Play Maker (5 page)

H
oly
. Shit. My heart was racing, I could barely catch my breath and I was pretty sure that I wasn’t going to be able to walk for the next twenty-four hours. After ridding myself of the condom, I rolled onto my back, careful not to crush Nicole, though I found that I immediately missed the warmth of her body. Propping myself up on my elbow, I looked down at the glorious specimen of woman that was blessing my bed.

Her blonde hair was spread across the expensive sheets, her eyes closed and her lips, by some miracle owed to God or the make-up industry, were still red. Her naked body was covered in a thin layer of perspiration, and while I’m sure I looked like I had run from London and back, her skin just had a gorgeous glow. And what skin it was. And what a body.

Those curves of hers needed a road sign. They were bloody dangerous for anyone who didn’t know what they were doing. From the round curve of her perfect breasts, with their dusky pink nipples to the tapering of her narrow waist and the swell of her luscious hips, I was ready to take a map and go exploring again.

Not that I would have the chance after tonight. This was a one night stand, remember?

I chastised myself for not taking enough time to truly worship it, to examine each and every secret it held. It took a rare woman to hold my interest like this, especially immediately after sex, but there was no doubt that Nicole was a rare bird indeed.

I couldn’t tell if she was asleep. Not that I would blame her. Usually after sex like that – ok, any sex – I was more than ready to pass out. For some reason, though, my body felt as though I had just chugged a six-pack of Red Bull. I was practically vibrating with adrenaline.

And while I wasn’t quite ready to go again – though the longer I looked at her, the sooner that would change – I was still full of sexual energy. In fact, the room seemed full of it. With any luck we’d have time for one more round before we parted ways.

I was still staring at her, when one of her eyes popped open.

“Hello,” I curled a lock of her hair around my finger.

“Hello,” she opened the other eye. She was smiling, but the openness that had been there when we entered the room, hell, when
I
entered her, wasn’t there any more. There was a wall all of a sudden.

“I was thinking we could order some room service.” I had never known of a one night stand to turn down room service. “And then maybe make use of that second condom you brought.”

She sat up, her breasts bouncing and for a moment I thought of reversing the order of my two offers. Sex again and then room service. But she was already getting up from the bed.

“That’s a kind offer.” She walked across the room as if she was totally unaware that she was naked. I was happy to admire the view, until I noticed she was picking her clothes up off the floor. “But I have to go,” she said, wiggling into her thong.

I tried not to stare at what the wiggling did to her curves, instead trying to focus on the fact that she was turning down both room service and more sex. With me. That had never happened before.

“Wait a minute.” I scooted off the bed, but she had already gone into the bathroom and when she returned, she was wearing her black pants and buttoning her shirt.

“I had a great time,” she told me, ignoring my open jawed stare to put on her shoes.

“A great time?” What was going on? Was I being Punk’d? Was she seriously leaving? Now? “Hold on,” I followed her to the door, feeling like I was getting the brush off and not liking it at all. “Well, maybe I’ll see you again?”

She smiled and placed a hand on my chest. “I don’t think so,” she said.

This was definitely a brush off. It wasn’t my first one, but it was the first time where I was the brush-ee, not the brush-er.

I didn’t know what to say. I knew I should be grateful, relieved even. Wasn’t this what I wanted? A night of hot sex with someone I never had to see again? Yeah. It was. She was doing me a favor, really.

“Well.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “It was nice meeting you.”

Her mouth quirked up in that half wicked smile that I’d seen at the beginning of the evening. My cock responded and I wished I had put on some clothes before walking her to the door.

“It was nice meeting you too,” she said and held out her hand.

We were going to end this evening on a handshake? I was feeling completely confused but I took her hand anyways and when I pulled back I found that she had given me something. I opened my fist to find the second condom there. I looked up at her.

“Use it wisely.” She smiled and in that moment the wall had disappeared and there was that openness, back in full force.

“Thanks,” I said, still not sure what was happening, still not really believing she was leaving.

She opened the door, but paused and turned back to me. “Oh, and James?”

“Yeah?”

Her hair had fallen over one of her eyes again, but I could see the other one was sparkling with humor. “If you get room service, order the waffles. I’ve heard they’re better than sex.”

And with that, she was gone.

E
very inch
of my body was tingling as I headed out the hotel and into the Uber that was waiting for me. Nights like these were the only times I indulged in such transportation. Usually I could catch a ride with Maya after closing, or on nights when she was staying at the hotel, there was a bus that dropped me only a few blocks from my apartment. But tonight I felt especially luxurious. How could I not, after an experience like that?

I leaned back against the leather seats and closed my eyes. My skin felt alive, the memory of how James had worshipped every inch of it, making me dizzy all over again. Oh my god. I couldn’t remember the last time sex had been that good. In fact, I couldn’t remember it
ever
being that good. Four times. I had come
four
times.

It had been exactly what I needed. I pressed my legs together, wishing I could hold on to the sensation of how he had felt inside of me. God, he had given me enough material for a dozen naughty daydreams at least. I was going to be replaying this night for a long, long time. I took out a piece of gum – a little post-coital treat for myself, though the entire evening had been a treat.

I felt the tiniest twinge of regret remembering how I had left before we could have a repeat performance, but I had rules. And a curfew. I looked at my phone. Shit. With luck on my side I’d just about make it. I promised my brother I would never be home later than 4am and it was currently 3:47am. Thankfully we hit every green light and by the time the car pulled up in front of my place in Montecito Heights, I was two minutes shy of my curfew.

Still, when I opened the door, there he was in the living room, pacing nervously. He was wearing his favorite Doctor Who t-shirt and his eyes were red, which told me he had been watching TV all night. Looked like my mom forgot to take away his iPad, which he had a tendency to hide under his pillow during the 2am electronics round up.

Mikey had seen every episode of Doctor Who at least six times – which, considering how long that show had been on the air, illustrated exactly how much time he spent in front of a TV or computer screen. Yet he never got enough. Never got tired of watching. And he didn’t watch them the way that other people watched them. He usually had to have several other things going on at once. Music blasting from his iPod, or YouTube videos on his phone were often playing while he was watching. Yet, he knew the show inside and out.

But his obsession with his favorite TV show wasn’t the only way his Down syndrome affected our lives. He took things very literally. If I promised something, he always remembered and he always held me to it. After all, until very recently, it had just been the two of us and those promises were a sacred vow that I had always put first. I looked at my phone. It was 4:05am. Dammit. I had screwed up.

“I’m sorry, buddy.” I went over and took his shoulders, trying to get him to stop pacing. “I know I’m late.”

“You promised, you promised.” He wasn’t looking at me, his head shaking back and forth.

“I know,” I took a deep breath. “Let’s get you in bed, ok? We can go over the list.”

“You promised! Too late,” he shook my hands off.

“Too late for the list?” I knelt in front of him. “But I really need help going to sleep tonight.”

The list was usually something I used to help Mikey go to sleep on nights like this when he was stressed. An alternative to counting sheep. We had been doing it since we were kids.

Mikey bit his lip and I could tell he was thinking about it. He was mad – and he had a right to be – but he also loved me. I looked at my brother, his sweet round face surrounded by blond hair in need of a trim. He towered over me now and if I looked at us together in a mirror, even though his face was softer and wider than mine, the resemblance was clear. We were a team.

“Please, Mikey?”

Finally he nodded and let me take his hand. I followed him to his room and while he climbed in bed, I lay down on the floor next to him.

“Ok, buddy, who is number one tonight?”

An hour later Mikey had finally fallen asleep and I came out of the bedroom to find my mom sitting at the kitchen table, her graying hair sticking up every which way. It looked like she had just woken up.

“I was late,” I told her.

She nodded as if she understood, which she did not. How could she? Mikey had been eight when she took off. She had left me, only sixteen, to deal with a younger brother who was operating at a completely different wavelength than most of the people around him.

“You forgot to take away his iPad,” I told her, the exhaustion of my day sinking in. “I told you he likes to hide it under his pillow.”

She closed her eyes, clearly frustrated. “I’m sorry,” she finally said. “I’m still getting the hang of this.”

I took a deep breath and tried to remind myself that we all were trying to get the hang of this new family dynamic. It had been six months since she had reappeared in our lives, wanting,
begging
to make amends. And I had been in a desperate place at that point – juggling two jobs, depending on neighbors to check in on Mikey while I worked – so I had allowed her back in, figuring I would let him decide if he wanted her back in our lives. And he had been thrilled to see her again. For someone who had a tendency to hold grudges over my broken curfew – something he might pout about for days – he seemed to forgive our mother for abandoning us twelve years ago pretty damn easily. I tried not to feel bitter about that. Some days I was successful, other days not so much.

I was the one having a harder time accepting her back into our lives. In all aspects. I was old enough to remember how much of a struggle it had been when she left. How I had to drop out of high school and get a job to support us. How I had to find special schools for Mikey, sometimes moving us to neighborhoods where he could be closer to the resources we needed. Even though I had managed to get my GED and even later a bachelor’s degree through night school, I still felt like I was ages behind most of my peers in a million ways. I didn’t have a car, I was bartending to pay rent and I had never had a relationship last longer than a couple of months. Most guys just didn’t understand that Mikey came first. And that he required a lot of attention and care. That he was my number one priority and if he needed me, I would drop everything to help him.

But I had also been struggling. And so when Mom showed up in our lives again, wanting to make amends, wanting to help, promising she had changed, I couldn’t say no to the extra income. And I wouldn’t keep her out of Mikey’s life if he wanted her there. That would be selfish.

So she had moved in. She had accepted the tiny guest bedroom I had been using for storage without complaint. Listened and took notes when I went over our daily schedule and the routines that kept Mikey’s life organized and stable. Rearranged her schedule to make sure she was always home when I wasn’t, which allowed me to work at the bar every weekend, which meant more tips and more money for all of us. She had been nothing but grateful for the opportunity to be a part of our lives again.

She was trying. It couldn’t have been easy trying to learn the routine I had been perfecting with Mikey for the last twenty years. Of course she was going to make mistakes. Of course things weren’t going to go smoothly right away.

I knew I needed to be patient. But right now I was exhausted and needed a shower and my bed. She needed to get to sleep too. Even though Mikey – if he stayed asleep – would probably sleep past noon, my mom had to be up for work at 8am. She worked as a housekeeper, which meant her days were busy, but her schedule flexible. When she first came back into our lives, I was surprised she had found a job, let alone one where she had cultivated a loyal group of clientele.

To her credit she seemed to have changed. Really, actually changed from the person who left us all those years ago to the person she was today. There was no sign of the scattered, selfish individual who often forgot to pick us up from school. Instead, I saw a woman who had made mistakes and was doing her best to amend them.

“It’s fine.” I rubbed my eyes. “Go back to bed.”

“Are you sure?” she eyed the door.

“Yeah,” I told her. “He’s fine. We did the list.”

“I’m sorry,” she said again. It wasn’t the first time I felt like the parent in this relationship and I was pretty sure it wasn’t going to be the last. She tried to smile at me. “Did you at least have a good night?”

S
tanding under the hot water
, I took a moment to replay the events of that evening. Fuck, it had been hot. I allowed my muscles to relax, indulging the memory of how good James had felt. How good we had felt together.

And yet, I couldn’t deny that I felt a little off-kilter too. Like he had gotten under my skin in a way I didn’t fully understand. For some reason, my apartment had seemed so small, so crowded when I came home tonight. I didn’t understand why. It wasn’t the first time I had been in one of the hotel suites, but tonight, the memory of its opulence seemed to have followed me home.

I leaned my head against the wall of the shower, thinking, just for a brief moment, of how nice it would have been to stay a little longer. To order those stupid waffles Maya kept talking about, to soap each other up in the insanely luxurious shower that I saw in James’ suite and to tumble into bed again for another round of mind blowing sex.

But doing that would have just delayed the inevitable. The reality of our situations – him, the famous, sexy-as-hell, British playboy and me, the bartender who was behind on her school loans. Staying would have accomplished nothing except give me more opportunities to wish for things I didn’t have. I knew what I could live without. Waffles. Expensive showers. Handsome soccer players. I just didn’t need to be tempted by them.

Nope. Leaving had been the right thing to do. And the next guy would come along soon enough. Pretty soon James and this night would be nothing more than a sexy memory that I might conjure up anytime I had an hour alone with my vibrator. But for now, I would settle for bed, with my body still deliciously sore and be grateful for what I had gotten tonight.