Two to Tango (Erotic Romance) (8 page)

“So, you didn’t get anywhere with the grants?”

“No.”

“I heard you mention penis-shaped things, which reminds me, have you called that guy Charlie yet?”

I stared across the desk at Gloria’s smirk. I should have never told her about the hookup in the pool, because now she was fixated on this guy she’d never met.

“What about you?” I asked. “Did you give your mailman another nip-slip peep show, or was it just a one-time deal?”

“Very funny. The man must be fifty-something. Some of his leg hairs are white.” She looked around the office, scanning past shelves stuffed with boxes of archived paperwork and plastic tubs of Lost-n-Found items, stopping her scan when she reached the sexy calendar boy, Mr. April. “I gave notice on the apartment anyway,” she said. “Maybe my next mailman will look like that calendar guy. He’s cuter than a pocket on a shirt.”

“You’re moving? Again?”

She turned back to face me, her dark brown eyes twinkling with excitement. “I love moving. I love the pre-move purge, and the packing. Then the first days in your new neighborhood, and all the new sounds.”

I squeezed in my shoulders and made a gagging sound. “You’re describing my worst nightmare.”

“This is why you won’t call that guy. You’re afraid of change.”

“I’m afraid of a lot of things. Earthquakes. Flying ants. Having someone come up behind me in a movie theater and cut off my hair.”

She frowned. “People do that?”

I nodded. “It happened to my mother.”

She pursed her full lips briefly. “Speaking of things that make you chew writing implements like they’re licorice sticks, I brought you the flowers as an excuse to come by about something else.”

I looked down at the pencil in my hand—the pencil I’d picked up and started chewing on unconsciously.

She continued, “Instead of a pay increase in September, we’re all getting a pay cut. Everyone. Even the director. Only ten percent, but it’s either that, or layoffs.”

I bit all the way through the wood of the pencil, snapping the lead.

“I know,” she said softly. “That’s still five months away, so that’s some notice at least, right? Don’t tell anyone, because it’s not official yet.”

The shock washed over me like a sewer backup. I’d been counting on a raise, and now this? Change was coming into my life again, and it was bad, as usual.

Just then, Bianca came running into the office, her sneakers squeaking on the floor.

“Skye, I’m early!” she shouted. “Hi Gloria. Hi Skye. Hi, hi, hi, hi! I’m early. Do you know why?”

I put a smile on my face and fought down my worries about the future.

“Why are you early?” I asked. “You came to help me set up the room?”

“My mom won’t be late to bring me to class because she doesn’t have to go to her job anymore.”

Gloria and I exchanged a look. Bianca was ten years old, but she had some developmental delays. She was patient and resourceful, but not the type of kid who figured out that her mom losing her job was bad. Bianca’s whole world was about to get turned upside down and shaken until the coins fell out.

I tossed the mangled pencil into the garbage bin under the desk and got up from the chair. “That’s great,” I lied, a big cheerful grin on my face. “Let’s dance with the ribbons today.”

“My favorite!” she yelled, running ahead of me.

I paused for a moment, looking back at Gloria. Despite her enthusiasm for change, she looked as worried as I felt.

~

After I got the bad pay cut news from Gloria, I went over and over my personal budget for the next week.

No matter how I crunched the numbers, I had only two choices: give up every single one of my vices, including the gourmet dark-chocolate-covered pretzels I went through at a rate of one ten-dollar-bag a week, or get a roommate.

As much as I hated the idea of having someone else in my space, I didn’t hate it as much as giving up the car and taking the bus everywhere. Besides, I worked mostly evenings and weekends, so as long as I picked someone with an office job, we’d hardly see each other.

With half my rent and utilities paid by someone else, I’d have enough money for fancy chocolates,
and
I’d be able to cover the dance tuition for Bianca and a few of the other girls who needed it the most.

Gloria was my first choice for a roommate, but she’d already put a deposit on a studio apartment in a converted loft building.

I went through the list of my friends and co-workers, but it wasn’t a huge list, and most of them were living with boyfriends, or husbands, or a husband plus a baby on the way. Everyone was growing up. Except me.

“Let’s do this!” I told myself as I sat down with the laptop at the kitchen table, in the dark, alone at home on Friday night.

I decided to post the ad that same Friday night, thinking that anyone who replied that night or early Saturday morning wouldn’t be a partier.

It took me several hours and a half a bag of chocolate-covered pretzels to craft the perfect roommate ad. I approached the task in my usual fashion: I searched online for some templates and examples of good listings, then I researched my competition and took notes on what I felt those ads were lacking, such as dimensions of closets and disclosure of distance to a produce store.

After taking measurements of the second bedroom, which I’d been using for storage, I finally finished the ad. It was three pages long. It was detailed to the point of looking like a parody of a roommate ad, or like one of those things people send around to make fun of the anal-retentive person who was just trying to be courteous to her potential roommate.

I sat there that night, and I saw myself the way a stranger might.

Why is it that being neat and organized is viewed with suspicion by so many people? The first time Gloria saw my apartment, she asked if I’d just moved in that month. When I told her I’d been there for over a year, she said she’d only seen apartments that tidy in movies about serial killers.

I posted the three-page ad. The right roommate would understand.

I brushed my teeth and went to bed.

At two o’clock in the morning, I jumped out of bed, ran to the computer, and deleted the ad. I couldn’t live with some stranger.

However, strangers wanted to live with
me
. My email box held five responses already, and two more arrived as I stood there.

The one response that caught my eye was from a person named Charlie. Was Charlie short for Charlene? I’d requested a female in the ad. The person mentioned no details about her or himself, just that they would be in the neighborhood at noon on Saturday and would love to “take a gander.”

I closed my eyes and tried to imagine my Charlie saying “take a gander.” He did have a formal way of speaking, but that phrase sounded more like Gloria.

Gloria.

She was playing a prank on me. She knew all about the ad because I’d tried to get her to proofread it for me—a request she had denied with a hearty LOLOLOLFUCKNO.

I wrote back to this “Charlie,” saying noon was great for me, and included the address. I had Saturday off, so lunch with Gloria seemed like as good a plan as any.

I went back to bed, slept soundly, and woke up to the sound of the front door buzzer. It was noon already, and I’d overslept. I stumbled over to the intercom.

“Hey, Gloria,” I said.

“Hello?” came a male voice.

“Who’s there?” I demanded.

“Skye? It’s me. Charlie.”

His voice crackled over the cheap intercom, but it sounded like the guy from The Cedars.

The guy I’d had sex with.

In a pool.

And liked it. Liked it very much.

Now he was here? At the common area door, two floors down?

Charlie
 

The bite marks on my shoulder faded quickly, but the memory of the Girl in Red remained.

I would dream she was in bed with me, and when I woke up in the morning, I had the uncomfortable sensation that she’d really been there, but I’d just missed her by a few minutes.

On the first Saturday in April, I was the April fool, because I actually woke up and called out, “Skye?”

My empty bedroom mocked me with silence. The belt hanging on the back of the door seemed to move, as if to tell me Skye had been there, sneaking out quietly as soon as I stirred into wakefulness.

I hadn’t felt that way about a person since my mother died.

I didn’t like the feeling, and I didn’t appreciate my mind, for playing such a dickhead trick on me.

When did I become such a fucking pussy?

She was just some hot chick I banged. Once.

Plus she was my father’s mistress. Maybe.

Fuck. I had to know. There was only one way to find out, and it sure wasn’t asking the old man.

I sat up in bed and phoned the guy who does background checks for our security personnel.

“Cooper, I have a job for you. Starts right away, but this one’s a little different. Don’t charge it to the company. I’ll pay you myself, directly, and I need your word that you won’t breathe a thing to my father.”

The sound of rapid typing on a keyboard came through the line, then, “I wouldn’t be much of a PI if I went around talking about my jobs.”

I chuckled, thinking about the time Cooper and I brought a case of beer out to the golf course after hours, confessed to each other that neither of us liked golf that much anyway, and drank the rest of the beer sitting on the wooden bridge of the 13
th
hole water hazard. Cooper was in his mid-forties, a former computer hacker who’d been working as an investigator for the last decade. He had more great stories than the water hazard had golf balls. He never gave names, but he didn’t spare details.

Most of the stories were about people who were suing big companies for injury settlements, claiming they couldn’t work a forklift, when the truth was they had no problem parasailing. It made Cooper happy to bust the people who were faking, because it meant there’d be more money for people who were actually hurt. I appreciated how he took something that sounded seedy and made it sound honorable.

“Who’s the girl?” he asked. “And when did she tell you she was pregnant? Does she want money? With my rates, you might be better off with a settlement, which I can arrange.”

“Really, Cooper? That’s what you think of me?”

“That’s not what I think of you, Charlie. That’s what I think of your money, and the little fruit flies that sweet honey attracts. Buzz, buzz. Those little fruit flies sure can be pretty, with their push-up bras and their giggles, but you’d better use your tongue instead of your dick, or you’ll be blowing wads of your daddy’s money.”

“My mother’s money,” I corrected. “My
late
mother’s money.”

There was an apologetic pause, then Cooper said, “It is too damn early for me to be drinking this much. Strike my comments from the transcripts. Now, what can I do you for?”

“Her name is Skye with an e. I don’t have a last name, or I wouldn’t have called you. She’s got great legs. Amazing legs. She’s a dancer.”

“Shouldn’t take me long to check all the strip clubs.”

“Not that kind of a dancer.”

“Hell,” Cooper said, his voice rising in pitch. “There’s
other
kinds of dancers?”

“She didn’t have, um, breast implants. They were natural.”

“I’ll be a gentleman and not ask how you know that. Any other details? Height? Age?”

“Tall. About five-foot-nine. Great legs, as I mentioned. Straight, brown hair, and pale blue eyes that look like the winter sky.”

Cooper whistled over the sounds of typing.

I continued, “She said she was twenty-nine, and she drives a white Toyota Tercel. And… another thing… she might be
in contact
with my father. I hope she isn’t, but need to know if she is.”

“I don’t like the sound of this,” he mused. “Too damn easy! You could have left out that bit about her car and let me have a little fun.” More tapping. “Give me three days.”

“As long as it takes.”

I ended the call and took a long shower, putting the fresh memory of Skye to good use.
The way she’d begged me to fuck her.
I’d heard girls say that in videos, and it always tugged at me, but not like that. They were just saying the line, saying what guys wanted to hear.

Skye had meant it.

And now I wanted to hear her say it to me, again and again. I wanted to break down those walls she put up around herself. I wanted to break in and hold her. In bed. On the couch, watching a movie. Up against a wall while I fucked her, and she cried out, biting my shoulder.

~

After my shower, I went downstairs in search of lunch.

I found everyone in the kitchen.

All four of us—my father, my stepmother, me, and Klaudia, the full-time housekeeper—had wound up in the same place at the same time. This type of thing never happened without detailed planning and text messages.

“Pancakes,” Klaudia said, practically clapping her hands with excitement. “Like old times!”

Our housekeeper is a white-haired Russian lady who has a no-nonsense, ruthless approach to cleaning and shopping lists, yet is full of gaiety when it comes to weekend brunches.

My stepmother, Willow, blew across her mug of chamomile tea and gave my father a look—a look that said she was a
fucking saint for putting up with so much.
One of the things Willow
put up with
was our housekeeper’s constant reminders that she was a living witness to life in the Ward household BW—Before Willow.

Before Willow, there had been pancakes on Saturday afternoons.

Before Willow, my father never wore jeans.

And Before Willow, there hadn’t been a number of dents in the wall of the garage from someone being unable to park her BMW without banging into walls.

Willow had been twenty-five when she married my father, and she was thirty-four now. For the last year, she’d been having her brown hair dyed red. Bright red. She told me she’d always loved red hair, but had waited so long to change her hair color out of respect for my late mother.

I’d been twenty when they married—not that I remember anything about the wedding day. Duncan and I were either drunk or high or both for that whole summer. Nine years later, at least I’d grown up, even if Duncan hadn’t.