Two
Heath
She wants me bad. I can tell.
My date has been stuck to me all night like sequin-covered Velcro. It was a risk bringing her a party like this as a first date, but nothing gets a girl to put out quicker than showing them how much money you have and making them think you’re looking to get married like your friends. To my luck, she has been starry-eyed and entertained the whole time. The problem is it’s taking forever to seal the deal. I’m three drinks in and starting to get impatient.
Her short dress rides up high on her thighs, and the top of it is cut low, both taunting me. It’s enough to give me a sampling of the goods while still making me curious. She giggles at my joke as she licks the sugar from the rim of her lemon drop. Weak, sweet drinks like that always lead to midnight fun.
I glance at my watch and see it’s 11:11. Already? Damn . What does a man have to do to get laid in Manhattan? “It’s 11:11,” I say in a flirtatious voice. “Make a wish.”
She smiles and closes her eyes. She’s either wishing for my dick or she’s stupid.
When she opens her eyes again, her pouty lips turn up in a smile. I know what that means. “What did you wish for?”
“I can’t tell you that, silly.” She bats my arm playfully with her hand. A little touching? She so wants it.
I catch her hand and hold it in mine. She looks up at me from beneath long lashes. Her fake nails are shaped like claws and have about a million crystals glued on them. Girls who pay that much money for hand glitter are always down to fuck a guy like me, and I’m not complaining.
“I’ll tell you what I wished for,” I say. Pink appears on her cheeks. I lean a little closer and brush my lips over her ear as I whisper just one of the dirty, dirty things I want to do between her thighs. Her cheeks are a vibrant red when I lean away. “Make my wish come true?” I ask.
She slams down her glass. “You’re a fucking pig.” Then she stands up and grabs her purse.
“What? No, wait! I was kidding?” That last part probably shouldn’t have been a question.
She glares at me over her shoulder as she walks away. Watching her ass move under that little skirt makes my balls ache with despair. Fucking hell .
A familiar chuckle sounds near me. I look over to find Teagan laughing at my misfortune from the end of the bar. “What?”
“Having a bad night?” She flashes a mischievous smile over her glass.
“Shut up.” I know how bad I fucked up without her telling me about it too. “What are you still doing here?”
“Watching you crash and burn.” She laughs. “‘Make my wish come true?’” Her laugh turns into a cackle.
“Fuck off.” I fight a smile. I’d take it personally, but Teagan never fails to throw a punch with any of the guys. It’s needed with a group of misfits like ours. I slide onto the stool next to her and signal to the bartender. “What are you drinking?”
“My favorite drink after every breakup. What-the-fuck-ever.”
“Having a bad night, too, I see.”
“No. I’m great.” The twist of her face illustrates her lack of sobriety. I wait for her lie to fall apart. “I mean, yeah, I just broke up with my boyfriend two hours before this party, but it’s fine. His replacement is arriving tomorrow by nine p.m.” She turns her phone and shows me her vibrator purchase on Amazon. The girl is a damn mess.
“Looks like we both need to make good use of these free drinks tonight.”
She clinks her glass against mine. We down them and I signal to the bartender for another round.
“Hey,” she starts again. “Weren’t you dating that girl from NYU? The pretty redhead?”
“That ended months ago.”
“Oh shit. Sorry.”
“Don’t be. I dodged a bullet with that one. Actually, I dodged a textbook and a lamp.”
She snorts. “I just know you deserved the textbook, but I’ll need more details to defend the lamp.”
“I really fucked up. We went back to her place after going out and it looked oddly familiar.” I shrugged. “When her roommate came home, I figured out why.”
“Let me guess. Because you were fucking her a few months before?”
I give her a sheepish smile. “More like a few weeks.”
Teagan bursts into laughter. She covers her mouth with a hand and tries to compose herself. “Yeah, you deserved the lamp too.”
I join her, laughing at my expense, the alcohol loosening my shame. “I thought we were chilling, then she wanted more, so I ghosted her and started seeing someone else I met at the same party.” Summarizing it makes me see the error of my ways. “Don’t say it.”
“What was I going to say?”
“That I’m practicing typical fuckboy behavior.” Her raised eyebrows and slow sip show I’m right. I know her well. “Why do I always act like a piece of shit?”
“Maybe because you are a piece of shit?” she responds. I give her a sideways glance, but I can’t kill my smile. When she’s right, she’s right.
The bartender sets down our drinks and we both take a swig. I steal a shameless look while she is distracted, hating how fucking hot she is. My eyes trace up those long, long legs, her deep-brown skin glistening like she’s made of the same silk as her dress. One of her straps keeps slipping down her shoulder, her hair is falling out of her updo, and her shoes are already kicked off and lying on the floor next to her stool.
Teagan has always been zero or one hundred, and nothing in between. One minute she’s obsessing over her image—an overachieving perfectionist, looking like a model while also being a model student and daughter—seemingly without a single stumble. Then the next she’s laid out, wild, and giving us a run for our fuckboy money. She’s a lot to handle.
Not that it ever stopped me.
“Why’d you break up with your boyfriend?”
“I couldn’t take it anymore. He made me go five months without an orgasm.”
I almost spit out my drink. “Five months? How?”
She shrugs. “He’s the son of my dad’s business partner.” That’s enough of an explanation. Teagan will do anything to maintain her perfect image with her parents, even if it means making herself miserable. “I really tried to make it work. He was great in every other way—intelligent, ambitious, great body . . .”
“But his stroke game was weak?”
“Try nonexistent,” she slurs. I laugh, but that’s just sad. “It was like he refused to let me come. I’ve never been with someone I liked that much but hated in bed. If I had some side dick, I probably would have married him. Well, he wouldn’t have married me when he found out about the side dick, but you get it.”
“I do.”
“How can being in a relationship suck as much as being single?” she asks. “It’s either you stay with someone you barely tolerate just so you can get laid on the regular, or you have freedom but waste all your time trying to convince someone to fuck you.”
God, she’s speaking my language. “Yes! It’s like the in-between disappeared. Fuck dating. All I want is someone who’ll be in my bed as often as possible without expecting a pet name in a month and a ring in a year.”
“ Right? All I want is someone who’ll get me off and then get off me.”
“Someone who’ll suck my dick then fucking dip.”
“Give me some P in V, then let me pee and leave.”
Both of our drunk asses find that funnier than we should. We laugh so long we’re in tears and gripping our stomachs before we manage to stop.
The bartender comes over and cuts into our fun. “Sorry, guys. We’re closing up now.”
We down the rest of our drinks and stumble away from the bar, still laughing to ourselves. Teagan can’t figure out how to put her heels back on, and almost tumbles down the stairs when we make it out front. When I help her down the rest of the way, she doesn’t let me go. Now she’s the one stuck to me, and it gives me a very bad idea.
“I’ll get us a cab,” I say. Teagan nods in agreement.
~
The cab pulls up to my apartment a few minutes later. Teagan and I only live a few blocks from each other and go to the same school, yet we only see each other every few months. We have classes, internships. She’s busy, I’m busy. We could still see each other if we really wanted to, but we don’t. At least she doesn’t.
We have history. Years of friendship tarnished by a moment we pretend we’ve forgotten over time, but Teagan never forgives. She hates me—when we’re sober and clothed, at least. things I don’t plan to be for much longer.
It takes us a full minute to climb the first flight of stairs up to my apartment. Teagan can’t walk straight. I find it hilarious, and both of us keep keeling over while laughing about it. We make it to the last landing, and then she trips. I keep her vertical while she stumbles to the wall and leans against it for balance.
“Fuck, I haven’t been this drunk since . . .”
She thinks for a moment but laughs when she can’t remember. Her breath smells like tequila and her hair is a mess, but she looks beautiful when she laughs. That smile does things to me. A very specific, swelling part of me. Fruit is always better when it’s forbidden, and I already know how sweet she tastes.
I press my hands to the wall, caging her between my arms. When she looks up at me, I step closer. “What’s stopping us?”
“The walls and floor are moving a lot right now.”
“No, what’s stopping us from solving our mutual problem?” I give her all the smolder I can muster in my drunken state. She stares me down, a smirk on her plump lips challenging me to do more. I lean in even closer, my mouth hovering over hers, but she still won’t give in.
“You want to fuck me so bad,” she whispers.
I reach down and run my hand up her exposed thigh, loving the feel of her buttery-soft skin. “I don’t not want to fuck you.”
Her doe eyes look at me from beneath heavy lids. I watch the desire swim over her face as she tries to suppress it. She’s too proud to go down without a fight and, oh, how I would enjoy that battle right now.
Her hand runs over the nape of my neck before she slides it down to my chest. In a sexy little voice, she whispers, “I hate you.”
“I know.” I smirk at her. “Come on.”
Taking her by the hand, I lead her up the last few stairs and into my apartment.