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Being the first of three sons, I was delegated at a very early age to being their minor caregiver and glorified babysitter. My mom always loved telling us the best things in life come in threes. I must have been around eleven, off to boarding school in Switzerland for the first time, when I told her: “One is acceptable. Two is pushing it. And three means you’re out the door. Some things should never come in threes.” This firm statement had a lot to do with the fact that my two younger brothers took up a large portion of my mother’s attention, and even though I love my brothers, I guess I begrudged it—a little bit.
As I got older, my rule about three strikes stuck. It made me ruthless, but I was bound by some obsession to hold by it. Maybe it seems like a childish rule to everyone else, but it’s been useful so far, so I haven’t felt the need to break myself out of it. Not sure if I even want to, to be honest.
I tune Melissa’s voice out a little bit. A soft young female voice promising to create her own solutions at the table behind me catches my attention. I can’t see who’s talking, but I find that voice incredibly alluring, for some reason. It’s husky, without being raspy. The tone she is using is compelling, without me even having to take her words into account. I imagine that voice whispering into my ear in bed, and become ever so slightly aroused. I have to fight the urge to turn around to look at the speaker.
“That’s my favorite part of Paris,” I hear Melissa saying. I catch the server’s eye, which is easy because he’s observing my table like a hawk, and point at our plates. I’m pleased to see my date has finished her appetizer, but I’m not surprised. The food here at Sergio’s is really good.
Melissa is looking at me expectantly and I give her points for not filling the silence with more chatter. I nod. “Is it true you stayed with Cousin Deb when you first came to Manhattan?” Earlier on, I got Ben to text me a few details that Deb Westing down in Accounting provided for me. Like my father, I know every single person who walks through the revolving doors at the Bridges Building, but when I need personal info or gossip, I like to go straight to the source. The truth is that I want to tune out Melissa’s voice again and go back to listening in on the conversation going on behind me.
“Rutherfords is the best placement agency in the city, Mom,” the husky feminine voice emphasizes. “I’ve told them to push the marketing side of my degree and not focus too much on the fashion and design aspect of it. Once I get a job, I’ll start chipping away at my student loan. It’ll be easier with Charlie and me sharing the rent over in Washington Heights.”
A man’s voice, “You’re twenty-four, Tess. You should be set up in your own place by now, not sharing a one-bedroom apartment with your old school friend. Why don’t you come back to Jersey?”
That must be the Dad. I can see his reasoning, but young girls and their obsession with Manhattan are a rite of passage here on the East Coast.
The sweet, husky voice replies kindly, “It’s okay, Dad. Charlie sleeps in the living area with a sheet pulled across the room. We doddle along just fine.”
I turn my attention back to Melissa. I want to close the deal with her before we get to dessert. “Do you want a third course or would you prefer to go back to my place for a drink?” She looks at me innocently, but we both know why we’re here. I can see the barely contained lust lurking beneath those long, dark eyelashes of hers. Melissa’s eyes dart over my tailored suit, crisp white shirt, and the Ulysse Narden watch strapped around my tanned wrist, and then sweep up to my face. I watch her pupils dilate as blood rushes to her cheeks. She is imagining what it would feel like to have my hands run over her body, and for my mouth to kiss her a bit more than just that brief greeting I gave her when she came to sit down at the table, holding her upper arm and gently brushing my mouth against the side of her face. But I also see something else there. Is that hesitance? Uncertainty? Could she be having second thoughts about this?
“Th-that sounds nice,” she says. “Do you have bathroom accessories for women there? I have an early morning shoot tomorrow.”
“Sorry, I have something on even earlier, Melissa, remember I told you? You can’t spend the night.”
One heartbeat, then she pushes her misgivings away. “Okay. I’ll just pop into the restroom here…” The server is at our table when he sees my date preparing to stand up, and he pulls the chair out for her. “Check, Rob, please,” I tell him before he goes back to his corner. Bridges Wealth and Asset Management has an account here, but I choose to leave it for business only. It’s one of the ways I can hide my private life from my father’s inquisitive eyes.
That voice. I hear it again, only this time it’s coming from in front of me and it’s talking to Melissa. I whip my head to the right and see a girl. Young, blonde, medium height, slim, but that’s all I can see because she has her back to me. She’s waylaid Melissa on her way to the restrooms.
“Are you really going to leave with that man? I’m sorry, but I couldn’t help but overhearing parts of your conversation, at leasthispart of the conversation because his voice is pitched so much deeper than yours…anyway, I think the way he’s treated you this evening has been appalling! And you deserve better.”
Melissa doesn’t ignore the young woman like I thought she might. I can’t believe she’s giving what the woman is saying to her any credence. “What do you mean?” Melissa asks. And at this point, I can’t tell if she is amused, annoyed, or genuinely interested.
The blonde shakes her head. She doesn’t care that I can hear what they are saying. She doesn’t even bother looking over her shoulder at me. At least Melissa is dividing her attention between the blonde woman and staring at me to watch my reaction. Thank God the tables at Sergio’s are spaced far away from one another and no one else but me can hear, because the woman is going for it. “Look, I know this might sound rude of me to say, but my parents eat more than they talk so that’s why I could hear that he makes no effort at keeping up his end of the conversation. He interrogates you about your life, but offers no information about his own. He asks you to his place for ‘a drink’, but then doesn’t even do you the courtesy of letting you decide if you want to spend the night or not. You are a gorgeous woman and can do better for yourself. Maybe not as far as his looks go, but definitely as far as his behavior does! What guarantee do you have that he’s all that, anyway? He doesn’t seem to have much of a personality. What if that is proportional to hisbedroomperformance? What are you going to do if he’s one of those three-second wonders? Or even worse…he can’t get it up?”
I’m the outsider now. These two women on their way to the restrooms have suddenly become the girls I hated at boarding school. The ones who formed unassailable friendships and cliques, and had their own conversational codes and way of rating the boys. Now I can feel what it is like being on the wrong side of their attention, wondering what I ever did to them.
Having said her piece, the young woman allows Melissa to head off to the restrooms. Then she turns around and my breath wooshes from me. Ms. Husky Voice is stunningly beautiful. We lock eyes, and strangely enough, it’s not an awkward moment. She’s satisfied her job is done and I am bowled over. Her eyes sparkle with intelligence and just a tiny bit of defiance. This woman looks like the last person in the world someone would want to cross swords with when it comes to a challenge.
She’s not five feet, ten inches tall like Melissa, perhaps three or four inches under, and she’s a little too large in the chest to be a model, but the woman has one of those faces that makes a man give her a double and then a triple take when he checks her out. I can’t stop this pull her eyes have on me. And then her mouth tips into a small smile. That smile tells me everything I need to know. What name did her father call her again? Ah, yes. Tess. Tess has a naughty side.
