But apparently I just mentioned the magic word.
“Home? No, I am not going home!” Mya shouts, suddenly wide awake. “Where’s Ariana? We’re supposed to be having fun!” One of her hands lands in my face as she practically climbs me trying to get back to the bar.
“Holy shit.” I grunt as her other hand punches me in the stomach. “Mya, baby. Come on. Ariana is already at home. Let’s go see her.”
Mya starts shaking her head back and forth so wildly that she loses her balance. I manage to catch her before she clips the bar and we both land sprawled on the bar stool.
“No, I don’t want to see her at home. That’s boring. I’m tired of being b-o-r-ing. I’m having drinks and then I am going to have some meaningless sex!”
Her voice is so loud that it carries even over the music. A guy across the room yells out, “I’d be happy to help you with that mamacita!” which ignites a round of spirited laughter from the crowd surrounding us.
I close my eyes. “Mya, you are going to seriously owe me for this one. But if you don’t come with me, I will carry your sexy little ass out of here.”
She leans closer, eyes narrowed. “You wouldn’t dare.”
I bend at the knees and then hoist her over my shoulder in a fireman’s hold. Her handbag is on the floor and I’m trying to figure out how to grab it and her shoes when the bartender comes from behind the bar and gets them for me.
“Good luck with that one, dude. She’s a wildcat.”
Mya’s nails dig into my lower back. I’m holding her too tightly for her to kick but I guess she figured that she can take her revenge elsewhere.
I wince. “Yeah she is. But I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Now I’m not saying that you should get an award for doing the right things in life. If something is the right thing to do, you should do it even if no one is watching. That’s just the way it is.
But if there ever were awards for being a nice guy, I should receive one for this cab ride.
“I can’t believe you spanked my ass in front of all of those people!” Mya shrieks, her face half-buried in my shirt.
Hopefully the cab driver isn’t paying attention to what we’re doing back here because Mya keeps climbing into my lap. I’ve tried putting her back on her side of the cab three times and she always ends up back here with her face buried in my shoulders and her soft round ass rubbing all over my cock. But I’m not touching her at all. She’s drunk right now and emotional and I would never take advantage of that. Even when she’s literally climbing all over me.
Lots of guys would argue that there’s nothing wrong with enjoying these incidental touches but I don’t feel right getting hot and bothered when I’m not sure Mya knows what she’s doing. So every time she climbs on my lap, I deposit her gently back in her seat.
See what I mean? Award material, right there.
“I only spanked your ass because you were scratching me. That hurt and I needed to get you out of that bar before you invited one of those guys home with us.”
We’re stuck in traffic so I’m contemplating whether I should put her back on her side of the cab again or just give in and let her stay where she is since she’s calming down now. But then I feel something ticklish moving over my lips. Mya is tracing my face with her fingertips.
“You’re so sweet to me,” she says. Her eyes close like she’s too tired to keep them open. But she’s still mumbling to herself. “I wish you weren’t. It was so much easier to hate you when you weren’t being so nice.”
Her voice is mournful and it makes me want to take care of her. I don’t like hearing her sound like this.
“Of course I’m nice to you, Mya. You’re my–” I falter, not sure what to call her. But she shushes me, holding a finger to my mouth.
“Don’t say it. It’s supposed to be a secret.”
Now I’m confused. I’m not sure if she’s talking about us or something else. “What’s supposed to be a secret?” But she doesn’t answer so I stroke her hair and say, “Sleep, Mya. We’ll be home soon.”
She sighs and the sound carries such sadness. “I’m going home alone. He didn’t want to keep me, you know? William didn’t want to keep me. So now I’m alone. Always alone.”
The longing in her voice calls out to me. Because the way she looks right now is the way I’ve felt so many times alone in the city. Mya is right to have concerns about us. About where this is going and about how we’ll function at work because of it.
But right now, all that shit doesn’t matter. There’s no work, there’s no client, there’s no Mirage. There’s just two lonely people in a cab.
I lean forward and tap lightly on the plexiglass separating us from the cab driver. “Sorry, change of plans.”
Maybe I’ll regret this later but right now I don’t care. I can’t fix everything for Mya but I can fix this. Neither of us has to be lonely tonight.