“If you keep staring at me like that I may have to fuck you again.”
“Promises, promises.” I wave him off with a smile.
“I don’t make promises, I just do it.”
That I believe. My eyes travel the length of him one last time.
He clicks his fingers. “Eyes, woman… you’re making my cock hard again.” I can see it growing, so I bend over in front of him to try and put my dress on, and I hear him hiss behind me.
“That’s not fair, not fair at all.” A hand comes down hard on my ass, slapping it with an almighty clap, and I yelp, stepping into my dress and pulling it up my body as quickly as I can.
Reality hits me that this isn’t just a ‘wham bam thank you ma’am’ we’re playing at. Instead, we are talking and having fun. How is this meant to work?
“I have to go.” I grab my heels, and my feet are moving bare before I can hear another word he has to say.“You need to come back. You’ve been gone way too long,” I complain into the phone to Johnny.
“I am. I’m coming back in a week.” He pauses. “What’s the rush? It’s good pay.”
“Darby,” I breathe into the phone.
“Oh, honey, do not tell me you fell for that man. He’s not one you should be playing with.”
“No… we just…” I can’t seem to make sense of any of it. What am I meant to say?
“You did, you two have been playing. Why him? He’s an asshole,” he moans into the phone. “Hot, but an asshole nonetheless.”
I laugh at his words. “It just kind of happened. I didn’t mean for it to happen.”
“Blah blah, that’s always the way.” We laugh, then he pauses. “Don’t fall in love with him. I’m back in a week.”
“I won’t,” I tell myself more than him.
Johnny laughs then ends the call. The minute I’m off, I go through my emails to find a few from my brother, one of him apologizing for the way he got me to go home, but I can’t even be mad at him because it was good that I did go back. I needed to end that chapter, or it would have haunted me for a very long time.
I press call knowing he’ll be awake, and I can’t sleep because I’m afraid if I do I’ll dream of him.
“What if I was asleep?” are the first words Barren says to me.
“You weren’t, you hardly sleep.”
“This is true. Now what can I help my sister with?”
“I got your email.” I can imagine him nodding his head to my words through the phone.
“Are you coming home then?” he asks, a little hope held in his voice. The last part in his email is asking me to take a bigger role in the company. One as large as his.
“You know it was Dad’s idea too, not just mine.”
“It was yours,” I say while shaking my head. He might be strong-headed like my father, but they have grown so much since when I was a little girl, and I couldn’t do anything because it was the boy’s job to do it all. It’s how I was raised, how they were raised.
“It was both, you deserve it. You know everything about it as much as anyone, come and take some weight off my shoulders.”
“I like not living there,” I finally say, and it feels good to get that fact off my chest.
“Olympia,” he says my name but there’s no follow-up.
“It’s just so much being there. I love home, don’t get me wrong. But I need fresh. It’s good for me to be away from something that holds all my most painful memories.”
“What about us?” he asks.
“You two aren’t, you know that. And I promise I won’t wait so long to come back home and visit.”
“How about you run some of the accounts then?”
“From here?”
“Yes. I don’t need you here for them, you can call me if you find any discrepancies.”
“I think I’d like to do that.”
He laughs. “Good. Then you can start paying for that ridiculously expensive apartment Father insists you stay in.”
“It has the best security,” we both mimic the words that he spoke when he bought it.
“I didn’t choose it, I’m only here to appease him. I’d be happy in a small, one-bedroom apartment, you should know that.”
“Yeah, I do. Well, it’s getting late.”
It is late, or early morning, I don’t really know.
“You and him a thing, yet?”
“Who?”
Barren groans into the phone. “You and that boss of yours. I see the way he watches you. It’s the same way I watch Claudia.”
I’ve seen the way he watches her. To everyone but her, it’s obvious why he goes to see her every time she’s working.
“No, it’s complicated. Neither of us want that.”
“If you say so. Call me when you work that complication out.”