Page 31
Fine. Fuck Aiden Cole. I’m a big girl, not his slave to command as he pleases. The day planner's open on the desk. Friday's square is empty, so I write TOMMY BIRTHDAY all the way across it in big letters, tracing over them several times until it’s embedded deep enough to be read through three pages.
Then, because I'm apparently twelve, I write in Saturday’s square UPRIGHT and underline it twice, leaving it open on purpose so he won’t miss it.
Getting ready on Friday is a bit of a nightmare. Everything I own is either suitable for a boardroom or a boatyard. I don’t have any party clothes.
That's the crisis laid out across my bed. Blazers and skirts on one side, work jeans, T-shirts and sweaters on the other, and a no-man's-land in the middle where a social life used to be. Diesel supervises from the floor with the patience of a saint while I hold things up, reject them, and start over.
I finally settle on the green dress. Soft, simple, hits above the knee. I’ve worn it to work, but it doesn’t scream corporate.
Then the underwear drawer, where I stop lying to myself entirely, because my hand goes straight past the sensible cotton to the nice set, the lace one, and I hear the excuse forming. It's for me, it's for the dress, I don’t want a visible panty line under the clingy viscose.
My fingers are already pulling it out. It's not for me or the dress. It's for a man who forbade me from going tonight, who won't be there, who'll never see it, and I put it on anyway with my pulse beating hot and low.
Getting the zipper up takes reaching back at a bad angle, and that's where the wanting ambushes me for real. Standing in front of the mirror, arm twisted behind me, imagining bigger hands taking over.
His knuckles dragging slow up my spine with the zipper. That gravel voice at my ear telling me the dress is a waste of time because he's only going to peel it off me, saying it rough and matter-of-factly, the same tone he uses to tell a customer what's wrong with their engine. Just imagining that voice saying filthy things drenches me. My nipples pull tight against the lace, my breasts turn heavy and tender, an ache opening up deep in my belly like I’m starving, and by the time the zipper's closed there's an incessant, hot throbbing between my legs and my panties are wet through before I've so much as left the apartment.
Fixing my lipstick with a shaking hand takes two tries.
"Wish me luck," I tell Diesel.
He stays curled next to my bed, offering no reassurance at all, and I walk to the bar through the warm evening, lifting my face in hopes of finding a breeze that will cool me down. I don’t think an ice-storm would be strong enough for that task at this point.
The bar’s only two blocks over from where I’m staying. The crew's claimed the corner. Tommy spots me first and his whole face lights up.
"You came!"
"I told you I was coming."
"Yeah, but I thought after what the boss said- “
"He’s not anybody’s boss outside office hours," I declare with confidence I don’t feel, handing him the wrapped gift before he can disabuse me of my foolishness. "Happy birthday."
He tears the paper off and goes completely still.
It's a clipboard. Aluminum, heavy-duty, his name engraved on the clip. Cost me nine dollars plus engraving and I have never given a gift that landed harder in my life. He holds it up to the light. Turns it over. Looks at me like I've handed him the keys to a truck.
"It's got my name on it."
"So nobody steals it."
"Marcus. Marcus. Look."
Carol pulls me into the seat next to her, someone puts a drink in my hand, Walt's telling a story that started before I arrived and he doesn’t restart it on my behalf. For a while it's easy. Warm. The kind of night I moved four hundred miles hoping was real.
I offer to get the next round. Drinks gathered, I check the mirror above the bar, lipstick, hair, dignity, in that order.
And find his eyes.
In the glass, back corner, past the pool table. Boots stretched out, beer barely touched, sitting where the light doesn't quite reach like he chose the spot for exactly that reason.
Aiden. Here. He's been here. However long I've been laughing with Carol and the others, he's been in that corner the whole time.
Watching me. Not the room. Me.
Chapter 7
Aiden
