Shopping for a Billionaire 4 (5 page)

“James.” She says his name like it’s a curse word. 

“What about James?”

Silence. Mom doesn’t do silence. The hair on my arms starts to stand on end.

“Mom?”

She shifts uncomfortably in her seat, spooning the perfect ratio of whipped cream, berry ice cream, and fresh berries onto a spoon. Then she stuffs the entire concoction in her mouth so she can’t talk.

“When you swallow, the truth is coming out.”

“That’s what
he
said,” are the first words out of her mouth.

“What does that even mean?”

“I was making a joke. You know. He. Swallow. Um…”

“Joke fail.”

Her eyes narrow. “It’s never,
ever
not funny to joke about swallowing.”

I regard my marshmallow cream in a whole new light and drop my spoon. “Thanks, Mom. You just ruined my chocolate comfort.”

“It’s not like you need the sugar.”

“Since when do you criticize my eating habits? That’s like Paula Deen telling Dr. Oz how to eat.”

She frowns. “Let’s talk about Declan.”

“Let’s not. Let’s talk about James. His dad. Who you…know?”

She turns the same shade of pink as her ice cream. “I don’t know how to talk about him.”

My mind races to do the math. “You can’t possibly know him from anywhere. He’s at least ten years older than you.”

“Seven.”

My turn to narrow my eyes. I feel like a snake, ready to hiss, or hug her to death. “Spill it.”

She bats her eyelashes innocently. “Spill what?”

“Two seconds ago you were doing heavy-duty mother-daughter bonding over what an ass Declan and his father are—”

“Not Declan. Just his father.”

“Spill it!” I shout, slamming my fist on the tabletop. She flinches.

Anger feels so much better than depression.

“We dated.”

My turn to flinch.

“Oh, God. We’re both sampling from the same male gene pool?”

She frowns. “This is a bad time to make a swallow joke, isn’t it?”

I shove my ice cream away and start to gag. Maybe another hairball from Chuckles.

Mom primly wipes her mouth and sighs, leaning forward conspiratorially. “I dated James very briefly when I was young and single and working in Boston as a stripper.”

“WHAT? When were you a stripper? Does Dad know?” I knew Mom worked as an artist’s assistant years ago and had memorized her stories about living in abandoned warehouses in the scummier parts of the city, but this?

“That’s right,” she says calmly. “When I stripped the canvases for the—”

“A paint stripper,” I say, relieved.

She looks confused. “What did you think I meant—oh, dear!” Her laughter sounds like bells tinkling. “You thought I meant I took off my clothes for money?”

“That’s the generally accepted definition of ‘stripper,’ Mom.”

“When I take my clothes off for a man, I don’t expect to get paid for it.”

I just blink.

“Okay, maybe dinner and a movie…”

“You’re just prolonging the inevitable here, Mom. You dated my boyfriend’s father?”

“Ex-boyfriend. Ex-boyfriend, dear.”

“You rang?” says a familiar voice.

No. Not Declan. This story would be so much better if it were, but…

It’s Steve.

Chapter Six

“You have the most interesting conversations, Marie,” Steve says with an unctuous tone so slick you could dip focaccia bread in it. 

“And you have the uncanny ability to appear in the most unusual places,” I mumble.

“Like a fairy godfather,” he says with a disarmingly sweet smile.

“Like a psycho stalker,” I retort. My mouth goes dry. I can’t stop looking at his eyes. He seems almost…appealing. But that voice. It’s like he’s being warm and sweet at the same time he’s convincing me to invest in a Bernie Madoff scheme. 

“I like my answer better,” he challenges, the sweetness gone suddenly. I sigh with relief, because the dissonance was too hard. 

“That’s because you’re a bit unhinged,” I say. Loudly, as I reach for my sundae and shove more chocolate goo in my mouth. “Go away, Steve.” 

He cackles. It sounds like Dr. Evil, high on NyQuil. “
I’m
the unhinged one? You pretend to be a lesbian and double-cross your billionaire ex and
I’m
unhinged?”

“Double-cross?” Mom asks, curling her arm around her ice cream protectively. “Shannon double-crossed someone?”

He pauses and stands awkwardly. If Mom asks him to join us, all bets are off.

“She cozied up to Declan McCormick and slept with him to get some big accounts for her company. All while pretending to be a lesbian,” he declares. He’s wearing a simple white button-down shirt, khakis, and Crocs. Steve is the only man I know who insists that Crocs count as business casual wear. Sure. For nurses. 

“How do you know she was pretending?” Mom asks. The catch in her voice makes the tops of my ears go hot. She’s up to something. I wish Chuckles were here, because I could read his frowns to understand better what Mom’s ulterior motive is. I’m on my own, though. No Kitty Radar in an ice cream shop. 

“Because I dated her for two years and I would know if I had slept with a lesbian,” he replies, voice dripping with sarcasm thicker than the impenetrable layer of ego that he wraps himself in, like a forcefield of arrogance everyone else knows is invisible, but he thinks is Kevlar. 

“How would you know if you slept with a lesbian?” Mom asks again. “Is a lesbian’s vagina a different texture? Do they use a code word during sex? Do they bring a U-Haul on the first date? Do they refuse to perform blow jobs on you?”

Steve’s jaw drops a little and he starts breathing through his mouth.

I keep mine shut and sit back, ready to watch Mom in all her glory. It’s kind of nice to watch her turn this on someone other than me. 

“Uh, I, uh…” he says. 

She turns to me with a pseudo-accusatory look on her face. “Shannon, is that why Steve was always so uptight? You wouldn’t play the flesh flute?”

Marshmallow cream comes flying out my nostrils as I choke to death. It’s a hell of a way to go. I imagine the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man greets you in heaven on a white cloud of fluff. 

She points at me and grasps Steve’s arm. “See? She can do it with ice cream. I’d imagine that marshmallow cream tastes better than—”

“Mom!” I cough. I’m not rescuing Steve. I’m preserving my nasal passages, because if she makes another comment about fellatio I’m going to shoot hot fudge so far into my sinus cavity I’ll have yeast infections in my brain. 

“My sex life is none of your business,” Steve says in a cold voice.

“I did,” I tell Mom, pretending Steve’s not here. “But let’s just say it wasn’t an even trade.”

Steve’s eyes fly so far open his irises look like they’re swimming in a bowl of cream. Marshmallow cream. 

“You can’t talk about blow jobs with your mother! That’s…private,” he insists.

“Like feeding Jessica Coffin stories to tweet is private?” I say sweetly.

“So you went up the elevator but you wouldn’t go down,” Mom needles Steve.

“I…what? No, it’s not…I didn’t…you don’t…”
Give up
, I want to tell him. You’re just digging the hole deeper, and that’s just more rope Mom needs to get to lower the bucket of lotion to you. 

She turns to me and pats my hand. “Poor thing. No wonder you didn’t fight him when he dumped you. It was a blessing. Being with a selfish, egotistical blowhard is one thing. But a selfish, egotistical blowhard who is bad in bed isn’t ever worth it.”

Steve looks like someone just removed his voice box with a corkscrew. His mouth opens and closes, his eyes jumping like little fleas trying to find a safe place to land. He’s struggling to think and speak and react and I get the distinct impression that this conversation is not going as planned. 

“I did not say a word to Jessica,” he argues, eyes shrinking to tiny, piggish triangles. Ah—so he’s going to address that and ignore the giant sucking chest wound that Mom just gave him over his, well…giant suckage as a sex partner. 

He’s hovering over us, shifting his weight from one hip to the other, and leaning down. A veritable tower of terror, I tell you. I am afraid for his dignity, which is about as likely to remain intact as a rock star’s t-shirt in a mosh pit.

“
Someone
fed her the story,” I retort.

“I’m not that someone.”

“Then it was Monica.”

He snorts. It makes him sound like a manatee. “My mother and Jessica aren’t close.”

“Monica isn’t capable of being close to anyone,” Mom says. “It would ruin her varnish.”

Steve frowns. “That’s my mother you’re insulting.”

“Yes,” Mom says. “It is.”

“Why did I even come over here?” he asks the air, waving his hands around as if he has an audience. Every single person in the store ignores him, because in the battle for attention between Steve and a giant peanut butter fudge sundae, he’s losing. Big time. 

“We were wondering the same thing,” Mom and I say in unison.

“Maybe to apologize for being so selfish in bed with Shannon?” Mom adds in a voice that carries through the ice cream parlor at the exact moment the satellite radio station pauses between songs. Now Steve’s got all the attention he wants. And he clearly doesn’t want it. 

“Dude,” says a college student, a guy sleeved with tattoos. “That’s sad,” he says as he walks out carrying a loaded ice cream cone the size of my cat’s head.

“Would you please tell your mother,” Steve hisses, bending down to whisper in my ear, “that I was not…that I…that she’s…”

This is the part where, for two long years, I anticipated what he wanted me to say and played puppy dog to whatever he wanted. I used to wag my tail and eagerly jump up and do what he wanted, including fetching the same stick 127 times in a row.

I got accustomed to being in a state of panic when my man was being challenged by someone else, especially when he was a douchebag who would take it out on me emotionally, later, when all the people who had a deep core that was strong enough to call him on his bull were gone. Conditioned to becoming the peacemaker, the neutralizer, she-who-must-appease-the-overinflated-ego-in-a-skinbag, I felt the cold flush of fear that he was going to overreact. 

But that was then. And
then
is long gone.

I let my heart beat once. Twice, Three times. Ten. The silence between beats is excruciating. It feels like an eternity, with Mom watching Steve with shrewd eyes that are zeroed in on him now that he’s maimed, and she’s waiting for him to bleed out enough to go in for the kill.

And then another space between beats. Another. One more, all with Steve giving me that
look
. The one that holds expectations—thousands of them, carefully cultivated over years together, his well-worn reflex of knowing I’ll jump right in and—what?

Save
him?

Silence. Heartbeats. Spaces between.

I need to save
me
.

I look him in the eye and say the exact same words he used on me, more than a year ago, when he broke up with me.

“I’m sorry, Steve. It’s just that you were never really up to par for what I need.”

One corner of Mom’s mouth tips up and her fingers twitch. She wants to high-five me, and the muscles in her neck tighten. She wants to say something but breathes through her nose instead, captivated but uncharacteristically quiet.

Steve has this expression of patience that melts into disbelief, as if his brain is on a three-second delay. He’s finally realizing that I’m not going to rescue him. Coddle him. Prop up the mythology that says he’s the center of the universe, that his emotional core is radioactive and therefore must be protected from exposure at all costs. He’s trained me to believe that it’s my responsibility to buy into his idea that he’s above criticism, and anyone who dares to confront him is ignorant and worthy only of derision.

Silence and non-movement are my weapons now. And while I’m clumsy and unskilled, I’m using them to protect my core.

Finally.

This is what Declan meant about Steve. Not letting him make me feel inferior. Except Declan was wrong. 

Dead wrong.

It wasn’t that I let Steve make me feel lesser.

It was that I let him convince me that the order of the world demanded that I
am
lesser.

And I’m seeing now that the way the world works isn’t some pre-defined set of rules that other people get to make and impose on me.

Steve finds his voice. “I’m done.” And he just walks away with fisted hands and a tight jaw.

“So am I,” I say in a clear, but calm voice, pushing the ice cream away.

Mom’s speechless.

Which means I won in so many more ways.

Chapter Seven

The slide of his hands, soft palms with squared fingernails moving out of my vision as he cradles my face, makes me inhale slowly, devouring the taste of his breath. We’re in bed, nude, skin against skin and heat against heat, the combination turning us into a fireball of sensual desire. 

Desire that will soon convert and combust into a licking flame.

I’ve waited so long for this, the press of his fingertips into my belly, the slow crawl of his mouth over my breast, the warm wetness of his mouth, his tongue tracing circles that make me taut with a craving for his taste. My body is a landscape for him to explore and I sink my hands into Declan’s hair, the long strands a surprise. He’s growing it out, a stark contrast to his short, clipped look, and when he catches my eye with a jaunty grin, one half-curl pops over his eyebrow and makes me fall in love all over again.

Again.

As if there could be more.

The space between us is so small you can’t fit a heart in there, much less two. We’ll have to share one that beats enough for us both as his mouth finds mine and says, “I’m here.” The next kiss says that he’s here to stay, and then that turns out to be a tiny white lie as he travels the valley to the sweet, supple parts of me that are so achingly ready for his mouth, his fingers, his throbbing flesh, our pounding need.

He’s back, in my bed, and it’s like he never left. Bright green eyes with tiny flecks of brown and topaz at the edge of the pupils are so close that I can read the colors. If I had the gift of second sight I could tell you what his orbs tell the world about all the dimensions of love we share, but I’m woefully incapacitated as he captures my red nub, enticing and teasing, mouth exploring where I tremor with anticipation.