“Yeah but they were sleeping together for a few months before that.”
My eyes bug out. This is news to me. “They were?”
He nods and eyes me like I’m too stupid to live. “She works reception at the charter company. Of course they’ve been boning. From day one.”
“I had no idea,” I say quietly. My heart is doing slow, sick thumps in my chest.
“Well, maybe you two aren’t as close as you think,” he says and it’s another spear into my heart. He quickly pours me another glass of wine. “Here, drink up. You should be smiling, not giving a shit about Linden.”
“He’s my friend.”
“He’s as much of a friend as I am. Who he dates isn’t really any of your concern, so as long as she’s not a total psycho hose beast. So far, she seems to be fine. I approve.” He narrows his eyes at me. “Don’t you?”
“Of course,” I say but the words come out on auto pilot. I know James didn’t mean any harm because, honestly, what he said shouldn’t have hurt me at all. It’s true. Linden is a friend, that’s all he has been and all he will be. Who he dates shouldn’t be my concern, not in that way.
But I guess I’ve been lying to myself for too long because I’m kind of bleeding inside, right in front of James’s face, and trying hard not to show the blood.
He’s watching me, closely, as if he’s suspected something all along. Then he leans back, apparently satisfied and says, “Now I suppose the real mystery is why you’re still single.”
I laugh, nearly spilling my wine. “It’s not a mystery, James. You of all people should know this.”
Something flickers in his eyes. “I liked being with you.”
“That’s not what I meant, not exactly,” I correct him. “I just mean with the both of us being small business owners now. I remember how hard you worked to own the Lion. You didn’t really have a lot of time for Linden or I or anyone else. It’s kind of the same with me. I just don’t have the time.”
“True. But before that, you still didn’t seem to…be with anyone. Not in a serious way. Other than that Owen douche.”
I don’t bother correcting him on that one. Owen had turned out to be a giant douche – and a cheater – and not at all the dependable rock I wished he was. “And you,” I point out.
He smiles and for a moment I’m transported back to when we had first met. James was cleaning pint glasses and I swear there was a spotlight from the small stage inside the Lion that was shining right on him. He was everything I had always wanted post-high school but couldn’t really find, or didn’t have the guts to approach: Tall, slim build with tight muscles, long black hair with a slight wave to it. To top it off, he had gauges in his ears, a septum ring and black, drastic tattoos. He screamed bad boy and a bad boy was a dream come true for this quiet Petaluma girl.
James, being a couple of years older than me, was the acting manager of the bar at the time. I handed in my resume to him and stood there awkwardly while he looked it over. I remembered Linden coming by to get someone a drink and I almost did a double take at his muscles, the intense look on his brow, his ultra-masculine swagger and dead sexy Scottish accent. I couldn’t believe my luck that two hot guys were working there.
I was sure by that fact alone, I wouldn’t be getting the job. No girl is that lucky.
But James just looked up at me and smiled and I was a goner. His smile is almost too wide for his face and it does something to his brown eyes, makes them almost sparkle. I would later find out that it hides the indignity he has deep inside.
He said, “Looks good. When can you start?”
And that was that. My first shift was the next night and a week later, James and I were dating.
He really was everything I was looking for in a boyfriend at the time. Aside from his edgy looks, which I showed off like a badge of honor, he was a musician and the band he was in with Linden was pretty good, even if they mainly played at the Lion and did covers.
He was smart and funny in this quiet way. He was also very good at keeping me on my toes. He was temperamental and would fly off the rail easily and usually over nothing. Some days if a guy just looked at me wrong, he would accuse me of liking him. Later those accusations would become more grandiose and it seemed like, to him, I was having an affair with half the city.
In the end, James was just too needy and too possessive. I mean, I like a guy who gets jealous, don’t get me wrong. But he was that way with my girlfriends too. The only person I was really allowed to be friends with was Linden, but that’s because Linden was always around the two of us and under James’s watchful eye.
So I broke it off with James. He had some issues with his childhood he needed to take care of – he had a drunk and abusive dad who abandoned him – and I couldn’t be the girl on the leash. I wanted my own life and to be myself without stepping on eggshells all the time. Being with James had tired me. And yes, the sex was good – he has a cock piercing that seemed to hit the right spot every time – but sex wasn’t enough to save us.
He was hurt. I know he was. And because of that, I was so certain I was going to be fired. I thought I wouldn’t even fight it because I felt so terrible over it all. But to James’s credit, he didn’t fire me. He acted like the break-up had been mutual. Maybe in some ways, it had been – we had been struggling, fighting, for some time.
I kept my job. It was an awkward couple of months but during that time Linden really stepped up as a buffer between us. I finally got to know him a bit better, though we didn’t start hanging out together until James seemed to be over us. Until then it was a lot of texts and funny Facebook messages.
Time heals all wounds, or at least it causes them to scab. James was able to move on and, slowly but surely, the three of us were back to being the three musketeers. There were some growing pains, of course. I made a conscious effort not to talk about other guys and James seemed to do the same with regards to whatever women he dated (and there weren’t many). But in time, everything found its groove.
It has been nearly seven years since James and I stopped being a couple and became friends. It’s taken seven years for us to hang out alone again.
James clears his throat and pours himself a glass of wine. “You say there is no mystery to you, but I don’t believe it.”
“Okay,” I say, sitting up and folding my legs under me. “Why have you been single for so long? There was only…what was her name, Laura?...that I can remember.”
He tucks his hair behind his ear and shrugs. “I dunno. I’m busy.”
“So am I. And maybe you’re a bit picky.”
He shoots me a sharp look. “So are you.”
“There’s nothing wrong with that.”
“No,” he says, looking down at the blanket. “Not if it doesn’t prevent you from moving forward.”
My forehead scrunches. “I’m moving forward, James. Finally, actually. This,” I gesture to the store, “is everything I’ve always wanted.”
“And love?”
I roll my eyes. “Love can show its face whenever it wants. Until then, I’m happy with the way things are.”
“What about sex?”
I give him a look. “What about sex? That’s totally different. I’m not a prude James, you know this yourself.”
“No, you’re not,” he says, smiling to himself. Then he glances at me and his eyes seem to have grown darker. “You can have sex and not love.”
Before I have a chance to say anything to that, he abruptly leans forward, knocking over the glass of wine, and kisses me.
I’m too shocked to do anything but I still let him. His lips and tongue are both familiar and jarring, his hands on my face bring me back in time. I have to admit, even though I’d not thought about James that way for years, it’s not terrible.
It’s actually kind of nice.
But I still want to know what’s going on.
I pull back, mindful now of the wine seeping into the knee of my jeans.
“Whoa,” I manage to say, catch
ing my breath. I quickly busy myself by pressing napkins into the spreading red stain on the blanket.
“We’ll deal with it later,” James says hurriedly and his lips are on mine again. His kiss is desperate and probing, fueled by something I don’t understand.
Or maybe I do.
Loneliness.
“James.” His lips move quickly along my jawbone and down my neck. “I’m not sure if this is a good idea.”
“Sure it is,” he mumbles against me, his hand on my breast and squeezing, my flimsy lace bra providing no barrier. “I want you, you want me.”
That wasn’t exactly true. I place my hand on his chest and look at him. His eyes are glazed over with lust and can barely focus on mine.
“James,” I say again, my tone harder.
“What?” He anxiously brings his hair off his face. “Steph, look…it’s just sex. Nothing more than that.”
I frown at him.
“I’m serious,” he says, running his fingers through my hair and tugging me closer. “Just sex. We had a good thing at one time. Why not have it one time more?”
“Because it could change our friendship,” I point out. I mean, it’s kind of the obvious. I don’t care how common it is for people to sleep with their exes, it makes things messy, especially when you’re still hanging out with your ex on a weekly basis.
“One night won’t change anything for me,” he says. “Will it change anything for you?”
I’m not sure. I know how I feel about James. I also know that sleeping with him might be as comfortable as a warm, old sweater.
And I like cozy sweaters on cold days.
“No,” I tell him, feeling myself relent. “It won’t change anything for me.”
He smiles at me, that wide grin that lights up his dark eyes like firecrackers. “For old time’s sake, then.”
Then he gets up and turns off the lights to the store before coming back to me on the blanket. We fall back into the food and wine. I don’t care what the movies tell you, it’s not as much fun as it sounds. While he’s ripping my shirt over my head, I’m praying he doesn’t throw it on the wine, when he’s sucking my nipples into his mouth, I’m worried about the brie and blue cheese becoming stuck to my backside. I fear my skin and clothes are being stained with a Frenchman’s dream.
It isn’t until I’m stark naked and flipped over onto my hands and knees, that I’m able to relax. It probably helps that his dick slides into me like second skin and that fucking amazing piercing of his hits all the right spots. No other guy has been able to activate the G-spot like he has, and even though the piercing is probably a form of cheating, I don’t really care at this point.
I come wild and hard and in my most freeing moments my mind is not thinking of James at all…
…but Linden.
It takes everything I have not to call out his name , even though it’s his face that I see clearly, his rough but slender, oh so manly hands on my waist, his muscled thighs and wiry hair pressing up against mine.
But it’s thin, quick, heavily tatted James in my fucked up reality. Someone who any woman would give their left boob to be with, but he’s not that for me.
Only one man is.
And I wish he wasn’t.
After we’re done, I take my clothes into the small washroom at the back of the store and wash the crap off my skin. I’d bought a new sage and lavender hand soap from a pricey line just for this little room and I find myself giggling at how I’m using it.
I just christened my store.
I pat myself dry with a fluffy hand towel and then put my clothes back on. My shirt has a bit of a wine stain that I’ll have to attack with enzymes tomorrow. For now though, I’m kind of drunk on Syrah and orgasms. And the reality is starting to seep back in like mold in a dark place.
I just slept with my ex-boyfriend and my current-friend, James. He may have said it was just for one night but the scallops and cheese and wine and the strawberries (OMG, we still have chocolate-covered strawberries!) say something else. Maybe I’m reading too much into the whole night, but I’m really hoping that everything can immediately go back to normal.
I need normal. I don’t need another dose of myself at age twenty-one. I turn thirty next year and I’m not going to slide backward, especially not onto James’s dick, no matter how expertly pierced it is.
When I come out of the bathroom, I feel a bit like a skittish colt, unsure how to act around him now. I want to just move on like nothing happened but James can be so volatile that I can’t bet on anything.
He’s standing over the blanket, shirt off but jeans on, and staring down at the mess.
He gives me a quizzical look. “I guess I didn’t really think this through.”
“I’m sure the cheese and wine will come off in the wash,” I tell him and show him my bare arm as I run my other hand along it. “It came off me just fine.”
Now he’s looking proud. “I guess the moment overtook us.”
Yeah. Moment. Or a lot of planning and wine. Either or.
I shrug. “That’s what those moments are for.” Then I clear my throat and stride over to the blanket, crouching down and gathering up the boxes. The strawberries, unfortunately, are crushed.
I toss everything in the trash and give James an expectant look as he rolls up the blanket. “Well, thanks for coming by. That was fun.” Perhaps it was a bit abrupt, but the sooner the expectations are halted, the better.
He pauses mid-roll and gives me a searching look, like he’s not sure if I’m lying or not. And I’m not. It was fun. It’s just the type of fun I’d rather not experience with him again.
I really hope I don’t have to tell him that.
Shit. He’s still staring at me. I knew this was a mistake.
Stupid loneliness and old, cozy sweaters.
“Yeah, it was fun,” he says slowly. “Do you need a ride home?”
“Don’t tell me you drove here,” I warn him.
He shakes his head. “I cabbed it. Come on, it will be cheaper this way if we split it.”
I pretend I have to think about it for a moment, then say, “I still have some work to finish up here. I’ll probably take the last bus.”
“I can wait.”
No, you can’t.
I give him a placating smile. “I’ll be awhile. It’s paperwork, you know how it is. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
It’s like a rain cloud has settled over the store. His eyes stop shining and his lips twist insincerely. “Okay. Talk to you later.” His words are hard and clipped.
And just like that, James and his tote bag and his blanket and his dick piercing and his shady motivations leave the Fog & Cloth.
The door shuts behind him.
I breathe out a giant sight of relief.
It’s followed by nothing but regret.
CHAPTER FIVE
For my first week of age twenty-nine and second week of being a small business owner, I wonder if I’ve ruined one of the best friendships I’ve ever had.
No, not me and James, even though he would be the cause.
I’m talking about me and Linden. I sent him a text message about Nadine right after James and I slept together but I hadn’t heard back from him. Then Monday rolled around and I tried again. No response. Facebook – good old Facebook – told me that he was online commenting on posts and Nadine’s page said her surgery had gone fine (“nasty fucking appendix is out” – said her status) but I wasn’t getting anything in response.
So I started worrying. I started to think that maybe James had told Linden what had happened, perhaps twisting the story around to make it seem like I had seduced him and ruined our friendship, that now Linden was no longer allowed to talk to me out of solidarity, that everything had gone to shit.
But on Tuesday, Linden called me out of the blue asking if I wanted to see a movie with him and James and get a bite to eat beforehand. He apologized about the texts when I brought them up, but he said his phone had died and he’
d literally been with Nadine for the last few days. Also, she’s an Android user.
He has an iPhone.
So do I.
They can’t use each other’s chargers. But we could. Not that that means anything.
I’m super on edge as Linden pulls the Jeep up to the curb. As I make my way down my steep driveway, the autumn heatwave coming back in and making me sweat in my olive leather buckle-boots (new to the store), jeans and dolman-sleeve top, I spy James riding shotgun.
This is going to be awkward.
To my surprise though, he gets out and flips back the passenger seat and climbs into the back, just as I get to the door.
“Thank you,” I tell him, trying not to study his face to see how he’s feeling and what, if anything, has changed between us.
“It’s cool,” is James’s response and it’s the same kind of response he would have given me last week, you know, before the sex.
Did that mean it is cool? Like, everything?
I get in and buckle up and look over at Linden.
He’s grinning at me, those dimples popping on his three-day old stubble on his face, his eyes twinkling in that Hollywood cowboy way that hinted he had a dirty secret life when the cameras weren’t rolling.
“Baby blue,” he says in that wonderful Scottish, panty-melting, how-am-I-so-lucky-to-hear-this accent. “Happy fucking birthday. I am so sorry I couldn’t be there.”
“Don’t worry about it,” I tell him, patting his leg. “I’m just glad Nadine is okay.”
He winces and starts the Jeep. “It was a tough few days, that’s for sure. But she should be sent home tomorrow. She practically forced me to leave her side.”
I smile, despite this news. “Well, she’s smart. You need to relax so you can be at your best for her, and she needs to rest.”
Total bullshit but it sounds good and it seems to work on him because he nods. He eyes James in the rear-view mirror. “I hope you took care of our baby on her birthday.”
My eyes widen, just for a moment, and I know I’m holding my breath as I wait for James to say something, to ruin it all.
But James just says, “I did. Man, Linden, she’s a real pain when you’re not around.”