33. Keeley #2
I park in the garage and skip my normal chat with Paul, Mark, and Jacobson to get upstairs faster, coming to a stop just inside the door to the apartment when I find Graham in jeans and a black button-down, clearly on his way out.
And he looks good.
He looks really, really good.
I’d forgotten he had some bachelor thing for Colin tonight.
Apparently, there’s tension over the fact that Mandy won’t set a date, and they’re trying to cheer Colin up.
I’d like to suggest that cheering Colin up with lap dances and girls jumping out of a cake isn’t going to help the situation, but I guess I’d sound a little jealous.
“I didn’t realize you were leaving so early,” I tell him. There’s a plaintive note to my voice, one I wish wasn’t there.
He glances at the clock. “It’s seven-thirty, Keeley, and we’re meeting for dinner. It’s not that early.”
“So…are you just going out to dinner?”
He’s focused on rolling up his sleeves, his watch gleaming in the light. At least he’s too cheap to buy a Rolex, so he won’t have women throwing themselves at him for his money.
Everything else , yes. But not money.
He shakes his head. “Simon did the planning, so I doubt it’ll end there.”
His shirt looks soft. If I were a girl seeing him out tonight, I’d walk straight up and run my fingers over it and ask him where he got it.
He’d tell me he didn’t remember and ask if I wanted a drink, and I’d smile at him—a small reward for playing along because we’d both know I didn’t give a flying fuck where he bought that shirt.
He catches me watching him and crosses to where I’m standing. “Are you okay?” He tips my chin up as if he’s observing me for signs of illness.
“I’m fine,” I reply, batting his hand away. “But don’t think you get to bring someone home just because you’re paying the rent.”
His eyes brush over my face, searching for something before a smile tugs at the corner of his mouth. “I’ll keep it in mind.”
He grabs his keys, hesitating.
“I’ll be fine,” I tell him. “Though I’d be better if I could just find my Tulane sweatshirt.”
“It wasn’t yours anyway.” A hint of a smile creeps onto his face again. “But yeah, it’s a real mystery, that sweatshirt’s disappearance.”
After he leaves, the apartment just seems empty.
I change clothes and consider eating my weight in junk food—Lucky Charms, washed down with Doritos and Oreos and maybe some guacamole if I need a vegetable—but I don’t do it.
When this pregnancy began, it was like being held hostage by someone or something I didn’t have to listen to.
Now, though, the baby matters more to me than anything I crave, so I wind up eating a boring salad, and it sucks that Graham isn’t here to pat me on the head like a child for making a good choice.
I’m getting texts from friends and acquaintances about the video, but work is my concern and Graham’s really the only person I want to discuss it with.
I guess there are other people I could call—Gemma would bring both guns blazing to that fight, I’m certain—but I know it won’t be the same.
She might reassure me, but she won’t be able to comfort me the way he would. No one could.
I put on Bridgerton and turn it off. It’s no fun without Graham there to comment, and I wonder if it’s always going to feel lonely like this after he’s gone.
I thought I loved living alone. I thought I loved being free. Maybe it’s just what I told myself so I wouldn’t get tempted to want anything more.
I wake on Saturday morning and scroll through the texts on my phone.
Every friend has seen the video by now and it just makes me wish I’d been doing something slightly more spectacular—some kind of crazy roundhouse kick to fight off an intruder while pulling the baby out.
Perhaps a John Wick-style pencil to someone’s eye.
I have no idea why this video is even a thing . Would anyone want to watch a video of a guy catching a frisbee? Because that’s basically what I did, only the frisbee was covered in amniotic fluid and briefly wedged inside a vagina.
Okay, I guess I would watch a video of a guy pulling a frisbee out of a vagina.
I skim through the texts until my eyes catch on an unfamiliar number.
Hi Keeley . My name is Trevor MacNulty. I’m a producer at Mindy and Mills . Hope you don’t mind but I got your number from a mutual friend. Saw your video and would love to talk to you about working together. Please give me a call as soon as possible.
This is it . My shot at fame has arrived at last. I’ll begin as their medical expert before moving onto a show of my own—something where I diagnose really cool, rare skin conditions but with a personal element: viewers will see me in business mode, but also watch me and Rihanna heading to Pilates together, or me and Jennifer Garner making scones in her kitchen.
“Graham!” I scream, running to the kitchen, still clad in my pajamas. “Graham, I’m gonna be rich!”
My words echo in the empty apartment. His door is wide open, the same way it was when he left last night.
I grip the counter, staggered by the unexpected wave of sheer fury sweeping over me.
He stayed out all night. I told him he couldn’t bring someone home and he followed my dictates to the letter and stayed with her instead.
You son of a bitch . You goddamn son of a bitch.
I picture him with someone else, someone more like Anna than me—tall and elegant and, you know, not pregnant, unbuttoning that black shirt he wore. Unbuckling his belt. Him beneath her, allowing her to take charge.
And I hate her, but more than that I hate him . I hate him so fucking much.
I don’t even know why I hate him, and I guess he hasn’t technically done anything wrong, but my thoughts are rage-filled and irrational. I picture kicking him out. Changing the locks, dumping his files and computer outside the door. And he has done something wrong. We are, technically , married.
I pick up the phone, my only goal to actively ruin whatever he currently has going with someone else in whatever way occurs to me.
I’ll tell him I’ve gone into labor. Explain THAT to your one-night stand , Graham .
But before his phone’s even begun to ring, I see a note he’s stuck to the bananas: At gym.
Try not to eat all the fruit while I’m gone.
I hang up, and then stand for a moment, letting this sink in. Letting the relief hit me, and then the realization I’m relieved when I shouldn’t have cared in the first place. This is potentially the biggest moment of my life. How could I have forgotten that simply because Graham wasn’t home?
Whatever. I still need to talk to him. I want him to listen to all the side businesses I’ll spin from my future reality show. He’d probably know all about syndication rights too. That’s where the money is, or so I’ve heard.
I dress as fast as I can, then take the elevator to the top floor, where the building’s plush gym looks out over the city through a million windows.
When I walk in, he’s doing dead lifts, so it’s his arms I notice first—massive, rippling with extra muscles that don’t even exist in real men.
And not to brag, but I’ve seen a lot of men naked, so I’d know.
Sweat glistens on his brow, his eyes so focused and determined that lust hits me like a bolt of lightning.
Lust has also hit the chick on the treadmill, however. She is surreptitiously taking photos of him, which I find deeply irritating. I mean, she doesn’t even know him.
“He’s married,” I hiss as I pass. “ FYI .”
I continue on, wondering what the hell led me to say that. Graham will soon be gone, but I might be sharing an elevator with that woman for years.
Well, she shouldn’t be looking at a married man. Even one who isn’t wearing a ring.
He sees me and sets the weight down, his brow furrowed in concern. “Are you okay? I assume only an emergency would bring you to a room where people exercise on purpose.”
“I’m up here all the time ,” I reply primly, though I’ve not been here once since my tour of the building, two years prior.
Treadmill Stalker is still watching, so I walk closer than I normally would and press my hand to his chest, the way I might if he were actually mine rather than simply pretending to be. His gaze falls to my hand, and he raises a brow.
“I’m checking your pulse,” I tell him. “For the life insurance policy I’m taking out on you.”
“That’s not where you find a pulse, Keeley.”
“Oh, I forget…which one of us went to medical school, Graham? Was it you?”
He smirks. “I wasn’t convinced it was either of us until quite recently. So what’s up?”
“I’m about to be really famous and I need you to help me figure out what my reality show should be called.”
“Reality show,” he repeats flatly. “Is this an actual thing or are you just spit-balling again?” He runs a broad hand over his head and it holds there.
My nipples tighten simply at the sight of his armpit.
This is what I’m reduced to after six months without sex—a woman whose nipples tighten at the sight of male armpit hair.
It’s a new low.
“I just got this text,” I say, brandishing my phone.
He reads it but fails to swing me in the air with the ecstasy of a lottery winner, which I guess lines up—even if Graham won the lottery, he’d just put it all in a mutual fund and go on about his business.
I reach for my phone. “I didn’t call him back yet. I don’t want to look too eager.”
“Let’s hope no one caught you running all the way up here to tell me about it, then.” He frowns. “That’s really what you want?”
“Of course. It’s what everyone wants.”
I can tell he’d like to argue, but he somehow refrains. “Then I guess you’d better go give the guy a call.”
I blink. I wasn’t done discussing this with him.
I want to get his thoughts on merchandising opportunities, the likelihood that the skincare/makeup world is too oversaturated for yet another celebrity line (A Dose of Dr. C, Dr. C’s Corrective Cream…
the names honestly write themselves). But he’s dismissing me, and he isn’t happy, and I hate that his unhappiness is taking away a little of mine.
I return to the apartment and dial Trevor MacNulty’s number. I leave a message, sounding politely interested at best.
When Graham finally returns to the apartment, I’m still irritated that he didn’t drop his stupid workout to discuss this with me. He is gloriously disheveled. That annoys me even more.
“You look disgusting,” I say sourly.
“Oh, do I?” He crosses the kitchen toward me then very intentionally reaches above me for a glass, pressing his sweat-soaked chest to mine, his damp arm grazing my face. I smell his soap, feel his exhale dance over my skin.
He’s trying to gross me out but instead, a memory hits me out of nowhere, so sharp I can barely stand it: his weight above mine, his breath on my neck, a low, guttural moan— Keeley, I’m gonna come, fuck .
A shiver races up my arms while my stomach tilts and flips, as if I’m a roller coaster hurtling toward the ground.
It definitely happened and I never, ever wanted it to end.
“You okay?” he asks, pulling away. “You suddenly look terrified.”
“That was more sweat than I’ve ever come in contact with at once.”
“That says more about you than me. By the way, I chatted with the woman in apartment 701. You apparently told her I was your husband?”
I grab a paper towel and begin brushing his sweat off me. “I’d have said you were my brother but that would make the whole pregnancy bit a little weirder than it is.”
His tongue darts out. He is…ever so slightly amused. “I’m not sure you really had to say anything to her.”
I’m not sure you had to say anything to her either. Why the hell would she tell you what apartment she’s in?
I move away, pretending I don’t care. I can’t believe I’m on the cusp of getting everything I want, and all I can think about is…Graham.