F.W.B. - And the Father Will Be... (Piper Bard's Toxic Standalones #16)

1

Ben owes me four hundred and thirty-seven dollars.

I know the exact number because I did the math last Tuesday when the electric bill hit my inbox for the second month in a row with only my name on the payment confirmation.

Four thirty-seven, split across utilities, the internet he streams on twelve hours a day, and half a handle of Bulleit he replaced with Evan Williams and thought I wouldn't notice.

I noticed. I just haven't said anything yet because I'm still deciding whether to bring it up like an adult or let it calcify into the kind of quiet resentment that poisons a living situation from the inside out.

So far, the resentment is winning.

It's a Friday, just past seven. I'm on the couch with a beer and no plans, which is exactly how I want it.

The week earned this — forty-plus hours of work I won't bore myself thinking about and a commute that exists only to remind me I should've moved closer to the office three years ago.

The apartment is mine tonight in the way it never is when Ben's around, all his noise and clutter and the particular way he leaves cabinet doors open like he expects someone else to close them behind him.

He's out somewhere, doing something he was vague about when he left.

That's fine. Ben is vague about everything.

Bills, plans, the friends-with-benefits situation he's been running behind his girlfriend's back.

The knock comes at seven-twelve.

Three sharp hits, knuckles, not a fist. I know who it is before I open the door because Ben's other visitors don't knock like they're expected.

Nikki knocks like she belongs here, and the thing about Nikki is that she half-does.

She's been showing up at this apartment every couple of weeks for the better part of six months, always looking for Ben, always staying for hours, always leaving at a volume that makes it very clear what she stayed for.

I open the door, and she's standing in the hallway in a dark green sundress that's doing exactly what she chose it to do.

No bra — that's immediately obvious, the fabric thin enough to confirm it — and her hair is down, dark, almost black, hanging past her shoulders in the kind of deliberate mess that takes fifteen minutes to look like it took zero.

She's holding her phone in one hand and nothing else.

No purse, no bag, no pretense that she's here for anything other than what she's here for.

"Hey," she says. "Is Ben here?"

"Not yet."

"Can I come in and wait?"

I step aside and she walks past me into the apartment.

She smells good. She always smells good, something warm and slightly sweet that fills whatever space she moves through and lingers after she's gone.

I've noticed it before. I've noticed a lot of things about Nikki before, the same way you notice anything that keeps appearing in your living room in a sundress with nothing underneath it.

She drops onto the far end of the couch and pulls her legs up beneath her, the dress riding high enough on her thighs to answer questions I didn't ask.

She's not tall — five-three, maybe five-four — but she's built in a way that makes her presence feel bigger than her frame.

Thick thighs, thick ass, a waist narrow enough to make everything below it look like a provocation.

The kind of body that fills out denim like a personal vendetta and turns a simple sundress into something you can't stop looking at from behind.

She knows it. She walks ahead of you in hallways and bends over things she doesn't need to bend over and none of it is accidental.

"God, I'm so glad to sit down." She stretches her arms above her head and the dress pulls taut across her chest. "This week destroyed me. I'm so ready for tonight."

"Big plans?"

"You have no idea."

I sit back down on my end of the couch and take a pull from my beer.

She declines when I offer her one, waving her hand like she's shooing a fly.

She's got an energy tonight that's different from her usual pre-Ben warmup.

She's buzzy, almost manic, her fingers tapping against her bare knee, her eyes bright and locked on me with the focus of someone who wants an audience.

"Have you talked to him?" she asks. "Like, recently?"

"Not since he left."

"When was that?"

"Couple hours ago. He said he had a thing."

"A thing." She rolls her eyes and slumps deeper into the couch. "We literally have plans. He should be racing to get here."

I don't ask what the plans are. I've learned that Nikki doesn't need to be asked. She operates on a broadcast frequency, and if you sit near her long enough, you're going to receive the signal whether you want it or not. I take another drink and wait.

It takes about forty-five seconds.

"Okay, so, you know Ben and I fuck, right?" She says it flat, conversational, a thing she's confirming rather than confessing. "I mean, obviously you know. I'm not exactly quiet about it."

"I'm aware."

"Right. So tonight's a little different. Different than our usual situation." She pauses, and the pause has a performative weight to it, a drumroll she's giving herself because nobody else is going to. "He's going to try to get me pregnant."

I look at her over the rim of my beer.

"I told him I wanted a baby," she continues, casual as weather.

"And since we're already hooking up, I figured, why complicate things? He can just do it. Tonight. No condom, no pulling out, just —" She makes a gesture with her hand that I think is supposed to represent the miracle of conception but mostly looks like she's tossing confetti. "You know."

"That's one way to handle it."

"It's the fun way." She grins, and her whole face changes when she grins, everything sharp going sharper, her dark eyes pulling tight at the corners. "I've actually never let a guy come inside me before. Even on birth control, I always made them pull out. So this is, like, a first for me."

"Congratulations."

"Thank you. I'm very excited."

She's not embarrassed. She's never embarrassed.

I've watched Nikki walk out of Ben's room at two in the morning wearing his shirt and nothing else and ask me, with complete sincerity, if we had any orange juice.

She exists in a state of perpetual comfort with her own chaos, and either she genuinely doesn't have a filter or she removed it on purpose and never looked back.

I think about Ben. I think about the four hundred and thirty-seven dollars.

I think about Vanessa, Ben's actual girlfriend, who has no idea this apartment smells like Nikki's perfume twice a month because Ben opens all the windows and lights a candle before she comes over.

Vanessa, who sent a Venmo request to the roommate group chat last month for her share of a surprise birthday dinner she was planning for Ben.

Vanessa, who is a real person dating a man who is currently late to let another woman try to trap him into fatherhood on our couch.

None of this is my problem. I don't owe Vanessa anything. I don't owe Ben anything, least of all loyalty, and the four-thirty-seven is the smallest reason why.

"Can you text him?" Nikki holds up her phone and shakes it. "My phone's been acting stupid all week. I can barely send anything."

I pull out my phone and text Ben. Nikki's here. You coming back soon?

The message delivers. No response.

"Sent."

"You're the best." She stretches again, arching her back against the cushion, the dress doing new and catastrophic things against her body.

She's talking again before she's done moving.

"We're planning some seriously intense sex tonight. Like, not our usual. Deep, hard, just — you know. Really going at it. I'm honestly getting turned on just thinking about it, and my one appointment for the evening can't even be bothered to show up on time."

She's looking at me while she says this. Not past me, not at the wall behind me — at me. Her eyes are steady and her lips are parted just enough to show her teeth, and I realize she's not just oversharing. She's performing. She's putting on a show and checking to see if I'm watching.

I'm watching.

"He knows how excited I am," she says. "I've been texting him about it all day. Well, when my phone cooperates. I've literally never had a guy finish inside me, and the first time is going to be tonight, and he's off at some thing doing god knows what."

My phone stays dark. Ben hasn't responded.