After Hours (11 page)

“There’s four things a real man has to be able to do for a woman.”

“Exactly how many man-lists do you have?”

He let my wrist go and ticked the items off on his fingers. “Fix her car. Grill her
a steak. Kick the ass of any guy who makes her cry. And fuck her so hard she wakes
up half-crippled.”

“Oh my God.” For a moment I just blinked at the gall of him. “You’re . . . You are
ridiculous
. Goodnight, Kelly.” I got up, heading for the exit. I realized my mistake a millisecond
before he called me on it.

“Said I can fix your car, not teleport it from two towns over.”

I swiveled. “I’m sure a real man can call a woman a cab, can’t he?”

Kelly stood. “This city’s got exactly one cab, and that’s its driver.” He pointed
to a supremely drunk man slumped beside the video poker machine.

I sighed. “Fine. Take me home, then.”

“As you command.”

I exited ahead of him, waiting on the sidewalk until he’d paid the tab and emerged
from the bar.

He rounded the truck and stood by my door, but didn’t open it. His gaze said,
Come here,
and for no good reason, I did. He circled me, fairly pinning my body to the passenger
door with his, staring down from a mile above me. No passerby would have any doubt
we were more than colleagues, but all at once, I didn’t care. I didn’t care about
anything aside from his nearness and size and heat, my annoyance forgotten and excitement
primed, but my face set in a willful mask of weary apathy.

“I thought about you when I got home that night,” he said, too gruff to be called
a whisper, but too soft to be overheard. His breath warmed my skin and stirred my
hair. “I stroked myself, tight and slow, with a palmful of lube, and thought about
how good you’ll feel.”

My breath froze as my heart raced. I felt something I never had before—a wateriness
in my legs as all of my physical consciousness drew tight in my belly, leaving my
extremities to wobble and submit. I was weak in the knees. I’d always thought that
was just an expression.

“I’ve put myself to sleep every night since the first time I took you here, thinking
about you. About us.”

Ditto.

“Come home with me,” he murmured.

I felt my blasé façade falling to pieces. “No.”

Gently, slowly, he took my hand and slid it between us, cupping my palm around the
length of his cock, hard as sin behind his fly. A dozen people could have seen, and
still I didn’t care. I kept my hand limp—not that it mattered. He was in charge. He
rubbed my palm up and down, making me measure him. If any other man on earth had done
this, I’d have named it sexual assault and called the cops the second I broke away.
But this was Kelly. And this was his fucked-up, patented approach to seduction. And
pathetic as it was, it was totally working.

“Not tonight,” I amended.

“Soon.”

“I don’t know.”

His hand went still, clamping mine tight to his erection. “You want this, same as
me. You feel all this.”

All this
, meaning his cock? No.
All this
as in, this force between our bodies, lust like ropes hugging us tighter, tighter
the longer I resisted him.

“So what if I do?”

“What’s the harm in us hooking up? We’re both single adults. Why waste this?”

Why waste this?

Fuck. It was a bull’s-eye shot, an arrow sticking dead center, thrumming from the
impact. It was an ace tossed out to trump my entire hand—my good sense and self-respect
and professional standards all bested by three little syllables.

All I could manage to say was, “Not tonight.”

Kelly stepped back and guided me to the side with a big, warm palm on my waist, then
unlocked and opened my door without ever taking his gaze off my face. I held his eye
contact the entire time, though I doubt I took a single breath. I got settled, relieved
to be off my shaky legs. Kelly slammed the door, then stooped, making a cranking motion.

I unrolled my window. He leaned his arms along the door, and pushed the lock down
with a click.

“Not tonight,” he said. “But real soon, sweetheart.”

Chapter Seven

My schedule the following week was only thirty-six hours—Tuesday, Wednesday, and Saturday.
Unbelievably luxurious after my initial week, forty-eight hours in Starling plus another
six completing restraint training on my so-called days off.

I dodged off-the-clock Kelly pretty effectively through our next two shifts. We saw
each other in the hand-off meetings and around the ward, of course, but I ducked him
during breaks and at Tuesday sign-out, dawdling in the nurses’ station with my paperwork
until I knew he’d have left for the day.

Work itself was manageable. I played checkers with Lonnie no less than five times
in those two shifts, and lost every game. Not on purpose, either. It was as if those
thick lenses let him peer inside my brain and anticipate my every move. And the more
he proved himself superior to me, the more tolerable I became. He even sat next to
me at lunch on Wednesday, when he could easily have taken another seat.

At some point I’d made an interested noise at his mention of being a Vietnam vet and
self-proclaimed historian of the war, and for better or worse, he’d started treating
me like his one-woman lecture hall. It beat being a target for sexually charged pizza
crusts, at any rate. And if the stories he told were true, it was actually proving
a fairly interesting course. I took to calling him “Professor,” which seemed to please
him monumentally, and he took to calling me “kid.” I’d have preferred “Ms. Coffey,”
but it still beat “bitch agent.” Progress.

I couldn’t be sure what was happening with Amber and Marco. She didn’t have a restraining
order, but I didn’t know if that was due to a paperwork delay or her pussying out
with pressing charges. But he hadn’t bothered her since the afternoon I’d earned my
formerly black—now yellow—eye, and she told me he’d dropped off a check. Whether that
was true or not . . . The uncertainty gave me a headache, so I decided to not think
too hard about it.

“Bullies tend to prey on weak people, people they perceive as worthless,” Dennis told
me on Wednesday. We happened to be taking our mid-afternoon breaks at the same time,
in the S3 lounge. I’d spilled the general details of what had happened at Amber’s
when he asked about my eye, doing my best to make it sound like an isolated incident,
not a drama that would threaten my reliability here at Larkhaven.

“Now, if some passionate party should happen to intervene,” Dennis said, nodding to
mean me, “and demonstrate in no uncertain terms that the victim is indeed worthy,
worthy of defending . . .”

“Yeah, I guess. I mean, I could never scare him off, physically. He’s huge, and strong.
He must weigh as much as two of me.”

“But by proving that you’re willing to fight that losing battle over your sister’s
honor and well-being, in turn you imbue her with an added perception of worth. You’re
saying she and her son are worth putting yourself in danger for. And in turn, this
Marco person is more inclined to respect her. Or at least value her.” Dennis’s amateur
academic side was coming out, but I didn’t mind his turning my family nonsense into
a case study. It could stand to be depersonalized.

Detach,
I’d been chanting in my head, whenever the memory surfaced.
Detach, detach, detach.

“We respect what others are willing to defend,” Dennis added, and drained his coffee
cup. “We value what others value, or at least covet those things. But bullies don’t
like conflict. Theirs is a cowardly facsimile of power, won only through sure bets.
And they’ll always go after the low-hanging fruit.”

I nodded, but my thoughts had drifted from Marco.

It was Kelly I pondered, Kelly whom I’d always seen as a bit of a bully. But he didn’t
want an easy target. If he was after anything, it was a challenge.

That first day I’d been at my weakest, and he hadn’t preyed on me when I was vulnerable,
however possessive he’d acted at the bar. No, it was my resistance that seemed to
get him salivating, like he wanted to pry me open after a good long chase. No low-hanging
fruit for Kelly Robak. More a tough nut to crack, the meat surely all the more rich
for the struggle.

I really needed to quit thinking of him as a predatory animal. But it was difficult
not to, when all he did was prowl and pounce and leave me writhing in poorly veiled
heat.

His invitation weighed heavily.

It weighed so heavily, in fact, that it often sank from my head straight through my
chest and belly, settling like a restless, muscular presence between my thighs. I’d
catch sight of his bare arm across the rec room, and my pussy would clench as though
I were lounging in bed, nothing to occupy my brain but idle sexual fantasies. But
this was during work. When I needed to be focused on dosages and staying alert for
signs of trouble. One foolish glance at the cotton stretched taut between Kelly’s
flexing shoulder blades, and I’d have to start my pill count all over again. It made
me wish the nurses’ booth had blinds. But even then, the sound of his voice held the
same power. He might say to a resident, “What channel you want?” but my memory echoed
words from that night in my bed.
That’s where I want to be,
it whispered, invisible fingertips drawing a tingling line along the seam of my sex.
Can’t wait to hear you beg.

I wanted to sleep with him. Badly. Worse than I’d ever wanted anyone. And the longer
I resisted the idea, the weaker my argument grew.
I’ll have feelings for him, and it’ll sting when he loses interest.
But it wasn’t like I was in love with him, or that I’d have a mental break and wind
up stalking him, yowling naked on his front steps demanding he give me a second shot.

My disappointment, should it come, would be private. And what was the threat of a
few days’ sheepish disappointment, compared to an entire weekend of theoretical pleasure?

Who does that?
I’d asked him. Who fucked all weekend?

I could. I really, really could. All I had to do was say yes.

Say yes, and spend two debauched days doing the same—saying yes to his every command.
Where in the tenets of feminism did it say it was liberating to stubbornly deny yourself
pleasurable sexual experiences just to spite a bossy man? No place. Feminism isn’t
a zero-sum game. Choosing not to sleep with Kelly, and our scoring zippo additional
orgasms off each other? That was zero-sum. Banging each other’s brains out for one
memorable weekend? Win-win.

Yet even with my surrender now a firmly adopted course of action, I still couldn’t
bring myself to go after him. It didn’t feel right.

After all, what kind of a chase would that be?

* * *

Kelly finally cornered me just after Wednesday’s hand-off meeting. The shift had ended
on a sour note, when Lonnie goaded John B. into a major manic episode, so bad we had
to settle him with lorazepam and usher him off to meet with one of the docs. I’d grown
nearly fond of Lonnie the last couple of days, and now all I could do was shake my
head, a matronly gesture I realized mid-lament that I’d picked up from Jenny. Jeez,
that hadn’t taken long. Might as well cave and order my beige orthopedic hoof-shoes
from the medical supply company. The transformation had begun.

When the meeting wrapped and people started filing down the stairs, Kelly clasped
my wrist discreetly and muttered, “Talk to me after you sign out.”

The hairs rose along the back of my neck, signaling danger, but I’d be a liar if I
said I wasn’t just a little bit pleased. Just a gigantic bit turned-on.

He released my hand and we headed slowly for the door. “What about?”

“We both got two days off.”

I tapped my keycard to the panel. “That we do.”

“What’re you doing, tomorrow and Friday?”

I could’ve lied. Could’ve told him I’d promised to watch Jack, put off my inevitable
surrender another week or more. But the end of that shift had sucked. I was exhausted
and frustrated, and weirdly, turning myself over to Kelly sounded heavenly. No spa
day, to be sure, but get me out of these scrubs. Get the insurance codes out of my
skull and lock me in the custody of a man so solid and alert that I could quit jerking
my head at every sudden noise, quit counting the paces and seconds it’d take to prep
a syringe and jab a raging patient. Keep me away from Amber’s problems before I caved
yet again, deciding it was my job to tackle them.

Sorry,
imagined telling her.
Can’t fix your life for you this week. Promised I’d fuck this guy from work.

“I’m not doing a thing,” I told Kelly.

He paused before the keypad at the bottom of the steps, just the two of us in the
stairwell. “Come over.”

“Okay.”

I had to laugh at his reaction, such obvious surprise. “Were you anticipating more
of a struggle?”

“Yeah.”

“Was that no fun for you, my giving in so easily?”

“I’ll show you what fun is for me,” he said, looking me up and down. “Tomorrow, after
lunch. Two o’clock. I’ll pick you up.”

“No, you won’t. I’ll drive myself.” No way I was stranding myself at Kelly’s for an
entire weekend. He could talk me into bed against my better judgment. Surely he could
talk his way out of giving me a lift home just as easily, prolonging my shift as his
sex slave. I needed some kind of escape hatch.
Some
semblance of free will.

We went back to pretending to just be coworkers, waiting until everyone else from
our shift signed out and exchanged good-nights. As he wiped his name from the board,
Kelly muttered his address to me, then his phone number. I scribbled both on a Post-it
branded with an antipsychotic drug logo, and we exited without another word.

The entire walk across campus, I thought I could sense something at my heels, stalking
me. I half expected to feel Kelly’s arm lock around my waist as he toppled me to the
ground like a wounded gazelle. But nothing.

A quick glance at my online bank balance told me my first check had cleared. It was
literally the largest chunk of money I’d ever received at one time, and it made me
giggle with relief.

At twenty-eight, I finally felt like an adult. With a steady job and a livable salary.

I’d had a rough childhood, and grown up quicker than most. I’d earned a certificate
and nursed my grandma through her final years, tackled her funeral arrangements. Those
occasions had brought relief, too—proud relief and guilty relief, respectively—but
I’d not arrived at those moments feeling like I’d had much control over my journey.
I’d bumbled my way across the finish lines, exhausted and reeling. I’d
survived
them. But looking at the number in my deposits column . . . I’d fought for this.
I’d done the best job I could and been compensated fairly. This, I’d earned.

To celebrate, I drove to the grocery store and bought some proper food, plus a minifridge,
since we weren’t allowed to keep alcohol in the common kitchen, what with so many
of the residents being in recovery. Sitting at my desk with a can of beer and a turkey
sandwich, I glanced around my little room, thinking this wouldn’t cut it for long.

As I ate, I scribbled out an estimated monthly budget. That night, I spent two hours
poking around the rental listings for Darren, pleased to see there were dozens of
affordable one-bedroom places available. Even the two – and three-bedroom houses were
semi-affordable, and I entertained a brief, masochistic fantasy about inviting Amber
to live with me, us and Jack in some modest little house, an hour’s drive between
us and Marco. How cozy!

How cozy and completely batshit-nutso!

Much as I loved her, I knew what would happen. Late-night drama, the thump of some
meathead’s fist on my door waking me in a cold sweat, and Amber getting semi-intentionally
fired from her job the second she had me secured as a rent-paying safety net. God
bless the girl, she was a self-sabotaging wreck.

I switched my search filter back to one-bedrooms only, my own self-sabotage averted.

When the time came to fall asleep, my thoughts turned predictably to Kelly. Anxious
thoughts and horny ones, excited ones and unnerving ones. I fell asleep after what
felt like hours, candidates for my safe word flurrying around my brain like snow-globe
flakes.

* * *

The next morning I did my laundry, dressed in a simple skirt and tee shirt and packed
a second outfit in an overnight bag, along with bathroom essentials. Cute but comfortable
underwear, freshly shaved armpits and legs but my downstairs left to its own devices,
because
I was no man’s personal porn star
. I was Kelly’s sex slave but also a feminist, and the crooked line had to be drawn
someplace. And that place was in the perfectly lovely, feminine, God-given soft curls
between my legs, I decided.

At twenty of two I climbed into my car with the directions I’d scrawled after a Google
Maps search and set out for Darren, stomach churning, palms clammy.

Kelly’s street was easy enough to find, maybe a mile’s drive past the main drag, on
a tired-looking residential block—a familiar sight to me, having grown up in the heart
of Michigan’s industrial decline, though with fewer boarded windows than I’d been
expecting. Most of the homes looked inhabited.

Kelly’s house was a navy blue, one-story ranch with a tidy lawn. His truck was parked
in the driveway, and as I pulled up along the cracked curb I found Kelly himself,
leaning over the peeling picket fence that abutted his property, reaching for something.

I killed the engine. He craned his neck and caught my eye as I slammed my door, before
going back to whatever he was doing.

What he was doing, I found out as I approached, was massaging the ears of a rapturous,
slavering, brown and white pit bull.

“Hey, Sadie,” he was saying. “Hey, pretty girl.”

“Is that your dog?” Of course it was. He was
so
the pit bull type. This dog would probably have a front-row seat to whatever debauchery
Kelly had planned for me, her baleful eyes shifting between us with canine judgment.