Chapter Six
It wasn’t fair to tease Tom like this. But the thing Flick wanted most in the world at this moment was to know how he kissed. He was so oversized and wound tight, he might be all bossy hands, hair-pulling and bruising lips.
This wasn’t how she’d expected the evening to go. She almost went out for drinks and dinner instead of coming home, not sure of Tom’s reception, but figuring it might make things more uncomfortable if she stayed away.
Last night, shirtless, tousled Tom had been sleepy and confused enough not to be guarded. He’d let his naked interest show until he remembered he was the reluctant landlord, and locked it down behind complaints. Tuna casserole Tom was contrite about that. His food was wonderful, he’d acknowledged his intemperate behavior, and his undisguised intention to make amends had led her to teasing laughter, unloading about her family and talking about Drew, and she never did that.
She cast her eyes over Tom and licked her top lip. Maybe he would touch her tentatively, be all watchful, gentle and deliciously reactive, and that could be even better than hard kisses and tight grips. She had to know, because somewhere between hair forks and cobbler they’d recaptured that sexual tension from last night, and it was too good not to explore.
What’s the worst that could happen? They were both adept enough to manage polite forbearance for the next couple of months to get what they really wanted.
“I’m scared to ask what you’re thinking,” he said.
She wet her upper lip again, and he groaned and when she crawled across the sectional toward him, he shifted to face her and put his hands up to hold her off. “What are you doing?”
She stopped. Close, but pushing the limits. “You wanted to kiss me last night.”
He lowered his hands. “No.”
Had she read him wrong? “You wanted to touch me.”
He dropped his eyes and flushed. She’d read him. He’d wanted to paddle her ass for waking him, for being dressed like she was.
“I wanted to touch you. You have abs, Tom, rock-hard, rippled abs. I nearly broke my elbow on them. I’ve never kissed with a man who has abs like you, who has arms like you. You hide all that awesomeness under a suit. I want to put my hands all over you.”
His eyes came up. “It wouldn’t be right.”
But it could be so good. “Because you’re my landlord?”
He seemed to have locked eyes on her lips. “Yes.”
She sat back on her heels. His eyes said one thing, but his body said another. If he sank any further into the sectional he’d fall through it onto the floor. She’d felt sexy for a minute, now she felt predatory. She couldn’t make him want to kiss her, but at least he could be honest. They were unattached adults. It was a kiss, or more, it wasn’t life-defining.
“Should have known you were repressed.” He’d move away. Or he’d make an insulting remark. He was good at that.
“Not repressed, careful. There’s a difference.”
She’d forgotten he didn’t do messy, complicated, out-of-order. He didn’t take risks to get what he wanted because he didn’t have to. “Oh yeah, if you kiss me you might lose a band shirt. You might make a dud playlist. You live twenty-three stories up and your balcony door is set to automatically lock. Who do you think is coming after your stuff, Spider-Man? That’s not careful, that’s obsessive.”
He cleared his throat, but didn’t say anything.
“Okay, forget it. I made a mistake. You’re not into it. I’m sorry. It’s only a kiss. Something tasty, like a serving of cobbler.” She swung her legs around and sat properly, looked out at the cabinet that held his TV.
“I don’t think it works like cobbler.”
“If Tinder is a cupcake, a kiss can be cobbler.”
“I rarely eat dessert.”
“You made an exception for me. Twice.”
He sat forward. “Flick, it would be ill-advised.”
“Oh Tom.” She glared at him. She wasn’t wrong about him wanting this, but she’d misjudged the intensity of his self-denial. “I’m a willing hookup, not a client paying for advice. Live a little. It’s just a kiss.”
He groaned. “Nothing is just anything with you.”
She turned her face away. She was going to bed unkissed and frustrated. She’d run her vibrator on high and not hold back and hope he heard her moaning. Hope it got him knotted up and strung-out.
“It’s good sense. Imagine the complications,” he said.
“I’m imagining them.” In hot, sweaty detail.
“Flick.”
Why was he still here if he wasn’t thinking about it too? He had a kitchen to clean, a social feed to monitor, no doubt a hundred unread emails to deal with. She angled toward him. “Tom, you have no trouble being dismissive. I think you want this kiss as much as I do.”
He passed his hand over his face. “Oh fuck.” His tone was full of repressed longing and his eyes—his eyes said he wanted and wanted. She put her hand to his shoulder and scooted closer. Last chance, buddy. You want out, do something about it.
His hand went to her cheek. The briefest, most tentative touch of his fingertips. “This is a terrible idea.”
“But you still want it.”
He touched her face again, but this time didn’t pull his hand away. He smoothed his fingertips over her cheekbone and slid them into her hair. His breathing was all out of rhythm and his pupils had blown out to dark wells of desire. This was reticent Tom, getting over himself, doing something about being kissed and doing it so gently and torturously slowly Flick’s own breathing clogged in her throat and she was helpless not to lean into the warm cradle of his hand. She wanted to touch more of him, feel his strength, the barely perceptible tremor in him, but she was frightened it would remind him this was real.
He angled his head and brushed his nose on hers. She tried to catch his lips and he pulled away, but only long enough to sweep his eyes over her face and decide. Oh please, please. When he brushed her nose again, he found her lips. A graze so light and brief it was like frosting, barely there but the best part of the cake. Neither of them pulled back.
“Sweet.” His breath over her chin. “Cotton candy.”
She moved her hand from the top of his shoulder to the back of his neck and their lips met again. This time with more pressure for longer. Oh yes, this was so very fine and smooth and achingly delicious.
They kissed the sweet to tart and all the way back again, breaking each movement, only to dive at it again, to push it a little harder, a little deeper, until she was tasting his whole mouth and he was tasting hers and it wasn’t enough. She had to press her hands into his chest and bring her knees up under her and lean into his body, feel the heat of him, the occasional tightening of his fingers in her hair.
“Good.” She licked the word over his lips.
“God.” He grazed his teeth on hers.
“More.”
“Shut up while I kiss you.”
There were more kisses, easy and light and stinging and lazy, and each one a delicious possession. She didn’t need to ask about crawling into his lap; he shifted to let her straddle his hips, her knees sinking into the cushions. She sat across his thighs while they kissed again and the sweet-tart got steamy when he cupped her breast. They’d reached the groping stage and she melted into it.
He didn’t melt, he heated. The arm around her back hauling her up his denim-clad thighs until she met the undeniable proof he was beautifully frustrated too.
She left his mouth to arch and flex against him. “Ladies and gentlemen, we have reached the dry-humping portion of tonight’s entertainment.”
Both hands on her ass, he rolled their hips, his eyes down to watch. “Stay seated, keep your hands inside the carriage at all times and enjoy the ride.”
She laughed. He was off the rails now. He was out of his careful head and grounded in his wicked body and his body was all over hers.
There wasn’t anything sweet about the kisses that followed. They were too deliberate and greedy. The hardness of his zipper and everything beneath was almost, almost enough to get her off, and she shook with the need for more.
“Can you come like this?”
She moaned a response. Maybe, maybe. Oh, please.
“What do you need?”
Skin and teeth and tongues, and his fingers inside the ache at the center of her. His lips were at her neck, on the thud of her pulse, and her pulse was the rhythm of her body as she rocked and strained. “So ready.”
His hand was harder, his knuckles, his thumb bent against the damp heat of her, his teeth on her breast.
“Oh God, Tom.” If he kept both hands inside the carriage, if he didn’t break the rules, she’d die here on the edge of coming undone. “I need you to touch me inside.”
All hail the stretchiness of yoga pants. She got what she needed, his fingers in her wetness. “Hhhh.” She could have broken his hand she ground down so hard, her knees open as wide as they’d go.
“Roller coaster,” he said, and took her mouth. It stopped a scream. Breathless, hands on his shoulders for balance, she hit her peak and shuddered through her orgasm, coming to rest with her head on his chest and his arms loosely around her.
He stroked her hair and she slowed her breathing. “That was insane,” she said. They’d stayed fully dressed. It was better sex than she’d had with all the usual buildup, bodies exposed and flesh fully tested, with more thorough preparation and deliberate intention, and back-and-forth instruction.
Yeah, she’d wanted him, wanted to see how far she could push this tension they had, but zero to hero wasn’t in her expectation set.
“I’d like to do that again, but with less clothing.” She sat back and climbed off his lap, conscious of her dead legs.
He stood. “It’d be better if we didn’t.” He was in the kitchen banging around before she could process that.
He ran water in the sink, kept his back to her, even when she came to the counter. “Leave that for the morning. I’ll do it.”
“It’s done.”
“What is this?” What did she get wrong here?
“I’m hiking in the morning. Need to go into the office in the afternoon. Need to get sleep.”
“What we just did. You, hand in my pants. Me, coming all over you. That was, what, taking out the trash?”
He moved around the counter but left an acre of furniture between them. “It was great.” He was making eye contact now, but the way you would with a wayward employee, chin down, brows up.
“For me it sure was.”
“I enjoyed myself.”
As if he’d had a laugh at a joke. “You could enjoy yourself a lot more.”
“I’m only human and you’re attractive, and I’m attracted to you, but it’s not practical, whatever this is.”
“Not practical.”
“There’s the—”
“Power differential. Shit, Tom.” Cold—that was ice-pick-to-the-ego chilling.
“You’re leaving anyway and it makes no sense to get involved.”
“Involved.” Said like it was a disease state. “I don’t want to get involved. I wanted to get off, but that’s so incredibly complicated for you, so you’re right, it’s not practical.”
He opened his mouth, closed it, shifted on his feet. She didn’t need to make this less awkward for him.
“Thanks for dinner and the orgasm.” She left him standing there, closed her bedroom door as quietly as possible and muffled her scream of frustration in a pillow.
The apartment was empty in the morning and she looked at it for the first time and didn’t see it as the elegant designer space of her first impression. It was beige and bland, too conservative to have a personality.
Like its owner.
She got out of there before the idea of messing it up took hold.
Today might as well be the day to visit home. Ride one confusing wave of disappointment straight into another and get all the unpleasantness over with.
She headed out to Gage Park. It would’ve been smarter to call first, find out who was going to be around, but advance notice gave everyone a chance to organize, so on the whole, surprise was a better tactic. It also suited her mood. Take no prisoners. She hoped Tom hiked a hole in his feet.
The fact she had to chill on the front stoop when no one was home was poetic justice. Nothing in the neighborhood had improved since she’d moved out. The same clunkers parked on the curb, the same falling-down front fences and missing roof tiles, lawns made of weed or gone to soil facing the street. It wasn’t that people didn’t want better, it was that they didn’t have time, the money, to make it happen. The priorities were different, the crime more prevalent, the choices more limited.
Everyone here lived too close to somewhere worse, and the risk of losing what you had was greater than the risk of trying to change. You held on, you defended your place. You made sure outsiders knew they were outsiders.
The people who got out got dead or got lucky.
Flick scrolled through her social feeds and tried not to call attention to herself, an outsider who got lucky, a daughter who abandoned her family, a sister who owed.
It was Mom who came home first. She got out of a friend’s car and froze in the drive when she saw Flick. She wore her Murphy’s Freight shirt. She’d come from an extra shift in the trucking company’s office. “Why are you here?”
“I brought clothes.” You didn’t come without bringing something. She had a bag of sweaters and shirts, pants that would suit Elsie and a pair of boots that would fit Mom.
Mom looked left and right, up and down the street. “Who knows you’re here?”
“No one.” Unless you counted a couple of teens who looked at her rental as if they were considering boosting it.
“Hope you’ve eaten. There’s no food in the house till I go shopping. Did you rent a car? You could take me.”
They got in the rental, and Flick drove to Walmart and pushed the cart while Mom did the weekly shopping. “Who’s living at home now?”
Mom stacked bread, hotdog buns and pound cake into the cart. “Elsie and the girls. Like at Christmas. Where do you think they’re going to go?” Elsie could force her sack-of-shit husband into helping with rent and child support, or maybe reconcile with him for the fourth time and move back to her own place.
“Is everyone well?”
“Kendall needs the dentist, Krystal needs shoes, but Elsie will tell you what else the girls need. She should be home when we get there.” Mom walked on to frozen food and when Flick caught up, said, “Why’d you come?”
“Wanted to tell you I’m moving. I’ve got a new job.”
Peas, mixed vegetables, baby carrots went into the cart. “Another one.” A dozen bean-and-cheese burritos and jumbo-sized packet of potato cakes joined them.
“I’ve had this one for five years.”
“And now what?”
“I’m moving to Washington.”
“Now why would you want to do that?” Mom didn’t wait for an answer, she walked on and waited by the dessert section.
“That’s where the job is.”
Three tubs of ice cream went in the cart. “I won’t understand this job either, will I?”
She would if she tried. Mom was all out of patience and had stopped trying with Flick a long time ago. Flick cut to the chase. “I’ll be earning less money and the city is more expensive.”
Four Sara Lee cheesecakes got stacked on the ice cream. “You came home to give us a sob story.”
“No, to tell you I won’t be around.”
“That’ll leave a huge hole in our lives.”
Dad was the only one quick with his fists in the family. Mom used her tongue to strike. There was nothing to say to that.
“Don’t pull that face. What did you think I was going to say, we’ll miss you? We don’t miss you. We all have our own lives.”
Except Flick’s life financed part of everyone else’s life. There was easily going to be five hundred dollars’ worth of groceries in the cart by the time they finished. Mom added a box of cola to the stash and then a jumbo bag of corn chips.
“For a while I won’t have as much money to send.”
“Ah. That’s why you’re here.” Mom took hold of the front of the cart and surveyed the items inside. “At least you said it to my face.”
“Elsie could get a job.” She had half a hairdressing qualification—she could turn that into something.
“She’s a single mom.” Salsa went in the cart. Two types. And popcorn and an enormous bag of pretzels.
“I said I’d pay tuition if—”
“Elsie doesn’t want to do hair and nails or any of the things your fancy tuition was going to pay for.”
“Lizzy has a job and she’s a single mom.” Her middle sister never asked for money either.
“She’s sleeping with her boss. How do you think she manages to keep that call center job?” Maybe because she was a good worker, was reliable and knew how to play politics.
Flick dragged the cart out of the middle of the aisle. “You work. Dad works.” Mostly. “The boys work.” Best not to worry about the shifty side hustles her brothers had on top of construction and spray-painting. “Why is that not the same for Elsie?”
Spaghetti and Newman’s Own pasta sauce on special went in next. “What makes you think we care about your opinion?”
“I didn’t come here to fight with you.”
A man with a toddler riding their cart moved past them. His expression said Sure looks like you did, lady.
“I don’t know why you came.”
To pay for the groceries. To leave clothing she bought specifically and pretended was secondhand, because her own secondhand clothing was never going to work for either of her sisters or Mom. To pretend she still had a family and they mattered.
“Are the kids going to be around today?” She’d once hoped to build a bond with Kendall and Krystal, but she was the Christmas aunt who bought cool presents and was otherwise forgotten. She’d have to pay more attention if she wanted that to change.
“With their dickhead father.” They’d wandered into the apparel part of the store. Mom added sparkly sneakers for both kids to the pile. That was something they could agree on—Dan was a dickhead, but only when Elsie wasn’t telling everyone he was the best husband in the world.
“How’s Dad?”
“His back is bad.” Given the bones he’d broken in the past on Mom, that seemed fair. “Are you planning on staying around to see him? He’s working a double.”
And after the double he’d drink because it was Saturday and he resented working Saturdays. Flick had no intention of sticking around to see that. “Do you need anything else?”
“Sheets. Towels. A new microwave. A milkshake-maker would be nice for the girls.”
They needed a second cart.
The bill came to thirteen hundred dollars.
Back at the house, they unpacked, installed the microwave and the milkshake-maker, and Mom made tea. Elsie didn’t come home.
“I’m tired. Going to lie down. Leave cash for the dentist,” Mom said when the tea was drunk. “You’ll come at Thanksgiving?”
Maybe it was time to check out of a scene that she didn’t fit into. “There are boots in the bag I brought. I thought you’d like them.”
“Always welcome your hand-me-downs.”
They’d never had the same size feet. Mom had to know Flick had bought the boots new for her. Do you think I should pay for getting out for the rest of my life? Do you think that’s right?
She didn’t say it. It made her feel mean and small and disagreeable, and with what leftover space she had inside, resentful. She’d done what she came to do. If she changed her address, her phone number, her bank account details, it would be like scorching the earth. There was no reason not to, except the guilt. She got lucky. She had choices. She got out. She was going to Washington to work so other people got the same chances.
She drove back to the city and dropped the rental off. It was late and all Flick wanted to do was shower and sleep and wake to a new day that wasn’t so inclined to make her feel like she took up too much space in the world at the expense of other people.