Chapter 1

“Alex doesn’t like girls.” Patrick said this like a warning.

I’d been staring at the man from the corner of my eye, framing him as part of the overall picture here at Patrick’s annual Chrismakkuh party. Alex was prettier than the bunches of Martha Stewart-inspired poinsettias and twinkling fairy lights, but so were all the men here. Patrick had the hottest friends I’d ever seen. Seriously, it was like a convention of hot men. After Patrick’s admonishment I looked Alex over again more closely, mostly just to jerk Patrick’s chain. He was so easy that way.

“Is that his name?”

Patrick gave a low snort of disapproval. “Yes, that’s his name.”

“Alex what?”

“Kennedy,” Patrick said. “But he doesn’t –”

“I heard you.” I pressed my lips to the rim of my wine glass, warming it. The rich, strong scent of red wine wafted under my nostrils. I could taste the aroma on the back of my tongue, but I didn’t sip. “He doesn’t like girls, huh?”

Patrick pursed his mouth and crossed his arms. “No. Jesus, Olivia, stop ogling his ass.”

I raised an eyebrow, mirroring Patrick’s earlier expression. An old habit and one I knew irritated the shit out of him. It seemed like that kind of night. “Why do you invite me to your parties if it’s not to ogle men’s asses?”

Patrick huffed and puffed and frowned briefly before he must’ve remembered what that did to the lines around his mouth and forced his face to neutral smoothness. His gaze followed mine across the dining room and through the archway. Alex had his back to us, one arm on the mantelpiece of the living room fireplace. He had a bottle of Guinness. He’d been holding it for as long as I’d been watching, but I hadn’t seen him drink from it even once.

“And you feel an especial need to point this out to me…why?” I sipped more wine and stared him down.

Patrick shrugged. “Just thought I’d make sure you knew.”

I looked around at the half dozen men helping themselves to the buffet and then through the arch to the living room where another dozen men chatted or danced or flirted. Ninety-nine percent of them were gay and the other one percent was thinking about it. “I think I know better than to expect to get laid at one of your parties, Patrick.”

Before I could comment further a pair of thick, muscled arms gripped my waist from behind and a tight belly pressed along my back. “Run away with me and see how long it takes before he notices we’re gone,” said a deep voice directly into my ear.

I twisted, giving in to laughter at the tickling touch of a beard on my earlobe and turned. “Patrick, you didn’t tell me you were inviting Billy Dee Williams to your party! Oh, wait…Billy Dee would never wear that sweater. Hey, Teddy.”

“Girl, don’t you go making fun of this sweater. Mama McDonald sent me this sweater, and her boy Patrick got one just like it.” Teddy dropped Patrick a wink. “Difference is, I’m man enough to wear it.”

I got a hug, a squeeze, a kiss and a pat on the ass all within the span of seconds before Teddy moved on to provide the same for Patrick. Patrick, still pouting, swatted at the bigger man and pushed him away while Teddy laughed and swiped a hand over Patrick’s hair. Patrick scowled and smoothed his ruffled feathers but allowed Teddy to kiss his cheek a moment later.

I gestured with my wine glass. “He’s trying to tell me not to ogle an ass.”

“What? I thought we were all here to ogle men’s asses.”

Teddy shook his, I shook mine; we did The Bump and dissolved into the sort of laughter helped along by a liberal helping of holiday cheer. Patrick watched us with his arms crossed and eyebrow lifted. Then he shook his head.

“Pardon me for trying to be a friend,” he said.

Patrick and I had been friends for a long time. Once, a long time ago, we’d been more than that. Patrick thought that gave him the right to tell me what to do, and I let him because…well, because I loved him. And because there’s never been too much love in my life to turn any small bit of it away.

This, though, seemed a little excessive even for Patrick. Teddy and I shared a glance. I shrugged.

“I’m making a run to the kitchen for some more wine, loves,” Teddy said. “Do you want any?”

“I’m good.” I held up my glass, still half full.

Patrick shook his head. We both watched Teddy make his way through the crowd. Only when he was out of earshot did I turn back to my ex-boyfriend.

“Patrick, if you’re trying to tell me in a not-so-subtle way that you fucked that guy—”

Patrick’s short, sharp bark was so different from his normal laughter it startled me to silence. He shook his head. “Oh, no. Not him.”

I didn’t miss the way he cut his gaze from mine. That more than anything told me an entire story that needed no words. It didn’t even need a picture to make it clear.

My grin faded. Patrick had never made a secret of his private life, and I’d heard more stories about the men he’d slept with than I ever wanted to. Patrick didn’t get turned down, at least not often. I watched the red flush creep up his perfect, high cheekbones.

I looked again across the room at Alex Kennedy. “He turned you down?”

“Shh!” Patrick hissed, though the music and conversation was so loud nobody could’ve overheard us.

“Wow.”

His mouth clamped tighter. “Not another word.”

I looked again across the room at Alex Kennedy, still standing with one arm on the mantel. Now I paid attention to the crease in his black trousers and the way the soft black knit of his sweater clung to his broad shoulders and lean waist. He wore the clothes well, but so did all the other men here. From this distance I could see darkish eyes and longish medium-brown hair that looked as though he’d run a hand through it one too many times – or just rolled out of bed. Hair like that took lots of product and effort to look good, and his did. I had an impression of handsome features more than an actual view, and some of that was assumption. Alex was very pretty, there was no doubt about it, but if Patrick hadn’t gone all “don’tcha dare” on me, I probably would’ve looked once, maybe twice, and never again.

“How come I’ve never met him?”

“He’s not from around here,” Patrick said.

I looked back at the man Patrick seemed so desperate for me to ignore. Alex appeared to be locked in deep conversation with another of Patrick’s friends, their faces intense and serious. Not flirting. The man across from Alex drank angrily, his throat working.

I didn’t need to lift my hands, thumb to thumb and pointer to pointer, to make a frame for the picture I was composing. My mind did that automatically at the same time it filled in the details of their story. Snap, click. I didn’t have my camera, but I could imagine the shot, just the same. I framed Alex in my head, slightly off-center and a little out of focus.

Patrick muttered and poked me in the side. “Olivia!”

I looked at him again. “Stop being such a mother hen, Patrick. Do you think I’m an idiot?”

He frowned. “No. I don’t think you’re an idiot. I just don’t want…”

Teddy came back just then, so whatever Patrick wanted got swallowed behind a tight, hard smile. I recognized it, along with the look in his eyes. I hadn’t seen it for a long time, but I knew it. Patrick was hiding something.

Teddy slung an arm over Patrick’s shoulders and pulled him close to nuzzle at his cheek. “Come on. The cheese tray’s been decimated and we’re almost out of wine. Join me in the kitchen, love, and I’ll give you a little treat.”

Until Teddy, Patrick had never stayed with anyone longer than he’d been with me. I adored Teddy despite this, or maybe because of it. I knew Patrick loved him, although he hardly ever said so, and because I loved Patrick, I wanted him to be happy.

Patrick’s hard glance cut across the room again, to Alex and back to me. I thought he might say something more, but instead he shook his head and let Teddy lead him away. Me, I took another ogle at Alex Kennedy’s very, very fine ass.

“Livvy! Merry holidays!” This came from Jerald, another of Patrick’s friends, and a man who’d done some modeling for me more than once. I traded him some nice headshots for his portfolio in exchange for using him in some stock photos I needed for my graphic design business. “When are you going to take some more pictures of me, huh?”

“When can you come in?”

Jerald grinned with perfect, white teeth and a smile as straight as he was not. “Whenever you need me.”

We chatted for a few minutes about when and where, and for what, and then Jerald gave me a hug and a squeeze and a kiss before abandoning me in search of someone with a penis. That was all right. I didn’t need Patrick to hover over me to make me feel at home. I knew most of his friends. The ones of recent acquaintance viewed me as a curiosity, a relic, the woman who’d been with Patrick before he came out, but they were friendly enough. Liquor helped, of course. Friends who’d known Patrick and me since college on the other hand, could all still laugh about the good times that had happened when Patrick and I were a couple without the half-disguised gleam of pity his newer, gay friends often gave me. Booze helped that too.

Wine glass in hand, I made my way over to the buffet to load my plate with all sorts of delicacies. Squares of Indian naan bread paired with spicy hummus, cubes of cheese dipped in cranberry honey mustard, a few purple grapes still clinging to their stem. Patrick and Teddy knew how to throw a party, and even on the Saturday after Thanksgiving, I still had room for food as good as they served. I was debating about sampling the slices of rare roast beef settled next to the crusty French rolls or the waistline-conscious strawberry walnut salad when a tap on my shoulder turned me.

“Hey, girl!”

I stopped with a roll in my hand, halfway to my plate. I knew Patrick’s neighbor, Nadia. She’d always gone out of her way to be friendly to me, not that she had any reason not to be. I’d always thought Nadia’s overtures of friendship had less to do with me and more with her, and tonight was proving that suspicion correct.

“I want you to meet Carlos. My boyfriend.” Nadia had a pretty smile in an otherwise unremarkable face, but when she used it, I wanted to take her picture. It transformed her.

“Meetcha,” Carlos mumbled, his eyes on the food, although Nadia’s hand held him in such a tight grip he couldn’t actually grab any.

“Nice to meet you, Carlos.”

Nadia gave us both an expectant look. Carlos and I gave each other the once-over, his dark eyes traveling over my entire face before meeting my gaze. He glanced at Nadia, whose fingers were curled into the crook of his elbow. Her skin was very white against his. I think we both knew what she wanted, but neither of us was going to give it.

I didn’t know I was Black until second grade. Oh, sure, I’d always known my skin was darker than my parents’ and brothers’. My features not the same. They’d never hidden the fact I was adopted, and we celebrated not only my birthday but the date I became part of their family. I never felt anything less than loved completely. Cherished. Spoiled, even, by three much-older brothers and parents I’d know later were trying to overcompensate for the cesspool their marriage had become.

I’d always believed I was special, but until second grade I’d never understood I was...different.

Desiree Johnson moved to my school in Ardmore from someplace closer to inner-city Philadelphia. She wore her hair in dozens of tiny braids close to her scalp and clipped at the ends with plastic barrettes. She wore T-shirts with gold shiny lettering and soft velour track-pants, her sneakers startlingly white and huge for the size of her feet. She was different, and we all stared when she came into our classroom.

The teacher, Miss Dippold, had told us we’d be getting a new student only that morning. She’d taken care to mention how important it was to be kind to new students, especially those who weren’t “the same.” She’d read us a story about Zeke, the pony with stripes who’d turned out not to be a pony at all but a zebra. Even in second grade, I’d seen the end of that one coming from a mile away.

What I hadn’t seen coming was Miss Dippold’s command that I shift my desk so Desiree could sit beside me. I obeyed, of course, atingle with delight at being chosen to befriend the new girl. Was it because I was the class’s top speller for that week, with my name on the board and first-in-line privileges for recess? Or had Miss Dippold noticed how I’d lent Billy Miller my best pencil since he’d left his at home again? My desk scraped along the floor, curling small shavings of polish off the wood as I moved it aside so Randall, the janitor, could fit in another desk and chair for Desiree.

It was none of those reasons but one I’d never have guessed.

“There,” Miss Dippold said when Desiree had settled herself into the new desk and chair. “Desiree, this is Olivia. I’m sure you’ll be best friends.”

Desiree’s barrettes clacked against one another as she turned her head to look up and down at my pleated skirt, knee-high socks and buckled Mary Janes. My hair, twisted into tight curls and held back with a matching headband. My cardigan sweater.

For a second-grader, Desiree already had a lot of attitude. “You got to be kidding me.”

Miss Dippold blinked behind her huge tortoiseshell glasses. “Desiree? Is there a problem?”

Desiree gave a world-weary sigh. “No, Miss Dippold. Nothing wrong with me.”

Later, just before lunch, I leaned to take a peek at the drawings she was making on her notepad. Mostly swirls and circles, shaded with pencil. I showed her my own doodles, which weren’t as elaborate.

“I like to draw, too,” I said.

Desiree checked out my drawings and snorted. “Uh huh.”

“Maybe that’s why Miss Dippold thought we’d be friends,” I explained patiently, still trying. “Because we both like to draw.”

Desiree’s brows rose up to meet her hairline. She looked around at the rest of the class, which was getting restless in anticipation of Sloppy Joes and afternoon recess. She looked back at me, then took my hand and laid it next to hers. Against the pale gray desktops, our fingers stood out like shadows.

“Miss Dippold didn’t know anything about my drawing,” Desiree said. “She meant it’s ’cuz we’re both, you know.”

“Both what?”

Now she gave an exasperated sigh and rolled her eyes at me. Her whole tone changed. “Because we’re both Black.”

It was my turn to blink rapidly, trying to take all of this in. I looked around the room, at a sea of white faces. Caitlyn Caruso was adopted too, from China, and she looked different than the other kids. But Desiree was right. She’d pointed it out like I should’ve known all along.

I was Black. This revelation stunned me into silence for the rest of the day, until I went home and took down all our family albums to flip through page after page of photos. I was Black! I’d been Black my entire life! How had I never noticed it before?

The answer was simple – my parents had never told me, never made it a big deal. I’d been brought up to appreciate diversity. I had little choice. Born to a white mother and a black father, I’d been adopted as an infant by parents in a mixed marriage, though of religion and not race. My non-practicing Jewish mom had married my fallen-away Catholic dad and they’d raised two sons together in a haphazard clash of holidays until they divorced when I was five. We never talked about the color of my skin, or what it meant, or if it should mean something.

Desiree didn’t stay long in our class. Her family moved again a few months later. But I never forgot Desiree for pointing out to me what I should’ve known for my whole life.

But here’s the thing about people like Nadia, who pride themselves on being color-blind – in the end, all they see is color. Nadia hadn’t introduced me to her boyfriend because we both liked to draw, or we both listened to Depeche Mode, or even just to be polite. Carlos and I knew it.

Nadia didn’t get it. She chattered on between us, dropping names like I should know them, referencing hip-hop songs. Carlos caught my gaze and gave me a small shrug she didn’t see. He looked at her with obvious affection, though, stopping her finally with a single, murmured, “Baby.”

Nadia laughed, looking confused. “Huh?”

“If you don’t let me eat some of this food, I’m going to pass out.”

“Carlos works out a lot,” Nadia confided as her boyfriend began to decimate the buffet table. “He’s always hungry.”

I was saved from having to comment by the kerfuffle arising in the living room. I’d still been aware of Alex Kennedy at the corner of my vision. He hadn’t strayed from the fireplace. The man he’d been talking to had raised his voice and his hands, gesturing and pointing. Accusing.

This would not be the first time drama had exploded at Patrick’s house – throw a party for a bunch of queens and there are never enough crowns to go around, as he was fond of saying. I wasn’t the only one who turned to watch, either. Alex, instead of engaging in the back-and-forth, only shook his head and lifted his beer to his lips.

“You…you’re such an asshole!” cried the other man, voice awobble in a way that made me cringe in sympathy and embarrassment for him at the same time. “I don’t know why I ever bothered with you!”

It was easy enough for me to see why he’d bothered. Alex Kennedy was a smoking hot piece of yum. He stood, stoic, in the onslaught of another round of insults and accusations, until finally the other man stormed off followed by a few clucking friends. The entire incident had taken only a few minutes and had only turned a couple of heads. By far not the most exciting or dramatic argument ever to hit one of Patrick’s parties, and in fact likely to be forgotten by the end of the night by everyone but the two men involved.

Well, and me.

I was fascinated.

He doesn’t like girls, I reminded myself and dug into the roast beef, diet-be-damned, and when I looked up from the carnage of my plate, Alex Kennedy was gone.

* * *

It was a good party, one of Patrick’s best. By the time midnight rolled around, I’d had my fill of goodies and gossip and had to hide my yawn behind my hand so nobody would accuse me of being the old lady I sometimes felt I’d become. Karaoke had begun in the living room, where so many people were dancing both the menorah in the window and the Christmas tree in the corner were shaking.

Was that…? Oh, no. It was. I covered my eyes with a hand to peek through my fingers as a man took center stage to sing along with Beyoncé’s runaway dance-club anthem from a few years before. The one about putting a ring on it. Oh, and he was dancing, too, keeping perfect time without missing a step. He probably had his own clips up on whatever video app was popular now. Everyone clapped and shouted, but I looked to the corner by the fireplace for the object of his attention. Yep. Alex Kennedy.

Somehow, I didn’t think a ring had ever been put on any part of him but his cock.

“Perk up,” Teddy advised and filled my glass with wine I didn’t want. “Party’s not over yet.”

I groaned and leaned against him. “Maybe I should just head home.”

He shook his head with a laugh and patted his pocket. “Got your keys.”

I lifted my glass. “If you hadn’t insisted on keeping this full –”

We both laughed. I’d spent so many nights in their guest room his insistence on me staying had almost nothing to do with the fact I’d been drinking. Now, though, as I watched through the arched doorway to the living room-cum-dance floor, I wished I’d been smarter and not planned ahead to spend the night; I wished I could walk from here, but it was too cold and dark and too long a way. I wished I could hitch a ride with someone, but although a few guests had already left, most were still in full-on celebration mode and none of them lived out my way.

I hid another yawn. “I think I need some coffee.”

Teddy frowned. “Poor Livvy. Always working so hard.”

“If I don’t, nobody else will do it for me.” I shrugged.

“Well, I’m impressed. Striking out on your own. Quitting your job. Patrick didn’t think you’d stick with it.” Teddy looked momentarily uncomfortable, as if he’d spilled a secret.

“I know he didn’t.”

“He’s proud of you, too, Liv.”

I wasn’t so sure Patrick had a right to pride in my accomplishments, but I didn’t say so. Instead, I let Teddy hug and pet me a little, because Teddy’s like a cuddlier version of The Borg. Resistance is futile. Not only that, but I’m a sucker for a big man in a Santa sweater, what can I say?

I handed him my glass of wine. “I’m going for some coffee. Or at least a Coke or something.”

I could’ve just gone to bed, but with the party still in full swing it was unlikely I’d be able to sleep. Patrick’s kitchen was kitschy cute, complete with a swinging-tailed kitty clock and retro-looking appliances. Well, except for the space age espresso machine, the fancy kind that steamed milk and used those special pods. I’d never learned to use it and in fact didn’t dare touch it in case I dialed something wrong and sent us all back to the Stone Age. I’d be the one to step on the butterfly.

I knew he had a regular coffee maker someplace, but a search of the cabinets didn’t turn one up. Patrick never got rid of anything – and I mean never, not his favorite T-shirt or a lamp with a broken switch. Hell, obviously not me. He hoarded belongings and people like the Zombpocalypse was coming and the only way to survive was by building a new civilization out of outdated wardrobes, non-functioning appliances…and past lovers. I knew he still had that coffee maker.

Maybe on the screened back porch, plastic-sheeted now for protection against the winter. Patrick had stored a couple dozen boxes of miscellaneous crap there, promising Teddy he’d sort through it but never doing so. His espresso machine was new, so there was an excellent chance he’d simply moved the old machine aside.

Bracing myself against the cold, I pushed open the back door and went out onto the porch. I hissed out heat and broke at once into goose-pimply shivers. I didn’t turn on the overhead light, just went for the first stack of boxes. Didn’t find the coffee maker, but there was a stack of porn mags I flipped through with numb, fumbly fingers and shoved back inside the box. It was the closest I was likely to get to an erection tonight, and don’t think I didn’t mourn that fact just a little.

Starting my own business had been great for my ego and sense of satisfaction. It’d been hell on my bank account and my sex life. No time to date, no time to invest in another person, even if I’d found someone I thought would be worth making an effort for. No time even for casual flirting, since working for myself meant I was alone most of the time. My other two jobs, the ones I’d kept so I could cover my mortgage, weren’t exactly conducive to meeting men. Taking school and sports team photos required a lot of traveling and although I met many a DILF, most of them were married. My job at Foto Folks was fun and paid well, but my clients were invariably middle-aged women looking for “boudoir” shots or moms who brought their kids to get pictures taken in front of giant stuffed bears. I’d developed a severe allergy to the feathers in boas. I was tired and run-down, but I was happy. I was tired and sometimes stressed, but I was doing what I loved.

I was also officially undersexed.

“C’mon, Patrick, where’d you put it?” I moved toward the porch’s far end, around the sheet-covered wicker furniture and behind a large stack of lawn chairs. “Ah, bingo.”

Coffee maker, filters, even a plastic zipped baggie of coffee beans. He really never got rid of anything. I laughed and shook my head, then turned at the sound of the back door opening behind me.

Freeze frame.

Two silhouettes appeared in the doorway. Men. The smaller one shoved the bigger one against the wall. Oh. I got it. I was ready to clear my throat and announce my presence when the taller man turned his face toward the light.

How could I have ever thought him commonly, regularly handsome? Alex Kennedy’s profile made me want to weep, if only because there are too few people in this life who are so beautiful while being also so real. In full light everything on his face had lined up just right. Here, now, with shadow splitting him in half, I could see his nose was too sharp, his lower jaw a little too undercut for perfection. His hair fell over his forehead, and he grimaced as the man in front of him dropped to his knees and unzipped Alex’s trousers.

I still had time to call out a warning. They were far gone, maybe drunk or maybe just so deep in their lust they weren’t paying attention to anything else, but I could’ve stopped them if I really wanted to. I didn’t.

“Evan,” the low, creamy deep voice that must belong to Alex said. “You don’t have to do this.”

“Shut up.”

The shadows morphed into figures again, one standing tall, the other crouched at his feet. The light from the streetlamp down the alley was barely bright enough to illuminate anything, but it was enough to show me what was going on. And, I thought, to block me from their view if they’d bothered to look, since I was in far corner and settled deep in shadow. So long as I kept quiet and still, chances were very good they’d never even know I was there. They would come…and then go.

Evan yanked Alex’s trousers down past his knees. I stifled my sudden harsh breath behind my hand. I couldn’t see cock, but I’m not too proud to admit I looked for it. What I could see was Evan’s hand stroking. His shoulder moved, a lump of black against gray. Alex’s head tipped back with a dull thud against the wall.

“Shut up and take it,” Evan said.

Maybe he meant to be menacing or sexy, but Alex only laughed and put his hand on Evan’s head. Did I imagine the twist and twine of his fingers in the other man’s hair? It was impossible to see, but in the next second when Evan’s head jerked back, I thought it must’ve been from his lover’s grip.

“Are you fucking serious?” Alex said around his laughter.

The next noise Evan made didn’t quite hit menacing. I didn’t find it very sexy, but Alex must have, because he loosed his grip enough to let Evan’s head bob forward. I heard the soft, wet noise of a mouth on flesh.

Whoa.

“Fuck, that’s good.”

“I know how you like it,” Evan said, softer this time, without the attitude.

“Who doesn’t?” Alex laughed, low and slow and a little drowsy.

If it makes me a pervert to get excited watching two people fucking, then sign me up and send me the T-shirt.

More soft, wet sounds. I was sort of soft and wet myself, at that point, and the only thing stopping me from reaching between my legs was that I was frozen in place with fascination – and of course, knowing I wasn’t watching some surreptitious gay porn but real, live men getting off.

I squeezed my thighs. Wow. That felt good. I did it again, putting pressure on my clit that wasn’t as good as a fingertip or a tongue would have been, but the slow and steady clench of muscle nevertheless started the buildup of pressure inside me I recognized.

I blinked, my eyes adjusting further to the darkness. I could see the flash of Alex’s eyes as he looked down at Evan, then the gleam of Evan’s smile as he pulled away from Alex’s cock. Alex put his hand on Evan’s head again. Evan got back to the business of cocksucking.

Alex moaned.

Evan made a muffled noise that didn’t sound nearly as nice. I heard more shuffling. The floorboards creaked. Another dull thump on the wall made me open my eyes and I watched Alex’s silhouette arch.

He was coming. I had to close my eyes, turn my face. I couldn’t watch this, no matter how sexy it was, no matter how kinky and perverted I was. I wasn’t cold anymore, that was for sure.

“No,” Alex said, and I opened my eyes.

Evan had stood. There was distance between them, a space of light in the dark of their two shadows. I watched Evan’s move forward again, a little, and Alex stepped to the side.

“No?” Evan repeated, voice querulous. “You’ll let me suck your dick, but you won’t kiss me?”

Zip. Sigh. Alex’s shape moved in what looked like a shrug.

“You’re a fucking asshole, you know that?”

“I know it,” Alex said. “But so did you before you brought me out here.”

Evan, incredibly, stamped his foot. Even Patrick at his most flamboyant never stamped his foot. “I hate you!”

“No, you don’t.”

“I do!” Evan opened the door and I shut my eyes tight against the sudden spilling of light. “You can just forget about coming home!”

“Your place isn’t home. Why do you think I took all my stuff?”

Ouch. That stung even me. If I were Evan I’d have hated Alex too, just for the smug tone.

“I fucking hate you. I never should’ve given you a second chance!”

“I told you not to,” Alex said.

Evan swept out. Alex stayed behind for another minute or two, his breathing heavy. I stayed as still as I could with my heart pounding so fast it made stars behind my eyelids. I was sure he’d hear me, but he didn’t.

Alex went inside.

I discovered I didn’t need coffee to keep me awake.

𓆩♡𓆪

Chapter 2

Patrick pounced on me in the kitchen, his expression fierce. “Where were you?”

I gestured at the back porch. “I went looking for your coffee pot.”

He crossed his arms over his chest. “It’s right there on the counter.”

The party was still going strong, but I’d had enough. Too much drama for one evening. If I hadn’t had a few too many glasses of wine, screw the drive, I’d have gone home to sleep in my own bed. As it was, I was coming down from the adrenaline high, and I could barely manage not to slur my words.

“You know I can’t use that one. Too complicated.”

He eyed me. “Are you drunk?”

“No. Just tired.” I hugged him, surprising him for a second, I think, by the way he jumped. Only for a second, then his arms went around me. Held me tight until I pushed him away. “I’m going to bed.”

“Already?”

“I’m wiped out!” I knuckled his side and Patrick tried not to laugh but gave in. “What is your problem, anyway? Why’d you come in here like the back end of your broom was on fire?”

My joke annoyed him.

“Very funny. I was looking for you, that’s all. You disappeared.”

“Uh huh.” I yawned behind my hand. “Well, here I am. No big deal, Patrick, sheesh.”

He grabbed my hand and squeezed it. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay, Liv. Is that so wrong? Making sure my best girl’s all right?”

“You haven’t called me that in a long time.” My fingers, trapped in his, twisted.

He let me go. “I mean it, and you know it.”

If you’ve ever loved someone for too long to stop, you know how I felt just then. Standing in the kitchen Patrick shared with someone else, bleary from exhaustion and red wine, I refused to give in to melancholy. I kissed his cheek instead and patted his ass the way I always did.

“I’m going to bed.”

I went up the back stairs. Narrow and steep, with a sharp bend halfway up, they were difficult to navigate even with a clear head. The sound of the music faded but the bass thumpa-thumpa continued as I climbed the stairs and went through what Patrick and Teddy called “the back room,” which had one door leading in and another leading out, and down the long, narrow hall. Like the stairway, the hall had a jog in it, sharp to the left. I loved old houses for their nooks and crannies, and this was no exception. It had been cut into apartments when Patrick and Teddy moved in, but they’d been renovating it back into a single dwelling. I touched the wallpaper in the hall, revealed when they stripped off a layer of tacky 1970s paneling. In the dark I couldn’t see the tiny sprigs of lavender flowers against the pale-yellow background, but I knew they were there.

Once I’d taken a photo of the view down this hall. The light from the window at the end had sketched shadows beneath the light fixtures, not fancy enough to be considered antique, just old. I’d captured a misty, fuzzy figure in the corner, something like the shape of a woman in a long dress, her hair piled high on her head. Trick of the light, perhaps, or optical illusion. It was just out of focus enough for me to never be sure. But nights like this, when I thought I might stumble from weariness or too much cheer, I imagined I felt her comforting hand helping me along.

I went from doorway to bed in a few steps, shedding my clothes and diving into the soft bed with its mound of covers and pillows. I tossed them on the floor without ceremony, knowing Patrick would squawk but too tired to pile them neatly on the trunk beneath the window. I reached to the nightstand and ruffled around inside, past the box of tissues, the lip balm, and found the small square box of earplugs I kept in there the way I kept a spare box of “girl” things under the bathroom sink.

In half a minute I had blessed silence, although an occasional surge of bass from downstairs still vibrated my stomach a little. I pulled on an oversized T-shirt from the bottom night-stand drawer and snuggled beneath the heavy comforter, the extra pillow tucked firmly between my knees to alleviate the pressure on my aching back. I couldn’t hear my sigh, though the dull thud of my heartbeat still sounded in my ears.

I couldn’t sleep.

My sophomore year of college, I shared a room with three other girls. The dorm I’d chosen had been overbooked. I’d been given the choice of living in a different building, farther away from my classes and the cafeteria, or moving into a converted study lounge for the semester. It hadn’t been so bad. The larger room meant we’d all had a bit more space, and the lounge was in the corner of the building, so instead of the one small window the regular rooms had, we had four large panes of glass. The downside was the complete and utter lack of privacy. Forget about having a guy over, it was impossible even to masturbate without an audience.

I don’t know about the other girls, one of whom was a devout Christian whose missionary position had nothing to do with sex, but I have always been and suspect I always will be, an avid fan of getting myself off. I’d learned the trick back then of rubbing off on a pillow tucked between my legs, just this way. Of using the slow, steady push of inner muscles to bring myself close, slowly, and finishing myself off against the pillow. I hadn’t come that way in a long time – I lived alone now and could strip down naked and rub one out on my dining room table, if I wanted. Not that I ever did.

But I hadn’t forgotten how to do it, how to press and release and inch my hips forward and back, just so. I gave half a second’s thought to embarrassment and tossed it aside in the name of orgasm. After all, I hadn’t burst in on them, or snuck up to peek through a window. The show on the porch had been dropped in front of me like non-denominational holiday gift, and I’ve never been one to return a present just because it didn’t fit quite right.

The memory of Alex Kennedy’s groan slid over me in the darkness and straight to the pit of my belly, inside me. Down to my clit. I shifted ever-so-slightly against the pillow. How must it feel to be the reason he made that sound?

I was suddenly tipping closer to the edge. I shifted again, tightening my inner muscles and holding, then releasing. Slow, sweet waves of climax began their start deep inside me. I turned my face into my pillow and bit the softness to stifle my own groan. I rode the waves of pleasure with my eyes closed tight.

Of all the pictures my mind had taken that night, his face was the one I could still see.

* * *

The house was quiet when I woke. I stretched under the weight of the blankets. The tip of my nose and cheeks had gone cold, and that didn’t bode well for how the rest of me would feel should I venture out of my warm cave. Patrick and Teddy’s house was old and heated unevenly, and I’d forgotten to open the register the night before. This could mean only my room was chilly, or that the entire house was shiver-inducing; it really depended on what they’d done with the thermostat before they went to bed.

My stomach rumbled. My bladder, the most effective alarm clock I would ever have, reminded me of all the wine I’d drunk. Worse, my mind insisted on replaying the activities of the night before in vivid black-on-black.

Had I really made myself come while thinking about Alex Kennedy getting a blowjob? It would seem I had. I stretched again, feeling softness beneath me, warmth around me, the brush of smooth fabric on my belly where my T-shirt had bunched up. I waited for shame, or at least embarrassment, but nope. Nada. I was thoroughly depraved.

This more than anything got my ass out of bed, because one could really only be appropriately depraved with an empty bladder and a full stomach. I took care of the first easily enough, skip-hopping down the cold, bare wooden floor of the hall and into the bathroom where I could actually see my breath and the hot water from the sink scalded my hands. I gave a longing look at the bathtub, an old-fashioned claw-foot tub Patrick hated and I envied.

Downstairs, the kitchen was gloriously warm. Heat flooded up from the open grate in the floor from the furnace directly below. In another twenty minutes I’d probably be sweating, but for now I gloried in it. I also reveled in the shelves of leftovers from the party the night before, everything tucked away into plastic containers and stacked neatly according to size and shape. Patrick’s work. I could only guess how late he’d stayed up, tidying, before Teddy forced him to bed. On the upside of that, I could be sure none of the food would give me food poisoning. Patrick was a stickler for keeping his buffet table appropriately cold or hot, depending.

Chicken pot-stickers called my name, the little bastards, not even trying to pretend they didn’t know I was trying to lose a couple of pounds. The chocolate cake I could ignore but not the little dumplings of fatty, sweet-and-sour goodness. I pulled the container from the fridge and turned to put it on the table – and almost ran smack into a bare chest.

The container of pot-stickers hit the floor and bounced. I screamed. Loud.

Alex Kennedy smiled.

“Fuck, you’re pretty,” I said.

He blinked, his smile getting wider. He crossed his arms over his very fine naked stomach. “Thanks.”

I thought about bending to pick up my breakfast but doing that would put me at his feet, and that wasn’t a place I was sure I could stand to be. Not after last night and what I’d seen. He cast a glance at the container by his toes, then at me. Then he bent to pick it up.

Alex at my feet, on the other hand? Very nice indeed.

“Thanks.” I took the container and eased past him to put it in the microwave. I looked over my shoulder. “Want some?”

He laughed and shook his head and took a step back. And then I realized something sort of funny, sort of strange. He was…uncomfortable?

I was used to finding half-naked men in Patrick’s kitchen the morning after a party. True, I’d never watched any of them come down someone else’s throat and then used that thought to give myself an orgasm, but he didn’t know about that.

“I’m Alex. Patrick let me crash here last night.”

“I’m Olivia,” I offered and waited for a reaction. Not even a blink.

“It’s nice to meet you, Olivia.”

He cleared his throat and shifted, foot to foot. His bare toes were as lovely as the rest of him. For the first time I noticed his pajama bottoms, a faded pair printed with Hello Kitty faces that looked well-loved and often worn. They covered more of him than my thigh-length T-shirt did of me, and I wished for a robe or at least a sweater, although I was no longer the least bit cold.

I gave them a look. “Nice.”

Alex laughed, staring down at his toes. The look he gave me was amused. A little embarrassed, but not much. “Thanks. They were a gift.”

The microwave dinged and I removed the container, holding it out. “You sure you don’t want any?”

He shook his head, even though his tongue crept out to dot his bottom lip. “I think I’d better go with oatmeal.”

I pulled a fork from the drawer and poked it into a dumpling. “Please don’t tell me you’re going to make me feel guilty because I’m not up this early to run a mile and a half.”

His laugh sounded more genuine this time. “Hell, no. I’m not going for a run. Not in this weather anyway. Or, well…not ever.”

I swallowed a bite of delicious. “Thank God.”

I went to the fridge again for some orange juice – Teddy squeezes it fresh and never leaves the pitcher empty. I pulled it out and offered some. Alex nodded. I grabbed a couple of glasses and set them on the table, then poured. His expression prompted me to check if I had something in my teeth or hanging from my nose.

“What?”

“Nothing,” he said. “It’s just…”

I sat at the kitchen table and waved him to a seat too. He pulled the glass of juice toward himself and sipped. I waited.

“Just what?” I said when it seemed he’d stalled.

“Patrick didn’t mention he had another person staying here. That’s all.”

“Ah.” I dug into another pot-sticker, which shouldn’t have been so tasty washed down with orange juice but was. “He didn’t tell me you were staying here, either. In fact, he said –”

Both of us seemed to have come down with a case of bite-your-tongue-itis.

Alex quirked a brow and sat back in his chair. The kitchen was warm, but he was shirtless, and goosebumps dappled his skin. An image of myself leaning across the table to lick his nipples sent a flash of heat through me that didn’t come from the furnace chugging to life beneath our feet.

“What? Tell me,” Alex said.

The man I’d seen last night at the party, the one in my room, was back. His voice melted, gooey caramel on soft ice cream. I wanted to lick it.

“He said,” I told him, carefully not looking at him but at my food, “to stay away from you.”

“Did he?”

I knew my laugh sounded forced, but he didn’t know me. “Yes.”

“Why?”

I licked soy sauce from a finger and caught him looking, his eyes narrowed but not angry. Interested, maybe. Intrigued. “Because Patrick likes to make sure I don’t get into trouble.”

Alex snorted lightly and drank more juice. “He thinks I’m trouble?”

“Aren’t you?” It sounded like flirting. It felt like flirting, but I knew better than to flirt with a man who was into guys. I’d learned my lesson on that a long time ago.

“I guess that depends,” he said, then, “yeah. I am.”

We both laughed at that, somehow companionable in our assessment of his character via the conduit of Patrick’s warning. “I thought so. You look like trouble.”

Alex’s thick brown hair had been carefully groomed last night to look like a mess, but now it fell in genuine disarray over his forehead and into his eyes. When he bent to stare at the table, his fingers tapping on it, his hair obscured his face. I wanted to brush it off his forehead.

“Emo bangs,” I said.

He looked up at me then and pushed the hair out of his eyes. “Huh?”

I gestured. “Your hair.”

He laughed again, for real this time. “I guess that’s a sign if nothing else is, huh? Time for a cut?”

“I don’t think so. I like it.” I speared the last pot-sticker and held it up to him. “Sure you don’t want it?”

“What the hell.” He plucked it from the fork and ate it from his fingers.

I watched his lips close over his fingertips and suck away the soy sauce. Warmth swirled inside me, which was stupid, but hey, a girl can look even if she can’t touch. We both finished our orange juice at the same time.

Then we sat in silence. Alex might be trouble, but he sure wasn’t chatty. Not that I got a snobby vibe off him or anything, like he just didn’t want to talk to me. More like he wasn’t sure what to say.

“How do you know Patrick?” It was ask or leave the kitchen for the chilly wilds of upstairs, where I’d have to dress and go into the colder outdoors to head home. Besides, I wanted to know.

“We met in Japan.”

“You work for Quinto and Bates?” That was the law firm where Patrick worked.

He shook his head. “No, I was brought in as a consult with Damsmithon Industries while Patrick was there for the international business meeting.”

“So you’re not a lawyer.” I swirled a finger in the remains of the pot-sticker juice in the bottom of the container. I wasn’t hungry anymore but couldn’t resist the savory tang.

He laughed. “Hell, no. But Patrick and I hit it off, hung out after the meetings. Kept in touch. When I told him I was coming back to the States he said I should stop by to see him.”

All of this didn’t sound like it should go along with the image of Patrick’s face and his warning to me about Alex being trouble. “So…you’re friends?”

“What exactly did Patrick say about me?” Alex’s bangs fell down again, and he didn’t brush them away.

I paused for a second before answering. “Not much, actually.”

Which wasn’t like Patrick at all. He usually had something to say about everybody and if he didn’t have anything, sometimes he made stuff up. I pondered this while Alex got up and went to the fridge. Patrick had warned me away from Alex but hadn’t given me details. No gossip. Strange.

Alex brought back the pitcher of juice and a plate of cookies covered in tin foil that had escaped my notice earlier. He offered the plate to me first, and don’t think I didn’t notice that he had manners. I didn’t pretend to myself or him that I shouldn’t eat any cookies. It was too late for that. Come January I’d be moaning about the size of my ass, but so would everyone else I knew whether it was warranted or not.

I picked up a gingerbread man with a huge erect cock. “Hmm. Normally I bite the heads off first, but…”

Alex snorted and picked up one for himself. “Now there’s a dilemma.”

We were still laughing when Patrick came down the back stairs. He wore a silk kimono and a bleary expression. His blond hair stuck up in corkscrews all over the place. He gave us both an imperious look from his spot on the last stair.

“We can hear you all the way upstairs.”

“Sorry,” Alex sounded contrite.

I didn’t bother. “Oh, Patrick. C’mon. It’s like, noon already. Get your lazy ass up and about.”

Patrick yawned broadly and swept past me, then turned to give me a real glare. “You didn’t even make coffee?”

“Your fucking machine is too complicated,” I told him fondly, though of course he knew that, and of course he was still miffed I hadn’t started it brewing for him.

“I’ll do it,” Alex said and was up and around the table before either Patrick or I could do more than blink at each other in surprise. “I should’ve thought of it, man. I’m sorry.”

I raised a brow at this sudden leap to obsequiousness, but I didn’t know the guy beyond, what? A warning, a karaoke serenade, and a drunken blow job in a dark room. He hadn’t quite seemed the servile type to me, but then I was forever being surprised by what I didn’t expect.

“Thank you,” Patrick said a little stiffly. “Alex, this is Olivia Mackey. Olivia, Alex Kennedy. Olivia is an independent contractor with her own graphic design company, and Alex does consulting for several international corporations.”

Coffee pot carafe filled with water in his hand, Alex turned while Patrick made the cocktail party introductions. He and I shared a look past Patrick’s kimono. I gave Alex a tiny shrug. I didn’t get it, either.

“We met,” I told Patrick. “What is up with you?”

“I’m just being a good host.”

“Thanks, Patrick,” Alex said and set about making the coffee.

He figured out his way around Patrick’s kitchen, faltering only once when he opened the wrong cupboard to pull out the coffee pods and found the spice jars, instead. I turned in my chair to watch him. He was no casual houseguest. He knew how to make himself at home.

Patrick and I could hold entire conversations without words, but this morning he was deliberately not giving me the right signals. Or he was misreading mine. He could be selective that way. Before I could get him to tell me what was going on, Alex turned from the coffee maker.

“Anyone hungry for pancakes?”

“I couldn’t,” I said, just as Patrick said, “Alex, you’re a darling.”

Patrick looked at Alex. Alex looked at me. I looked at Patrick.

“Actually,” I said, “I should get going. I’ve got some work to do –”

“On Sunday?” Patrick said incredulously. “What’s the point of working for yourself if you can’t take the weekend off?”

I stood and stretched. “The point of working for myself is that I can work whenever I want.”

“Yeah, and work whenever you have to.” Alex leaned against the counter, one long leg crossed over the other at the ankles.

I nodded. He understood. Patrick, who worked eighty-hour weeks but also took a month’s vacation every year, understood the importance of hard work but would probably never comprehend why I’d quit a stable salary to go out on my own.

I hugged my former boyfriend and kissed his cheek. Patrick softened, finally, his embrace unwilling but inevitable. He held my face still and looked into my eyes.

“Don’t work too much, Livvy. It’s the holidays.”

I put my hands over his on my cheeks and carefully peeled away his fingers to release his grip. “You want me to take back all the presents I bought you?”

He laughed the first real Patrick laugh I’d heard in a few days and squeezed me close. He whispered in my ear, “remember what I said.”

Most of the time when Patrick hugged me, I could take it for what it was, a physical expression of the affection and love between two friends. Platonic friends. And then there were the times when I breathed in the scent of him, the cologne I bought for him so many years ago and which he’d never switched from even though he could afford something trendier and more expensive. When I felt the press of his body along mine and I had to close my eyes and remind myself to let him go, and when I found it almost impossible to do so.

Still locked in Patrick’s arms, I forced myself to open my eyes. Alex’s gaze found mine over Patrick’s shoulder. With that scrutiny as motivation, I patted Patrick’s back quickly and stepped away, hoping my nipples weren’t hard through my T-shirt or that my cheeks weren’t as flushed as they felt.

Patrick caught my wrist before I could get entirely away. “Stay for a while. It’s Sunday.”

“Patrick...”

He didn’t let go. “Alex, tell Liv she should stay.”

“Olivia. You should stay.” Alex, still leaning, smiled.

I smiled, too, even as I turned and gave Patrick a good, hard poke. “I have a life, Patrick.”

He scoffed. “What are you going to do today? Hang around that cold apartment and fiddle with your pictures? She’s a photographer,” Patrick added for Alex’s benefit and jabbed at my ribs.

“Cool. What do you take pictures of?”

“Everything!” I said over my shoulder to Alex as I tried to dance out of the way of Patrick’s poking fingers.

I looked at him, hard. Last night he’d warned me off Alex as though my mortal soul depended on it, and now he was begging me to hang around for the day. Of course he often persuaded me to stay longer than I’d intended, and often I let him. But I did have work to do in my studio, which wouldn’t paint or clean itself, and which had been sadly neglected since I’d bought it six months before.

“Patrick…”

Knowing he was manipulating me didn’t make it any easier to resist him. When he flashed me the familiar pout, the one that had always swayed me, I sighed. I glanced at Alex, who was watching us both with an expression I could only describe as intrigued.

“Alex is making pancakes,” Patrick said.

I looked at Patrick. Patrick looked at Alex. And Alex…Alex looked at me.

“I am,” Alex said. “And I’m really good at it.”

I knew enough to admit defeat.

“Fine, but I’m taking the first shower, and I don’t care if you run out of hot water,” I told Patrick, who smirked the way he always did when he got his way.

Upstairs I bumped into Teddy coming out of his bedroom.

“You’re staying?”

Another man might have hated the fact I was still so much a part of Patrick’s life, but not Teddy. But then I’d never seen him hate anything. Teddy fully believed in that crap about lemons and life.

“Yeah. Just for a little while, I do have to get home tonight.”

He laughed. “You should move back up here, Liv. It wouldn’t be such a long drive, then.”

I rolled my eyes. “You’re as bad as he is. Annville’s only half an hour away, for crying out loud.”

Teddy had spent his entire life in Central Pennsylvania, a place where crossing the Susquehanna River could be considered entering a whole new world. He grinned. “But it’s Annville.”

“Pfft.” I waved a hand. “I’m taking a shower. I hear there are pancakes in the making.”

Teddy rubbed his stomach. “Yum. Our guest, I assume, not our beloved Patrick.”

Patrick never cooked.

“Yeah. Hey, Teddy…” I paused and leaned against the doorjamb to my room. “What’s the story with him, anyway?”

“Alex?”

“Yeah.”

Teddy shrugged and his smile became a tiny bit strained. “He’s a friend of Patrick’s. He needed a place to crash. He’s only going to be here for a few more days. Nice guy.”

That answer floated between us, a bit of fluff on a current of not-going-to-bring-up-certain-topics. The topic in question being why Patrick felt he had any right or interest in my love life, or lack thereof. I shrugged, finally, because sometimes you simply have to put things aside that have no answer.

“Taking a shower,” I said, and Teddy left me so I could.

* * *

Forty-five minutes later, my stomach full of pancakes and turkey bacon and good, strong coffee, I was attempting to kick Alex’s ass at Dance Dance Revolution and failing pretty miserably. I had Teddy beat, and was pretty well-matched with Patrick, but Alex…he was a superstar.

“My feet keep slipping on the dance pad,” I complained, out of breath.

“I’ll set myself to advanced,” Alex offered with a wicked gleam in his eye. He was practically rubbing his hands together and twirling an imaginary mustache. “You can stay at basic.”

I wasn’t going to turn down that offer. “You’re on.”

“I knew I shouldn’t have let you start playing,” Patrick said from his place on the couch where he was reading a thick paperback novel.

At the sound of affectionate amusement in his tone, I looked at him while Alex used the Wii remote to switch the settings. Patrick, bundled under a heavy quilt, had gone back to his book. Teddy’d disappeared, probably to play the Sims on his computer upstairs. It was a picture of lazy Sunday bliss, so why did suddenly it all feel so…wrong?

“Olivia?”

I turned at Alex’s question and flashed him a smile I couldn’t be sure looked real. “Yeah. I’m ready.”

He tilted his head the tiniest bit. “You want to take a break?”

Patrick must have heard concern in Alex’s tone, because he looked up again. “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing.” I waved a hand. “Too many pancakes. Let’s go.”

Alex had changed out of his Hello Kitty pajamas and into a pair of faded jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt, but his feet were still bare. He tapped one against the dance pad but didn’t start the next song. He looked from me to Patrick.

“Okay. If you’re sure.”

“Sure. Let’s go.”

But there was no way I could beat him, even with the different levels set to make it more to my advantage. I was distracted by the sudden, unexpected wave of nostalgia and something else, something I couldn’t parse. My performance was sucktastic.

“I think you’re letting me win,” Alex said.

Patrick scoffed from the couch. “Olivia never lets anyone win. Take your victory and savor it.”

I gave Patrick a narrow-eyed glance. His teasing had a ring of truth to it that sat wrong with me. “I should get going.”

This got Patrick’s attention, and he looked up. “Now? I thought you’d stay for dinner, at least. Alex says he’s going to cook lamb chops.”

Alex laughed. “Dude.”

I looked at him. “Now you know the real reason he’s letting you stay.”

My teasing, too, had a ring of truth to it, but Patrick didn’t seem to care.

“It’s okay. I like to cook.”

In the background, the music of the game blared on and on, though I couldn’t blame my sudden, inching headache on that. I looked at Patrick again, settled so neatly on his couch with his book and his friends around him, catering to him. Giving him whatever he wanted. Patrick annoyed me sometimes, the way anyone can on occasion. I hadn’t hated him in a long time, but I remembered, suddenly, how it felt to despise him.

“I’m sure they’ll be delicious Alex, but I can’t stay. It was nice meeting you.” I reached for his hand, and he took it. Shook it firmly and let it drop.

He put his hands on his hips. “Maybe I’ll see you again.”

“Well, if you ever come back to visit Patrick, I’m sure you will.” I was already turning to go.

“I’m staying in the area, actually. I got another consulting job. Just short term.”

I paused. Patrick looked up. He put down his book.

“You didn’t tell me that.”

“My contact with Hershey Foods just got back to me,” Alex said. “I’ll be here for about six months. Maybe eight, depending.”

This caught Patrick’s attention and he sat straight up. “Where are you staying?”

“Not here, don’t worry.” Alex laughed. “I’ve got a room booked at the Hotel Hershey for a week, but I’m looking for a place to rent for the rest of the time.”

The sound of heels echoing on wooden floors rang in my ears, along with the ka-ching of a cash register. “I have a place you might be interested in.”

Both men looked at me then. Patrick’s brows had raised. Alex looked assessing.

“I bought a building,” I explained. “An old firehouse. I live on the second floor, but the ground floor apartment is vacant and partially furnished.”

“You told me you didn’t want to deal with the hassle of having a tenant.” Patrick’s tone, faintly accusatory, put a small curl in my lip.

Alex, on the other hand, let his gaze drift back and forth between the two of us before his mouth tipped up a fraction at the corners. “Where’s your place, Olivia?”

“Annville,” I said as Patrick said, “the middle of nowhere.”

“Annville,” I repeated, “is about twenty minutes from Hershey. Same distance as from here.”

“Sounds great. When can I see it?”

“How about right now?”

Alex smiled. “Perfect.”

𓆩♡𓆪

Chapter 3

Alex drove a crappier car than I expected. I hadn’t noticed the baby-shit brown sedan parked along the street in front of Patrick’s house the night before. It probably looked much better in the dark.

“Rental,” he explained when I stared at it.

I’d parked my own car with the pride of privilege in Patrick and Teddy’s narrow driveway in front of the garage. “Mine’s around back. I’ll pull out and wait for you so you can follow. Oh, and let me get your number in case we get separated.”

He had a crappy car but a very, very nice and shiny new iPhone, the latest model. “Yeah, I’d better take yours, too.”

There was nothing strange about this exchange. Random strangers gave each other their numbers all the time. Texting had replaced normal face-to-face conversations. Pretty soon we’d all just implant chips in our heads and never leave our houses. Even so, tapping his long and unfamiliar number into my phone felt somehow intimate and strangely permanent.

“Now you,” Alex said, and held up the phone. “Smile.”

“Oh, you’re not –”

Too late, he’d taken the shot and held it up to show me how I held a place now in his list of contacts. I was smiling, my head half-turned, and the light was better than I’d thought, the picture clear and crisp. I’d be in his phone forever, or until he deleted me.

Alex boop-booped his car with the keyless remote. He’d put on a black wool peacoat with an upturned collar and a long, striped scarf. With his tousled hair and long bangs he could’ve been a catalog model, and I mentally snapped a few shots of him looking into a sunset, maybe standing next to a Golden Retriever, advertising something sexy like cologne or designer sunglasses. Not that I ever got those sorts of jobs, but someday I might.

He caught me looking and smiled like he was used to being stared at. “Ready?”

“Yep. Follow me.”

He put a hand over his heart and gave a half-bow. “Wherever you may go.”

My mouth opened, flippant words ready to spill out, but somehow they got tangled up on my tongue and all I managed was a smile. It had been quite a while since any man had left me speechless with something as simple as a grin and a few words. No wonder Patrick had warned me off. Alex Kennedy was trouble, unfortunately of the best kind.

And he didn’t like girls, I reminded myself. “I’ll be in the silver Impala.”

I kept my eye on him in the rearview mirror the entire trip, but Alex had no trouble navigating the sparse traffic and keeping up with me. We pulled into the alley next to the three-story building that had once been the firehouse on Annville’s Main Street and parked in the lot behind it. He got out before I did and tipped his head back to look up at the building.

“Sweet.”

I felt a rush of pride as we both took a minute to look at the building’s brick backside. The iron fire escape wasn’t pretty but even so, the building was impressive. And I owned it. The whole thing, just me.

“So, this is Annville,” Alex said.

A car crept slowly along the alley and kicked up a stray grocery bag I snagged to toss in the trash. While living in Harrisburg I wouldn’t have bothered, but since moving to the small town I’d taken more pride. “Yep. In all its glory.”

Alex, hands in his pockets, turned around in a circle to give everything another once-over. “Nice.”

I laughed as I turned the key in the back door’s lock. “It will be quite a change from your international globe-trotting.”

“That’s okay. I grew up in a small town. Not as small as this,” he amended, stepping through after me and stomping his feet on the mat. “But believe me, I didn’t grow up as a world traveler.”

The long, narrow hall led to a three-story foyer with the wide, wooden spiraling staircase to our right and the door to the ground-floor apartment to the left. Directly ahead, a front door opened onto the sidewalk along Main Street, and tall windows let in a lot of light. Alex looked up, smiling, and let out a whistle.

I looked over my shoulder at him as I opened the door to the ground floor flat. “Come inside.”

It wasn’t anything special – a living room, dining area and kitchen with a bathroom and two bedrooms that had been carved from what had once been the garage housing the firetrucks. It was darker than my place and didn’t have big windows like the apartments on the second and third floors, but it did have immense, broad beams in the ceiling, and a nice, open layout.

“What do you think?”

Alex walked around, checking out the wooden floors, the plastered walls. He tested out the sprung-cushioned loveseat left behind by the previous tenants and peeked into the kitchen while I watched. He looked into one bedroom, then the other, and finally the bath. The whole tour took about seven minutes. He turned to me with a broad grin.

“I’ll take it.”

“Really? That fast, huh?”

“Sure. It beats sleeping on someone’s couch,” he said. “I like it.”

“You don’t even know the price,” I pointed out, though I hadn’t planned on charging much since the place did need some work and something was better than the nothing I’d had from it before.

“Name it.”

I thought. “Seven hundred a month?”

“Sold.”

“Should I have asked for more?”

Alex looked around. “Probably. That couch adds a lot of value. The smell, especially.”

“It doesn’t smell!” I cried, horrified. “Does it smell?”

He laughed. “I’m kidding you, Olivia. It’s fine. So…you want first and last month’s rent? A security deposit? Got paperwork to sign?”

I hadn’t thought that far ahead. “Umm…”

Alex came forward, hand out. I thought he meant to shake but when he took it, he didn’t let go. He pumped my hand slowly, smiling. “Maybe we should just spit on our palms.”

“Wow. No. How about we skip that part. First and last month’s rent is fine, if you have it.”

“I have it.” Alex squeezed my hand and let go, then looked around again. “When can I move in?”

“Whenever you want.”

“Sweet.” He turned to me. “Next week? It’ll take some time for me to get some things shipped here. Buy a bed. That sort of thing.”

“That’s fine. I’ll get you a copy of the keys.”

Alex studied me. “You sure you don’t need references or anything like that?”

“Why? Because you’re trouble?”

Alex laughed. “Right. That’s me.”

“I can handle you,” I said.

“I’m sure you can.” Alex’s stomach rumbled suddenly and loudly.

After the pancake orgy earlier, I’d have thought I wouldn’t eat until the next day but of course my own stomach had to answer his.

“Let me take you to dinner,” he said.

“It’s only three o’clock.”

“Late lunch, then.” He grinned. “Where do you want to go?”

“Alex…I really need to get some work done.”

“Olivia,” he wheedled, a man totally used to getting his own way. “I heard your stomach rumbling, you can’t deny you’re hungry.”

I’d known him for less than forty-eight hours, and already I’d seen how he looked when he came, tasted his cooking, had my ass handed to me playing Dance Dance Revolution and now I was going to practically be living with him.

I let Alex take me to dinner, too.

* * *

It was hard to eat while laughing, and he wasn’t giving me much chance to do anything else. Alex had stories, and if I could tell that many of them were exaggerated for effect, it was also easy to believe them. He’d been all over, done so much, I felt like a real country mouse beside him.

“What is your story, really,” I said over slices of cheesecake and mugs of espresso. “How’d you make it here from Japan?”

“I came from Holland, actually. Before that I was in Singapore. Went to Scotland, too.”

I made a face. “Smart ass. You didn’t come to central PA just to visit Patrick?”

“Well…” Alex shrugged. “He invited me, for one thing, and it was on my way back home. Plus, I had a lead on this consulting gig. It all worked out.”

“Where’s home?”

“I’m from Ohio. Sandusky.”

“Cedar Point!” I said. “I’ve been there.”

“Yeah. That’s the place.” Alex drank some espresso and leaned back in the booth. He still wore the long scarf, although his peacoat was scrunched in a pile by his side. “I thought I’d get back there for the holidays, but it looks like I’ll be staying here instead.”

“How come?”

This time Alex did more than glance at me. He gave me the full weight of his gaze. “I haven’t been back in a long time. Sometimes, the longer you stay away from something the harder it is to go back there.”

I knew that already. “Yeah. I guess you’re right. So…you don’t get along with your family?”

A pause, a breath. He raised a brow.

“Too personal?” I asked.

“No. Just not sure how to answer.”

“You don’t have to,” I said.

He shook his head. “No, it’s okay. Have you heard the expression ‘home is the place where they have to take you in?’ Or whatever it is?”

“Of course.” I licked the tines of my fork and then dragged it through the chocolate syrup on my plate.

“Well, let’s just say I’m more of a ‘you can’t go home again’ type of guy.”

“Wow. That’s too bad.”

“Yeah. I guess so. I used to not get along with my family at all. My dad was…” Alex hesitated again, then kept going before I could tell him once more he didn’t have to speak. “He’s an asshole. I was going to say he was an asshole, but I guess he still is. He doesn’t drink any more, but he’s kind of an ass anyway. I think that’s just who he is.”

I sipped at the last of my coffee. “But?”

“But he’s trying. I guess. Not that I think my dad and I are ever going to go on that big father-son fishing trip or anything,” he added.

“You never know.”

“I know,” Alex said pointedly. “But at least he talks to me when I call home. And he cashes the checks I send. Well, hell, he always did that.”

He laughed. I laughed a second later, thinking I should feel a little awkward about this sharing but…not.

“People change,” I said.

“Everything changes.” Alex shrugged and looked away. “Shit happens. Anyway, I’d been working overseas for a long time. Sold my company a few years ago and wasn’t doing a whole lot. I went back home for the summer and…fuck.”

A harsh word, a little out of place for the circumstances. It put me on the edge of my seat. It sounded good, coming from him, like he said it a lot. He must’ve been keeping himself in line until now. I liked thinking he might be letting go.

“Let’s just say I remembered all the reasons I’d left home in the first place.” He flicked his bangs from his face with a practiced jerk. “Anyway, I got some offers to do some consulting, got a start with a new company. Traveled for a while, went back overseas. Worked for a while in Japan. That’s where I met Patrick. But the job ended, and I had to go somewhere. Thought I’d travel around my homeland instead of being a stranger in a strange land.”

“I love that book.”

He looked at me. “Me too.”

“So what, you’re not working at all? Just going wherever you want, whenever?”

“Sleeping on a series of couches.” Alex paused to bite some cheesecake. “I’m sort of a professional houseguest.

“That sounds…” I laughed.

He laughed, too. “Shitty?”

“Sort of.”

He shrugged. “I’m good at making a pain of myself by abusing hospitality.”

“I don’t see that about you at all.” I thought of how he’d moved around Patrick’s kitchen, making himself at home, but not overstepping. “Besides, people wouldn’t invite you to stay if they didn’t like you.”

Alex dragged his fork through the cheesecake and kept his gaze there, too. “Sure. I guess so. But now I don’t have to worry about it anymore, right?”

Warmth eased over my cheeks at that, and I couldn’t keep my smile tucked away. “I guess not. I’ve got your first and last in my pocket, and it’s pretty much already spent.”

“I guess you’re not treating for dinner, then.” He reached to drag his fork through the last bite of my cheesecake and while I might’ve stabbed out the eyes of anyone else who dare do such a thing, I could only laugh at him.

“No way. You invited me.”

I don’t think it’s possible to know someone in just a couple days, a few hours. I didn’t believe I knew him then, no matter what I’d seen or said. But at that moment, I believed I could know him. More than that, I believed I wanted to.

“That’s right, I did. The person who asks should always pay for the date.”

He looked up at me with those dark eyes, that soft, smirking mouth, and I once again found myself without words and wondering how he managed to strike me so stupid with nothing but a glance.

“C’mon,” Alex said as he got up from the table. “Let’s get out of here.”

And I followed.

* * *

The first clue I had that Alex had actually moved in was the different car in my parking lot. It wasn’t a new car, but whoa. Bright yellow Camaro with black accents? Not at all what I’d have picked for my new downstairs neighbor. It looked to be from the mid-to-late eighties, and the only reason I could guess that close being that my older brother Bert was something of a muscle car buff and would often wax poetic about a certain type of car.

I pulled in beside it and stepped out to look it over. The car itself was in fine but not pristine condition, the interior a little more worn. This wasn’t even a showpiece car. This was a butch, wheels a-rollin’, smoke-out-at-a-traffic-light sort of car.

I liked it.

It had only been a few days since we’d sealed the deal without the spit on our palms, and I’d put the cash Alex had paid me with to good use – toward groceries and some bills and added a new photo printer I didn’t need but really wanted. I hadn’t seen him since Sunday, although he’d left a message on my voice mail telling me he’d be moving in some time this week. Judging by the car and the boxes stacked up in the front entry, he’d made a good start.

His door opened as my foot hit the first stair, and I turned, resting the heavy printer box on the railing to rest my arms. “Hi.”

“Olivia.” Warm and gooey caramel, smooth and yummy, that was his voice. “Hey, can I give you a hand?”

I’d have said no but for the fact I’d been stupid and tried to carry not only my three bags of groceries but also the printer, and my arms were already shaking. “Yeah, that would be great. Can you grab –”

He’d already lifted the heavy box from my hands. “I got it. You go on ahead.”

I shifted the plastic bags in my two fists and led the way up the stairs to my own door, unlocked it and pushed it open. “Thanks, you can put the box over there on the dresser at the foot of the stairs.”

I pointed to one of the dozen dressers I’d collected from thrift shops and used furniture stores. Patrick called it a fetish. I called it a practical use of space and an appreciation for recycling. The one I meant was long and low, about thigh-height on me. I’d covered it with a collage of articles and photos cut from the stash of photography magazines I no longer subscribed to. It fit just right against the wall under the set of metal spiral stairs leading up to the loft, and because of this was covered with all the junk I meant to take up there and consistently forgot.

Alex set the box next to a collection of hardback novels I’d picked up at a library sale and hadn’t had time yet to crack open. “Big Jackie Collins fan, huh?”

I laughed. “Hey. Some books are bad because they’re bad. Some books are good because they’re bad.”

He looked over his shoulder at me. “People, too.”

Before I could answer that he’d stepped back to look up through the spiral stairs, his hands on his hips. “What’s up there?”

“Just the loft.”

“Can I see it?”

“Sure.” I followed him up the winding stairs.

At the top, Alex let out a low, impressed whistle. “Sweet.”

Downstairs, the large open space and elevated ceilings had dwarfed my few pieces of furniture. But up here I’d made this space comfy and cozy with a jumble of thrift store and salvage pieces—a curving sectional that had come from a hotel lobby, a low coffee table, and dozens of cushions. The floor-to-ceiling windows that let in so much light below were bisected a few inches from the ceiling by the loft’s floor, and I’d hung the glass with sheer colored scarves and strings of beads. A cheap paper shade lantern from IKEA dangled from a corner.

“I read up here.” It wasn’t really big enough to do much else.

Alex ducked reflexively as he stepped into the loft’s center. He wasn’t in danger of bumping his head, but the ceiling was so low up here it felt possible. Grinning over his shoulder at me, he jumped onto the sectional and bounced a little, then put his hands behind his head and his feet on the table.

“Awesome.” He looked at the pile of books stacked on the floor next to the sofa. “More Jackie?”

“Probably.” I tilted my head sideways to check out the titles. Lots of science fiction, some romance, a couple of mysteries. “I think there’s a little bit of everything there.”

Alex lifted the book from the top of the pile. “Robert R. McCammon?”

“Swan Song. Have you read it?”

He shook his head. “No. Should I?”

“It’s scary,” I told him. “You can borrow it, if you want.”

Grinning, he tucked the book into his fist and stood. “Thanks.”

Alex was tall but not big, not broad, more lean than anything. Yet he took up an awful lot of space. He stretched up one arm and placed his hand flat on the ceiling, and the lines of his body shifted. A hip went down, a knee bent. Once again, I pictured him in a catalog. He had a face that could convince people they wanted stuff they couldn’t afford and didn’t need.

“Well, I’d better get back,” he said after a spare few seconds.

“Lots of unpacking?” I asked over my shoulder as he followed me down the stairs.

“Umm…no.” He laughed. “I don’t have a lot of stuff.”

“But you got a new ride. I saw it out back.”

Alex laughed again. “Yeah. Fucking Bumblebee. What can I say? I got my first hard-on for the Transformers.”

“Better that than Rainbow Brite, I guess. Or the Smurfs.”

We laughed together and he looked around my apartment again. The layout of my place was a little different than his, with more open space and higher ceilings, plus the loft. It was brighter, too.

“Nice place.”

“Thanks. I can’t take much credit for it. I bought it already made into apartments. Hey, would you like some hot tea? I just got some chai.”

“That would be great.”

I left him to make himself at home while I heated the water and put away my groceries. I had no doubt he would, and even though I was usually one to guard my privacy, that was surprisingly okay with me. By the time I came out of the kitchen with two mugs of steaming chai, he’d made the tour around my apartment.

“You took all these?” Alex took the mug without looking at me, his gaze fixed on the photos I’d hung in stark glass frames without mats.

“Yes.”

We studied them together. I warmed my hands on my mug. He sipped. He said nothing for so many minutes I began to feel nervous, as though I wanted to speak. Had to speak. I bit my tongue, determined not to ask him what he thought.

“This one.” He pointed to a shot of me and Patrick at the far end. “You didn’t take this one.”

“Oh. No.” I’d hung it there because it was a favorite, a candid shot of us in happy times. Our hands were linked, my head on his shoulder. We looked like a normal couple.

Alex sipped more chai.

“I should take it down, I guess.” I made no move to do so.

He looked at me then. “Why?”

“Well…because…it’s a lie.” It wasn’t what I’d expected to say, but once the words came out, they felt right. “That picture isn’t real. It was never real.”

Alex handed me his mug, and I took it automatically. When he hooked the frame off its hook I made an unexpected noise of protest. He gave me a look and took the single step up onto the landing to where my dining table was. He put the photo face down on it.

“Now, it’s down.” He reached for his mug, and I handed it to him. “Feel any better?”

“No.” But I laughed a little. “Thanks.”

“Hey, do you have any plans for tonight? I know it’s Friday. You probably have something going on.”

I had to work the early shift at Foto Folks the next morning. “Actually, I don’t.”

“I just picked up a couple of DVDs at the thrift store. And, like a D-bag, didn’t remember I don’t have a TV yet. Or a DVD player.”

“Ah. So you’re going to use me for mine, is that it?”

“I’d be ashamed to say yes, but it’s the truth. Do you have one?”

I sipped from my mug as I pretended to think about it. “What did you buy?”

“The new Transformers movie. And Harold and Maude.”

“Yeah, wow, because those two are so similar,” I told him with a laugh. “But I haven’t seen the Transformers and it’s been years since I watched Harold and Maude. Sure. I’ll let you use my TV. And I do happen to have a DVD player, but I’m not sure if it still works.”

“I’ll buy the pizza, how’s that?”

“Sounds like a plan.”

We made arrangements to meet later, and Alex showed up at six p.m. with a large pizza from the place down the street in one hand and a bunch of DVDs in the other. I hadn’t done more than change my clothes into Friday-night-stay-at-home sweatpants and a T-shirt, but he’d showered and shaved and wafted through my door on a delicious cloud of garlic and cologne. I wondered if I should’ve made more of an effort.

“Dinner by candlelight?” He asked as he set the pizza on my dining table.

“Oh…no. They’re not for ambience.” Lighting candles was something I did on Friday nights when I wasn’t out and about, a habit left over from my childhood when my mom had made a point of lighting candles even if she’d done very little else to usher in the Sabbath. Big change from then until now, when her life revolved around it.

He gave me a quizzical look. “Are you Jewish?”

I shouldn’t have been surprised he guessed – a world traveler would probably have encountered some Jews somewhere along the way. “Not really. Sort of.”

“Oooookay.”

I laughed, self-conscious. “It’s complicated.”

“Fair enough. It’s not any of my business.” He glanced at the candles. “They’re pretty, though.”

“Thanks.” My mother had given me the candlesticks. I don’t think she knew I used them. At least I’d never told her. “What can I get you to drink?”

Moving right along. Alex got the hint. “Water’s good.”

“You sure? I have some red wine. In a bottle even, not from a box.”

He made an impressed face. “Fancy. But no, thanks.”

“Do you mind if I have some?”

My question seemed to surprise him. “No, of course not. It’s your house.”

He’d been gracious enough not to push me on the religion issue; I gave him the same treatment about the drinking. We piled slices of pizza on our plates and ate in front of the television while the Transformers blew up a lot of stuff and Harold fell in love with Maude. We laughed a lot and talked over the movies. We sat at opposite ends of the couch, but our feet met in the middle, nudging every so often.

It was the nicest night I’d had in a long time, and I told him so.

“Get out of here.” Alex flipped a hand at me.

“I’m serious!”

“Well. Good. I’m glad.”

A few glasses of red wine had left me mellow and languid. “It’s nice, just hanging out with you, Alex. No pressure. None of that stupid back and forth stuff.”

He was silent for a few seconds as the credits rolled. “Thanks. It’s nice hanging out with you, too.”

I yawned under cover of my hand. “But it’s late, and I have to get up early tomorrow.”

“Work?”

“Yeah. Think of me while you’re still snuggled down under the blankets in the morning.”

He laughed and got up, held out a hand to help me up, too. “Oh. I’m sure I will.”

Our fingers had linked, but now he let me go. I watched as he popped open the DVD player to take out the disc and slipped it into the plastic case. He caught me looking as he turned.

“We should do this again,” I said. “It was fun.”

I wasn’t drunk, but I was tired and more than a bit fuzzy. I couldn’t quite read his smile or the look in his eyes – something was there that looked like amusement. Something beneath that, too deep to decipher.

“Yeah. I’d like that. Good night, Olivia.” Alex didn’t move toward the door.

This was the point of the night where, with another man, I’d have been tipping my face up for a kiss. The part of the night where I’d already have decided if he were going to spend the night or be kicked out. Instead, we both laughed at the same time. He stepped away. Whatever tension I’d imagined – and it had to be imagined – faded.

“Good night, Olivia. See you.”

“Night,” I called after him as he let himself out the door. “Catch you later.”

The door clicked shut behind him. I gathered the trash and put the leftover pizza in the fridge, then padded into my bathroom for a hot shower so I wouldn’t have to wake up so early the next morning. Usually the steam and water relax me enough so that I’m boneless by the time I come out, ready immediately for sleep, but not this night.

My soap-slick hands slid over my skin. Nipples tight. An ache between my legs. I wasn’t making myself come with Alex’s face in mind, his long, lean body…the sound of his moan. I wasn’t sliding my hands over my breasts and thighs and belly pretending they belonged to him. I was absolutely not laying in darkness on my bed with my legs spread, a finger in my cunt and another on my clit, working my body into ecstasy while I pretended it was him.

All right, so I was. It was impossible not to. He was beautiful and sexy and the closest I’d had to a date in months. That was by choice, since plenty of men asked me out but very few impressed me. And he wasn’t into women. I’d seen evidence of that with my own eyes, even if Patrick hadn’t warned me off him.

Yet my body gave it up for him, my mind swirling with thoughts of how wrong it was. How stupid and useless. My mind knew better, but my pussy didn’t care. I slid fingers deep inside my hot, slick flesh and felt the clamp and grip of my internal muscles as I spasmed. My clit throbbed, pressure building while I tapped a fingertip in a slow beating rhythm on top. Teasing. Holding off.

Until at last I thought once more of the sound of his voice, my memory conveniently merging the sound of his groan with my name and the way he said “fuck me.” In my head it had become a command, not an exclamation of surprise. And as I surged up and over and down into the spiral of heat and pleasure, I wished he would say it to me for real.

𓆩♡𓆪

Chapter 4

“I haven’t seen you in forever.” Patrick frowned. “You never return my calls, and I sent you about four dozen pings at Connex and you ignored me there, too.”

I fiddled with my camera settings and took a few shots of nothing just to test them. “I’ve been busy with work. I haven’t even logged in to Connex lately. What sorts of pings?”

“I invited you to our New Year’s Party. Teddy thinks I’m crazy for having another party so soon after the last one. But what can I say? I like parties. Besides, I don’t want to go out anyplace around here for New Year’s Eve, and nobody invited us anywhere.” Patrick shrugged. “You’ll come.”

“What if I have plans? Turn to the left a little. Hold up the cup. Look like, c’mon Patrick, look like you’re enjoying it.” I looked through my lens to frame the shot I was supposed to use in an ad for a local café. “I’ve seen you look more enthused about watching Lawrence Welk reruns.”

“What do you want me to do, look like I’m getting ready to fuck the mug?” Patrick frowned and lifted the cup higher and forced an entirely false grin onto his handsome mouth. “Is this better? How’s this, Olivia? Ooh, coffee, I’m so horny for you…”

I snapped a couple of shots just to annoy him with later, when he saw how ridiculous he looked. “Quit being a jerk. C’mon, I need this for tomorrow.”

“Nothing like running behind schedule.” Patrick licked the mug.

I snapped another shot and thought I might frame that one as a gift. “It’s a last-minute job, and I can’t afford to turn them down.”

He shot me a glance, then put his pout into place. “How’s this.”

“A little less constipated, but yes. Good.” Finally, I got something that would work. It wasn’t art, but it would do. Patrick put the mug down while I transferred the pictures to my computer.

“You’ll come, right? And dinner on Friday. You haven’t been over since the party.” He flipped through the large album of photos I’d chosen as my best to show off to potential clients. “Oh, I like this one. Why don’t you do more of these, Livvy? They’re so good.”

I glanced at the picture, a nude I’d taken at a photography workshop I’d gone to the year before. “Because I’m not an erotic photographer and I don’t have much use for nudes.”

“She’s pretty.”

I gave him a look. “Yes. She is. She’s a model.”

He flipped a few more pages. “I like this one, too.”

A landscape. Nothing special. I could add text to it and play with the dimensions to use in brochures or websites. I shrugged.

“You don’t take compliments very well.”

I laughed and began toying with the pictures I’d taken of him. “I want to make my living doing this, Patrick. I don’t have any grand ideas of becoming a famous artiste. The work’s good. Yes. I get it. I’m not setting up shop at the street fair to sell my prints, okay?”

“You could have a gallery show. Your work is good, as good as some of the stuff I’ve seen hanging up downtown. You know I have a friend of a friend –”

“Stop,” I told him firmly. “Patrick, I love you, but I’m not having a gallery show. And besides, I know people too, you know. It’s not like I couldn’t get something going if I wanted to.”

“So why don’t you?” Patrick leaned against the large wooden chest of drawers I’d salvaged from the back alley.

I thought about warning him he’d get his designer jeans dirty rubbing up against the old wood but decided against it. As fussy as Patrick could be, he liked to pretend sometimes he wasn’t, especially when we were alone and sort of reverted to the way we’d been as a couple. When he’d had to be what he felt was “manly.”

“Because I don’t want to.” I shrugged again.

“You should do it anyway.”

Now I turned to look at him, full-on. “You know, you can leave any time.”

Patrick-my-boyfriend would never have flipped me the finger. Patrick-my-boyfriend had insisted on using tools and playing sports. He’d farted and burped a lot more back then. I couldn’t say I wasn’t happy he’d let go of that.

“You don’t go that way, remember?” I said with a glance at his middle finger.

Patrick snorted and stood up. “You’ll come to dinner.”

The past two Fridays I’d spent watching movies with Alex. “I might have plans.”

“What on earth could you be doing on a Friday night that would be better than games and food and drinks at my house?” He paused. “Do you have a date?”

“I love how you make that sound like science fiction.” I sighed, giving up trying to work on the pictures with him there. “As a matter of fact, my tenant and I are probably going to be watching the entire BBC Production of Pride and Prejudice. The Colin Firth version.”

Patrick gasped and recoiled. “What? You…with him? But…”

He looked so shocked and hurt I shouldn’t have laughed, but I did. “He’s never seen it.”

“Liv!”

“Patrick!” I mocked.

He shook his head, frowning, brows pulled low over his blue eyes. “I knew you renting to him was going to be bad.”

“What’s bad about it?”

Alex had been great. He took the big garbage cans out to the dumpster in back, had cooked dinner for me twice the week before and hung out watching old movies with me. He had a great sense of humor and didn’t play his music too loud. He also liked to do yoga, shirtless, and that was a bonus. I’d also found myself unable to sleep for thinking of him, but I didn’t want Patrick to know that. I sounded a little too gushy, too perky, but my focus was on the computer screen and not my tone of voice. Patrick’s silence alerted me to my faux pas, and I turned to look at him.

“Don’t be like that.”

“Well, you haven’t called me like, a week,” he said. “I thought you were going to come over to watch Supernatural on the big screen. You know Teddy bought the Blu-rays.”

“I’ve had to work, Patrick, I can’t just throw all that aside all the time.” I tried to sound gentle, and it came out annoyed. Probably because I was annoyed.

Patrick just glared. He was jealous. This realization punched an incredulous laugh out of me. He hadn’t been jealous of the last three guys I’d dated, but he was jealous of this?

“Oh, Patrick.”

We knew each other well enough that some things didn’t need to be spelled out. He frowned and kicked at the floor. “I guess you’ll be spending Christmas with him, then?”

“Instead of you?”

He crossed his arms and looked dour.

“I do have a family, Patrick. My dad’s invited me home with him and Marjorie. And my brothers have, too.”

“And you’re going to go?”

“I think so. I don’t see them that much.” My brothers had invited me for past holidays and I’d declined, not wanting to make a trip either to Wyoming or Illinois in the winter. I believed them both when they said they’d miss me, but I was also sure they weren’t heart-broken. We’d all grown up. They had families. Kids. Our family had never been as close as some and never as distant as others. What we had worked, at least for us.

“What about your mom?”

“My mother doesn’t celebrate Christmas, remember?” I gave him my full attention, and a scowl. It had certainly been a bit of an issue when we were dating. Not as much as the eventual revelation he preferred sausage to tacos, but it had caused some tension.

“I can’t believe you’re blowing me off for someone else.”

“Get out.” I pointed at the door, but not before Patrick danced closer, just out of reach, to smack his lips at me. I didn’t want to smile or laugh, but I had to. “Out! I have work to do! Isn’t Teddy waiting for you?”

“Teddy’s always waiting for me.”

“And I’m sure he has dinner all ready for you when you get home, too. Don’t be late, hanging around here. Go on. Go.” I shooed him. Patrick grabbed at my hand but missed.

I liked him this way, acting silly the way we’d been together a very long time ago before sex got in the way, and he thought he had to be something he wasn’t. He was different now. We both were. But Patrick was really different with his new friends, his new partner. It might have been the “real” him, but this silliness was part of him, too.

Time had passed, wounds had healed. In many ways Patrick and I were closer than we’d ever been as a couple. I knew in every part of me that mattered that if we’d gone ahead and done it, married, we’d have been miserable and divorced or worse, miserable and not divorced, in less than a year. I was happy my Patrick had found his place in the world with someone who loved him the way he deserved and wanted to be loved, and I didn’t mope around wringing my hands, wishing for my prince to come. Or I tried not to.

Then I was feeling and nostalgic again and hating it. Part of it was the time of year, when I felt caught between my different worlds anyway, but part of it would always just be…Patrick.

“Just don’t forget about me,” he said.

“Oh, Patrick. As if I ever could.” I stood to give him a hug and a kiss he didn’t deserve but I couldn’t deny. “Now. Get out. I’m busy.”

“Call me,” he demanded.

“I will! I will. Now go!”

“Liv…”

“Yes, my dear one?” The words were sweet, my tone a little bitter.

“Nothing. Never mind.” Then he went out and closed the door behind him.

I turned to my computer and lost myself in work. It was better than being lost in anything else.

* * *

I wasn’t brought up stupid.

On the contrary, both my parents were part of the sex, drugs and rock-n-roll generation. Fans of the Grateful Dead. I had two much-older brothers who didn’t think much about shielding me from the movies they watched or music they listened to. I knew about sex.

After my parents divorced when I was five, my dad remarried almost immediately. His new wife Marjorie was an enthusiastic member of The Good Believer Church of God. She brought with her my two stepsisters, Cindy and Stacy, both a year or so older than me. My mom stayed steadfastly single, rarely even dating. My parents were cordial to one another as they shared me, neither ever making me choose, and if there was always a little bit of tension with my dad over my place in his new household, it was made up for by my mother’s complete indulgence in me. We were best friends, my mom and I.

I had my first “real” boyfriend at fourteen, gave my first handjob a year later. Most of my friends had lost their virginity by the time we were sixteen, and I waited another year before I gave it up in my boyfriend’s basement at a graduation party for his older brother. I wasn’t scarred by screwing him, even though we broke up shortly after that. I knew enough to use a condom and was smart enough to go all the way with a guy who’d already proven himself adept at getting me off. It was as fine a first time as I could ask for.

My life changed my senior year of high school. My mom, who favored flowing gypsy skirts and long, unbound hair, had always been a reader, but her choices of material had changed over the past year from Clive Barker and Margaret Atwood to thick, leather-bound copies of the Tanakh and journals on Jewish commentary. I knew about Judaism, although we’d never practiced anything more religious than spinning the dreidel. But now…well, they say there’s nothing like the enthusiasm of a convert. My mother, born and raised Jewish, wasn’t technically a convert, but she was definitely enthusiastic.

Suddenly, most of what we’d done together as a family disappeared, tossed out in the garbage along with an entire pantry of food she’d deemed unfit to eat. She put away half her dishes to keep them unused for a year, the time it would take to make them kosher again. The others she kashered by pouring boiling water over them and becoming a completely meat-free house.

Suddenly we were Jewish and vegetarian. My mom had always been a devout carnivore. The Friday night dinners I could’ve dealt with. The candle-lighting, the baking of challah. But giving up cheeseburgers? No way.

I moved out to live with my dad and Marjorie, who took me in but not quite without making it seem as though I were a burden. It was her duty, I heard her whisper to a girlfriend once, when they were gathered for coffee. Her Christian duty. It bothered her more that I hadn’t been baptized than the fact I was Black, which was good because there was always the chance I might accept Jesus Christ as my savior, but I could never change the color of my skin.

I loved my dad and didn’t mind having to share a bathroom with my stepsisters, or having a small, dank bedroom in the basement. I didn’t mind the prayers before meals, because at least they were giving me plenty of bacon, ohhhhh, bacon. Every morning, bacon and eggs. I didn’t even mind church so much, because the altar boys were cute.

My mother didn’t like any of this, but caught up in her own journey I think she let a lot of things slide. So long as I was with her for the holidays she wanted to celebrate, she didn’t mind what I was doing the rest of the time – if I was there to light the menorah, she was all right with me going home to my dad’s to stuff the stockings. I was smart enough not to tell her about the youth group Marjorie encouraged me to join, or how my dad had been hinting that it might be a good idea for me to get baptized.

I escaped salvation by heading off to college. Where I met Patrick my sophomore year. He lived in my dorm and the first time he smiled at me, I imprinted on him like a duckling. Tall, fair-haired, ruddy cheeked…and Catholic. As in can-name-all-the-martyred-saints-Catholic. I was smitten.

I like to think of life as an infinite jigsaw puzzle with so many pieces that no matter how many you fit, the picture’s never finished. Meeting Patrick was the culmination of a hundred thousand choices. He was the end of only one path, but it was the one I took. No matter how it ended, he was the choice I made and while I’d always felt I would never waste time in regretting it, I was beginning to think I might.

I thought I knew what love was with a handsome boyfriend who was a very good kisser. I thought I knew what it was for three years, all through college, even when all my friends were fucking like bunnies and the sheen of chastity was wearing off. Love is patient, love is kind, right? Love forgives all things?

That’s what I believed then. I wasn’t so sure now.

Our senior year, Patrick got down on one knee and asked me to marry him with a princess-cut diamond ring in one hand and a bouquet of twelve red roses in the other. We set a date. We planned a wedding.

And two weeks before we were due to walk down the aisle at my father’s church, I found out Patrick had been lying to me all along.

I hadn’t been raised stupid, but I’d sure ended up feeling dumb.

* * *

The week passed. I heard the sound of voices as I passed Alex’s apartment, and I saw his car come and go, but I didn’t see him. I ended up watching Pride and Prejudice alone and somehow blaming Patrick for that.

The week before Christmas is busy for most people, even those who don’t celebrate the holiday, and I had a to-do list as long as anyone’s. I hadn’t put up a tree, but I had bought presents. I’d be spending the day with my dad and his family, although my brothers and their wives and children weren’t going to be there. I’d also picked up a slew of last-minute design jobs for after-Christmas sales promotions, and a few portrait sessions for friends looking for down-to-the-wire stocking gifts for friends and relatives.

The little girl in my camera’s viewfinder didn’t have wings, but she was a little angel. Four years old, mop of curly black hair, stubborn little rosebud mouth and a pair of crossed arms. A tiny, bad-ass version of Shirley Temple, including the dress with the bow at the waist.

“No! No, no, no!” She stamped her foot. She pouted. She glared.

“Pippa. Sweetie. Smile for the picture, please?”

Pippa looked at her daddy Steven and stamped her foot again. “I don’t like this dress! I don’t like this headband!”

She tore the bow from her hair and threw it on the ground, and to make sure we all knew just how much she hated it, stepped on it with her patent-leather shoes.

“I blame you,” Pippa’s other daddy, Devon, told me.

I raised a brow. “Gee, thanks.”

Devon laughed as Steven grabbed up the bow and tried to salvage the look. “She’s stubborn, that’s all. A lot like you.”

“Pippa, princess, please –”

“Oh, and her daddy spoiling her has nothing to do with any of that?” I murmured, my attention focused on the scene playing out in front of me. Point and shoot. Click. I captured the battle between father and child with a press of one finger.

“Don’t take pictures of this!” Steven demanded.

Pippa, laughing, dodged his grasp and ran around the studio. Her shoes pounded the old wooden boards, the beat of freedom. She ran fast, that little girl. Just like I always had.

Devon laughed and sat back, shaking his head. I snapped picture after picture. Pippa running. Steven grabbing her up, dangling her upside down, her pretty dress flipping up to show the rumba panties beneath and her springy curls sweeping the floor. Daddy and daughter snuggling close. Then, two daddies with their little girl, the love among them a visible, tangible thing I didn’t control or edit, but merely captured.

“Pippa, do it for daddy,” Steven said. “I want a pretty picture of you to give Nanny and Poppa.”

That rosebud mouth pursed again and the small, fine brows furrowed, but at last Pippa gave a sigh better suited to a little old lady. “Oh, okay. Fine.”

He settled her on the upturned wooden crate and arranged her hair and dress, then stepped back. I framed the shot and took it. Perfect. But even as I tilted the camera to show the digital image to Devon, I knew this wasn’t the one I’d tweak and polish to give them for their wall.

Small arms hugged my knees and I looked into an upturned face. “Lemme see, Livia! Lemmee see the pitcher.”

I knelt beside the little girl and showed her the photo on the screen. She frowned. “I don’t like it.”

“Shh,” I told her, conspiratorial. “Don’t tell your daddy that or he’ll make you sit for another one.”

Even at four, Pippa was smart enough to figure out when a smile was a better weapon. She giggled. I joined her. When she hugged me, her small, soft cheek pressed to mine, I smelled baby shampoo and fabric softener.

“Why don’t you go play with the dollhouse,” I told her. “Let me show your daddies the pictures.”

“I wanna see the pitchers too!”

“You will,” I promised, knowing there was no way to keep her from it but not willing, as her fathers were, to indulge her every whim. “But first I have to put them on my computer. Go play.”

“She listens to you,” Steven said with an exhausted sigh as Pippa skipped off to the corner where I’d placed my old dollhouse. “Thank God.”

I shrugged and slipped the memory card from the back of my camera. I took it to the long, battered table I used instead of a desk and pushed it into the card reader plugged into the back of my Macbook. My photo program opened, showcasing the series of pictures I’d taken. Steven and Devon pulled up chairs on either side.

“Look at that one,” Steven said about the one showing the three of them. “Gorgeous, Liv. Just amazing.”

The heat of pride flushed my cheeks. “Thanks.

“No, seriously. Look at that one.” Devon pointed to one of Pippa, backlit in front of one of the studio’s long, high windows, her dress belled out around her knees as she spun. “How do you do it?”

“Practice. Talent.” I clicked on the shot to enlarge it and toyed with some settings to bring out the contrast of light and dark. “Mostly practice.”

“Anyone can take a snapshot. But what you do is art. Really art.” Devon sounded awed. He turned from the monitor to look at me. “She draws, you know. Pippa does. The pediatrician says kids her age are just barely making stick figures, but she’s already drawing full bodies.”

“I don’t draw,” I told him gently and kept my focus on the screen.

“I’m just saying,” he told me softly.

We worked together for a little while on the shots they liked best, until I’d cleaned them up and added them to a USB drive to take home. I added the raw shots, too, in case they wanted them for any reason. I lingered on the shot of Pippa in front of the window.

“Can I use this one in my portfolio?”

“Of course. Absolutely.” Devon had taken the drive and put it in his bag while Steven went to check on their daughter.

“Thanks.” I’d get a print made later. For now, I looked again, only a moment, before clicking it closed and removing the memory card to place back in my camera.

“You know, Liv…” Devon hesitated until I looked at him, and then he looked across the room. “You know you’re welcome, any time, to see her. Not just when we come over for pictures or when we invite you.”

I followed his gaze with my own. Pippa had rearranged the furniture in the dollhouse, beds in the living room and an oven in the attic. She giggled as Steven took one of the dolls and made it speak to the one in her hand.

“I know. Thanks.”

Devon meant well, so how could I tell him that I didn’t want to invite myself into their home to watch them raise my child? That I appreciated being kept a part of Pippa’s life, but that I didn’t expect or even crave anything more than what I already had? She was my child, but I was not her mother.

“Thanks again for the pictures.” Steven settled a check onto my desk.

I didn’t pick it up. He’d have written it for too much, again, and I didn’t want to be ungracious by arguing with him about the amount. I liked taking pictures, but I liked paying my bills, too. Besides, taking his money made this not a favor, but a job. I think we both preferred it that way.

“Livvy, are you coming to my birthday party? It’s a pretty princess party.” Pippa twirled. “And I’m going to have a piñata.”

I laughed and tugged one of her long, silky curls. “A pretty princess piñata for Pippa. Perfect.”

She tipped her face to look up at me, her eyes squinched shut with glee. “Yes! And all my friends are coming.”

“Then I guess I should come, too. Since I’m your friend.”

Pippa hugged my thighs just briefly before dancing off again. “Yes, yes, you’ll come to my paaarty. And bring a present.”

“Pippa!” Steven said, exasperated.

Devon chuckled and met my eyes. I think he understood me more than his partner did. Steven, hovering just a little too close, watched me. He didn’t say anything, but he didn’t have to. I could imagine how he felt. So I stepped back and watched Pippa, who twirled again, already chattering at her daddy about where she wanted to go for dinner and what she wanted to watch on television when they got home.

“I’m going to take Pippa out to the car. Get her strapped in the seat. Devon?” Steven lifted Pippa’s coat, an entirely impractical white, fur-collared jacket. “You coming?”

“Yep. I’ll be right along.”

Devon waited until the sound of Steven’s boots and Pippa’s patent-leather shoes echoed away down the concrete stairs. He shrugged into his own coat, a soft brown leather that hit him at mid-thigh and belted at the waist. Something in the way he turned his head to look at his hand tying the belt caught my eye, and I lifted my camera to take a shot.

It blurred, but I took another as he looked up at me with a self-conscious smile. I’d missed what I was looking for, something elusive I couldn’t have described in words. “Look back at your hands.”

The moment was lost, though, and I pressed the button to view the blurred shot, thinking how I could fix it. Devon looked over my shoulder. He laughed.

I looked up. “See? It takes practice.”

“And talent,” he told me.

Devon was a tall, broad man with skin the color of dark caramel. He shaved his head and wore a cropped goatee, and when he flexed I always expected to hear the purr of ripping fabric as he popped the seams on his shirt. He was also one of the most gentle men I’ve ever met.

“You should come in and let me take your picture. Just you.”

Devon raised a brow. “Uh huh.”

I punched his arm gently. “I like taking portraits when I’m not at Foto Folks. It would give me material for my portfolio, anyway.”

“We’ll see.” Devon smoothed the front of his coat. “I meant what I said, Liv.”

“About coming over? I know.” My camera made a nice barrier between us. I didn’t want to disappoint Devon, and I knew that’s what would happen. He wouldn’t understand my feelings about his daughter. Nobody seemed to.

“It’s just…we’re family, you know? All of us. I lost my parents years ago and my sister doesn’t speak to me. Family’s important. I don’t want you to think you’re not welcome to be a part of her life.”

I nodded. “I know, Devon.”

“Merry Christmas, Liv.”

“Thanks. Same to you.”

He touched my shoulder gently and left, closing the door behind him. When he’d gone, I sat back in my chair and opened the file with the photos I’d taken today. Devon’s family had disowned him at age seventeen when they found out he was gay, and he’d never reconciled with his parents before they passed away. He’d made his own family, gathered friends around him to love and be loved in return.

Pippa was my child but not my daughter. Steven had requested we not call me Pippa’s mother, and that I sign all parental rights away upon her birth. I’d had no objections. I hadn’t counted on Devon’s love for family making this so complicated.

I took a last look at the photos of the little girl and her parents, her real and true parents. She looked like me and even acted like me a little, and I was blessed to know her. But I was not her mother, and I never would be. I took one last look at the photos, and then I closed the folder.

𓆩♡𓆪

Chapter 5

I didn’t take the photo of Pippa along to my father’s house to show him on Christmas Day. We never spoke of her, or mentioned my pregnancy, which had been unexpected and definitely not welcomed by most people in my life. Instead, I took bags full of gifts for Cindy’s and Stacy’s children, four of them apiece, nieces and nephews I didn’t bother putting “step” in front of.

We had a big ham dinner with all the sides, and I could feel Marjorie staring when I declined the meat to take an extra helping of potatoes, but she didn’t say anything. We opened gifts. My brothers both called, and I spoke to them. I fended off questions about my love life and bragged about my work—not the part at Foto Folks or the photos I took at schools and for sports teams, but the brochures and ads I’d created for personal clients. I relaxed and enjoyed my family and hoped they enjoyed me, too.

I declined the offer to spend the night and drove the hour and a half home blasting everything I could play that wasn’t a Christmas carol. I pulled my car next to Alex’s in my parking lot at just past midnight.

It had been over a week since I’d seen or spoken to him, and I thought about knocking on his door as I passed. Not that he was required to check in with me or anything. In fact, so long as the rent was paid on time, we really didn’t have to interact at all. But we had been, and I missed it. I peeked and saw a line of light beneath his door. I took a deep breath and knocked. He didn’t answer, and my courage fled. Rather than knock again, I started up the stairs and had made it just inside my door when I heard his voice.

“Olivia?”

The best part of skiing is that first moment looking down the mountain. Getting ready to push off. To speed and swoop. To fly. This felt like that moment.

“Hi, Alex. Merry Christmas.”

He wore a pair of jeans and an unbuttoned long-sleeved shirt over nothing else, his hair rumpled, and one cheek creased. “Merry Christmas. I heard you come in.”

“Did I wake you up? I’m sorry.”

“No, it’s okay. I was in a post-Christmas dinner stupor.”

“Do you want…to come in?” I held the door open wider.

“It’s late. That’s okay. I just wanted to give you this.” Alex held up a small box wrapped in silver paper with a crisp blue bow.

I looked at it and then at him. “You got me a present?”

“Sure. It’s that time of year.”

“But I didn’t get you anything.”

“That’s okay. Just open it.”

“Well, come in, then.” I stepped back and he followed, but not too far inside the doorway. The box had been wrapped so I could simply lift the lid without removing the paper. Inside, nestled on a soft bed of pretty fabric, was a bracelet made of polished stones. “It’s beautiful!”

“I’m glad you like it. I know it’s not much –”

“I didn’t get you anything,” I reminded. “It’s pretty. You shouldn’t have, Alex. Really. But thank you.”

“I just wanted to give you something,” he said. “Prove to you I’m not a total douchebag.”

I was startled into laughter. “Oh, God. I don’t think that.”

“No?”

“Of course not.” I paused. “Should I?”

He studied me, brow furrowed. “I just thought…never mind.”

“Thought what?”

He waved a hand. “Nothing. Really.”

I wanted to press him for an explanation but didn’t. I slipped the bracelet on my wrist and held it up to tilt it back and forth, admiring it. “Thank you.”

Neither of us moved. I hefted a tote bag full of leftovers Marjorie had packed for me. “Are you hungry?”

Alex put a hand on his stomach. “Wow. Um…no. I don’t think I’ll ever be hungry again.”

I laughed. “Until tomorrow.”

His smile drifted slowly across his mouth. “Yeah. I’m sure I’ll want to eat again tomorrow.”

“All right, then.” Again, we stayed still, him a step inside the doorway. “Sure I can’t convince you to take a slice of Christmas ham? My stepmother insisted I take it home, but I’m not going to eat it.”

“Hmmm…I didn’t have any ham…we had something called a turducken, if you can believe that.”

“You did?” I laughed some more. “Wow. Patrick always said he wanted to make one of those for Christmas.”

“Well…yeah,” Alex said. “He invited me over.”

I could think of nothing to say to that but “I’ve never had one.”

“You should try it. Well, I’m going to bed. See you, Olivia. Merry Christmas.”

“Thanks for the bracelet.”

“You’re welcome.” He smiled over his shoulder at me as he left.

I closed the door behind him and leaned against it, not sure why knowing Patrick had invited him over for Christmas had been such a big deal, only that it was.

* * *

If the Chrismakkah extravaganza had been an orgy of food, music and drama, the New Year’s Eve party was much quieter. Still plenty of food and music, but the guest list had been cut way down. Teddy’s sister Susan and her teenage son Jayden, Nadia and Carlos from next door, and a few of Teddy and Patrick’s friends I’d met but didn’t really know. Patrick’s brother Sean. Me.

And, of course, Alex Kennedy.

He came in the back door, arms laden with packages wrapped in silver paper tied with blue bows. I turned from the counter where I’d been slicing cheese and laying out a new supply of crackers. My heart gave a stupid little skip of surprise.

“Alex!”

“Olivia.” His smile flashed white teeth that had never seen braces, I’d bet, because they were just endearingly imperfect enough. “Happy New Year.”

He saw me looking at the bundles he carried. “Patrick said you all exchange New Year’s presents.”

We did. Small things, usually. None of the elaborately wrapped gifts in Alex’s arms looked small.

I grabbed at the one getting ready to topple. “Let me help you.”

“Thanks.”

We piled the presents on the table. I gave him a sideways glance. I was used to the men in Patrick’s house looking pretty and smelling good. Truthfully, it had sort of spoiled me for men in general. Tonight Alex wore jeans, faded just right, and a black fitted T-shirt beneath the heavy peacoat he shrugged off and tossed onto a chair. His hair fell down a little into his eyes as he straightened the packages. I didn’t want to stare but did anyway.

Dinner was simple but good, and the conversation flowed as sweetly as the wine. I sat next to Sean and across from Patrick, Alex at the other end of the table. Maybe I liked leaving the conversation up to everyone else. Or maybe it was still the season making me quiet and watchful. It wasn’t until I saw Patrick touch Teddy’s hand that I realized it was more than simply holiday blues.

There wasn’t anything sexual about the touch. That I’d seen plenty, in the days when Patrick in his newfound gayness had fucked his way through half the city and not been too ashamed or too tactful not to regale me with the details. The way Patrick touched his lover’s hand was comfortable, a gentle, brief squeeze.

My eyes burned. Next to me, Sean leaned to say something to Teddy’s sister on the other side of me. Everyone was laughing at something I’d missed while I’d been taken up with unexpected jealousy. When I looked down the table to the end, Alex met my gaze with his.

In his eyes I saw a mixture of emotions, most of which looked like some form of pity. It stung in a way I couldn’t shield myself from. It left me naked.

It also lasted only seconds before he was laughing too, ignoring me and my plight, but instead of being grateful for his compassion, I wanted to poke him with a fork. Alex Kennedy, the man who’d had a diva breakup anthem tossed in his face at a holiday party, then let the singer blow him in on a back porch, didn’t have the right to judge me.

“So, Liv,” Sean said when he turned back to me. “What’ve you been up to, lately?”

“Yes, Liv. Tell everyone what you’ve been doing.”

Suddenly the focus of the entire table, I found my mouth inconveniently empty of food, which meant I had to fill it with words. “Oh…I’ve opened my own studio.”

“Recording?” Jayden, who’d been kicking everyone’s butt on a popular guitar-playing game, asked.

“No. Photography. It’s more of an advertising business. Graphic design for local places. Brochures, websites, that sort of thing. I take pictures for the work, rather than using stock photos.”

“But some of your pictures have been used on those sites, right?” Patrick sounded proud, and I didn’t really mind the nudging.

“Pretty much anyone can upload pictures to a stock photo place, but yeah. Some of mine have been very successful.” I’d made more money on selling the rights to some of my images than I could using them exclusively. It wasn’t art. It was business.

“Don’t listen to her. She’s a great photographer. I have some of her landscapes hanging in the living room,” Patrick said.

“You took those?” Sean looked impressed. He leaned a little closer. “Wow.”

I tried to think why this should be such a surprise – I had almost married his brother, after all. It wasn’t like Sean had never met me before. But back then my camera had been a hobby. Now it was a job.

Or, I thought as I caught a whiff of his cologne, he was paying more attention to me than he had back then. I sniffed surreptitiously. He smelled nothing like Patrick, but spicy and masculine just the same. Beneath the table, his knee nudged mine again. This time, I thought it was on purpose.

This close to him, I could see the white flecks in his blue eyes, identical to Patrick’s. Like his brother, Sean had thick blond hair and a mouth that curved just so, and also like his brother he had broad shoulders, a lean waist and a flat, flat belly that begged any straight woman with half a libido to lick it.

Unlike his brother, though, Sean Michael McDonald wasn’t gay.

“Yes. I took those.”

The conversation moved on after that, but I’m not sure what we talked about. I didn’t look at Sean again. I didn’t have to. I knew all too well that he was right there.

After dinner came the opening of the gifts and more wine. I kept my glass full by mostly pretending to sip. Alcohol’s never good mixed with self-pity, especially on New Year’s Eve at an ex-lover’s house to which you have not brought a date.

The rule of the gifts was that they had to be small. Handmade, or inexpensive. Nothing too fancy, and everyone was to bring an extra to pass out in a grab bag exchange. I got a great new pair of soft driving gloves, a more-than-fair exchange for the gas station gift card I’d tucked into the basket of goodies to be passed around. There were personal gifts, too, obviously, and I made out well there, too, but better for me was watching the faces of Teddy and Patrick as they opened the gift I’d brought for them both.

“Liv, this is…amazing.” Teddy stroked the sleek mahogany frame. “Beautiful. Really.”

“When did you take this?” Patrick asked softly.

“Over the summer.” We’d gone to a local park to have a picnic dinner and listen to a band play on the riverfront. I’d captured the two of them sitting with the river behind them, their gazes locked and mouths almost touching. Getting ready to kiss.

They hadn’t noticed me in that moment and behind the shield of my camera I’d convinced myself I hadn’t felt like a third wheel. Now I couldn’t help remembering that I had. Beside me, Sean shifted until his thigh nudged mine again. Behind me, I felt the warmth of his arm snake along the back of the couch. The hairs on the back of my neck stood up.

Alex was watching me.

I forced myself to look at Patrick. “I hope you like it.”

“Love it,” he said. “Look, Teddy, it will go right there.”

As they talked about the perfect place to hang the picture, Sean’s fingertip whispered along the back of my neck. I shivered. Sean leaned close to whisper in my ear.

“Cold?”

I turned, just a little, away. “A little.”

“Maybe you need a sweater or something.”

As other gifts were opened, the room rang with laughter. Patrick certainly wasn’t looking at us. In the past there had been many times when everything around me disappeared but for the sound of Patrick’s voice, or the sight of his face. Almost the same voice murmured next to me, now. Almost the same eyes looked at me.

There was still a moment when it could have gone a different way. If Sean hadn’t shifted again to press his thigh to mine in a move more blatantly sexual than Patrick had ever made on me, or if I’d come with a date the way I’d planned…or if it hadn’t been New Year’s Eve and I hadn’t still been in love with the one man I would never have.

“Actually, I’m going to grab something to drink. I’ll be right back.”

“Want me to come with you?” Sean smiled an easy, quirking smile that would’ve charmed me senseless if it hadn’t been almost identical to his brother’s.

“No. I’ll be right back.” My hard-edged smile must’ve put him off, finally, because I escaped to the kitchen without a tag-along.

I didn’t want a drink, really. I needed some fresh air to clear my head. I was absolutely not going to give in the glums, not tonight, not ever. Not again. I was fine.

I was fine until I shrugged into my coat and found the small, wrapped package in my pocket. I’d meant to give it to Patrick some time when we were alone, not in front of the group. I’d bought him a button featuring the stabbity knife from his favorite cartoon, Kuwaii Not. He’d gotten me hooked on the quirky, sick-sense-of-humor artwork, and it was one thing we still shared that he didn’t with anyone else. I’d wrapped it in non-denominational paper and scribbled his name across it. I’d wanted to make sure, so fucking sure, he knew how casual and careless a present it had been. An afterthought. Not important.

But feeling it there, the button’s round edge through the cheap paper, I knew I was the only one who’d have ever thought it was important, or meaningful.

By the time I got out the back door and down the porch steps, I was crying. My vision blurred. Tears froze on my cheeks. They burned, and I stumbled. I drew in a hitching, labored breath that seared my lungs. I made it all the way down the path and past the detached garage before I burst into raw, hateful sobs. I stopped, a hand on the bare wood, to swipe at my eyes.

“Fuck!” I cried when I saw I was not alone. “Where’d you come from?”

Alex, bundled against the weather, stood beneath the eves. He’d been leaning but straightened now. In one hand he held a cigarette that wasn’t lit.

“I went around the front of the house. Olivia? Are you all right?”

“Do I look like I’m all right?” I’m sure I meant to answer him calmly, but the words shot out of me, riding the backs of more sobs. I pounded the garage wall. “No! I am not all right!”

I covered my face and sobbed into my gloves. The noises in my throat became like that of rusted gears, grinding against each other until the whole machine broke down and stopped. I became aware of a firm hand on my shoulder and then an even firmer chest against my cheek. I hadn’t realized he was so tall until my head fit just beneath Alex’s chin. His coat smelled good. The hand not holding the cigarette stroked down my back.

I’m all for equality of the sexes and everything, but I bet there are few women out there who’d have been able to resist the allure of the comfort Alex offered. Strong arms, manly chest. I didn’t want words or advice. I didn’t even really want to tell him what had happened, I only wanted to stop feeling so bad. When I finally drew away, my sobs had stopped but I didn’t feel any better.

“It’s the most wonderful time of the year my ass.” Alex put the cigarette between his lips. “Holiday time is shitsville.”

I tucked my hands into my pockets. “Yeah.”

He nodded. That was it. No explanation. No further assurances.

I looked him over. The streetlamp made his eyes seem darker, his skin paler. I watched him lip the end of the cigarette, then take it out of his mouth and draw in a breath of frigid air.

“Are you smoking that? Or not?”

“Not,” he said. “I quit.”

“So what the hell are you d-doing out here?” I said around chattering teeth. “It’s freaking freezing.”

“Ah…old habits. You know when you smoke you always have an excuse to duck out of a place when you want to.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” I scrubbed at my face, not just to wipe away tears but to get some warmth circulating. “I should’ve gone out with that guy I met at the coffee shop. He wanted to take me to some package deal at the Hotel Hershey. Dinner and big band dancing. I’m sure there would have been plenty of chocolate, and a guy to kiss at midnight. Do you know how many years it’s been since I had a date to kiss at midnight?”

“Can’t have been that many.”

My laugh sounded faintly of the same grinding gears my sobs had been. “Too many. And not because I haven’t had offers!”

“I wouldn’t have assumed that.”

Surreal. All of this. The night, the conversation. The man in front of me lipped his cigarette again, then let it dangle from the corner of his mouth.

“I didn’t have a formal dress, but that’s not why I didn’t go,” I said.

Alex watched me with a faint smile for my babbling.

“Go ahead and ask me why I passed up a night at the Hotel Hershey to come here, instead.”

“Oh, I know why,” Alex said.

My shoulders slumped. I blinked my sore and swollen eyes. “You do?”

“You love him,” Alex said.

If anything should’ve made me cry that night, it was those three words, said as simply and matter-of-factly as that. Maybe I was cried-out by then, dehydrated. Frozen. All I could manage was the shake of my head and a sigh that blew out my breath in a long plume.

The crack of fireworks came from down the street. A church bell tolled. Tears welled up again and clogged my throat.

“Fuck,” I whispered. “It’s midnight.”

“Happy New Year,” Alex said.

Then he tossed aside the cigarette, pulled me into his arms and kissed me.

𓆩♡𓆪

Chapter 6

His mouth, warm and soft, pressed mine for about five seconds before I managed to react, and by that time, he’d pulled away just enough to murmur against my mouth, “I don’t have any chocolate. Sorry.”

I stepped back and put a hand over my smiling mouth. “It’s all right. You didn’t have to do that.”

He fixed me with a steady gaze. “What makes you think I didn’t want to do that?”

Alex doesn’t like girls, Patrick had said.

“Well, thank you,” I told him. “I’m sorry I cried all over you and burdened you with my blabber. Again. It’s not the best way to start the New Year.”

He put his hand on his stomach and gave a silly little half-bow. “My pleasure. Really. Knight in shining armor shit always makes my New Year. It’s my fucking resolution, actually.”

I’d been sure I wouldn’t laugh for a good, long time, but now I did. Loud. It hurt my throat but felt good just the same. “You should go back inside. Aside from being freezing out here, you’re missing the party.”

He looked over his shoulder, across the yard, to the house. “Right. The party. I think I’m heading home, actually.”

I nodded. “Ah. Okay.”

“You okay to drive?” He moved a little closer and put a hand on my shoulder.

“I wasn’t really drinking. I’ll be fine.”

His fingers squeezed, gently. “You sure? I can drive you.”

“No, really. I’m okay.” I shivered and clamped my teeth shut against further clattering. “I’m going to go. I’m an icicle.”

He laughed and let me go. “So much for global warming, huh? You wouldn’t know it by this weather. Drive carefully, Olivia.”

“I will. And Alex,” I said as he turned toward the sidewalk. He looked back at me. “Thanks again. And Happy New Year.”

He tipped an imaginary hat. “I told you, it was my pleasure.”

He’d already disappeared around the corner of the house when I got my feet moving. I was going to go inside, get my things and head home. No more sitting too close to Sean’s brother, no more mooning over what might have been and never was.

“Where were you?” Patrick cornered me the moment I walked in through the back door. “It’s past midnight. You missed the toast.”

“I needed some air.”

“What the hell are you doing?” Patrick closed his eyes and turned away, held up his hand. “Never mind. I saw you.”

I saw betrayal on Patrick’s face, clear as any expression I’d ever seen there. What picture would tell this story? “Saw me what?”

“With him.” Acid dripped from his voice, but he kept it pitched low with a glance through the kitchen door toward the living room.

“Who? Alex? Jesus, Patrick…it was just…”

“Whatever.” He cut me off with a slash of his hand.

I stopped being sorry just then. Patrick, staring at me with fury burning in his gaze, was jealous. And I, seeing this for the first time, thought of how many other times over the past few years he’d steered me away from or out of potential relationships, knowing I loved him and trusted his judgment as my friend.

“You have no right.” My voice wavered alarmingly.

“I have every right! This is my house!”

“It was a New Year’s kiss from a friend. Shit, Patrick, you’ve gone down on guys when I was in the same room!”

He couldn’t deny that, but he wasn’t going to let that make a difference.

The look he gave me said it all, and then Patrick looked away. His throat worked as he swallowed. I tried to remember if I’d ever seen him this angry with me and couldn’t. We never fought. Patrick and I were always best friends.

“What a really shitty thing to do to me,” he said finally.

“To you? I didn’t do it to you, Patrick. Or to anyone. If anyone has a right to be upset –” It was my turn to swallow against burning words. “I think I should go.”

He blocked the doorway. “You can’t rush out of here. Everyone will want to know why.”

“Do you think I care?” Tired, worn, and still too much in love with him to be able to stand this close without wanting him, I stood my ground but didn’t touch him. “Really, Patrick? Do you think I give a flying fuck what anyone here thinks?”

“I thought you were staying over. It’s New Year’s Eve. Tomorrow we’ll have pancakes and…” He faltered.

“I’m not staying. And really, I think I should go. It’s better.”

“I fucked him, Olivia,” Patrick said tightly after a half a moment. “Just once. Teddy doesn’t know.”

“God, Patrick. Just…oh, my god. When?”

He shook his head, then gave it up. “Christmas.”

“In your house? With Teddy there? What the…” I swallowed hard. Jealous didn’t even describe it. “How could you? And you’re angry with me? What a shitty thing to do!”

“Teddy knows I sometimes sleep with other guys—”

“Yeah, he knows. That’s the point, isn’t it? That he knows who they are? And when you’re doing it? Fuck, Patrick, I wish I didn’t even know this.” About his agreement with Teddy, about his sex life. About everything.

“Don’t you tell him.”

“Do I even know you?” I whispered.

Patrick cleared his throat. “Don’t tell Teddy, Liv. Please.”

“Why would I? I love Teddy. Why would I hurt him like that? Why would you,” I added and rubbed my hand across my eyes. This was one big basket of fucked up. “Why would you tell me this now, anyway?”

“I didn’t tell you. You forced me to tell you.”

He wanted to tell me, or he wouldn’t have. I’d just begun to warm up from being outside, and now I went cold again. From down the hall, Teddy’s loud laughter drifted. I swallowed a sour taste. I crossed my arms, more jealousy stabbing me all over, in tender places I didn’t even know existed.

“Fuck you, Patrick. That’s why you don’t want me hanging around him. You’re not jealous of him, you’re jealous of me?”

“I’m not jealous,” he ground out. “I’m just trying to protect you.”

“From what? Clue me the fuck in, okay? Because it seems to me you’re not trying to protect me from anything. You’re just trying to…fuck. I don’t know what!” I swallowed years of longing. “I am not a fucking coffee pot!”

“What the hell’s that supposed to mean?” Patrick reached for me.

I pulled away. “It means…It just means…What do you want me to do? Make him move out? Not be his friend because you couldn’t keep your dick in your pants? What the fuck do you think is going to happen, Patrick?”

“Nothing,” he said, sullen.

I shook my head. Patrick stepped back. I waited for him to say he was sorry, or to make some effort at touching me again, but I was glad when he didn’t. Nothing he said or did could make this right, or make it go away.

“I’d better go.”

He didn’t try to stop me this time. I pushed past him and into the hall, where I waited for him to come after me. He didn’t. I went down the back stairs and grabbed up my coat. In the front room, the squall of Rock Band had been replaced by the sound of party horns on the television. They’d tuned into the Times Square celebration. The television was showing a local news program, coverage of the post-midnight New Year’s festivities. In Central Pennsylvania we’re a big fan of dropping strange things from the sky on December thirty-first. The newscaster was talking about the giant Lebanon Bologna being donated to feed the homeless.

At home, Alex’s apartment was dark and quiet, no light beneath the door. This time, I didn’t knock.

* * *

“Hallllp!” The small figure behind the towering stack of boxes and bags overflowing her arms cried out, but too late.

I managed to catch a couple of the packages, but most of them hit the floor at our feet. Sarah sighed and stared. I laughed, and she shook her finger at me.

“You’d better hope there was nothing breakable in those.”

“Why on earth would you have bought anything breakable for me?” I crouched to help her gather up all the stuff she’d brought. “Where do you want all this stuff?”

“On the table.”

Sarah had been the one to find the long dining room table set up in the center of my studio. I called it vintage while she referred to it as antique, but it had cost a hundred and sixty bucks at the local church’s resale shop and came with a set of ten chairs. Only two of them had been re-upholstered, and the others were all stacked along the wall, waiting their turn. When it was finished the whole set would be fantastic and impressive, just the sort of thing I’d always dreamed of having in an office of my own.

We settled the packages on the table’s scarred surface. Sarah regarded them critically. “I feel like there should be more.”

I looked at all she’d brought in with her. “More than this?”

Sarah clicked a blue-painted fingernail against her teeth as she mused. “I guess we’ll see when they’re all open.”

I rubbed my hands together. “Then let’s open them up!”

Sarah laughed and grabbed a hair band from her around her wrist, then used it to pile the mass of her blue and purple hair on top of her head. She pushed up the sleeves of her slim-fitted, silver spangled T-shirt and put her hands on the hips of her black skinny jeans, just over the black leather belt with its rhinestone-encrusted belt buckle. She was studying the array of goodies she’d brought while I was studying her, and when she caught me looking, she laughed.

“Sweet, huh?”

“What made you decide to go back to blue?”

She grinned and ran a hand over the unruly strands of multi-hued hair. “I dunno. Orange and red was a little too harsh and green won’t stay in. I like the blue and purple.”

I liked it, too. I’d tried dying my dark hair a few times, but without stripping the color from it first, the color wouldn’t show up. I’d given up on trying to bust out of that box. “I like it, too. I told you that before.”

“I know, I know.” She waved a hand. “I just wanted to try something different.”

I laughed. “Because everyone else has blue and purple hair.”

Sarah made a face and gave me the finger. “Fuck you.”

I blew her a kiss. “Not today. I have a headache.”

She guffawed, the bold, bright laughter that turned heads, and slapped her thigh. “Do you want to see what I brought you or not?”

Of course I did. My studio had been bare and gutted when I bought the old firehouse. Sarah, whose design work I’d have admired even if she weren’t my friend, had agreed to help me turn it into the professional-looking space I desired. In return, I’d promised to do her brochures and website and other graphic design-type stuff. Oh, and to take her picture whenever she wanted, which was usually every time she changed her hair. So that was pretty often.

I didn’t care. She always let me put the best pictures up on my Connex page, the one I kept for the rest of the world and not just friends. She was always willing to pose for me, too, if I had an idea in mind for something special. Sarah loved to dress up and put on makeup but didn’t have any hang-ups about how she looked, or at least not as many as a lot of the “models” I had access to did. And she was okay with doing crazy stuff and looking silly, which most of them most definitely were not.

She pulled a length of material from the first bag. “Picked this up at a yard sale at a Mennonite place last summer. Isn’t it gorgeous?”

She held out the end for me to feel. Soft, auburn velvet, delicately embossed with a faint pattern of trefoils. She caught my gaze.

“For the side wall,” Sarah explained. She pointed to the long, plain, windowless wall. “I’m going to tack up some furring strips, top and bottom, and shirr this top to bottom. I have some other stuff, too, some sheers. You’ll be able to hang your portraits and stuff over it.”

She started opening other packages. Bolts and stray pieces of material spilled out onto the table.

“Sarah, that’s too much. I can’t take your entire fabric supply. I was just going to paint the walls.”

She sighed and turned to me. Sarah’s a good five inches shorter than me. Despite this, she has no problem staring me down. “Liv.”

“Sarah.”

“If I were craving chocolate, would you buy me some?”

“Umm…yes?”

“If I broke up with my boyfriend, you’d take me out dancing, right?”

“Of course.”

“I love fabric. I have a fabric addiction. I crave buying yards and yards and bolts and bolts of material.” Sarah pointed at the pile on my table, then gestured all around the room. “All of this? Is from two boxes in my storage unit. Do you want to know how many boxes I have?”

“Okay. I get it!” I laughed, but she wouldn’t let me go.

“Guess, Liv!” She demanded.

“Ten.”

“Thirty,” Sarah confessed in a whisper as though she were ashamed, although her grin gave her away as anything but. “Thirty boxes of fabric, Olivia. Take this off my hands. Please. So, help a sistah out here.”

The faux “urban” accent had grated my ears coming from Patrick’s neighbor Nadia, but from Sarah it made me laugh. “Fine. But I owe you.”

“Of course you do,” Sarah said matter-of-factly. “Don’t worry, I’ll make you pay.”

Together we sorted the fabric into piles. She’d picked all complementary fabrics, even colors I’d never have thought would go together, but did. Purples with reds and rusts, browns and blacks together. She lined up the fabrics and pulled out a single box of nails.

“Huh,” she said, looking at the box. “These won’t do much good without a hammer.”

“Or the furring strips.”

She looked around the room. “And a ladder. And hey, don’t you have any big, strong men to help with this? Especially ones who’d be happy to work shirtless?”

I sighed. “Yeah. Right. Believe me, if I had a big, strong, shirtless man in my life who liked to use tools, don’t you think I’m bringing him around you. I’m keeping him for myself.”

“Selfish bitch.” Sarah chuckled and hopped up on the table to swing her legs back and forth.

“I’ll see what I have in the back room as far as tools go. I have a ladder back there, too.”

“Make sure you don’t have a hunky handyman back there,” she called after me as I headed into the back room I used as a storage place, dressing room and small kitchen.

I flipped the switch on the wall, which turned on an old standing lamp I’d put in the corner. I needed to replace the overhead fixture. The small circle of light from the standing lamp wasn’t enough to really see what was in all the boxes, some of which I hadn’t even opened since moving into the space. I knew what was in most of them. A few contained untold mysteries. I was pretty sure I’d stashed a toolbox someplace on one of the back shelves.

After a couple moments’ scrambling, I found a box of tools, but not of the hammer and screwdriver variety. I unsnapped the locks and lifted the hinged, plastic lid. From the other room I heard the sound of Sarah’s phone and low-pitched laughter. Inside the box lay a huge, flesh-colored cock, complete with balls and a handy-dandy suction cup to keep it secured to a table or wall. Beneath it in the toolbox’s other compartments were all sorts of sex gadgets – a butt plug still in its original package, boxes of novelty condoms in flavors and shapes, sample packets of lube with names like Slippery Nipplez and Cherry Popper.

This box had been a bridal shower gift to me from a group of college friends. It had gone with me from my dad’s house to my first apartment, the one I’d meant to share with Patrick but had ended up living in alone. And now, somehow it had found its way with a bunch of my other crap, to the storage room in my studio.

I looked at it for a while. It had been a joke when I got it and had become more of a joke later, although I’ll admit it had taken me a long time to see it as funny. I’d put it away when I couldn’t bear to see it, not because of the contents but because of what the gift had been meant to celebrate.

I ran a finger along the monstrous dong and shook my head, laughing. Something like this was too funny to be kept locked away. And after all this time, if I couldn’t break out the huge rubber penis my friends had bought me in anticipation of an unexpectedly canceled wedding to my gay boyfriend, I really needed a better sense of humor.

“Sarah!” I cried, clasping the dong to my crotch and striking a pose in the doorway. “I have something for you! Woo-hoo!”

Yeah. I twirled it like a lasso. Then I jerked my hips back and forth, fucking the air like a porn star on Ecstasy. “Come and get it!”

Of course I hadn’t looked before leaping through the doorway. Of course I’d assumed the pizza man had come and gone, and that Sarah was alone in the office. Of course I was wrong.

Of course it was Alex standing next to Sarah, their mouths agape and eyes wide. Sarah looked back and forth from him to me and shot me a look I knew meant she thought I’d been holding out on her. She recovered first.

“Thanks, Liv, but I’ve already got one like that.”

“Me too,” Alex said after half a moment. “Mine’s not as big, though.”

Sarah guffawed and jerked a thumb at him. “I like this guy.”

I stood in front of him with a gigantic rubber penis in my fist, and I couldn’t find anything witty or smart to say. “Hi, Alex.”

Sarah gave him a long up and down perusal. “Hello, Alex, owner of a huge cock.”

I clapped the hand not full of pseudo-cock to my forehead. “Thank you, subtle Sarah.”

Alex didn’t seem perturbed by the implication we’d be discussing him. He gave Sarah his hand. “Alex Kennedy.”

“Sarah Roth.” She fluttered her eyelashes at him, and he laughed.

“Nice to meet you, Sarah.” He looked at me. “I brought you a rent check.”

Sarah’s brows disappeared into her hairline. “Rent?”

“Remember I told you, I got a tenant?”

Sarah snorted laughter. “Uh huh. You sort of left out a few details on that one.”

I realized I had the dildo in a death-grip, like I was strangling an anaconda. I had no place to put it, so I set it on the table, where it nestled among the piles of fabric. The three of us stared at it.

“That’s a shame,” Sarah said after a minute. She plucked up the dong and swept the fabric out of the way, then suction-cupped it to the table surface. “There you go. Muuuuuch better.”

We all stared at it again.

Alex cleared his throat. “That’s umm…impressive?”

Sarah gave the dildo a flick with her finger that set it bobbing like a metronome. “Well, listen, I’m out of here. Have fun, kids. Liv, I’ll make a run to the hardware store.”

“You don’t have to go,” Alex said. “Not because of me.”

Sarah snapped her fingers at him. “Hell no. I need a trip to the hardware store. I have a serious jones for a new nail gun. Besides, I have plans.”

“What plans?” I asked, suspicious. “You didn’t mention any plans before.”

Sarah held up her phone. “I didn’t have them before, but I do now. And you’ve got company now, anyway. Alex.” Smirking, she gave him another obvious assessment. “Maybe he can help you pound something. Ta, kids. Liv, I’ll call you later. Alex, nice meeting you. Hope to see you again.”

“You too,” he said, and watched her go before turning back to me with a slightly incredulous look. “I feel a little like I’ve been run over by a steamroller.”

I laughed. “That’s Sarah for you.”

“Here.” He handed me an envelope that I put into my pocket. He looked around the room. “Great space.”

I’d forgotten he’d never been up to the studio. “Thanks. It’s the reason I bought the place to begin with.”

“I don’t blame you.” He glanced over his shoulder at me. “You see the potential in things a lot, Olivia.”

The compliment moved me, set me back a little. “Thanks.”

He smiled. “So, I got a call from Patrick.”

“Yeah?”

Alex’s smile twisted a little. “Yeah. Apparently I’m supposed to avoid you?”

“Apparently.” Something in his voice and expression tipped me off that something was a little strange. “What did he say?”

“Umm…” Alex looked discomfited. “A lot of shit.”

“And…what did you say?”

“I told him he was a prick and to fuck off.”

I raised a brow but believed he was telling the truth. “Wow.”

Alex frowned. “Look, Patrick doesn’t own me. Fuck, he doesn’t own you, right?”

“No.”

He shrugged. “I’m not really into being told what to do. For my own fucking good or not.”

“He told you it as for your own good?” I crossed my arms over my chest. “Wow.”

Alex shrugged again but gave me a look softer than his last words had been. “Don’t worry about it. I think he got the picture.”

I cupped my elbows in my opposite hands. “He was a little pissy that we’ve been spending so much time together. Thinks we’re becoming BFF or something.”

It didn’t seem right talking about Patrick with a giant pink penis between us. I yanked it free from the tabletop and put it in a highboy dresser along the wall. Alex didn’t say anything while I did it, and I kept my back to him as I pretended to look for something in one of the drawers.

“What’s the story with you two, anyway?” He asked, mildly enough. I could see his dark eyes. Gray, not brown as I’d thought.

“I don’t think I have a story.”

“Olivia,” Alex said seriously, “everyone has story.”

“Patrick and I used to be a couple.” It was the short version.

“I know that part already.”

I chewed the inside of my lip. “It was years ago. Obviously. Before he was gay.”

Alex tilted his head, gave me an assessing look. “You don’t think he was always queer?”

“No, I…” He’d stumped me for a second. “Right. I meant before he came out. Before he admitted it, I guess. We were a couple when Patrick tried to be straight. How’s that, is that better?”

He didn’t seem to mind I sounded harsh. “And now? What are you now?”

I sighed. “Now…I don’t know what we are. Friends, I guess.”

He made a skeptical noise, then then gave an exaggerated look around. “Annnnnd, moving right along…nice studio.”

“You said that already.”

“I know.”

I laughed. It was easy to laugh with Alex. Easy to put aside the discussion of Patrick I didn’t want to have anyway. “It’s a mess. Sarah was here to help me spiff it up.”

“And I chased her away. I’m sorry.” Alex put a hand on his heart and looked pained.

“Oh, don’t you feel bad. Now that you’re here I can use you. I’ve got a ton of junk that needs to be hauled around,” I said with a grin. “There’s no way I’m tackling anything fancy without Sarah here, but I can paint the walls with stain blocker mildew stuff and clean out the back room.”

“Manual labor?” Alex looked skeptical. Then he cracked his knuckles and rolled his head, cracking his neck. He hopped from foot to foot. “Manly stuff, huh?”

I snorted. “Oh, yes, manly stuff. Because clearly I’m so entrenched with gender stereotypes.”

I couldn’t interpret his long, studying look, or the half-smile that followed it. I’d amused him again, but I couldn’t tell why. I gave him a look of my own.

“You’re not too pretty to work, are you? Afraid of getting your hands dirty?”

“No, Ma’am. I can even use power tools on occasion.”

I snorted lightly. “I bet you can.”

Alex gave a pointed glance at the drawer where I stashed the dildo. “I bet you can, too.”

We both burst into laughter, utterly companionable and uncomplicated. My giggle fluttered into a sigh. He watched me, his dark gray eyes alight.

“What?” I said, wondering at the scrutiny.

“Patrick’s an asshole.”

I frowned a little, not wanting to head back toward that dark mood. “He can be. But so can anyone.”

Alex grunted. “Hell yeah, that’s the truth.”

Alex had never been anything but nice to me – super nice, really, above-and-beyond nice, but I knew he had first-hand experience with being a bit of a prick. I’d seen it myself. But that wasn’t my business. I tried to judge people on what they did to and for me, not for anyone else.

“C’mon. I want to get this space painted by the end of the day so when Sarah comes back again, we can hang the drapes. Because believe me, if it’s not finished, she will kick my ass.”

“She’s a little tyrant, huh?” Alex followed me into the back room and let out a low whistle. “Cool.”

I looked at the wooden shelves constructed from thick barn beams and heavy planks of wood. They reached ten feet high, halfway to the raftered roof. Once they’d been used to store equipment and supplies for the firehouse but now most of them were bare or cluttered with the jumbled mess of everything I needed for the studio or couldn’t fit in my small apartment downstairs.

“This room is what sold it for me. When they put this place up for auction, the realtor didn’t even want to show me this part. Apparently, the former owner’d run out of funds before converting this floor to living space. There was water damage, broken glass. The first time I came up here, I found a dead bird.”

“No wonder she didn’t want to show you.”

It seemed I laughed with him more often than anything else. “Right. Well, I made her, anyway, because to spend that sort of money on two apartments, even with the rent potential, seemed like a very bad choice.”

“And you’re not into making bad choices.”

I flung him a look. “I think we can both agree I’ve made a few.”

“But not in buying this place.” Alex tipped his head back to stare up, up to the roof, where four-foot beams held the weight of the tiles. Then he rubbed his hands together. “Great. What first?”

“First, I want to seal the bricks and paint the studio walls. Give everything a nice, fresh start.”

“Groovy.”

“You don’t have to help me, you know.” I nudged past him to get at the buckets of sealant and paint, the brushes and drop-cloths. “You must have better things to do.”

“Nope.”

I handed him a brush. “Why do I find that hard to believe?”

“Because I’m so damned pretty,” Alex said with a straight face. “And charming.”

I tapped his chest with my paintbrush. “That’s it.”

“Believe it or not, Olivia,” Alex said as he exited the back room after me, each of us carrying a bucket and a brush, “That can actually be a disadvantage.”

“Oh yeah? How so?” I paused to look around the room, seeking the best place to start. I had several buckets of clear brick sealant and a few cans of the dark gold paint I’d picked for the room’s constructed walls. The floor, of scratched and scarred wooden planks, wouldn’t be hurt much by splotches of paint, but I also didn’t have the money to refinish it for a while, so I flung down a drop cloth in one corner.

“For one thing, everyone assumes you already have plans when you don’t, so hardly anybody ever invites you places.” Alex set his bucket of sealant down by the front wall, between the long, floor-to-ceiling windows. “It’s annoying.”

I spread out my drop cloth and opened my paint can. “Oh, yeah? Should I hold you while you cry?”

Alex guffawed. “Am I that pathetic?”

“Sort of, yeah.” My tone said the opposite. I straightened, watching as he bent to open his bucket. He’d shoved his sleeves up high on his elbows and I took a long, satisfied look at his forearms. I’m a sucker for a nice pair of wrists. The tendons underneath are very sexy to me.

I watched as he lifted the heavy bucket and bent to pour some of the sealant into the low pan and soaked the roller brush in it. And yes, I was staring at his ass, because please god, never let knowing it’s stupid get in the way of ogling a fine rear-end.

I also poured paint into my pan and dipped my roller. “Why don’t I believe you?”

“It’s that damn reputation of being an international playboy.” Alex shot a grin over his shoulder. “Thought I’d give being a domestic playboy a try.”

“How’s that working for you?”

“Not so good,” he admitted and began coating the bricks with sealant. “It’s not as exotic, that’s for sure.”

Again, I submitted to laughter and reveled in it. “Everyone’s got their talents.”

We painted for a while in casual silence. The room got hotter. I’d turned to ask him if he wanted something cold to drink and stopped short, slapped to silence by what I saw.

He’d lifted the hem of his shirt to wipe his face. His belly was tight, taut, a single line of hair trailing from his navel and into the waistband of his low-slung jeans. His belly button was perfection, I remember that, thinking how could a dip and hollow of flesh be so perfect?

“Don’t move,” I said.

The picture in my head had already appeared. All I needed was to make it happen. I wiped my hands on the seat of my jeans, not caring if I left streaks, and got my camera from its place on top of the dresser by the door. Alex, surprisingly obedient, had frozen, his shirt still lifted, his face turned toward me, one hip cocked.

I looked at him through the safety of my viewfinder, making him a picture and not a person. Light shafted through the windows on either side of him. I couldn’t forget how I’d seen him once before, cut in half by shadow.

“Turn your face.”

He did. The effect wasn’t quite the same, the room was too bright, but I captured the motion with a series of rapid shots as he moved. They’d be blurry. I didn’t care.

“So fucking pretty,” I muttered and thought I heard him make a noise low in his throat, but I was too caught up in what I was trying to capture that I didn’t pay attention.

I moved closer, aware as I always was how my position could change the picture. Click. Move. Shift, click. I didn’t pause to view the pictures on the digital screen – I didn’t want what I was getting to interfere with what I saw in my head. Not yet.

“Lift up your shirt again. Wipe your face.”

That wasn’t as good as it had been the first time. He was too self-conscious. I stepped closer, studying him. “No. Take it off.”

This time I couldn’t pretend he didn’t make a sound. Alex twitched. I thought he’d say no, but then he reached over his shoulder to grab a handful of the shirt on his back, pull it upward and over his head. He clutched it for a half second before tossing it to the floor.

“Beautiful.”

I grabbed one of the dining room chairs, seat tattered, carved wood dusty. I dragged it toward the window to his left. “Sit.”

He laughed from deep in his throat but moved without protest. With my camera still in one hand, I used the other to push him gently toward the light. He moved, pliable, and I saw his smile but focused on everything else.

“I have an idea…it’s just…” I could not express it in words. Hardly ever could. “Tilt your chin just a little…yes. Perfect. Stay like that.”

My camera whirred. Alex stayed still. I took another picture and moved closer to get close up. Very close.

“You smell good. What is it?”

“…It’s called Whip. I get it from Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab,” he said slowly, on an exhale.

“It’s good.”

The first time I’d ever looked at him I’d thought how good-looking he was, but it had been a standard sort of pretty. Watching him get head from another man, seeing him come, remembering how it felt to climax with that picture in my head, layered that impression with a sexuality I hadn’t been very good at ignoring. Dangerous to me, that sexuality, because I’d been burned by that flame and would be forever scorched.

Yet now I leaned closer. Looked into his eyes. “Will you do something for me?”

He swallowed, meeting my gaze, and breathed out without saying anything. His assent came with a nod. I wanted to touch his face but kept my hands tight on the camera that made all of this safe.

“Will you take off your shoes and socks?”

He laughed, not nervously but with a small hint of surprise, then bent to do what I’d asked. He straightened, his gaze bold and inquiring and anticipatory.

“Perfect.”

I moved back a few steps. “Look out the window. Think about something…sexy.”

“What?” The word stuttered out of him on a laugh.

I looked at him over the camera. “Don’t tell me you can’t do sexy.”

“I can do it.”

Of course he could. He looked out the window, his body language shifting subtly. He slouched a little, one bare foot in front of the other, a man at ease with his body in a way that made him a natural model. I took a profile shot of him looking far away.

When he put his hand up to his chest, fingertips just over his nipple, I almost dropped my camera. I kept myself from squeaking only by biting my tongue.

Focus. Focus and snap the shot.

It’s not real.

If you look at it through a lens, it’s not real.

Alex leaned back a little more in the chair, then gave me a lazy glance. “Yes?”

“More.”

The quality of his laughter changed. Got slow and low. This man had had an audience before. Maybe not one with a camera, but he wasn’t shy about being watched.

“How much more do you want, Olivia?”

“What can you give me, Alex?”

He shifted, his hand sliding down his chest and belly to the button at his waist. Neither of us spoke. I held my breath but couldn’t tell if he were holding his.

This was not the sort of picture I normally took. Yet here we were, him before me with his hand ready to unsnap his jeans and my camera ready. I licked my mouth. I raised the viewfinder to my eye and made it all not real.

“Yes,” I told him in a hoarse, low voice I wished didn’t shake. “Do it.”

He unsnapped and unzipped. He reached inside. His back arched, just a little, as his hand disappeared inside the denim.

He made another noise and closed his eyes, bit down on his lower lip. I caught the flash of teeth. His hair fell forward, shielding him.

Click.

Snap.

Nothing through the viewfinder is real. Except of course, when it all is.

His hand moved. I knew what he was doing, but the angle I shot from showed only a man, head bent, face closed in concentration. Naked chest. Naked feet. I moved, circling. His jeans had slid lower, showing the dimples at the base of his back and a hint of his ass.

I pulled a stool in front of him. Got on it to shoot down, now the shot consisting of muscled, broad shoulders and the top of his head. I didn’t tell him how to move or what to do.

Our breathing was very loud.

I got off the stool to take a few more shots. Standing in front of him I looked at his face, not at his cock in his hand. I wasn’t touching him, but I imagined I could feel him against me. I could smell him. I thought if I breathed in, I could taste him, too. I think I made a sound. Alex opened his eyes. They were naked, too.

I knew why Patrick had warned me.

This could go no place good. I would end up embarrassed, rejected. This wasn’t about a photo now. I put my eye to the camera again.

He breathed out. “Do you want…”

“I want all of it. Yes.”

He sighed and shivered. His hand moved, stroking. And through the tiny square of glass, I watched him, and I made the pictures in my head real.

I moved closer, meaning to take another shot. His hand captured my wrist. I didn’t pull away. Inches apart, I looked into his eyes and saw an invitation that became a request when he took my hand and placed it under his.

He moved mine along his cock, very, very slowly. Up. Down. He was so hard, so hot beneath my palm.

It wasn’t the first time I’d had a man’s cock in my hand, but I’d never been holding a camera with the other. I’d never been helpless to pull away, frozen in my own arousal. I lost myself in his dark gray eyes.

He took my camera from my hand and put it on the windowsill. Alex pulled me closer. His hand moved mine, faster now, and he let out a small groan.

He took my other hand, now empty, and put it on the back of his neck, where it curled in the softness of his hair. My fingers twined, tight, instinctually, and he moaned at the pull. His head tipped back. His hand moved mine faster.

I couldn’t pretend this wasn’t real anymore. It was all too real, too much, too focused. Who did this sort of thing?

Apparently, I did.

He let go of my hand when I moved it on my own, and when I pulled his hair again, he gritted his teeth over a strangled gasp. I had never felt this before, power like this. To stand over a man who by all previous accounts should not have been aroused by my touch – to feel his cock stiffen more in my hand and hear the pace of his breath quicken. To watch him close his eyes…

“Look at me,” I said.

He did.

I did not fall into orgasm from that look, but I came damn close.

I let go of his cock and stepped back, two steps. Four. He shuddered and made a noise of protest, but he didn’t move.

“What the fuck,” I said with a quaking, shaking voice, “is going on?”

“Olivia –”

I shook my head and stepped back again. “Why are you fucking with me?”

“I’m not – I’m sorry,” he said quickly. “I just…believe me, I didn’t think this would happen.”

The breath hissed out of me, and my shoulders slumped a little. “I think you’d better go.”

“I like you, Olivia.”

“You don’t even know me.”

With a sigh, he took a step away. I didn’t like the distance between us any more than I had the lack of it, but again, I stayed still. Alex put his hands on his hips.

“I could get to know you.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

He looked too sure of himself, too cocky. A man used to having his own way. “Why not?”

“I don’t think we got started the right way, that’s all.” I gestured at the chair, my face heating.

He looked at the chair, too, and then back at me. “I’m sorry. That was…believe me, I didn’t plan that.”

I knew he hadn’t any more than I had, but it had happened. Unexpected, utterly sexy…but unacceptable. And there was more to it than that.

I swam for a minute in his gaze. I rocked a little bit, my entire equilibrium a mess. This something I wanted and couldn’t convince myself not to want.

I should’ve told him what I’d seen, him with Evan. Told him I knew about him and Patrick, too. But that meant admitting I’d been in the room, and how did I do that without sounding like some sort of crazy, horny pervo? Or a jealous ex-girlfriend?

“Patrick said you don’t like girls,” I said at last, lamely.

“Patrick,” Alex said, “doesn’t have a fucking clue.”

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A Second Chance at Submission: Chapter 8 🌶️🌶️