12. CHANCE

“Leave the bottle.”

Tre glances at the waitress, then at me.

“Is that a good idea?” he asks. “It’s barely past lunch.”

“Then it’s a good thing I’m the CEO,” I grouse. “I get to make the rules. And the president gets to follow them, so drink up.”

He shakes his head but does as he’s told. The scotch is a special single-malt distilled by a crazy Scotsman who lives in a basement apartment in Lincoln Park. A group of connoisseurs each chip in fifty grand in return for a dozen bottles of the specialty batch.

It’s far and away the best scotch I’ve ever tasted, and it’s illegal as hell, but bars like this one will serve it to select customers who know what to ask for. But even it can’t bring me out of the state I’ve been in since Sara walked into the boardroom this morning.

“I don’t know, man,” says Tre. “She sure didn’t seem like she was on a fishing expedition. I think it was just a coincidence that Pearce hired her. She didn’t know anything about the company.”

“Maybe so,” I say. “But I’m still not talking to her.”

“Sure, that sounds like the grown-up thing to do.”

“I am your boss, you know.”

“A real CEO doesn’t let a past relationship cloud their judgment about the present,” he says. “Especially when it has an impact on the company’s bottom line.”

Why is he always right? Do they teach a class in it at Harvard, or something?

“Just keep her out of my way. I have to come up with something over the next month to convince the Sullivans not to sell, and I don’t need any distractions.”

“Heh,” Tre chuckles. “You always were distracted by Sara. Remember the time you walked right into the side of that delivery van when you first started stalking her? I thought I was going to piss my pants.”

I scowl at him. “I wasn’t stalking her, I was just interested in her.”

“Yeah, I suppose you were ‘just interested’ in all those terrorists you hunted overseas, too.”

I pluck a pretzel from the dish and send it spinning at his head with a flick of my fingers. Mr. Football Reflexes catches it, of course, and pops it into his grinning yap.

“I’m just saying you’re too intense sometimes, Randy.”

He uses the nickname he’s had for me since grade school. It’s short for “Random Chance” and I still hate it to this day. Ah, that’s not true. I don’t mind it; I’m just in a shitty mood.

“You would be, too, if you had a month to come up with a way to save your company,” I say.

He gives me a sidelong look. “Who do you think is gonna be the one who comes up with that idea? Not you, motherfucker. Besides, I’m invested in this, too. You can bet Pearce wouldn’t be keeping me around as president.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll make sure there’s a golden handshake built into the deal if I can’t stop it.”

“Hey, wait a minute,” he says. “Golden handshake? Maybe I’m all turned around on this thing.”

“Fuck you,” I chuckle, launching another pretzel at him.

“I don’t think there’s anything to worry about,” he says.

“Hey, six hours ago, I was the one telling you not to worry.”

“I didn’t mean that; you totally have to worry about the deal. I’m talking about Sara. I don’t think she’s going to dig up anything we’ve buried, especially if she’s not going to have any direct contact with you.”

Hearing Tre say that helps ease my mind a bit. I wonder if he’s figured out why I want to stay away from Sara. It’s not about keeping Atlas’s secrets.

It’s about making sure I don’t allow myself to go down that path with her again.

* * *

The rec center is deserted at this time of night. Nobody cares where I am, and Sara has snuck out of her bedroom. It’s Friday night, which means her mom is so drunk and/or stoned that you could set off a firecracker in her underwear and she wouldn’t react.

We tiptoe from the window, through the little gymnasium with the basketball nets toward the storeroom, where I jimmy the door open. Once inside, we curl up together on the little army cot that’s served as my bed more nights than I can count. I’m pretty sure Rev. MacFarlane suspects that I’m using it, but he’s never said anything to me about it.

Sara reaches under my t-shirt and traces lines along my belly with her fingernails. We’ve done this a hundred times – it’s our way of shutting out all the shit that the world throws on us, and connecting with each other.

“I wish we could afford our own place together,” she sighs.

I lean in for a kiss. Her lips taste like cherries. They always taste like cherries. Her tongue explores mine as she grips her arms around my neck, locking me in place. As if I’d go anywhere.

“I wish I could afford anything,” I say when she finally lets me up for air. “Besides, your mom will never let you move out.”

“The crazy bitch won’t have a choice when I turn eighteen in a couple months,” she scowls.

“Hey, don’t talk like that,” I say. “She’s still your mom.”

Sara stares wistfully at the water-stained ceiling tiles above us.

“You don’t know her,” she says. “You only see a small part of what I see.”

“You’re right,” I say, turning her face to mine. “You’re the only thing I see. And you’re perfect.”

She takes me by the mouth again, only this time it’s more urgent. Suddenly her hands are all over my body, grabbing at my chest and my ass and my crotch.

I pull back and our lips part with a wet popping sound. When I look at her face, I realize she’s not Sara. Not the Sara from back then. She’s the Sara from this morning. Grown up, filled out, with darker hair and more defined features.

“I’m not seventeen anymore,” she says. Her hand rips her blouse open, giving me a full view of her breasts. They’re gorgeous: full and round and happy to see me. The look she gives me is pure lust.

“Like what you see?”

I don’t understand how this is happening, but I do like it. We’ve fooled around in the storeroom more times than I can count, feeling each other up, getting a glimpse of some skin, but never going all the way.

Before I know what’s happening, she’s yanked my belt off and is tugging down my jeans. Only these aren’t my skinny high school legs – they’re the tree trunks I developed in the Marines through grueling exercise every day. Apparently I’m my adult self, too.

There’s a tent under my shorts, and it’s making Sara grin like a Cheshire cat.

“Is that for me?” she purrs. “I’ve wanted it for so long…”

I can’t hold myself back – I pull my raging hard-on out of my boxers and use my other hand to unzip her skirt. A few quick moves and she’s fully naked in front of me. I can see that her bush is the same deep red as her hair, and I almost come right on the spot.

“Slowly,” she says, taking my shaft in her hand and stroking. “We’ve got forever. We’re grown-ups now.”

Yeah, I think. We’re grown-ups. And I’m rich. I can do anything I want. And what I want to do is fuck Sara as hard as I can.

As if she can read my mind, she sighs and lays back, only we’re not on the storeroom cot anymore. We’re on the king-sized platform bed in my penthouse. Sara squeezes her breasts together as she spreads her legs wide apart, showing me the secret place I’ve wanted to see for so long.

“It’s all yours, Chance,” she whispers. “After all this time, it’s all yours.”

“I want you, Sara,” I sigh. “You’re all I ever wanted.”

I want to stay here forever, to feel like this forever, but I can already feel it slipping away. Something is tugging at me, causing me pain. I try to hold on with everything I have, trying to get on top of Sara, to finally be inside of her, to come together finally as one, but there’s so much pain down there.

Why? Why is there so much … pain…?

* * *

I wake up to the painful ache of my hard cock being almost bent in half by my body weight. I’m on all fours in my bed as if someone is underneath me, but all my hard-on is running into is an unyielding mattress.

“Fuuuck,” I groan as I roll over onto my back. My chest is heaving like I’ve just finished a full-pack hike.

There’s a tent under the thin top sheet. I sleep in the nude, so I suppose I should be thankful I didn’t finish the job in my dream. If I had, I would have been stripping the bed before the maid gets here tomorrow.

“Fucking scotch,” I mumble as the dizziness begins to catch hold. It does nothing to wash away the images from the dream, though. I can still see Sara’s perfect naked body, still feel her hand around my cock, still taste her cherry tongue in my mouth.

I see the setting sun behind my bedroom curtains casting an orange glow on the window pane. The clock on the night table says 8:16 p.m.

That’s what I get for starting into the booze right after lunch. I sigh and reach down to massage the cramp out of my rapidly deflating cock.

This is going to be a looonnng fucking month.