Chapter 20 It Is Certain #2
She smiled, a soft, relaxed one. “Yes. I am. However,” she said, and I could sense she’d shifted to some sort of professional stance now, “I do think it’s ridiculous that Conroy wants to try to make a profit on short-term rentals that will gouge the neighborhood, and somehow he’s twisting the facts and turning a private club into the enemy. ”
“Exactly. It’s frustrating as fuck to deal with his lies.”
“I take it you didn’t get into business thinking you’d have to work with developers,” she said.
“I did not. I like figuring out what works. How to make different lines more profitable, more successful. Mentoring start-up founders in how to do the same.” I looked at the stunning view of Manhattan from my window, a reminder of how well Joy Delivered was faring.
“Starting this particular business was my sister’s idea.
We went in together because she brings the passion, and I bring the bottom line. ”
“You’re the numbers man. The logic guy. But Jack, that’s what you’re passionate about, right?”
I nodded, liking that she’d understood me so quickly. “Exactly. And with this problem, I get why it’s important, but I wish I didn’t have to bother with it and untangle all these lies.”
“That could be said about a lot of things though, right?”
I raised an eyebrow in question. “What do you mean?”
“Well, no one wants to have to deal with the problems that get in the way of our everyday lives, but yet it’s part of everyday life, right?”
“True.”
“You just have to think about it as another problem to solve. Because that’s what you like doing. You like finding the clues. Putting them together until you reach the answer, right?”
“Yes,” I said with a small smile. She was getting me.
“Look at this the same way. Don’t look at it as getting involved in something seedy, like real estate guerrilla warfare.
Look at it as a—” She stopped, stared at the ceiling as if she were hunting for the right word, then continued, “as if a new vibrator was stimulating the labia rather than the clitoris, and you have to fix it.”
I laughed so hard I had to grab her hips so she wouldn’t fall off me from the chuckling.
“I would never make a vibrator that stimulated the slit, not the clit,” I said, being deliberately crass, and it was her turn to laugh.
“But that’s good advice. Just treat it as yet another challenge in the business day. ”
“Exactly,” she said with a crisp nod, and it hit me. Like a blast of light blaring through the room at dawn.
“You just gave me advice,” I said, kind of awestruck. “Like a therapist.” I quirked up my lips.
“That’s what I do,” she said playfully.
And it didn’t bother me. And I was able to talk to you.
“Sometimes, I can’t help myself,” she added.
“I liked it,” I said, and I wondered what it would have been like if I hadn’t met her at The Pierson. If I’d simply shown up for my appointment two weeks ago. I was quiet for a moment, drifting off to that notion.
“Are you thinking about what it would be like if we were working together? In therapy?” she asked in a soft, quiet voice.
“Are you a mind reader?”
She smiled. “I am, actually. It was part of my coursework. I’m certified not only in intimate relationship therapy but also in mind reading. As well as tarot. Shall I read your cards?”
“Oh, please do. Though I’d honestly feel a tad better if you relied on a Magic 8 Ball. Are you certified in that too?”
She mimed shaking a Magic 8 Ball. “What would you like to ask it?”
I stroked my chin, pretending to be deep in thought. But when I spoke, the question was borderline serious. “Would Michelle still have been attracted to me if we first met at her office?”
Her lips parted as if she were taken aback by the question. Then she peered at the pretend glass window in the makeshift Magic 8 Ball. “Without a doubt,” she said, and I watched her. The way she swallowed as if nervous. How her eyes stayed fixed on me. The clarity with which she spoke.
I ran my fingers across her wrist. “Would you have fought it?”
She let go of the pretend toy. “It is certain,” she said, giving another Magic 8 Ball answer, but one that seemed truly serious.
“Then I’m glad we met the night before. I don’t know what I would have done sitting across from you in your office, trying to talk to you as my therapist when I want to do bad things to you,” I said, toying with the hem on her skirt.
“But you’re talking to me now as my lover, and I presume you’ll still do bad things to me later.”
“I will absolutely do them,” I said, then shifted gears because I liked getting to know her better. “Did you always want to be a therapist?”
“It was my fallback option.”
“What was your first choice?”
“I thought I wanted to be a Broadway star.”
“Yeah? What happened there?”
“Only three things got in the way of that dream. One—I can’t sing. Two—I can’t dance. Three—I can’t act,” she said and I laughed at the way she made fun of herself. So easily, reminding me the more time I spent with her, the more time I wanted to spend with her.
“You answer the question now. Have you always known you wanted to be a therapist?”
Her lips curved up as if she were thinking of the answer.
“I don’t think I had it on my list in high school.
But I always liked helping people. I think I always enjoyed being someone my friends could turn to for advice, even with simple things when I was younger like what to wear on the first day of school, and then when I was older on things like what to say to their parents when they got in trouble, or what should they do about this teacher, or that boy, or this problem. ”
“You were a natural,” I said.
She shrugged, as if blowing off the compliment.
“Maybe. But it wasn’t until my parents died, and I had a tough time of it for a while in college that I started to try therapy myself for a few months, to deal with all the residual grief.
It made a difference for me so I realized it was the perfect marriage for me professionally. ”
“I bet you’re good at it,” I said, stroking her collarbone absently.
“You missed your chance. That ship has sailed for you, sir.”
“I can’t say I regret it. Because I like this arrangement we have going on.”
“Me too. Is the sex therapy working for you, Jack? Helping you heal that wounded heart?” she asked, tracing a heart shape on my chest. I tensed momentarily at the suggestion of why I was a damaged man.
I almost wanted her to know the truth. That I wasn’t hurting; I was besieged by guilt.
But we weren’t dredging up the past now. We were focused on the present.
“It’s working immensely,” I said, and that was true—I felt lighter, freer with her. “And you? Are we getting that guy out of the rearview mirror?”
She leaned closer, pressed a soft kiss on my cheek. “How could I think of anyone else while I’m sitting on your lap like this?”
“I like you on my lap,” I said, glancing down at her and the way her gorgeous body molded to me. How her ass felt on my thighs. How her back rested gently against my arms. How her legs felt draped on me.
“Funny, but you don’t really seem like a lap person,” she said, playing with the collar on my shirt, then my tie, running her fingers along it.
“Why not?” I asked, wrenching back in mock offense.
“Don’t know. It just seems sort of warm and cuddly.”
I rolled my eyes. “This from the woman who won’t spend the night. This from the woman who keeps me at arm’s length.”
“Isn’t that the length you prefer?”
I shook my head. I didn’t know why, but the guilt that normally clawed at me was absent right now.
It had slinked off, like smoke curling away.
I felt stripped bare, but I didn’t mind her knowing how I felt, because somehow she was working her way past all those barriers I’d built to protect people from myself, and she wasn’t even trying to knock them down.
She simply did it by being herself. By talking. By asking. By wanting to know me.
Our conversation today seemed to be a stepping stone to something more.
To closeness. It should have scared me. Should have sent me into preservation mode, both for my sake and for hers.
But it didn’t. It only made me want more of her.
I hoped this feeling wouldn’t lead to an impossible choice down the road.
Or even in two weeks, when our thirty nights ran out.
I didn’t want to focus on that though. I wanted to exist in the moment with her.
“With you, I don’t mind less than arm’s length,” I whispered, then brushed my lips against her hair, burying my face in the soft strands and bringing her even closer. “And I want you to spend the night with me. I want to see you in the mornings too.”
She pulled back. “I don’t know.”
“Is that you protecting your heart again?”
“Yes,” she said, and I liked that she didn’t hide the truth. She simply admitted it.
“But I make amazing scrambled eggs.”
“Well, in that case,” she teased, as she finally unknotted my tie, “I’ll take it under advisement.”
I looked down my nose at her handiwork, her hands tap dancing on my chest.
“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were trying to get me naked.”
“Maybe I am,” she purred.
“But I’m working,” I said in a playful voice, as her fingers undid my buttons. The afternoon was shot. I didn’t care anymore. I had other things on my mind.
“I think work is over for you today.”
“Do you want me to do bad things to you?”
“What do you think?”
I nodded. “All signs point to yes,” I said, giving her a Magic 8 Ball answer. I didn’t need tarot cards to tell me she was going to enjoy all the bad things I’d do. Her body made it clear.
I reached for her hips, lifted her off me and set her down on the edge of my desk.
I stood up, zipped my pants, held her face in my hands, and moved in to plant a bruising kiss on her lips.
She gasped the second I made contact and I kissed the sound away, feasting on her lips, turning everything playful into something hot and hungry once more.