I laugh, a genuine bark of amused surprise. “Yeah, actually, you happen to be one hundred percent correct. But Vivian was onto something.”
Silence.
“So…bye, I guess?”
I turn, finally. He’s dressed, put together, and as breathtakingly beautiful as ever. More so, maybe. “Bye.”
“You know we’re gonna see each other at some point, right?” He scuffs his boot against the track of the sliding glass door.
I nod. “Yeah. And we’ll be friends. Just not…this.”
He chuckles ruefully. “You really think that’ll work?”
I sigh. “No, probably not. But it has to, so it will.”
“You gonna ignore me?”
I nod again. “I’ll probably be an icy bitch to you, so be warned, and try not to take it too personally.”
“Right. Duly noted.”
I try to smile, but I can’t quite do it. This is the weirdest, most awkward, most uncomfortable parting I’ve ever experienced. I just want it to be over.
“I’ll see you later, Franco.” I breathe this, stifling the bizarre flood of icky feelings inside.
“Yeah.” He digs his key ring out of his pocket, looks at it, and puts it back. “See ya.”
He waves, once, supremely awkwardly, and strides out of my room. Out of my apartment. I hear the door slam. A few minutes later I hear a car door close, an engine start, tires crunch, and then the sounds fade and I’m alone with my thoughts and feelings.
Shit, shit, shit.
I go into my living room to where my purse is still sitting on the floor by the front door. I sit down right there, dig my phone out of the purse, and call Imogen.
“Hello? Audra? What is it?”
I didn’t even look at the time. I don’t really care. “Imogen? I—remember what I said about really bad or really good?”
“Uh huh.” Her voice is tired, but coherent.
“It was both.”
“Was?”
“I need so much wine right now.”
“Do I need to come over right now?”
“Unless you can get here sooner.”
“Sooner than right now?” she says, laughing.
“Can you be here five minutes ago?”
“Oh god.” She heard something in my voice, clearly. “That bad?”
“You have no idea,” I whisper. “I need to be really, really drunk, and I can’t do it alone.”
“Audra, you can’t drink your way past your feelings.”
“Watch me, bitch.” I say this with a laugh.
She sighs. “Okay, okay. Ten minutes.”
“Bring all the wine!”
She laughs. “How about I bring vodka and we get this done faster?”
“I like the way you think.”
“Do we need snacks?” she asks, and I hear her moving around, then Jesse’s voice rumbles in the background.
“No. No snacks. Just vodka.”
“Jesus.”
“Tell Jesse I’m sorry for dragging you away from him.”
She giggles. “Oh, don’t worry about him. We just finished having some seriously epic sex, so he’s fine.” I groan, and she inhales sharply. “Oh, I’m sorry, Audra—was that a bad reminder?”
“No, I just—” I laugh. “I just finished having some seriously epic sex, too. Only, that’s a good thing for you and not so much for me.”
“I’m so confused, Audra.”
“Just get here.”
“Ten minutes.”
It’s the longest ten minutes of my life.
Chapter 6
The security buzzer sounds, and I reach up to stab the button, allowing Imogen access to my building. An empty bottle of wine and a chunk of 85% dark chocolate sit on the coffee table. I walk over to the door and stick the bottle between the door and the jamb so Imogen will be able to come in and I won’t have to get up again.
As I sit on the sofa I hear Imogen approaching, talking on the phone—to Jesse, judging by the low intimate tone of her voice.
“Hi, Jesse!” I yell, as she shoves open my door, bends to pick up the bottle, and then enter my condo.
“Audra, be quiet!” Imogen hisses. “It’s nearly midnight.”
“Sorry. Hi, Jesse!” I whisper-yell.
Imogen eyes the empty bottle and my empty wineglass. “Holy shit, Audra. Did you drink that whole bottle by yourself in fifteen minutes?”
I shake my head. “No. Only half of it. Franco and I had the other half. After round one, but before round two.”
I hear Jesse tell Imogen to hand me the phone; I take the handset from her and put it to my ear. “Hi, Jesse.”
“Don’t get my girl too drunk, okay? Somehow, I doubt she has your liver.”
“No, I won’t. I’ll be getting wasted, but she’ll be fine. She’ll just have to babysit my stupid ass.”
There is a pause on the other side. “Hope you understand if I don’t get involved in this.”
“Yep. He’s your best friend; I’m your girlfriend’s best friend. I get it.”
“Good. Now both of you stay there. I’ll come back and get her when she’s ready to go.”
“You’re the best.” I sigh deeply. “She’s a lucky girl.”
“Got that backwards, babe. She’s the best, I’m the lucky one.”
“Both ways, then.”
“He didn’t do anything stupid, did he?”
I laugh. “Yeah, he did.” I pause for effect. “He slept with me.”
Jesse sighs. “Don’t get too crazy. It doesn’t actually fix anything, you know.”
“I know,” I say, cheerfully. “I just don’t want to deal with it right now.”
“He’s gonna be a miserable bastard to work with for a while, isn’t he?”
“Yeah, probably. You can blame me.”
Imogen takes the phone back. “Okay, give my boyfriend back.” She moves away a few feet and whispers into the phone. I’m not positive, but I think I hear her tell him she loves him.
I wait until she hangs up and puts her phone away and then stare up at her hopefully. “Vodka?”
She laughs, withdrawing a brand new bottle of Grey Goose from her bag. She eyes me. “You’re not gonna drink it straight, are you?”
I blow a raspberry. “Things are bad, but it’s not that bad. I have some strawberry Bubly in the fridge. We can mix it with that.”
In a few minutes we both have a stiff drink, and we’re sitting on the couch. Imogen knows better than to push me, so we turn on an older Iliza Shlesinger special and I suck down two more drinks before lowering the volume and pivoting on the couch to face Imogen.
“I went to talk to him.”
She snorts and rolls her eyes. “Yes, I know. I heard about it from James.”
“How?”
“James and Ryder came over for a while earlier this evening, under the guise of talking about the next project now that the Waverley build is almost done. But really, it was so they could gossip about you and Franco.” She laughed, shaking her head. “Men. They act like we’re the gossips, but they can be just as bad.”
“What’d they say?”
“Oh, just that you showed up and you guys talked in the basement, but then you left all upset.”
“I was not upset. He didn’t want to talk about personal stuff at work, and we decided to meet for dinner.”
Imogen looks surprised. “Dinner? Like…a date?”
She’s shocked because I rarely ever go on anything resembling a date. I will meet for drinks to ensure we don’t end up at my place, but that’s about it. Dinner, coffee, breakfast? Nah. Not likely. Dates are the way you get to know someone, and I’m not interested.
Or I wasn’t.
Until I met Franco.
I sigh. “Yeah. Dinner, at Callihan’s. A date.”
“With Franco?”
I snort again. “No, Imogen, with Jimmy Buffet. Yes, with Franco.”
“Well, no need for sarcasm,” she says, getting up to make another
drink for us—we alternate, and I made the last round, so it’s her turn. “I was just surprised, is all. Considering the last time we talked about him you were all like, ‘eeew, feelings, ICKY!’” She says this last part in a faux childish whine.
“I wish I could be mad at you for that, but I can’t.” I take the drink and sip at it—I’m now starting to feel the effects of the alcohol pretty nicely. “It wasn’t supposed to be a date. It was supposed to be meeting to let him explain why he ghosted on me. And then…it just turned into a date.”
She frowns. “Um, so…you guys had already slept together, and you were meeting for dinner…”
“And he picked me up here.” I say this with a wince, knowing what’s coming. “And I let him pay for dinner.”
She just blinks at me. “But yet you didn’t expect it to be a date.”
“I got confused!” I wail. “He’s so sexy and easy to talk to, and we flirt without even trying, and…he makes me…god, I don’t know. I don’t know which way is up when I’m around him. Or, I do, but it’s not until afterward that I even realize what’s happened. It was just…we were driving home, and then we were up here, and then he was going down on me, and then suddenly it wasn’t just fucking anymore.”
“I just want to be perfectly clear. He brought you home and you slept with him… here, after a date?”
“Yes, Imogen.”
Imogen looks confused. “You’re breaking all your rules for Franco.”
“I know!”
“Did you kiss him?” she asks, knowing about my Pretty Woman rule.
“No, thank god.” I sigh. “But the last time we had sex, right before I called you…it was…we didn’t kiss, but somehow, we didn’t need to. The whole thing was like a kiss, but it was our whole bodies kissing. And before that, we’d been talking about how we weren’t going to continue the thing.”
“Continue the thing?”
“Keep fucking,” I clarify. “We agreed we’d stop seeing each other, in your old lady parlance.”
“And then you slept together again.”
“And it was…” I struggle for words. “We…he…I…”
Her expression as she watches me is soft and knowing. “When you came, you felt it in your soul?”
“Yeah, except I felt the whole damn thing in my soul, not just when I came.” I whisper the next part. “And I couldn’t tell the difference between him coming and me coming…where he began and I…and I ended.”
Her eyes go wide. “Audra…” she breathes. “You know what that means, don’t you?”
“Don’t tell me. Please.”
“It means you made love.”
“YOU SHUT YOUR FILTHY WHORE MOUTH!” I shout.
She just laughs. “You did! That’s what that is, babe. Hate to break it to you.”
“I need a drink,” I say.
Imogen laughs. “You’ve had four, and you have one in your hand.”
“I need more.”
I stand up, drain my glass, and go into the kitchen. I feel Imogen watching me as I pour two…ish…fingers of vodka into my glass, drain it, hiss, and chase it with flavored sparkling water, and then pour another more rationally proportioned mixed drink. And hooooo, I’m feeling it now.
“You’re so gonna regret this in the morning.” Imogen laughs.
“My first client isn’t until noon,” I say. “I’ll be fine.”
Imogen snorts. “Yeah…you won’t be going to work tomorrow.”
There’s a long pause as I sip and feel the alcohol numbing me. Sweet, sweet oblivion.
Yes, this is irresponsible, and stupid, and will only prolong me having to deal with my feelings. But I just don’t know how to deal with this. How to handle my emotions at all, much less regarding Franco.
“Audra, honey, listen—”
“If you’re about to bring up The Incident, you can just shut up.”
“You called me over here for a reason, Audra. And it wasn’t just so I could enable your dealing with this situation through alcohol.”
“It wasn’t making love,” I insist.
She sighs. “What happened with Jared was twenty years ago, Audra.”
“You said his name,” I hiss.
“Yes, Audra, I did. It’s time you got over that. Jared, Jared, Jared.” She stands up and paces around me, gesticulating. “Jared Robert Ellis.” She glares down at me. “Say his name.”
“No.”
“Say it.”
“He’s not even worth speaking about. I haven’t said his name in twenty years, and I’m not about to start now.”
“You’re just giving him power over you, Audra. That’s what he doesn’t deserve.” She takes a drink and then whirls on me. “He’s not Voldemort, he’s just your ex-fiancé. He was a piece of shit, and he messed you up. I get that. But you have to at least try to get over it. To move past it. To stop letting him, and what he did, shape the way you handle everything in your life pertaining to men, love, sex, and relationships.”
“Franco said everyone should see a therapist at some point in their lives.” I sigh. “Maybe I should.”
Imogen stares at me with an incredulous expression. “You talked about therapy?”
I nod. “He said he’s seen someone before, and that everyone should do that as a routine part of self-care.”
“You never have talked to anyone about Jared, have you?”
I shook my head. “You’re the only one who knows about him. I couldn’t talk about it. It hurt too bad. The only way I could cope was to bury it and move on.”
“Which isn’t healthy. Surely you realize that.” She eyes me sadly. “You wouldn’t even talk to me about it.”
“I couldn’t. I don’t know how else to say that, Imogen. I could…not…talk…about…Jared.” My eyes widen as I realize I just said his name.
“No, and instead you turned to speed dating and casual sex.”
I snort. “Speed dating is the last goddamn thing I’d ever do.”
“Well, yeah, but you know what I mean.”
“Speed dating is matchmaking. I’m interested in the exact opposite.”
“I know what you want—casual sex. Jumping from guy to guy as fast as possible.”
“Not as fast as possible. I’ve never slept with more than one guy in the same day.”
She eyes me. “Really?”
I stare at Imogen. “You really think I have?”
She shrugs. “I guess I just assume there’s not much you haven’t done, to be honest.” She hesitates. “You tell me about a guy here and there, or complain about bad sex, or a smelly penis, or bad foreplay. Sometimes, if a guy was really good at something, or if you liked him enough, you’d have sex with him a second time. But you never really go much beyond that. You keep the really personal details to yourself.”
I frown. “Well…yeah. I mean, you don’t want to really know that I slept with a different guy every single day for the first month after my ninety-day post-Jared celibacy period, do you? Or that for the entire five years I lived in that apartment downtown I was fuck buddies with my landlord? Or that I don’t do anal because the one time I tried it the guy got carried away and hurt me? That I get checked for STDs once a month? Or that Price, the guy you saw me with that day you walked in, was the only guy to get past one fuck in over six months, and that if you hadn’t walked in, he’d have probably made it to three? Or even four?”
“Audra—”
“No, you don’t really want to know any of that. And to be honest, I’m glad you walked in when you did, because I was letting Price’s youthful energy blind me to realizing how silly it was of me to be sleeping with him.” I paused. “What else do you not want to know?”
“Did you have feelings for Price?”
I shake my head—I realize I’m feeling wobbly. “Nah. It was just really good sex. Now that I’ve had Franco, of course, everything pales in comparison. But still. Price was good, objectively speaking.”
“And you definitely have feelings for
Franco.”
“I don’t know what I have for Franco.”
She blinks. “A different guy every day for a month?”
I nod, following her jump back to my previous statement. “It was revenge, I guess. Not like he ever knew, but it was—I don’t know—emotional revenge, for myself. Escaping him, or getting as far as possible from what I thought we had.”
“I thought you had a three strikes rule?” she asks. “How did that work if you were fuck buddies with your landlord for five years?”
I shrug. “He lived on the first floor, right by the front door. Sometimes, after coming home late from work, he’d leave his door cracked with the bolt out to prop it open. That was the signal. If his door was cracked open, and I was in the mood, I’d go in, lock the door, we’d screw on his couch, usually with NASCAR on in the background, and a cigarette burning in the ashtray. And then when we were done, I’d go home. I think in the five years I lived there, when we were fuck buddies, we exchanged a total of maybe a hundred words.”
She looks perplexed. “I don’t understand that at all.”
I laugh. “It was fun. He was a few years older than me—like, seven or eight. Good-looking guy, great cock. I know literally nothing else about him, and we fucked several times a week for five years. I don’t know his middle name, where he grew up, how he came to be the landlord, why he was alone, what happened to his leg, who the woman in the pictures on his mantel was, not a damn thing. It was just sex. Sometimes I’d sit on the couch afterward with him and watch NASCAR for a while, but we didn’t talk. Sometimes he’d give me a beer or two.”
She shakes her head. “I just don’t get it. Why? Wasn’t it weird or…impersonal?”
“It wasn’t impersonal at all. We were both lonely, I think, but neither of us wanted to make it anything more than it was. I don’t know what his reasons were.”
“What was his name?”
“Tómas.” I take a long drink. “He was from Europe somewhere. I know he had an accent. And he was just…European. Uncircumcised, which was different for me, then, and kind of neat.” I pause again, thinking. “He had a limp in his left leg, a big scar on the knee. No clue what from, though.”
“Was he revenge on Jared, too?”
I shake my head. “No. After that first month, I honestly got just plain tired. That much sex is exhausting. I learned a lot about myself in that month, though. For example, I learned that I love sex and a lot of it, I love men, and I love variety. I don’t have any one type. Tómas, for example, was older, tall, kind of thin and not a really physical sort of guy, with dark hair and a permanent five-o-clock shadow. Jared, obviously, was the all-American golden boy. You’ve met some of the guys I’ve been with. There’s no one type. I just—”