Garrett had been living in New York for the second time in his still relatively young life, and for the first time, he felt like it was exactly the right place for him to be. He had thought this several times since allowing his father to convince him to return, but he knew now in his heart that it had never been true. He hadn’t really belonged in New York again until he had taken Finnley into his bed. Even after she had agreed to come with him, he had been almost sure it was a dream. He had been sure he had made it up in a dream for the sole purpose of stroking his own ego when she refused to do it for him. He imagined an entirely different outcome of their conversation at the bar and had a difficult time while still half-asleep distinguishing between the truth and his imagination.

In this version, he told her to either give him a fair chance or go ahead and leave him alone at the bar and she left. She yelled at him, called him all of the names he was so used to having women apply to him, and left. In that version, he went home alone and feeling very sorry for himself, which was what he’d been half-expecting from the very beginning.

When he opened his eyes, however, he found that it wasn’t the true version, this pathetic one. In the true version, Finnley lay sleeping beside him, and she was the most beautiful thing he had ever laid eyes on. He’d been with beautiful women, too, more than his fair share of them, but none of them came anywhere close to comparing. Her body stretched out beside him, long and lean and milky white, her heat seeping out of her skin and into his own body. Some of her hair was still tangled in one of his hands and while this was something that would have driven him batshit crazy with another woman, with her it made him feel like he’d won himself a prize. The sex with a beautiful woman wasn’t anything new, but this was. With every other woman, going back to the very first one he’d taken to bed when he was still a sixteen-year old kid, it had always been the same. The second he had them, he didn’t want them anymore. He’d have sex with them, and then he’d be done, so done that he could hardly wait to get them out of his bed for good.

“Hmm. Hey, buddy.”

“Buddy? He laughed, sliding down in his bed so that he was even closer to her than before. “That’s a new one. I’ve never had a woman call me buddy after making love to her before.”

“Ugh, making love?” She cried out, grabbing the pillow from beneath her head and throwing it over her face. “Please, for the love of God, promise me you won’t ever call it that again.”

“Aw, come on. What’s so wrong with that? I thought that kind of term was what all of the chicks like to hear. Sounds all romantic and shit.”

“Not to me it doesn’t. Besides, you can’t talk about how romantic you’re being in the same breath as calling me a chick. It doesn’t work that way. And if it’s how you see romance, you may still have a little something to learn.”

Garrett growled at Finnley, a low growl that was meant to sound predatory but that only made her laugh instead. The sound of that laugh combined with her lithe, naked body was enough to make him want to take her all over again. He kissed her roughly, slipping his arm beneath her body and pulling her towards him. He would never be able to get enough of her, and he knew it. He wasn’t sure how or why he knew it, but he did, and when the sound of somebody’s frantic knocking started up at the door to his room, he groaned impatiently.

“What the fuck?” he muttered to himself, propping himself up on one elbow to get a look at his door. Finnley propped herself up as well, looking towards the door and pulling the sheet up around her chin.

“Were you expecting somebody? What time is it, anyway?”

“I don’t know,” he peered behind him at the clock, then found that they had knocked it off the bedside table some time during the night. “The damned blackout curtains make it hard to tell.”

“Maybe you should just answer it then,” she said uncertainly when the knocking started up again. “It might be important, you know?”

“And why don’t you tell me what could be more important than this, buddy?”

“Ugh, no way!” She giggled loudly, the sheet slipping some and making him wish the intruder at the door would go on his merry way. “You were right. Buddy’s off limits from now on. Now answer the door. From the sound of it, whoever’s there isn’t going anywhere until you do.”

Garrett let out a string of hardly heard curse words but did as he was told. Shimmying into a pair of boxer shorts that had been casually discarded the night before, he half walked, half stomped towards the sound of the knocking. In his mind, he had already had a half-a-dozen conversations with whoever it was that hadn’t taken the hint and gone away. He was so sure that any one of them would give him the solace he was interested in—that he was mostly expecting his unwanted visitor to be gone by the time he swung the door open wide.

“Holy shit. What...what the hell are you doing here?”

When Garrett thought upon what happened next, after it was all said and done, he was never quite able to believe it. He thought about it because he felt compelled to, not because he wanted to, and each and every time, it made him want to vomit. If he had learned that some menacing asshole was actually writing his life out for the amusement of other menacing assholes, Garrett wouldn’t have been surprised. It would have made perfect sense to him. That was how bad the things that happened next truly were.

“What am I doing here? What have you been doing in here? I think that’s a much better question, don’t you? Although it doesn’t take a genius to know the answer, does it. Does it?!”

“Garrett?” Came Finnley’s uncertain call from the bedroom of his too fancy suite. “What’s going on out there? Is everything okay?”

Garrett couldn’t answer. He struggled to come up with the right kind of words, and that was part of it, but it wasn’t all. He seemed to have lost the physical ability to speak, something almost every person learned before they were even old enough to pay the feat any mind. Out of every person walking the planet earth, Becky was the last person he expected to see standing before him. Even more surprising was the way she stormed straight into the suite. She did this with complete confidence. She did so as if she had not even the smallest amount of doubt that this was the room she was looking for. There had to be hundreds of hotels in New York City and hundreds of rooms in the one he was staying in, and yet she had marched straight up to his door without any problems at all. It made the sick feeling in the pit of his belly worse to realize that, which made it hard for him to even move, let alone think straight. This wasn’t the most convenient of times to lose his shit, either, because as he stood there like a statue Becky stormed through the sitting room of his suite and headed straight for the place where Finnley lay defenseless.

“Are you fucking kidding me?!” He heard Becky shriek, a shriek that rammed its way through his skull like a bolt of lightning. “Are you kidding me with this? I guess I always knew you were an asshole, Garrett, but I didn’t think you would cheat on me. Call me stupid, but I never thought you would do a thing that low.”

“Garrett?” Finnley called again, her voice far more strained now. “I really think you should get in here. I think this is your drama, not mine.”

The breaking of her voice on those last words was what did it. It broke the odd paralysis Becky’s coming had placed him under and drove him into the room he was currently calling home. What he saw there was as bad as any apex of a dramatic movie. Although small, Becky’s rage was enough to make her look easily ten feet tall, and she had the added advantage of being fully clothed. Add to that the total element of surprise and nothing about what was happening was fair. It might have been exactly what Garrett deserved, but Finnley didn’t deserve to be any part of it at all. Garrett was dimly aware that he would feel like a piece of shit for a long time to come for taking so long to act, but it was better late than never, and so act was exactly what he attempted to do.

“You’re not welcome here, Becky. I don’t know what gave you the impression that you were, but you aren’t.”

“And do you want to know what I think?” She spat, her formerly pretty face ugly and distorted with rage. “I think you’re full of shit, that’s what I think! I think it’s a good thing that I got here to warn this poor, stupid girl before she let herself fall for any of your lies.”

“Okay, you need to hold on, alright? I don’t know what the hell is going on here, but I don’t want to be a part of it.”

“Finnley, please, I—”

“You nothing, Garrett. Get that part straight, okay? You nothing. You obviously have a whole thing going on here, and I don’t have any desire to be a part of it. I should never have come here to begin with. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

As she spoke, Finnley jumped out of his bed and set to the task of getting herself dressed again. It couldn’t have been easy to do that gracefully under present circumstances, but somehow Finnley managed to do it. Garrett saw it and felt his disgust in himself grow. Even now, when everything was so clearly completely fucked, he wanted more of her. Even with one of the women he’d grown tired of standing by and watching so scornfully, he wanted her more, and if that wasn’t proof that he was kind of an asshole, he didn’t know what did.

“You’re better off, you know,” Becky half consoled, half heckled Finnley, her face burning with anger and probably some jealousy as she watched Finnley dress. “At least you know now what kind of man he is. Besides, you wouldn't want to get in the way of a couple trying to work through things, would you? Those women are the ones we like to call homewreckers, and something tells me you aren’t that kind of girl.”

“Just do me a favor and shut up, will you?”

“Excuse me? I don’t really think that kind of thing is cal—”

“You don’t think it’s called for?” Finnley interrupted, her voice low and threatening and somehow sexy in the danger it implied. “Is that really what you were about to say to me? You don’t think it’s called for?”

“Well, no,” Becky answered huffily, her lip poking out like a bratty little kid. “I don’t. You don’t know what kind of history you’re walking into.”

“Nope, and it’s got nothing to do with me, does it? Just like you have nothing to do with me. None of this does. You want him? More power to you. He’s yours.”

Completely dressed and standing at her full height, Finnley painted an impressive picture compared to Becky. It wasn’t just that she was more beautiful, although she very much was. It was the person she was, the complicated, sometimes completely maddening person. Garrett realized in that moment that the fight inside of her was part of why he’d wanted her so badly all along. Too bad for him, then, that he was coming to that realization just a little bit too late for it to do him any kind of good. He wasn’t a total moron. He knew she’d always been on the fence about him, and just like a jackass, he’s proved all of her doubts justified.

“Move.”

“Finnley, please.”

“I said move, Garrett. Get out of my way.”

“I don’t want you to go.”

“And I so don’t give a shit. Move.”

“This isn’t what you think, though. I know that’s what everyone always says, but I swear to God it’s true.”

“You’re right,” she answered coldly, her expression one that could only be described as withering. “It’s exactly what everyone says. Really, Garrett, if you’re going to try to plead your case, you should come up with some more original material. Now you can either get out of my way, or I’ll start screaming, and you can trust me when I tell you that you don’t want me to do that. I can make this whole thing a whole lot more embarrassing for you than it already is, if that’s the way you want to play it. Something tells me this is the kind of thing you want as few people in on as possible, especially when you’re still half naked.”

“She’s right, Garrett. You know she’s right. Just let her go, and we’ll work things through the way we should have done in Colorado.”

“I’m sorry,” Finnley said in the new cold voice as she looked upon Becky, the voice that made Garrett’s balls want to climb back up inside of his body. “What exactly is your name?”

“It’s Becky, and—”

“No, I don’t want to know any of the rest of it. I only wanted to know your name. I wanted to know so I could make sure I addressed you correctly when I told you what an annoying bitch you are. Now I’ll leave the two of you to it. Something tells me you two deserve each other.” 

He had nothing left to say. He was dismally aware that if he were made out of a different kind of metal he would probably have had plenty of things he could have said or done, but he wasn’t. He was just himself and so he watched as Finnley brushed by him, that perfect skin no longer for him to touch. When she was out of the room with the door slammed behind her, Garrett turned to look at Becky and was glad that she wasn’t within arm’s reach. He may have been a lot of unsavory things, but up to this point, a woman beater hadn’t been one of them, and he had no intention of starting down that dark road now. Still, when he looked at Becky’s pale but still smug face, he had never wanted to throttle a person so much in his life, be it man or woman. At a certain level of anger, it was kind of hard to see the difference. When her eyes found his and she had the nerve to give him what she must have convinced herself was a sweet smile, the temptation for punishment grew so great in him that he made a point of creating more physical distance between them, just to be sure it wouldn’t get more out of hand than it was already. The thing he couldn’t stop coming back to was that everything had felt so perfect only ten minutes ago. Ten minutes ago, he had been ready to throw everything away and go on the run, just Finnley and him against the world, and now she was back to hating him.

“Garrett, aren’t you going to even look at me? After I came all of this way?”

“Yeah, about that. I think it might be better for the both of us if that didn’t happen.”

“Come on, you can’t be all that angry, can you?”

“Becky, for your sake and because we used to be something, I’m going to ask you not to ask me questions like that. In all of my life, I can’t remember ever being this pissed off with anyone. Not even close, and I’ve been pretty fucking mad in my day.” 

“Just because I came here to see you? That makes you so mad?”

“That, and the fact that you don’t seem to understand how fucking crazy you are for doing this. When something’s over, it’s over. When you can’t get that, it puts you on a Fatal Attraction level. You're lucky I don’t call the fucking cops, you know that? I should.”

“Oh yeah? Well, did it ever occur to you that I may not have gotten the idea into my head all on my own? Did it ever cross your mind that there might be somebody else to share the blame?”

“Of course, it didn’t! But it fucking does now! Who are you talking about, Becky?! And make sure you think long and hard before you answer because whatever patience I’ve got for you, it’s just about at its end.”

“It was one of your parents, Garrett. That’s who put me up to it. It was one of your own freaking parents, so what do you say to that?”