Crushing On The Billionaire (Part 1) Page 6

  I was reaching for my phone to text Shawn my idea about the programs when it vibrated. Picking it up, I saw that it was Patrick, and my stomach contents fluttered.

  Without making much of an effort to understand that peculiar feeling, I answered.

  “Hey.”

  “Hi, Loren. How are you?”

  “Just fine.” I fidgeted. This was the first time we were talking after that night in the den. My own nervousness surprised me. I guessed I just didn’t want him to think that this was just another mistake. I didn’t want to have to convince him again that us being together was something worth pursuing.

  Patrick paused a few seconds too long. “So…how was school today?”

  I burst out laughing, and he soon joined me.

  “How dare you small talk me?” I asked, giggling. “Why is this so awkward? It shouldn’t be awkward. We agreed that we had feelings for each other.”

  “Yes, we did.”

  “Tell me, then, oh wise one,” I said, grinning. “Why, after engaging in good sex—”

  “—very good sex.”

  “True. Okay. Why, after engaging in very good sex, do two people genuinely attracted to each other feel that they have to have awkward small talk in order to feel each other out?”

  “Well,” Patrick began, and I could hear the smile in his voice, “from my wizened standpoint, it is polite for the male to contact the female following coitus to ensure that everything remains on friendly terms, and to hopefully secure future coitus in the process.”

  We both laughed for a long time.

  “All right, then, Patrick,” I said, wondering abstractly why it was so hard to stop smiling. “Why don’t we restart this conversation with those parameters in mind? Cut the small talk. Neither of us needs it.”

  “Hi, Loren.”

  “Hello, Patrick.”

  “Sex was amazing the other night, wasn’t it?”

  “You got that right.”

  “I’d love to see you again soon.”

  “I want that, too.”

  “I would like for it to be as soon as possible. I can’t stop thinking about you.”

  “I think it would be great if we saw each other again soon.” I paused, touched my face. It was warm, and I just couldn’t get rid of this smile.

  “Would it be too forward if we saw each other now?”

  I liked this game. We were each saying what we really meant, ignoring the polite nothingness of small talk, the diplomacy of circling around and around what we both actually wanted to say.

  “I don’t think that would be too forward,” I said. “I think it would be nice.”

  I jumped at a light knock at my door and gasped. Patrick laughed, but this time, I could hear him right outside my apartment.

  “You weren’t joking, were you?” I asked, pushing myself up off my couch and tossing a few discarded clothes into the hamper before answering the door.

  “You were the one who wanted me to say what I meant,” he said, as I opened the door, his phone still held up to his ear.

  “Goodbye, and hello,” I said, ending the call.

  “Hello.” He slipped his phone into his pocket and kissed me—strong, sweet, everything. “Is it okay that I’m here?”

  “It’s better than okay that you’re here.” I led him inside, shut the door, and turned around. For not the first time, however, I was insecure about how small and shabby my apartment was. Shawn had only been here once, for crying out loud, before insisting I join him at Patrick’s house at all times. Now that Patrick was here, would he judge me harshly based on my natural habitat? This was the kind of dwelling I was most comfortable in, the same caliber of abode my foster parents had raised me in.

  I tried to head off anything disparaging he might say about it. “I know it’s not much, but it’s enough for just me,” I said, as he took in the surroundings. “It’s my first place on my own since I left home for school. And if I’d known you were coming here, I would’ve cleaned up better. Or lit a candle. Or cooked something. I don’t know. I think the fridge is empty—wait, no. Hold on.”

  I ducked inside and emerged triumphant, holding a pair of Miller Lite cans.

  “Can I offer you something to drink, sir?” I asked, affecting an accent that implied these cheap beers were something to be savored, and far finer than they actually were.

  “I haven’t had one of those in years,” Patrick said, taking one cold can from me.

  “How can you avoid drinking a Miller Lite for years?” I asked, puzzled. “It’s not like there’s a shortage.”

  “There can be when somebody tells you fifteen years ago that you should start supporting local craft beers,” he said, opening the can with a hiss. He took a drink and exhaled heavily. “I…I can’t put into words how much I missed that. Just…it’s just beer. Just beer.”

  I laughed at his wonderment and opened my own can, feeling more at ease now. Patrick might be able to flummox me with a fleet of cars, a fine house, and an indoor pool, but if I could strike him speechless with a single can of regular beer, I didn’t have anything to worry about.

  “I like your place,” he was saying, drifting around, looking at the photos I’d taped up on the walls—all the photos I liked too much to give up to Mercedes for inclusion on the photography studio’s walls. These were the images I wanted to live with, the ones I couldn’t be without. People and places, colorful blurs, always the fog. You couldn’t escape the fog if you lived in San Francisco. It just became a misunderstood neighbor you grew to love in spite of everything.

  “I live rent free,” I said, shrugging. “It makes sense to stay here while I’m still in school.”

  “Of course it makes sense.” He smiled at me. “You don’t have to diminish your apartment, or feel like you have to explain it away. It’s smart to live cheaply. And this apartment is charming because you’re the one who lives here. Now, come here and kiss me again. Stop it with your small talk.”

  Justly admonished, I approached him and he took my beer, setting it aside on a battered end table I’d rescued from a dumpster. We kissed again, slow, like we had all the time in the world, and I guessed we did. This wasn’t the frantic, grueling tryst we’d had in the den. This was two pairs of hands exploring two different bodies, the way his ribs rippled under my fingertips, the goosebumps he was able to coax to my skin as he massaged my neck, and the deliberate, seductive slip of every button through its buttonhole on his shirt.

  We assisted each other out of our clothes, doing a casual dance into my bedroom, kissing each new expanse of skin that was exposed once the fabric fell off of it. When Patrick finally laid me down on the bed, covering my body with his, and eased into me, it felt playful, comfortable, just right. We understood just how to move with each other, who followed when the other led, the rhythm that felt the best for us both.

  It felt silly to think about it, but as we moved together, my counterthrust an ebb to his thrusting flow, it seemed like we’d been doing this for a long time and had gotten really good at it together.

  He knew just where to touch me to get me to moan, and I relished in running my nails along the backs of his arms, knowing that it would make him sigh happily.

  How was this only the second time we’d been together? How had we only discovered this perfectly choreographed pleasure now?

  Maybe we were making up for lost time. Maybe I shouldn’t have been studying it, overanalyzing it. Patrick moved one of his hands between us and pushed against my clit until I was writhing, screaming, crashing down in waves of ecstasy, and he was matching my every sound. How had this happened? We’d come within moments of each other, Patrick being self-aware enough to realize he was already there, then waiting for me until I joined him.

  It was like the Twilight Zone, but only in the best, most erotic way possible. I’d had lovers before who didn’t care if I got off, too, but Patrick was already proving himself to be far and away from them.

  We panted together in comfortable, exhauste
d silence until our breathing slowed, and we took notice of each other again, a light kiss, the glancing pass of a hand, the continuation of exploration.

  “I did want to talk to you about one serious thing.” Patrick studied the ceiling, and I propped myself up on one elbow to study him better.

  “Go ahead,” I said, unable to ignore the pinch of dread in my belly.

  “I don’t think we should tell Shawn.”

  I rubbed the bridge of my nose and sighed. “Why not?”

  “Because I know him.” Patrick ran his hand through his hair. “He would be sensitive about this. He wouldn’t take it well.”

  “I don’t want to lie about it. He’s my best friend.”

  “And I’m his father. You think I want to lie about it?”

  I shook my head. “Give Shawn some credit. He’s not a child. He could handle this. It’s better than sneaking around, than hiding it.”

  “I’m not saying that we have to sneak around,” Patrick said. “I just don’t think he’s ready to hear about us being together.”

  “I don’t see how we can avoid telling him about it,” I said, shaking my head. “I see you all the time when I come over to the house. And now, Shawn and I will be working on a collaborative senior project. If possible, we’ll see each other even more.”

  “I know about the project,” Patrick said, sounding grim.

  “We’re really excited about the project.”

  “What if, when you’re at the house, we act like nothing’s happened?” He narrowed his eyes, staring off across the room, obviously thinking aloud. “If he’s not there, of course, everything will be normal. We could meet at hotels. We could meet here. If you want, I could get a suite somewhere and just keep it for us.”

  “I am not going to be your dirty little secret.”

  He looked at me.

  “If you think that we should hide away our feelings for each other and carry on our lives in some sort of sad charade, then we should just stop right now,” I said, rolling off the bed and stalking away. I was halted in my tracks by Patrick snagging my wrist.

  “I would never want to hide you. I just don’t know how to tell my son I’m in love with his best friend.”

  In love? I reeled for a moment at the magnitude of that revelation. Patrick was in love with me, and I realized that my long attraction to him, the understanding that he reciprocated those feelings, the smile I couldn’t get rid of…was it too soon to be in love with each other? Was that bad?

  “I think I’m in love with you, too, and I want nothing more than to tell everyone,” I said. “Even Shawn.”

  “We’re not going to hide it,” Patrick said again. “I care for you too much. You’re not some mistress I’m going to seclude in a penthouse somewhere. I have genuine feelings for you. I just want to tell Shawn about it in the right way, at the right time. I don’t want him to get hurt. That’s all.”

  “I don’t want to hurt him,” I said. “But I don’t want to lie to him. I can’t. If he asks me, I won’t lie.”

  “You’re a good friend,” Patrick said finally, after a pause that stretched on and on. “Loyal. And I really do love you.”

  There was that word again. Did I say it back? Would it be weird not to?

  Patrick saved me from my dilemma by kissing me, and my body went aflame again, and I didn’t think about anything for a long time.

  He slipped out of my apartment as the sky lightened, giggling like a boy being caught at something, and I knew I should get some sleep, but I couldn’t. Patrick made me feel more alive than usual, if that made any sense. I felt like I could do anything because of him. I wanted to do something, so I grabbed my camera and left in search of moments to collect, seeing if they would put into context the things I was feeling.

  My focus was on couples, on a woman handing a steaming coffee to a man across the counter, their fingers brushing for a fraction of a second, but a fraction of a second that I caught on camera, a fraction of a second that would endure for years and years and years.

  When it started to sprinkle, a man opened an umbrella and invited a woman, who peered up at the sky as if personally affronted, beneath it. I couldn’t tell if they were dating, or even if they knew about it. They huddled under the umbrella together, shoulders touching, and I captured the moment to study for as long as I wanted later.

  Strangers on a bus were forced to pair off, couple up, as seats became vacant and filled. I imagined men sitting next to each other as couples, secret lovers who only met in public while riding public transit. Two women both looking at their phones as they sat side by side were texting each other the things they felt they couldn’t say aloud. The man deeply in love with a woman who couldn’t be with him for any one of a number of reasons expressed his helpless love by standing, offering her his seat. The smile she gave him in return would feed him for an entire week until he gradually started going hungry for her again.

  I shot photos the entire day, having to exchange the drained battery for the charged spare, at one point, to accommodate my own hunger for this art of the couple, the real ones, and the ones I imagined. The homeless people bickering in the alley were just having a lover’s quarrel. Two people who happened to sit down on the same bench didn’t have to say anything to each other. The love between them was a palpable, wordless presence.

  I walked and walked, only dimly aware that my feet were aching, when I felt my phone buzz in my pocket. It was the third text from Shawn. I’d apparently missed the first two.

  Where are you? it read. The previous one: I want to work on our project. The first one: I’m coming to pick you up.

  It made me shudder a little bit to realize that Shawn had been knocking fruitlessly on the door of my apartment where, just hours earlier, I’d been having amazing sex with his father. I guessed I could appreciate Patrick’s inclination to wait to tell Shawn about us, casting uselessly around for the perfect way to break the news. There wasn’t going to be a perfect way. There probably wasn’t going to even be a good way to tell him. I almost ignored the messages, eager to lose myself again to the shooting of couples and love, both real and imagined, but that wouldn’t be right. That would be the very thing I’d railed against with Patrick last night. I didn’t want to hide, or be hidden.

  I texted Shawn the names of the streets at the nearest intersection, wondering if I could act as if everything was normal around him. Would that be lying? It would be a lie of omission, but Patrick had said he wanted to wait. He hadn’t said anything against me when I’d said I couldn’t lie to my best friend. Was it going to come down to me to tell Shawn everything?

  My phone vibrated. Stay there, Shawn had typed. I’ll swing by and get you. Really eager to start the project.

  And I was eager to clear the air, but I didn’t know what that would do to the dynamic of our friendship. Instead, I texted back okay and turned the camera on myself, clicking the shutter. In the program detailing our project, this photo would be captioned, “Loren is excited about starting the senior project collaboration with Shawn, but she’s nervous because she just started a torrid love affair with Shawn’s father. How will it affect their art and their friendship?”

  I looked at the photo I’d taken on the camera’s display and sighed. I looked scared.

  It wasn’t ten minutes and Shawn’s car rolled up to the curb. I had to laugh at him as I climbed into the passenger seat.

  “What, were you just cruising down the streets, hoping you’d find me in this big city?” I asked, shutting the door behind me and buckling the seatbelt.

  “I know how you get when you’re shooting, and you’re almost always shooting,” he said, grinning at me before pulling back out into traffic. “The rest of the world just drops away, and you wander from frame to frame.”

  “You know me pretty well,” I said, still testing the waters of our friendship. Everything seemed normal, right now, but when was reality—and its secrets and lies—going to rear its ugly head?

  “I do.”
He made a couple of turns before I realized, with no small amount of dread, just where we were headed.

  “We’re going to the house?” I asked, my voice coming out in a squeak. “I thought you said you wanted to start working on the project.”

  “I do,” Shawn said, laughing. “And you should probably be taking photos of me right now. It’s the process.”

  I obeyed numbly, wondering if Patrick was going to be there. For the first time ever, I wished him away from the house. I hoped he had a meeting in Palo Alto or maybe on the moon. Anywhere, anywhere but the house. I didn’t think I could keep up my causal demeanor if Patrick was there. I reacted too much to him. Shawn would definitely take notice.

  “I just thought that, if we were going to be starting on the project, that we’d be at school, maybe,” I said, still trying to get us out of having to go to the house when I wasn’t sure what lay in wait there.

  “Why at school?”

  “Because it’s a school project,” I said lamely. “Because your studio’s at school. And your supplies. And we could ask some of the theater students if they’d be interested in modeling as a part of it, and I’d be shooting all of it. Because it’s the process.”

  “Well, at home I have a studio, too,” he said, pulling off the highway, passing by the bus stop I’d gotten off at when I’d ridden public transit out here with the unabashed goal of seducing his father. “I have supplies there, too, and we can write an advertisement to post on Facebook or something—maybe around campus—to see who’d be interested in modeling. You might be surprised that the people who reply aren’t all theater students. There are a lot of visual art students who understand how important it is to have a model for your work who’d do it. And we might get a wider variety of canvases that way.”

  I laughed in an effort to dispel some of my own tension. “It’s kind of creepy when you refer to people as canvases. Kind of on par with Hannibal Lecter.”

  “I’m painting on people, not eating them, Loren.”