Chapter 14 – Cullen
Chapter Fourteen
Cullen
My period is ten days late. I suspect I’m pregnant, but we both want to wait another week or two before I take a test just to be sure.
The news has only accelerated the excitement and tension between me and Padraic.
We spend every minute we can together – and we don’t spend all of it having sex despite the constant temptation.
I start sleeping in Padraic’s bed. The first night, he traps me in his grasp and I have no choice.
Every night after that, we mutually choose to fall asleep together.
It’s a new step for both of us and I sleep so much better in his bed that I stop sneaking back to my room and move some of my things into his.
I don’t know how this can be working out but my relationship by arranged marriage contract is more fair and healthy than any relationship I chose out of love or any other driving chemical imbalance.
Padraic’s work picks up with the start of the spring season. I don’t know why exactly, but he explained it with a lot of big finance words over breakfast one morning. For the next few days after that, he’s started waking up before me and I begin to wonder if he isn’t the only one falling.
I haven’t forgotten what he said to me after that incident on his desk.
He’s falling for me. What does that mean coming from a man like him?
Does he only want me because I fulfill all these needs for him or…
is it something else? If we met under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t feel like this.
But part of what makes this so exciting are the rules.
The tension between us. Is it really okay to fall for this man? Am I betraying myself?
Jelena sends someone else up with breakfast instead of delivering it herself today.
The new girl doesn’t speak English very well.
I try my best to communicate with her so I can say thank you, but I’m not sure how well it works.
After breakfast, my days are all so luxurious that my nervous system has the time to heal. This really is the soft life.
The softness lasts all of thirty minutes before I hear running and then Zack bursts into my suite without knocking. Luckily I’m just painting.
“Cullen. You need to get up and get your ass into some Chanel. Now.”
“Excuse me?”
Zack has never talked to me like this before.
“I don’t know what the fuck happened but this may be our last conversation. Up!”
I spring up from my painting stool. But Zack looks like he’s about to explode with tension. I set my paintbrush down and Zack grabs my hands, dragging me towards my walk-in closet.
“Can you tell me what’s going on?”
“My mother is here. She has no idea Padraic got married and he didn’t want her to know. The last thing I need is for her to see you wearing… that.”
“What’s wrong with my kaftan? It’s comfortable and I can paint all day in it, because I already got paint all over it.”
Zack looks at me like he feels sorry for me.
“My point exactly.”
“I don’t know which of these clothes are Chanel.”
Zack moves me out of the way as politely as possible.
“Isn’t she your mother? You’re acting like there’s a missile headed towards the house.”
“The missile has already entered through the front door and picked up on the fact that Padraic has been hiding something from her. Somebody snitched.”
“Snitched? Why is this a secret. We’re both in our late thirties. Can’t your brother marry who he wants?”
“You would think so.”
Apparently, this isn’t the case. The skirt suit Zack picks out for me looks like something Hillary Clinton would wear. No shade to her, but my style is halfway between Kamala Harris and Michelle Obama. I love dressing like an aunty, but dressing like a Caucasian grandma? I don’t know about that.
Zack doesn’t watch me change until I need his help getting the zipper up on the back of this Chanel suit. He pulls the zipper all the way up the length of my back. The suit feels like a prison. I turn around, and I seriously could not feel less sexy.
“Even when I’m a grandma, I will dress sexier than this.”
Lots of black women I know are sexy well into their eighties. It has nothing to do with injections or surgeries, either. You take care of yourself and have that je ne sais quois… You can be sexy forever-ever. This suit kills the entire concept of sex.
“You look perfect.”
“I look like a weird combination of a man and several balloons.”
“You are crazy. You would look hot wearing a freaking potato sack, okay?” Zack says. “But that doesn’t even matter because my mother will rip you apart.”
“What?”
“Oh yeah. She’s a bitch. We don’t have much time, so I can’t prepare you but… I need you to go upstairs to Padraic’s office and survive for about ten minutes. I’ll come up with a plan to get you out of there by then.”
“Are you joking?”
“Ma’am?” Zack says, folding his arms. “Do I look like I’m joking?”
He’s wearing a pink seersucker suit. I don’t know how Zack wants me to answer that question.