“Don’t ask me that,” I tell Dash, wagging a finger at him. “I’m not sober enough to talk to you.”
His eyebrows arch as he tucks his hands behind his head. “No?”
“Nope.”
“You want me to go inside?”
I don’t—but there is alcohol inside. “You could go get me another drink.”
He frowns. Then he gets up. “Be right back.”
Dash returns with orange juice, and I notice as he steps onto the deck, spilling light across the cement floor, that the man who was talking on his phone is gone now. It’s just Dash and me.
I take the orange juice. Dash reclaims his chair beside mine. I can’t read his face. I’m too drunk to think high-level thoughts.
“You don’t have to sit out here,” I manage.
“I could use a breather.”
I look him over, surprised anew by how damn hot he is. “You’re Mr. Social. I guess you always were. I wasn’t.” I smooth my fingertips over the pattern on my dress and sigh. “People make me super tired.”
“You’re in a sorority, though. I saw on your CV.”
“That’s true. Different, though.”
“How so?”
“I don’t know…” I look at his strange, familiar-not-familiar adult Dash face. “I guess because I know the rules.”
“Not here?”
It takes me a second to discern what he means. “Definitely not here.” I bite my lip. “You’re here.”
“There aren’t any rules with me, Amelia.”
“Just Amelia,” I say, wagging my finger again. “None of that old nickname shit.”
He nods.
Then somehow, I spill my orange juice. Dash is by me, dabbing the hem of my dress with a napkin. I lean back, needing to get away from the heat of him, the smell of him. But my hand didn’t get the memo; I grab his arm and look into his hazel eyes.
“I can’t believe this happened,” I say drunkenly.
“What?” His voice is rough.
“You’re my boss.” I give a bitter laugh.
“I’m not your boss, Amelia.”
“Partner, then.” My head feels unsteady, so I blink a few times. “I thought you were overseas.”
“For a year. And that was a while back.”
“I saw that somewhere…” I murmur, feigning casual; I hope he can’t tell from my face that I know because I stalked him online. “Did you like it?” I ask as he leans back away from me, one hand holding wadded napkins.
“Yes—I did.”
His voice is strange. I’m too drunk to know exactly how. Stupid Amelia. Leave it to me to get drunk and chat up Dash. I lean toward him, rubbing my finger over the scar I saw near his temple at work.
“How’d you get this?”
He leans subtly away from me, so my fingertip is touching air. “Hit it on something in the gym.” His voice sounds rough.
“By accident?”
“Fighting.”
“Why were you fighting in the gym?”
“Krav Maga. We were sparring.” He stands slowly, then sits back on his chair. His face, I notice, is excessively neutral. The kind of neutral that isn’t really neutral.
I sit up, leaning slightly toward him. “Is that karate?”
“Yeah.”
“Can you show me some moves?” I giggle.
He gives a low laugh. “Not here.”
I get up, then plunk myself down at the bottom of his chair. I lean toward him and let my dumb thoughts flow out of my drunken mouth. “I liked it when you were sitting with me on my chair…”
Eleven
Dash
I don’t know how often Ammy drinks or what she had tonight, but woman is hammered. I wouldn’t pin her as the type to get drunk at a work gig, but if she doesn’t drink often, it could have been an accident.
In fact, I’m betting on that.
She’s got that drunk look that’s a combo of surprised, relaxed, and chatty as she perches on the feet end of my chair and leans over my legs.
“I’m cold, Dash. Why is it windy out here?”
I sit up, tug my jacket off. “Here.” I drape it over her shoulders, and Amelia wobbles as she gets her arms into it.
Her eyes shut. “Smells good.”
One look at her wrapped in my coat, and I know my dick can’t handle this shit. Not for long. I shift, moving my legs off the chair and leaning on my knee, my body already oriented toward the door.
“You wanna go soon?” I ask. “You can catch a ride with me.”
“Maybe I should.” She peeks at me through her lashes. “I get sleepy when I drink.” She blinks, then wrinkles her nose. “Did you drink water?”
“Yeah.” I’m surprised she noticed.
“You don’t drink?”
I lift a shoulder. “Only once or twice a year.”
“Why not?”
Another shrug, even as my chest aches. “Don’t care for it too much.”
“You used to.”
“That’s true.” Now it brings back memories best avoided.
Amelia leans her head onto one shoulder, her coppery hair falling across her moonlit cheek. “You’re a mystery, Dash. Mr. Mysterious Boy Next Door.”
“What do you want to know?” I wait, silent and still, hoping she’ll ask me why I left her. Despite the lack of drink for me tonight, I feel like I could tell her the whole fucked up story now, while she’s not fully present. Light spills over the balcony at that moment: a waiter stepping through the door.
I note a few shorter glasses on his tray. “Water?” I raise my brows.
He hands one to me.
I pass it to Ammy. She takes it without a word, and has a small sip. I watch as she folds her hands around it.
“Cold…”
I try to give her a smile, but I can’t, so I just stare. I stare at her, and she at me, and then she sets the drink down on the cement floor.
When she leans back up, she reaches for me. I can’t stop her. Not when her hand wraps around my shoulder or she sprawls onto my lap. My arms remember what to do: they go around her, not too hard, so she feels like I’m grabbing her, but enough so she won’t wobble off my lap.
She lifts her face, hair falling down around her shoulders; then she dips her mouth to mine.
I don’t have the discipline to move away. Damn me. I let her kiss me. She is smooth and silky, tasting like champagne and lipstick, making me rock hard in a breath.
Our tongues brush, and as she opens more deeply to me, my cock throbs and I have to pull away.
Her hands frame my face, then her mouth is covering my mouth again. I wrap an arm around her back and pull her up against me once more, kissing her as hard as I need before warnings rip through my head and I push her gently off my lap.
I get up, starting for the door before I realize: this is what I did last time. I left. I can’t do that to her now, despite how much I fucking need to, so I step over to the rail.
I hear my own hard breaths as I fist my hands, looking down at the forest on the south side of the house.
I feel Amelia as she moves to stand beside me.
“Dash?” Her voice is thin, almost childlike in its raw regret. “I’m sorry.” Her body sways a little, bumping into mine—making me want to grab her by the arms and push her up against the railing.
“Nothing to apologize for,” I manage.
“Dash…?”
I shift my gaze to her face, finding her lips puffy, her cheeks marked by the scruff of my beard.
“I...think I’m going to go.”
I turn after her. “Let me call a cab for you, Am.”
She stalks back to me, her eyes flashing with moonlight. “You never liked me, did you, Dash? You didn’t feel the same way I did.”
“That’s not true.”
Her eyes shimmer with tears. Then she whirls around and barrels through the doors. I let her go.
Amelia
I cry the whole way home. I’m so confused—and drunk. And
confused. I wake up the next morning with a killer headache, and a bigger ache inside my chest.
Why did I do that?
What the hell is wrong with me?
But I know. I know.
I still love him. I love Dash. It’s stupid. So, so stupid. That, I know as well. But I love Dash. My heart and body still feel like he’s mine. I want him beyond reason, logic, safety.
That’s why I’m here. That is why I took this job, I realize as I wash my old, stale makeup off my face. Why I got drunk and stayed outside when he came out there, too.
Because I want him.
I feel possessed, like there’s this shadow person living inside me who has her own plans, plans completely different than the ones Thinking Amelia has. I guess it’s a fight between head and heart, I think, as I chew cereal and hold my throbbing head at the apartment’s little table.
Now that I know for sure, I feel like I should quit the internship. Before I do something really stupid.
I walk around all day Saturday feeling shocked at how stupid I am. How much I want him. Have I learned nothing over time?
My friend Lucy texts me ‘how’s it going’ and I send her the yellow-blue iPhone symbol with its hands up at its cheeks and its mouth in a screaming “o.”
‘I’m in love with Dash, and he’s the animator on my team. I’m doing stupid things and probably going to get my heart broken again. I want him so much, and I want to make him regret the way he left me. Send help!’
I delete all that, typing instead, ’Kind of crazy. I’ll tell you about it in Southampton.’
How far away is that? One week? Two?
I check my phone and realize I’ve got two whole weeks ahead before Imagine’s annual summer break week, during which I’m going to Southampton with Lucy and our other besties, Mags and Charley.
Shit.
I hobble to the elevator and walk my achy, nauseated self to a nearby 711, where I grab a sports drink and a packaged sugar cookie. If I’m going to throw my sanity away, I might as well eat sugar while I do it.
Then I return to my place, crawl under the covers, and take a nap. I wake up in time to watch some episodes of Girls, which I’m behind on, and text some with Lucy.
‘Crazy how? Like crazy sexy?’
‘I’m having some issues with the animator. Who is very sexy.’
‘Is he a sexy asshole?’
‘Yes. I want to kill him. Or have sex with him.’
‘Do it.’
I laugh to myself. Lucy would go nuts if she knew what bad advice she was giving me. We were friends when Dash left me high and dry that summer, but since then, we’ve become best friends. If she knew what I was doing, she’d probably tell me I had lost my mind.
Because I have.
Late Saturday night, so late it’s almost Sunday, I get an email that makes my phone buzz.
Feeling okay? Hope you got home safely. I’m sorry I didn’t take you.
Dash.
I sigh and spend the night trying to decide if I’ll reply. Sunday morning, I do, and with restraint: Fine, thanks.
Just lacking all of my dignity and a working brain.
Monday morning, I give myself a pep talk in the shower.
He doesn’t want you. And even if he did, so what? Are you a whore? You’re not just a body. Don’t be stupid.
I decide to fabricate a dentist appointment midday. I can get through a few hours in a room with Dash—Dash whom I kissed while drunk; Dash whom I still want.
I can.
I will.
These things are within my control. I’ll make smart choices.
I wear my plainest pantsuit, white, with a green paisley scarf and wedge sandals. I show up just a minute or two early, and sit down with Meredith and Bryan, setting a print-out of our progress on Carrie’s vacant chair. (She’s sometimes late, having stopped downstairs for coffee).
And Dash walks in. Walks right beside our little group on the way to his desk.
He smells like sunscreen of all things. And he looks tan.
He gives me a modest smile, as if to say that happened, but it’s cool; it ain’t no thing, then sets his fellow animators to work on something and rolls his chair over to my crew and me. He helps us fill in details—mostly visual ones—about the library, looking at me often as the subject shifts, and he’s chatting about his weekend on a guy friend’s boat. He acts like we’re not just friends, but friends with not one bag of baggage.
And he smells amazing.
Fuck him.
Figuratively, of course.
All day, he keeps it up: the just-plain-friends, no-history-no-baggage act. Until it’s five o’clock and I’ve forgotten my fake dentist appointment. My stupid teeth are throbbing like the rest of me. I’ve been bespelled and all I want is just to sit beside him, listen to him talk about dumb things like politics—who likes politics?—and baseball games and why it’s tedious and hurts his fingers to sketch feathers.
Fury. That is all I feel.
Fuck Dash and this stupid friend shit.
All the other people working on our project are fulltime Imagine employees—all but Mallorie, and she’s out today—and this is bad because, as I wash my hands in the restroom, Weiss’ voice comes over the intercom, reminding all fulltime Imagine employees to come down to the lobby for a quarterly meeting.
I dry my hands and tell myself that when I get back to our studio, I’m going to pack my bag quickly and go on home. Sometimes we work past five, but tonight doesn’t have to be one of those nights.
As I step out of the bathroom and into the hall, I pass Adam, Ashley, Meredith, Bryan, Amber, and Carrie, all toting their purses and bags, headed in the direction of the elevators.
“See ya later.” Meredith blows me a kiss, and Carrie waves. “We’re doing dinner after the meeting. I’ll text you if you want.”
I nod reactively. All I can think about is that I have to go into our room, and for the first time since our kiss, it’s going to be just Dash and me.
Not good. I need to make a speedy exit.
Except when I get back, I find Dash’s head leaned back against the top of his chair. He’s got his hand over his eyes. His other hand, I can’t help noting as I step inside the room, is cupped over his… yeah.
So fuck me. Fuck Dash, and fuck me, too. Because I tell myself to sit down, to reach underneath my desk and grab my purse and bag… Instead, what do I do? I step beside him, rub my fingers through his hair, and say, “I liked it long, but I think I prefer it shorter.”
Twelve
Dash
Amelia’s hand. In my hair.
Fuck.
She tugs a few strands near my nape, then rubs her nails over my skin. “Did you do it after work Friday?”
“Before the party,” I manage.
She rubs her hand over my head, ruffling my hair gently. “It looks nice.”
That feels nice. So fucking nice, my dick is throbbing in my boxer-briefs.
I grit my teeth and shut my eyes, and within seconds, I can hear her shoes clink on the floor and feel her warmth diminish. When I open them, I find her sitting in her chair. It’s rolled away a few feet, as if she can sense my want of her and she’s reacting with some distance.
Thank fuck.
I don’t need this. I don’t want or need to fuck with her. Scratch that: I want to, but I definitely don’t need to. Far from it. I spent the weekend raking myself over the coals because I touched her Friday. She was drunk, and I was stupid. Unforgivable, again.
I don’t want to toy with her, so when I came to work today, I tried to be as open and as friendly as I could be, just so she’ll know where we stand and maybe think we can be friends. It seems stupid, but…I don’t know. It’s all I’ve got.
I feel like shit that she kissed me. If she still wants me…
Any feelings she might have for me, beyond hate or irritation—all the things I thought I got from her when our work first started here—are misplaced, and a sign that what happened w
ith us left a mark on her. I fucked her up, I fucked her over.
I take a slow, deep breath and tell myself to get out of my head. Flip to a fresh page in my pad and start sketching. My hand around the pencil is sweaty, though. I put that work aside and get on the computer, choosing color palettes.
Nearby, I can sense Amelia moving, but I don’t dare look at her. I don’t allow my gaze to wander till she stands up. She walks slowly behind me. I hear something clink on the floor.
A pencil. She dropped it right beside my office chair. I could reach it if I—
Ammy leans down, showing me her ass in white dress pants. I hold my breath and wait for her to straighten up. Instead she laughs.
“Oops.” She crouches and waddles slightly toward the pencil, giving me a Grade-A view of her round ass. It’s in my fucking face.
Just when I’m thinking she’ll stand back up, she does…but instead of stepping back to her chair, Amelia leans over the desk right beside me, tapping something into the keyboard, jutting her hip out as she does it.
“Just need to check…” Her mumbles grow so quiet, I can’t hear them. But I can see her thrust her hip out further. I can smell her: warm skin, lotion, female.
She throws the pencil down again—I see her do it!—and then crouches back over to get it.
“Sorry to keep staying in your space here,” she says, sounding cheery. My dick twitches as the fabric of her pants pulls, shaping her ass; I can almost see her ass crack through the thin fabric.
My dick pulses. And then her pants slip down a little. I can see her white thong. My hands reach for her without permission, closing around her hips and squeezing.
“What are you playing at?” The words are growls. Goddamn, I need to pull her closer, but I won’t let myself.
“What do you mean?” Her voice is thin and high: and I know her. I fucking know this girl. I know she means this. She’s fucking with me.
My fingers press into the curve of her hips. “Is this your idea of punishment?”
I swear I can hear her heartbeat… Or maybe that’s mine.