Chapter 14
14
KATE
E verything’s happening like I’m watching a video at double speed. One minute I’m wrestling with my inappropriate attraction to my much-older boss. The next minute it seems like I’m having my morning coffee up on his roof deck, watching the bright trails of the kite surfers out on Pleasure Bay.
I always loved Boston, even the noise and the bars and the shouting matches that turned into fistfights out on the sidewalk about half the time. But here, still in Southie but a little removed from the fray, it’s pure luxury. The wind and the water and the fact that Mickey’s place is a whole detached house with plenty of windows and smooth pale wood floors, sleek countertops and everything is open and bright.
“This isn’t what I expected,” I told him the first time I saw it.
“What? You think I was gonna move to fuckin’ Beacon Hill?”
“I can’t imagine you leaving Southie behind, no. I just meant I thought it would be some huge mansion with dark colored walls and tons of woodwork. Imposing and manly and really old-fashioned.”
“My dad’s house was like that. I sold it after he passed away. It was always like being suffocated. It was stale in there, full of stuff but it never felt like a home where you could relax, know what I mean?”
“Did Fiona the nanny not make it warm and fun?”
“Eh, she tried, but she went home to her own house and her own kids every night. I spent a lot of time in the kitchen growing up. The cook we had for a while was this guy named Jackson. He came from New Orleans, and he liked to talk. I’d hang out down there, help out when he’d teach me what to do, and just have somebody to talk to.”
“I’m surprised you don’t have a cook now,” I say.
“I eat out a lot. Or I cook for myself. I don’t mind it. When I think about it, the people who were kind to me when I was a kid, were people who worked for my dad. I don’t want to surround myself with people that are here just for a paycheck. I’d rather be on my own.”
“Well, I work for you, so I’m not sure if I belong here or not,” I say. Then I just lean my head against his arm because I actually know how good it feels to be here. I wouldn’t mind hearing him say that he wants me here all the time, that I look like I belong here or he wishes I didn’t work for him anymore. Anything, something to let me know that he feels it too. That this grew out of being a fling and became something a lot deeper. The truth is I’m not sure it ever was a fling.
We’re careful. No disappearing together for a long lunch or anything that wasn’t common practice when Benny was on the job. For one thing, if word gets out about our relationship, it looks bad. He’s my boss, way older than me, and that’s before anyone factors in my brother being his closest lieutenant in the organization. I recite this to myself like ten times a day as a reminder why we can’t really be together, not in real life. We can sneak around and have fun, and we can even care for each other more than I want to admit. But anything more than that? Out of the question.
I spend as much time working with Sal and his team as I do with Mickey. It’s his idea when I start spending half my days in an office on the executive floor of the Oyster. That way I’m established in the legitimate business and if Rory comes looking for me, my secretary (Ragucci’s secretary actually) answers the phone there. I don’t like being away from the Pearl because it’s special to me now, but I understand the point of separating my work from the more clandestine operation.
The hardest part isn’t working in a different building from him and seeing him less. The problem I have is going home. It’s not home, not anymore. Not since I was eighteen years old. When I was nine, Rory moved out to live with a girlfriend. Until now, that was the last time he and I lived under the same roof. He moved back into our parents’ house when my dad was sick, gave up having his own place. This isn’t quite like I imagined it to be. When I had to give up in LA, I hoped that we’d be close, have long talks and inside jokes and be like a family. When we were never really like that to start with. It makes me sad that we’re not close, but nothing I’ve tried has bridged the distance.
Sometimes Mickey wakes me up in the morning with a phone call, telling me something he was thinking about while working out. I think about how lonely he must have been all this time. Maybe for his whole life. He wants to talk and listen and show me the movies he likes, play me his favorite music. I’m awash in sides of him I never suspected.
On the roof deck, which is my favorite place, he asks me about LA one night.
“What was so great about it?” he asks it with the flat vowels of a man who loves Boston with his life’s blood.
I curl up beside him on the outdoor couch he has up here, his arm around me. The steady thud of his heartbeat, the rise and fall of his chest beneath my cheek is everything right now. I’m obsessed with him and I know it. It’s hard not to tell him that, not to say it out loud every time I think it.
“The weather’s nice,” I say.
“The weather?” he says with disgust.
“Yeah, and I saw Gracie Abrams once when she was doing a show at some club a few years ago before her career really took off. She was amazing.”
“You lived in LA for, what, six years or so?”
“Almost seven. I did my bachelor’s and master’s degree there.”
“And the most unforgettable things you can tell me off the top of your head are the weather’s good and you saw some singer once. You’re gonna go live in some overpriced city where everybody’s had plastic surgery and eats vegan because it doesn’t snow there?”
“That’s not why,” I laugh. “You better talk to my brother about this, because I think he keeps offering to pay for all my CPA stuff and ship me back there at least twice a week. The man wants me out of Southie.”
“You think he’s worried about you being in some kind of danger?”
“Maybe, or maybe he liked me better when I was thousands of miles away,” I say and I mean to say it lightly but the joke doesn’t quite land. He hears the hollowness when I say it and hugs me tighter.
“You still want to go back there?” he asks. For a second, I think he means the house where I live with my brother. I want to stay here with him, want to live in this house and wake up beside him every day. But I choke back the words, clear my throat.
“That’s the plan,” I say, “save some money, do the prep courses, take the tests and start job hunting for a position in LA.’
He doesn’t say anything for about a full minute. He’s gone still beside me except for his fingers in my hair, tenderly threading through my tangled waves. My hand slides up his chest and I tip my face up to look at him. His brow is furrowed, and he’s not looking at me but out toward the water or the horizon.
“I’d like to stay like this forever,” I confess, my voice barely above a whisper. “But I know we can’t. It’s impossible. But don’t think for a minute that LA sunshine and smog is better than this because there’s nothing better than this, Mick. I want you to know that. I’m probably—probably gonna spend the rest of my life chasing after anything that reminds me of this even a little bit. Anything that feels like home.”
He doesn’t look at me, doesn’t meet my eyes. I’m out here on a limb, breathless, and I feel like I am dying. I need him to say something. I look at him expectantly. I start to feel panicky, my stomach clenching and sweat coming out on my palms. I bite my lips. I was brave, told him part of how I feel and now here I am. Left hanging. Nothing in his posture or his face or his actions suggest that what I said means anything at all to him. My throat gets tight with tears and it makes me mad.
I reach up for his face and put my hand on his cheek to make him look at me. It’s agony waiting to see what those icy eyes will show me. My lip trembles. He doesn’t meet my eyes. He lets his drop shut, turns into my palm and kisses it. The shiver of desire drowns out my fear and sadness. He’s intense and heat rises in chest to blot out the gnawing hollowness that threatens to take over.
He pulls me across his lap and moves his mouth down my neck, big hands sliding up the back of my shirt. Fingers in his dark hair, I try to get his lips on mine. Instead, he strips off my shirt right there in the open air, a cold breeze lifting goosebumps on my flesh. His lips fasten on my nipple and suck as I whimper and hold on to his shoulders, his hair. It’s pure indulgence with that filthy, delicious mouth working me over. A sharp pleasure spikes from my nipple down my belly like a tiny hook of ecstasy tugging at my clit already. I squirm on his lap and then his hand is there where I need it.
I rub myself back and forth in his palm as he presses and cups me there. I need him, but it feels like something is off. He’s using his incredible skills as a lover to distract me from what I said and what he didn’t say back to me. The knot of sadness in my chest holds my lust at bay and I make myself wriggle back from his mouth and hands.
“Stop,” I say, and I grab my shirt, pull it back on. Shame stains my cheeks red and I scoot off of his lap.
He still hasn’t said a word. He meets my eyes though. Looking wrecked. That’s the only word for it. Like he’s been destroyed.
“I said too much, I know. I caught feelings for you, and I probably should’ve kept it to myself, but I couldn’t hold it in anymore. I just want you to know how much you mean to me. I won’t say anything again.”
He levels me a hot gaze that reminds me how fiery blue eyes can look. It cracks right through the icy fear that had closed around my chest. Everything in me melts under his eyes, and I hold my breath, wait for him to say something, anything.
Mickey runs his thumb across my lips. He sweeps my hair back and kisses my forehead right by where that bandage used to be, and I know he still thinks about it.
A thousand things to say well up inside me. I want to scream and cry that I’m heartbroken. I want to apologize for pressuring him to define the relationship. And I want to shout at him that he has no right to be everything I ever imagined he was when I had a teenage crush on him and more. That he should be selfish or rude or have bad table manners, something to make me regret him less when I have to go. Because it’s obvious I have to go, given that he didn’t ask me to stay.
“The business comes first with me. It always has,” he finally says, and his voice is as grim as if it were in a vault six feet under. “Of course I want you. I’d be crazy not to, but I can’t give you what you deserve—a guy who works a nine to five and comes home and forgets about it till nine the next morning. You can’t have my full attention or a promise to stop being a workaholic. What I want is this, you and me at my place together. You get the best of me, but there’s not much of it to give is what I’m saying. It’s never gonna be enough.”
“Being with you at all is enough,” I choke out. “I’m almost ashamed to say it. But I’ll take you in my life however I can get you. If you can only give me an hour, Mick, I’ll take the hour. Because one hour with you is better than the other twenty-three with anyone else.”
That’s it—my dignity is a distant memory. I’m begging this guy for scraps and I’m not even sorry. Because it’s the sad truth. I want his time, and I’ll take as much of it as he can give me. Even if it’s not much at all. It isn’t easy facing how far gone I am on this man
“How long do I have?” he says finally.
“Till what? Until I get sick of waiting for you to say something and I call a Lyft?”
“Until you leave, back to California.”
“I finished my first prep course. The exam, the first part, is scheduled already. I spoke to HR about taking the day off.”
“Whatever you need,” he says stiffly.
“Are you asking the same thing as my brother? How soon can I leave Boston? I didn’t think when I came home that everybody would be counting down till you see the back of me,” I say, trying not to reveal how hurt I am.
“For me it’s the opposite. How many days do I have left with you, that’s the question.”
“If I pass the first time which is no guarantee because lots of people have to take it more than once, some people do it in under a year. I mean, there’s people who work on it full time for like five months and get it all in that length of time. It has four sections, the test does.”
“So you’re ready for part one. Three more to go after you pass this one. You’re saying it could be a couple months or it could be longer, right?’
“Yeah.”
“What do you say to keeping this up till you go back? If you need more time to study or something, just say so, but I want to hang on to you as long as I can.”
It’s lukewarm and noncommittal but I take that deal happily. Being wanted temporarily is better than not being wanted at all as pathetic as that sounds even to my own ears.
“Okay, how about we set up a regular meeting in the crow’s nest, Wednesday nights?” I offer, trying to make it feel more like a game, filthy and fun, and less like settling for crumbs.
“All right, what time on Wednesdays?”
“Nine. Right after they open.”
“I know you like it when there’s people playing on the main floor. That they’re on the other side of the glass,” he observes and I nod, not bothering to deny it. If all I can have of him is a few more months, I’ll give myself this to look forward to, a scheduled rendezvous.
I watch him take out his phone and put it in the calendar as a recurring appointment. I allow myself to smile even though it feels bittersweet, like I’ve lost something I knew I could never have anyway.