dinner had suggested, I somehow got sucked into watching What to Expect When You’re Expecting.
Awful, and not just because it scored 22% on Rotten Tomatoes.
But because it made me think of Darren.
And thinking of Darren made me want to call and apologize to him once again.
I stared at the phone for long seconds, debating, mulling the scenario in my helplessly tired brain.
He’d pick up.
Try to tell me I made a terrible mistake.
That he doesn’t care. He still wants me anyway.
Only he does. He cares a lot.
And I’m not good enough.
Not for someone like him.
Another thing I should mention: despite my sarcastic nature and motor mouth, I was all bark and no bite. I wasn’t interested in ruining lives. I’d much rather save them. That was why I’d given up Darren.
Darren deserved a normal life, with a normal wife and an appropriate amount of kids to start a football team. He deserved long vacations and open-air activities outside the hospital walls. When he wasn’t working there, that is. In short—he deserved more than I could ever give him.
I tucked myself into bed, pressing my back against the headboard as I gaped at my bedroom door, willing it to open, pushed by a god of a man who was going to keep me warm for the night.
Dean Cole.
Jesus, I hated him. Now, more than ever. He wanted to reevaluate my rent. He couldn’t. I was dirt-poor as it was. Especially by Manhattan standards. Besides, he made in a day what I made in two years. Was it really necessary, or did he want to get back at me for not giving in to his advances?
Closing my eyes, I envisioned the world-class douchebag eating out Jessica Rabbit, who was straddling his chiseled, perfect face, while Petite Brunette sucked him off. Appalled, I snaked a hand into my already-damp panties, the crease between my eyebrows deepening, and coughed softly.
Dean Cole was probably the filthy kind. The type to flip Jessica Rabbit over a second after she came and pound her from behind, pulling at her scarlet hair.
I pushed my forefinger inside my sex, then the middle one, looking for that spot.
Disgusted, I imagined Petite Brunette being grabbed by the neck and thrown into position on her back when he was done with JR. Now he was screwing her, too, pinching her nipples. Hard.
I arched my back, revolted.
I moaned, repelled.
Then I came hard on my fingers, repulsed.
I hated everything about Dean Cole.
Everything…but him.
S-E-X.
That’s what it all boils down to, really.
The whole world is built on one, single, animalistic need. Our quest to look better, work out harder, become richer, and to chase things we don’t even need—a better car, more defined obliques, a promotion, a new haircut, whatever bullshit they try to sell us on ads.
All. Because. Of. Sex.
Every time a woman buys a perfume or a beauty product or a fucking dress.
Every time a man enslaves himself to ridiculous payments on a sports car that’s not half as fucking comfortable as the spacious Korean car he had a week ago and injects steroids in the locker room at a stuffy gym…They. Do. It. To. Get. Laid.
Even if they don’t know that. Even if they don’t agree with that. You bought that blouse and that Jeep and that new nose to become more fuckable. Science, baby. You don’t argue with that shit.
Same goes for art. Some of my favorite songs were about sex before I even knew I could do something with my dick that didn’t involve pissing my name in snow.
“Summer of ’69”? – Bryan Adams was nine. He’d clearly been singing about his favorite sexual position. “I Just Died in Your Arms” by Cutting Crew? – Talks about orgasms. “Ticket to Ride” by the Beatles? – Prostitutes. “Come On Eileen”? That cheery fucking song everyone dances to at weddings? Sexual coercion.
Sex was everywhere. And why shouldn’t it be? It’s fucking magnificent. I couldn’t get enough of it. I was good at it, too. Did I say good? Scratch that. Amazing. That’s the word I was going for. For practice makes perfect.
And God knows I’ve had a lot of practice.
Which reminded me—I needed to order another box of condoms. I had them specially made by a company called SayItWithaRubber. I didn’t just design the foil to have my name on it—hey, some chicks wanted to keep that as a souvenir, who was I to deny them?—and pick the colors (I liked red and purple. Yellow made my balls look a little pale. Not a good color for me…), but I was also picky about the type of rubber, thinness—0.0015mm, if you must know—and the sensitivity level.
“Morning, you,” one of the girls croaked, rising from her sleep. She pressed a fluttery kiss to the back of my neck. It always took me a few seconds to remember whom I spent the night with, but this morning was even worse, because I’d spent yesterday drinking like my mission was to liquefy my liver into rum.
“Did you sleep well?” the second chick droned.
My body was tilted to the side, toward the nightstand, as I scrolled down a long-ass text message written by my friend and business partner, Vicious. Most people wrote curt text messages to get their point across. This intense
bastard made Siri his bitch and sent me the whole fucking Bible. Waking up to a message from him was the equivalent of waking up to a blowjob from a shark. And this was what he wrote:
Dear Dickbag,
My fiancée brought it to my attention that her headache of a sister might be late to the rehearsal dinner next Saturday because she’s trying to save a few bucks taking two connecting flights to make it to Todos Santos.
She is Em’s maid of honor, hence her attendance is not fucking optional. It is mandatory, and if I have to drag her by the hair, I will, but I’d rather not. You know how I feel about this place. New York is hard on the body. Los Angeles is hard on the soul.
I have no soul.
I’m asking you as a friend to knock on Rosie’s door and shove a new ticket into her hand. Have Sue book her a first-class ticket next to you and make sure she gets on that plane with you on Friday. Chain her to the goddamn seat if you must.
This is the part where you’re probably asking yourself why the fuck would you do me any favors. Consider this a favor to Millie, not me.
She’s stressed.
She’s worried.
And she doesn’t deserve this type of shit.
If Em’s baby sister thinks she can do whatever the fuck she wants, she’s wrong.
Make her realize how wrong she is, because every day she plays the dutiful, frugal saint, my future wife is getting hurt.
And we all know how I react when something of mine is being damaged.
Peace, motherfucker.
-V.
Not exactly purple prose, but that was Baron Spencer for you.
I stretched, feeling a hot body climbing on top of me, fighting the lake of navy blue, seamless, silk sheets between us. There were heaps of rich fabric, hot flesh, and soft curves all around me. The sun poured in from my floor-to-ceiling window, shining over my one-thousand-square-foot balcony, a sea of freshly cut grass bleeding into the Manhattan skyline. Rays of warmth licked at my skin. A wet bar called for me to fix myself a Bloody Mary. And plush, gray and navy loveseats begged me to take the girls on a ride against them for all of New fucking York to see and hear.
In short: this morning was awesome.
Vicious, however, was not awesome.
Therefore, I allowed myself to bathe in the comfort of these women—Natasha and Kennedy—and do what God, or nature, or both, wanted me to do—fuck them hard. Because civilization and seed spreading and shit.
As Kennedy—the lovely redhead, my memory reminded me—peppered kisses down my neck, making her way to my morning wood, and Natasha—the racy, fun-sized yoga instructor—kissed my mouth ravenously, I processed the new information through the pounding hammers of a well-deserved hangover.
So, Millie LeBlanc was stressed about her dinner rehearsal. No surprises there. She was always this goody-two-shoes girl who wanted everything to be perfect and worked hard to make it that way. A stark contrast to the man she was marrying, who took it upon himself to tarnish as many lives as he could using his dry wit and appalling behavior.
She was the sweetest person I knew—not necessarily a good thing, by the way—and he was by far the nastiest.
I guess I was supposed to think about the ‘what if?’ because Millie used to be my girlfriend. Because the human brain is designed to fill in the gaps, and I was twenty-nine, and Millie was my only serious girlfriend, so people might assume it was some big, lost love.
The truth, as always, was both disappointing and unflattering.
Millie was never a big love. I liked her, but it wasn’t fierce or deprived or insane. I cared for her and wanted to protect her, but never in a way that drove me out of my fucking mind, like it did to Vicious.
The fact that I still liked her after she bailed out on me and fucked off leaving a half-assed breakup letter just goes to show we weren’t really meant to be. Because the truth was, I was enamored with Emilia LeBlanc…until I wasn’t.
Sometimes I think I just loved the idea of her, or never loved her at all. Either way, one thing couldn’t be disputed—when I was with her, I was good to her. Loyal. Respectful. She, in return, fucked me over.
To this day, I don’t feel like I truly knew my only ex-girlfriend. I knew her traits, sure. The crap that would make it onto your dating website profile. Dry facts. She was artistic, shy, and well-mannered. But I had no idea what her fears and secrets were. What kept her up at night, what made her blood simmer and her body sizzle.
The other part of my ugly truth was I never felt like I wanted to know these things about anyone other than Rosie LeBlanc. But Rosie fucking hated me. So, I stayed single. She was going to change her mind. She had to.
Speaking of Rosie, she didn’t take money from Vicious and Millie unless it was out of necessity. That was common knowledge, and she made that point a year ago by furnishing my two-point-three-million-dollar New York condo she had been living in with Craigslist discards that cost less than two hundred bucks in total. I doubted I could change her mind, but when it came to her, I was always up for trying to.
So, anyway. Back to the important stuff—fucking.
It was when Kennedy took me in her mouth, exhibiting some serious deep-throat talent, that I heard a knock on my door. No one was allowed into the building without a code, and no one had asked me for one recently, which brought me to the simple conclusion it must be Miss LeBlanc herself.
“Dean!” Her raspy voice crawled from the outside hall into every tissue in my body and I immediately grew harder. Kennedy noticed, I’m sure, because her grasp on my dick loosened, then I felt her breathing hard against my thigh. Natasha stopped the tongue-action. They both froze. Three more knocks. “Open up.”
“Is that the weird girl again?” the latter inquired with a hybrid of a scowl and a pout.
“Sure fucking is.”
“She’s freaking me out.”
“Such a weirdo,” Natasha agreed. Like their opinion mattered. To me. To Rosie.
I rose to a sitting position and tucked myself into my black sweatpants. I didn’t mourn the unfulfilled fuck. I was more eager to catch a glimpse of that tiny thing, wondering what she came here for. I got up and rubbed the sleep out of my eyes, my hands sliding up to purposely mess my hair. “This was fun.” I kissed both the backs of their hands before I started stalking to the entrance door with purpose. “We should do it again sometime.”
We weren’t going to do it sometime. Or anytime. This was goodbye, and they both knew it. I was clear when I picked them up the night before at some Manhattan bar I went to. They were inhaling cocaine like it was powdered sugar, maybe a grand’s worth of it, on a table in a glitzy place I went to whenever I needed to make use of those custom-made condoms. I sat at the bar, exchanged some flirty looks with them, then signaled the bartender to send the girls some drinks. They invited me to come over and do some shots with them. I invited them to sit on my face. One drink turned into seven. This script was getting old.
“Whoa, you’re such a piece-of-work.” Kennedy was the first to get up from the bed. I twisted my head to watch her collect her dress from the floor, yanking it up like it wronged her somehow.
Really? I thought. Before I hailed a taxi to take us to my place, I laid it out for them, clear as the fucking August sky: this was a random hookup. Christ, what part of picking them up from a bar and using Two Girls, One Cup as a small-talk topic made them think there would be more?
I offered the girls a consolation wink before swaggering my way into the vast, champagne-lit hallway, cream marble flooring, and black and white family portraits glaring at me from every corner with huge, white-toothed smiles.
“Uh, excuse me, Mr. Asshole? We were kind of in the middle of something!” Natasha added in a high-pitched voice. I was already in the foyer, swinging the door open, drawn like a magnet to the source of my entire fucking libido. Baby LeBlanc. That little, beautiful, crazy, pixie.
Rosie wore a pair of untorn jeans and a basic white button-down shirt, her version of a tailored suit. A
high, messy bun sat on top of her head, and her huge eyes told me she was not impressed. I leaned my shoulder against the door, grinning.
“Changed your mind about brunch?”
“Well, you blackmailed me into it with your reevaluation threat.” Her eyes strayed from my face to my abs for a second before lifting back up to narrow at me.
Shit, I did. My memory of last night was fogged by alcohol, weed, and pussy.
“Come in.” I stepped sideways. She turned her head in my direction as she stepped in.
“Thought you’d at least make some coffee before you tear me another asshole with the rent. So much for being neighborly,” she muttered, drinking in my apartment through wide eyes.
I folded my arms over my chest, aware of my cut figure, and swiped my tongue over my bottom lip.
“You want neighborly? I can buy you breakfast at the bakery downstairs and give you a few orgasms for dessert,” I said, adding, “And I can tear you another asshole in bed if you prefer.”
“You need to stop hitting on me.” Her voice was painfully flat as she walked past the massive white and gray island in the middle of my kitchen, stainless steel winking at us with a sparkle from every corner of the room. She plopped onto a stool and glared at my empty coffeepot by the sink as if it committed a hate crime.
“Why?” I taunted, turning the coffee machine on. Why did I have to stop hitting on Rosie LeBlanc? She was single now, after she dumped her boring, doctor boyfriend. She was fair game, and I was going to try to play with her until she had third-degree carpet burns all over her back.
In fact, that was the first thing I thought about when I saw the sorry-ass motherfucker moving his shit from her apartment. From my apartment.
I’m going to fuck your ex-girlfriend before the tears on her pillow dry, I thought. And she is going to love it so much she’ll be crawling back for more.
Meanwhile, in real life, Rosie greedily accepted the mug of steamy coffee I silently offered her, taking a sip. She closed her eyes and moaned. Yes, moaned. Fuck, I wanted this sound to be my new ringtone. Then she opened her eyes and poured ice-cold water all over my fantasy.