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4 - SIMON
My neck… My back…
Not in a good way, like the aftermath of a night spent with a beautiful woman in your arms or a massage. I’d rather be buried between Pop Rock’s legs instead of alone in bed with nothing but silence and a kink in my neck. I’d been having the best dream, imagining her legs wrapped around my head so tightly they threatened to cut off circulation to my brain. If it meant dying, what a way to go. Nothing had ever tasted so sweet, and I licked my lips, desperately trying to relive every moment before my body registered I’d woken up.
Too late.
I rolled over with a groan, trying to kick the covers off my body. The sheets were twisted around my legs, and I spent a good twenty seconds wriggling around like a spastic serpent, trying to pull myself loose without damaging my morning wood. Whoever said wearing monogrammed, black silk pajamas while sleeping on silk sheets would change your life was a fucking idiot.
Whatever.I still looked good. I frowned at my dick, shaking my head and remembering my dream and the reason I was standing proud when it was barely seven in the morning.
My neck gave a satisfying crack when I sat up, and I scrubbed my hand over my face and hair. I glanced at the clock on the nightstand and the delicate gold bracelet that had somehow ended up in my inner jacket pocket. It was hers. It had to be. She was the only one who touched me, slipping her hands under my jacket and over my chest. Now I was stuck with the damn thing, without a clue how to return it.
I shifted away from the bright sunlight streaming in the windows and let out a long, obnoxious sigh. It was still too early to start my day, not that I had anything productive going on, but it was never too early for a run. I swung my legs over the side of the bed and stood, groaning as I made my way to the bathroom.
The day in, day out nonsense of my life looked a little something like this: run, sleep, complain, search for fresh strawberries, watch football or hockey or women’s interpretative rhythmic gymnastics, fail to live up to anyone’s expectations, be dragged into another issue between my brother-in-law and sister—since I’d become the unofficial third wheel in a marriage I never asked to be a part of—get three phone calls from my family to handle issues I didn’t ask to deal with, and complain some more. And so I began another day, doing the same thing and still expecting a different result than yesterday. Wasn’t that the definition of crazy?
“Oh fuck,” I said, stopping in my tracks as I passed an overflowing garbage bin with today’s paper hanging over the side. I sucked in a deep breath of the cool October air, putting my hands on my knees, and leaning forward. The flaming red hair in the photograph caught my attention, and it took me a second to register someone had capitalized on the position Pop Rock and I were in last night. My heart rate increased like I’d sprinted here instead of running at a perfectly respectable pace. I rubbed my hands on my thighs, wiping off the clammy sweat and willing myself not to slip into a full-on episode.
I hadn’t had one in months. I’d gotten better at keeping myself in check. What was that saying again? You couldn’t control other people’s actions, only how you reacted to them.
The photo was staring at me from the bin, mocking me as I picked it up and read the headlines. At least I knew her name and where she worked, but when my father saw this, he would toss it in my face and make it another thing for me to handle.
Pretending like he wouldn’t was stupid. Not with the way my mother obsessively read the society pages to dissect it with her friends at lunch or golf or some other mundane activity she did between the hours of breakfast and happy hour. Why the fuck did newspapers still have society pages? Why the fuck were newspapers still around? A tingling feeling spread up my fingers and overtook my hands, and I shook them out frantically, trying to make it go away.
I threw the paper back in the bin and breathed deeply through my nose, out through my mouth, tapping each fingertip to my thumb in another attempt to calm down. The smart choice would be to go straight to my parents’ house with my head held high and a PowerPoint presentation on all the ways I’d bring honor back to the family name, or some other bullshit that would placate my father this week.
I didn’t do drama, and kept a low profile as much as possible until red-haired temptresses in purple dresses that smelled like candy and tasted even sweeter came in and ruined everything. This reminded me why I stayed under the radar. This pounding pulsing in my veins that gave me tunnel vision and made it hard to breathe.
A familiar cluster of palm trees came into view, and I looked up, spotting the entrance to my apartment building.
How the hell had I made it home?
Three miles. Gone. I had no idea how I’d gotten here. I ran back to my building, lost in self-pity and not observing anything along the way. Those damn trees outside my apartment building mocked me, swaying in the breeze as I hightailed it up the stairs. It was like they knew a shit-show was coming.
“What’s your plan for dealing with this, Simon?”
I hung my head and breathed, still reeling from my almost-episode earlier. My father used me like a personal assistant since I didn’t work at his law firm anymore, and assumed I had time to deal with every issue that affected our family’s reputation.
I’d never lived up to his standards when I joined his firm out of college, so I left to study graphic design. That company, my real passion, went belly-up, but I never had the time to make it great. I was always pulled back because my father thought I owed him for leaving to pursue something I loved. The constant reminder to marry, reproduce, and have a respectable woman from a good family on my arm didn’t exactly help his cause. Like my life was nothing more than an extension of the family’s social circle.
My daily norm was angry outbursts over things I couldn’t control and reminders to breathe and let it go. I’d babysat my nieces so many times I could quote that flipping song by heart, and I wasn’t ashamed to admit the motto, let it go, helped.
Fuck. I needed cheese to go with this whine.
My father didn’t wait for me to respond before he stalked over to the built-in bar on the back wall of his office and took out two tumblers and a bottle of twenty-year-old scotch. Pouring a healthy amount into each glass, he handed one to me and motioned to the black couch overlooking downtown Charleston. The leather squeaked under my frame, and I took a sip, relishing the harsh burn that seared my throat and warmed my stomach.
“A little early for the hard stuff, isn’t it?” I asked, holding my glass up and raising one eyebrow. To show me what a badass he was or some other intimidation tactic, he kept his eyes on me and drained the glass, setting it on the glass table in front of us.
“Not when I was here working on the Merrythorpe case, only to have your mother barge in, waving the paper and fanning herself like it was a hundred degrees outside over a damn newspaper article. Seriously, an Allison?”
He said the last name like I was expected to turn my nose up or some shit. I’d heard of the Allisons. Their name was attached to charities, parties, and the usual nonsense—same as ours.
“You know I had no idea pictures were taken.”
“Of course, I know that. You never intentionally do this shit. But the pictures were taken, and the article written was a pathetic attempt at smearing our name. I’ve already contacted the paper for a retraction, but the damage is done. Now, we’re forced to go on the offense and handle this. Nothing can interfere with this case,” he said, leaning forward and clapping me on the arm.
His hand stayed, and I glanced at where it rested on my arm, then at him, looking into eyes matching my own. I didn’t know how to respond. He was pissed, sure, but his first reaction wasn’t to browbeat me or question my life choices?
