Nora
“Craigslist again?” Aubry says. I wrinkle my nose at her as I enter my living room. Resentment swoops in and morphs into anger. She does not understand. Who is she to judge me? I try to rearrange my thoughts. To find equanimity.
“I don't want a relationship. I want a certain kind of pleasure. I can find it there.” I sound bellicose and childlike. I haven’t had my morning coffee and it is showing in my mood.
“But it’s not safe, Nora.” She twists her legs under her. Burt is curled up next to her looking like a dog bagel.
“I'm not scared of them.” I sink into the armchair across from her and bite my lip and mentally dissect my night. I didn’t garner much pleasure from Gill. It was barely enough to sate me. He wasn’t hard enough on me. I don’t hand out directions with these men. I simply let them know in my ad that I am looking for rough play.
“Are you even listening? Hello, Earth to Nora.” Aubry’s voice yanks me from my head.
“What? Yes,” I say. Aubry shakes her head and chuckles. “What?”
“I asked, if you had gonneherphsiphilaids.” I laugh. Loud and hardy because ... it is a very Aubry thing to say. And she caught me not paying attention.
“How’s the book coming along?” she asks.
I blow out a breath and pull my hair up into a ponytail. “At a laggard pace.”
“I’m going to pretend I know what that means. Instead of trolling Craigslist, maybe you should write.” She gives me a pointed look.
I shoot one back to her. “Har, har. Why are you even here this early?”
Aubry jumps up, excited. She claps her hands together.
“Because today is dress shopping day.” My shoulders slump. I hate shopping. “But first, we’re hitting the nine a.m. yoga class so that when we try on dresses, they all fit.”
“That’s absurd, you know that, right? Doing yoga before dress shopping will not make them fit any better,” I say.
“Spoilsport. Just do as I say.” Aubry sets her hands on her hips. It is her tell-tale I-mean-business pose. I snort and roll my eyes at her.
“Yes, Master.”
“Go wake up Eve and Lotte.” She points toward the stairs.
“You didn’t wake them up? You just came in and what ... chilled out in someone else’s living room?” I squawk.
She gives me a pout and terribly executed puppy dog eyes. “I’m hurt. I think of this house as mine.”
I approach her, arms spread wide. She lets me hug her. “It is. I was teasing.”
Aubry swats my rear end and giggles.
“Go wake the others,” she says.
I knock on Eve’s door until I hear a groan pour out of her. At Charlotte’s door, I twist the knob without knocking. Pushing it open quietly, I watch her for a moment. She is almost fourteen now and it shows. She is a young lady. I admire her tanned, smooth skin and the way her eyelashes brush the apples of her cheeks. Her mouth is puckered into a small ‘o’ and her breaths make a sweet low whistle. I tiptoe in until I am at her bedside. Leaning over her sleeping form, I spread my fingers out and wiggle them into her sides.
She wakes with a squeal, followed by a peal of laughter.
“Nora, stop!”
“Say the magic word,” I say.
“Sesquip-” I tickle her neck. She grunts and laughs at the same time, causing her word to get garbled. “Sesquipeda—” I do it again. Now, I am laughing. I move to her waist and she finally draws in enough air to get it all out. “Sesquipedalian!”
I remove my hands from her and clap.
“And what does it mean?” I ask.
“Using long or large words,” she says and rolls over to make room for me next to her. I lie down in her bed, grinning. “That is definitely not one of my favorite ways to wake up,” she muses. We lie side by side, staring at the crown of fake wild flowers I hung around her overhead light.
“No?”
She laughs and looks at me. “I prefer my alarm clock to you.” Her eyes give away that she is only joking, although it has become harder and harder to tell what is true sass and what is fun-loving ribbing these days. Teenagers are difficult creatures to discern.
“Mmmhmm.”
“Is Aubry here yet?” she asks. I nod and sit up. Lotte follows suit and hops out of bed before she digs through her monumental pile of clothing on the floor for workout clothes.
“Ten minutes,” Aubry yells up the stairs. Eve’s door creaks open and I leave Lotte to find a fresh change of clothes for myself.
***
Liam
It took me nearly forty minutes to get to Nora’s house from mine. I’d followed her home, then to yoga and then shopping. I’d treated myself to a coffee and cheese danish while I sat in the corridor at the mall and watched the four women fawn over dresses. I almost touched her. She looked like she needed a break, as if shopping were tiring to her. When she stepped out of the store for a moment, she closed her eyes and leaned against the glass store front. I walked toward her slowly, watching her inhale and exhale. Her lashes almost touched her cheeks. Her profile defined and her body, womanly. I was almost to her when her eyes opened. I looked to the floor and walked past her. The smell of her skin intoxicated me.
I sink into my chair, and wrap my hands around her mug which I took when I broke into her house today. Temptation crept up on me. It got under my skin and wouldn’t let me be. I had to go in. I’d left the mall and gone straight to her house. My craving for her, unrelenting.
Her room was nothing like I imagined it would be. She doesn’t have many belongings. She is not the typical twenty-three year old. The walls did not hold pictures of friends or family. There were no necklaces dangling from dress knobs. No makeup spread across the bureau. Her clothes were sparse and neatly put away in her closet. The mug was on her nightstand, along with a stack of books. It is plain white, with the phrase Good Morning, Gorgeous stamped on the inside bottom.
I set the mug down and grab my iPad to open iTunes. I am going to buy and read the books that sat stacked next to her bed.
“Liam, is that you?”
I jump. My iPad falls to my lap. “In here, Carol.”
“Ah, there's my handsome man,” she coos. I chuckle.
I squint at her. “It’s Saturday. What are you doing here? Don’t you have a real family to tend to?”
She tsks at me and swats my head as she passes by. Stopping at the mantle above the fireplace, she picks up a piece of paper.
“I forgot my grocery list yesterday.”
“Sure you did.”
“Did you eat the plate I left in the fridge for you? You have to eat, Liam. All these late nights at the office aren’t good for you. How’re you going to find a nice girl and settle down with your hours?”
If she only knew. “I’m fine. I’m young. I have plenty of time.”
She shoots me a look that splits me in half. She wants a nice woman for me to share my life with. She is relentless about reminding me of that fact. She would not be accepting of what I am doing. In fact, she would probably adore Nora Robertson.
Carol was my nanny growing up and my father’s housekeeper. When I graduated business school and bought my first house, I took Carol with me. She is the closest thing to a mother I have. My father didn’t appreciate her the way I did, so I requested her. He had no issue letting her go. I’d given her a much needed pay raise, too.
“Your father expects too much of you. You’re only young once. Go out, have fun,” she says, waltzing past me.
“I’m going out tonight. Have a good weekend, Carol,” I call out. She mumbles something but I can’t make out the words.
A quick glance at the clock tells me I have a few hours to secure a ticket for tonight's gala. The gala that Nora and her friends have been emailing back and forth about non-stop. I grab my phone and start dialing. It’s a charity event and a large company donation should easily secure me a last minute ticket for the evening.