Five
Enzo
“What should we drink to?” Bianca asked, taking a seat at the opposite end of the couch and raising her Manhattan toward mine.
“To a long and happy life—apart,” I suggested, leaning over and tapping my glass against hers.
She took a sip and tucked her feet beneath her. All the drapes were closed, only one floor lamp was on, and she’d turned on the gas fireplace, so the room was warm and intimate. In another life, with another woman, I’d have been moving a little closer to her on the couch, sliding a palm up her thigh, working my mouth from her throat to her lips. She had such perfect lips, and when she’d kissed me at the table, I’d nearly lost my mind. My dick had responded as if she’d put her hand in my pants.
The entire rest of the meal I’d been annoyed with her—and with my body’s reaction to her. But how was I supposed to control that?
She wasn’t supposed to fucking kiss me! That had been her rule, and she’d broken it. And now kissing was fair play in the game—what the hell was I going to do about that? How was I supposed to not get hard when she leaned into me, put those lips on mine, and looked at me like she wanted me? Was it all for show?
It had to be, because the minute we were alone, she was always angry about something. But God, it turned me on how mad she got. Pissing her off was like my new favorite sport.
What the hell was wrong with me?
“Flip any houses lately?” she asked.
“Not really. You?”
“Not in a while. I was working with a friend in Chicago who was sort of the money behind the deals—I did all the legwork, supervised the renovations, and then I turned it over to a real estate agent friend to make the sale—but the friend in Chicago lost big on a few risky stock investments and pulled back.” She shrugged. “And I knew I needed to save up for fertility treatments. They’re not cheap.”
“Got it.” I took another sip of my drink. “Did you like living in Chicago?”
“I did, believe it or not. I never really thought of myself as a city girl, and I hated the traffic, but I did like the convenience of having lots of shopping and dining options right there in my neighborhood.”
“Where in Chicago did you live?”
She leaned back against one end of the couch, stretching her legs out, her feet nearly touching my thigh. She wore black socks with gray polka dots on them, and when she wiggled her toes, they cracked. “When I first moved down there, I lived on campus. Then I had an apartment with a girlfriend in Bucktown.” Her eyes dropped to her drink. “But for the last four years, I lived with my boyfriend downtown. He had a condo on Lake Shore Drive.”
“Fancy,” I remarked, wondering why I hated this boyfriend without even knowing his name.
She nodded without smiling. “It was.”
“Four years, huh? That’s a long time.”
“We were actually together for five.”
I drank again. “What was his name?”
“Tate DuCharme.”
Figured he’d even have an asshole name. “So what happened?”
She exhaled and stared into her glass, and for a second I thought she was going to tell me it was none of my business and then I’d have to argue that her relationship history would be something I’d know about if we were really in love, disguising the fact that I was just really fucking curious. But she surprised me again.
“What happened was that I was an idiot,” she said, her tone bitter. “I believed his lies, I let him convince me he just needed more time, and I turned a blind eye to all the signs he would never be ready for a lifetime commitment.”
“Why’d you do all that?”
“Because I loved him.” Her eyes met mine, and they were bright with tears. She’d worn contacts tonight instead of her glasses. It made her look different. “And I wanted him to love me back the same way. But no amount of wanting could make that true.”
“But he must have loved you,” I argued. “Why else would he date you for five years?”
She shrugged, taking another sip of her Manhattan. “Maybe he loved me. But not enough. And what’s the use of that?”
I didn’t have an answer.
“He always had some condition that had to be met, or some goal he had to reach, before he could think about the next phase of his life—getting married and having a family, which is what he said he ultimately wanted. For a while, it was turning thirty, then it was making partner at his firm, then it was landing this certain big client, then it was closing the case.” She shook her head. “But there was always another big client and the next big case. I realized I was never going to come first. And then I realized that it was all lies anyway—he was sleeping with a woman at his firm.”
“Seriously? What a prick.” I felt like kicking his ass. If you want your sexual independence, fine—but don’t lie about it. I tossed back the rest of my drink in an angry gesture.
“And she probably wasn’t the first.”
“I’m sorry, Bianca,” I said, wondering if I’d ever uttered those words before and meant them.
“The worst thing was, even after that came to light, I went to him and said, ‘Last chance. If you want a life with me, it starts now.’ And he said he wasn’t willing to give up the life he had for the future we’d planned.”
“Fuck.” Now I really wanted to beat the shit out of him. “What did you do?”
She tipped up the last of her cocktail. “I left him that night and went to stay with a friend. Quit my job the next day. Two weeks later, I moved back here.”
“You did the right thing. That asshole didn’t deserve you.”
“Thanks. So what about you?” she asked, swirling the cherry around the bottom of her glass. Not one of those fake maraschino ones, either—she had little jars of Michigan cherries she’d brandied herself. I dug that.
“What about me?” Setting my empty glass on the table, I propped my head in my hand along the back of the couch, pulling one knee up on the cushion between us. The bottoms of her feet were now resting against my shin.
“What’s been your longest relationship?” She plucked the cherry from her glass and ate it.
“Define relationship.”
She grinned. “It’s a thing where you date one person exclusively for a somewhat lengthy period of time.”
“Hmm.” I pretended to think. “I believe there was a girl in high school that I drove home from school every day for like four months.”
She poked me with her toes. “That’s not a relationship, that’s a carpool.”
“If her parents weren’t home, sometimes she’d invite me in and give me a hand job in her bedroom. Does that help?”
Her nose wrinkled. “No. You’re a pig.”
“Oh relax, I actually liked that girl.” I grabbed her toes and tugged. “And I returned the favor.”
“Did you?” Her eyebrows arched. Her toes pointed.
“Of course I did. I’m a gentleman and a feminist. I always return a favor.”
She set her glass down on the table and folded her arms over her chest, eyeballing me shrewdly. “What about Juliet?”