Reasonable Doubt 3 (18 page)

“Sure.” She crossed her arms. “What does he do when he gets bad reviews?”

“He looks at his bank account,” I said. “And then he claims, and I quote, ‘I don’t recall learning that someone needs to be well-liked in order to be successful.’ He really said that.”

She practically melted into the sidewalk. “I bet he really knows how to fuck…”

I gave her the paper and walked away. Her bringing up sex was a reminder of how long it’d been since I slept with someone.

And then it hit me: Sex.

I needed some, badly.

I signed up for an online dating site, Date-Match, and slowly shed the layers of the man I used to be. I bought expensive suits—one for every day of the week. I slowly curbed my excessive drinking to make room for a new appetite, and instead of punching my walls to de-stress, I invested in Cuban cigars.

Still, the women I met online were average, and none of them seemed to be about sex. They just wanted to talk about bullshit—always leaving me restless and alone at the end of the night to drink away my sorrows; forcing me back to square one with my experiment.

Like the woman who was sitting on the edge of the bed right now, a goddamn mile-a-minute talker. She was a few years older than me, a teacher of some sort, and she couldn’t shut up for shit.

She was talking about her life in college, about some boy named Billy she once loved—some boy who never loved her back. Before she could start elaborating about the campus bond-fire where the two of them met, I realized that I couldn’t take this shit anymore.

“Billy and I would’ve been perfect together, I think,” she said. “There was even this one time that—”

“Are we going to fuck or what?” I cut her off.

“
What
?” She clutched her chest. “What did you just say?”

“I said, are we going to fuck
or what
?” I emphasized every syllable. “I didn’t reserve this hotel room so I could sit and listen to you talk all night.”

Her jaw dropped.

“I thought that…” She stuttered. “I thought that you liked me.”

“I like you enough to fuck you. That’s about it.”

Her eyes went wide and she stepped back. “All this time that we’ve been dating you’ve only been thinking about sleeping with me?”

I mentally added “rhetorical questions” to the list of shit I wasn’t going to put up with anymore.

“I was under the impression that all those dates you took me on was because—”

“I took you on all those dates so we could scratch the surface of each other’s personalities. So I could know that you’re not some psycho-murderer, and so you could be assured that I’m not one either.” I grimaced at all the time I’d clearly wasted. “The purpose was so the both of us could be comfortable enough to fuck, and then after that we could go our separate ways.”

“It was only going to be
once
?”

“Do you have a hearing problem?”

She looked completely lost, and I wasn’t in the mood to make this picture any clearer.

Before I could say another word, she looked into my eyes.

“So,” she said, still in shock, “all the things on your profile were a lie?”

“No. Everything on my profile is one hundred percent accurate.” I pulled out my phone. “I specifically wrote what I’m in for, and I’ve been more than lenient spending my time with you. You seem like a nice person, but after tonight—whether we fuck or not, I won’t be speaking to you again. So, what’s it going to be?”

She stood there, her jaw dropped once more, and I glanced at my profile.

Sure enough, I’d forgotten to adjust the default settings when I’d signed up for Date-Match, and my “What I’m Looking For” box was still set to bullshit: “Long conversations, a connection with someone I can truly relate to, and finding my one true love.”

Ha…

I quickly erased all of the text and looked up, noticing that my date for tonight was still in the room.

“If you continue standing here,” I said,” I’m going to assume that you do want to fuck tonight. If not, the door’s right behind you.”

The sound of her huffing was the last sound I heard before the door slammed so hard it rattled the mirror on the wall.

Unfazed, I contemplated what I wanted to write in my profile’s box. Over the past few months, I’d found disappointment after disappointment—wasting too much of my time and money on women who were not on the same wavelength as me.

And now it all made perfect sense. All those unnecessary dinners, late night conversations, and utter bullshit was about to end right now.

I didn’t need another relationship—those days were gone forever, and I would never spend more than a week talking to the same woman on the phone.

As the sun set outside the hotel room’s window, the perfect phrasing came to me, and I typed: One dinner. One night. No repeats.

Then I highlighted it and placed it in bold.

Staring at it, I realized how bare it looked, how someone might actually think I wasn’t dead ass serious, so underneath, I made things completely clear:

Casual sex. Nothing more. Nothing less.

To forgive, support, and/or overlook moral or legal failures of another without protest, with the result that it appears that such breaches of moral or legal duties are acceptable. An employer may overlook an employee overcharging customers or a police officer may look the other way when a party uses violent self-help to solve a problem

Aubrey

I sat in the back of the courtroom, listening to Andrew break down on the stand. Twice, when the defense purposely brought up Emma, he lost all composure.

Yet, as I saw the look in his eyes at the mere mention of her, of the “slip” of her name, I felt his pain.

I kept my head down the remainder of his testimony so our eyes wouldn’t meet, so he wouldn’t know I was here, and when the judge called for a short recess, I slipped outside.

Reporters were murmuring in the hallway, hoping he didn’t read any of their old articles about him years ago, and suddenly they were shouting questions.

“Mr. Henderson! Mr. Henderson!” They hounded him the second he stepped outside of the courtroom. “Mr. Henderson!”

He stopped and looked at them. “My name is
Mr. Hamilton
.”

“How do you feel about potentially sending your former partner and best friend away to prison?”

“He’s sending himself to prison,” he answered.

“Do you have any intentions of reconnecting with him while he’s behind bars?”

He ignored that question with a blank stare.

“Your name was cleared years ago and yet you still left New York,” someone else asked. “Now that everything is in the open for good, any chance that you’ll come back and re-open your firm?”

“I’m about to spend my last hour in this city on the way to the airport,” he said, pulling shades over his eyes.

The throng of reporters followed him out of the courtroom, and he slipped inside the car without a second glance.

Sighing, I pulled out my phone and re-read the messages he’d sent me this morning, somewhat regretting that I didn’t respond.

As I was rereading that email, a new one popped onto my screen:

I knew my lack of response was immature, that it was my fault that I didn’t get to see him before he left, but I felt as if he could’ve made more of an effort. And I still felt that he was wrong for not being open with me when he should have.

Leaving the courthouse, I headed home and thought about all the half-truths and lies that had swirled our relationship. Alyssa. His wife. My real name. His real name.

Everything we had was built on lies…

Letting tears roll down my face, I opened the door to my house, prepared to shower until I couldn’t cry anymore, but Andrew was standing in my living room.

“Hello, Aubrey.” He glared at me.

“Breaking and entering is a crime.” I crossed my arms. “Shouldn’t you know that?”

He said nothing, just continued glaring at me—looking me up and down.

“Don’t you have a flight to catch?” My voice cracked. “Shouldn’t you be spending your last hour in New York on the way to the airport?”

“I realized I still have something to say to you.”

“Do you have another fake name you want to tell me about? Another secret identity that you want to—”

“Stop.” He stepped closer and closer until I backed into a wall, and he looked directly into my eyes. “I need you to listen to me, Aubrey. Just fucking listen…”

I tried to move away from him, but he grabbed my hands and pinned them above my head. Then he used his hips to keep me still.

“You’re going to stand here and listen to me for the next five minutes whether you like it or not.” The words came out rushed, heated. “Since you suddenly care about knowing the truth, I’ll tell you the fucking truth…”

I tried to say something, but he leaned down and bit my lips. Hard.

“I liked you when you were Alyssa and I was Thoreau—when we spent nights talking about your ridiculous homework and my law firm… I even liked you after you fucking lied to me and I saw you at your interview—I
liked
you…” He tightened his grip around my wrists. “And even though I knew I shouldn’t have chased you down and showed up to your apartment that day, I did, and I fucked you…After that, I
really
liked you.”

“Are you being serious right now?”

“Dead ass serious.” He glared at me and bit my lips again, silently commanding me to keep quiet. “I didn’t want to like you, Aubrey. I wasn’t supposed to, and I didn’t need to, but every day after that you were all I could think about. You and your smartass mouth, and how your lies maybe weren’t so bad after all.”

“What about
your lies
? Do you still think that you’re above morality? That—”

“
Stop talking
.” He choked out. “Let me finish.”

I swallowed and he stared at me a few seconds before continuing.

“Yes, I hid the fact that I was married from you, and although it was unintentional, it was still a lie.”

“A
huge
lie.”

“
Aubrey
…” He gripped me tighter. “I hadn’t thought about Ava in a very long time…On the contrary, I’ve been thinking about you every day since you left.”

“No, you haven’t…”

“I have.” He looked directly into my eyes. “I drove to your ballet class twice a week, trying to see you, trying to talk to you and apologize…I sent things to your apartment. I even showed up twice, but that was before I knew you’d moved.”

“You’re just saying all this so you can fuck me…” I shook my head and turned away, but he made me face him again.

“I’m saying all of this because I love you…”

I gasped and tears formed in my eyes.

“I fucking love you, Aubrey…” he repeated, wiping my face. “And I’ll do whatever it takes to show you that.” He brushed his lips against mine. “Do you still love me?”

“No, I don’t… Not any—” I felt his lips against mine, silencing me.

I didn’t want to kiss him back, I wanted to push him away and tell him to leave, but I parted my lips and let his tongue slip inside of my mouth.

Slowly, he freed my hands from his grip and locked his arms around my waist—keeping his lips attached to mine. He didn’t give me a chance to talk, to breathe. He just kissed me senseless until I couldn’t take it anymore.

“If you can honestly say that you don’t love me,” he whispered, slowly pulling away from me, “then I’ll leave you alone.”

“And if I can’t?” I asked, breathless.

“If you can’t, you’re going to show me to your room so you and I can become reacquainted.”

“Reacquainted?” I moaned as he cupped my ass. “Is that code for conversation?”

“It’s code for fucking.”

“Would it kill you to say make love just once?”

“Depends on if you actually love me or not.”

Silence.

His fingers were now trailing the zipper on the back of my skirt, gently pulling on it as I looked into his eyes.

“I hate you,” I said, making him raise his eyebrow. “If you said all of those things just to get my hopes up, I’ll never forgive you.”

“You still haven’t…” He kissed me gently. “I meant every word I said.” He pulled my zipper down. “And I really need to know whether or not you still love me because…” He stopped talking.

My skirt fell into a puddle on the floor and he tugged my thong away from my waist until it snapped.

“Aubrey, tell me…Tell me right now.”

I gasped as he slipped a finger inside of me, as he groaned at how wet I was.

“Yes…”

“Yes?” He moved his finger in and out. “Yes, what?”

“Yes, I—” I paused as he kissed my lips. “Yes, I still love you.”

“Where’s your bedroom?”

I looked to my left and he immediately tugged me down the hall, shutting the door behind us. He didn’t give me a chance to get undressed. His hands were all over me—unbuttoning my shirt, ripping my bra, and caressing my breasts.

I reached forward and unbuckled his pants, pushing his pants down. Then he tossed me onto the bed, climbing on top of me.

I spread my legs beneath him, lifting my hips up so he could fuck me, but he didn’t. Instead he kissed my neck—whispering how much he missed me, how much he needed me.

“Andrew…” I felt his cock rubbing against my thigh.

He slowly moved his mouth to my chest—swirling his tongue across my nipples as he palmed my breasts. His kisses traveled further and further, all the way down to my thighs.

I shut my eyes as he pressed his tongue against my clit, as he teasingly darted it against me in slow, sensuous circles.

“Ahhhh…” I tried to clamp my legs shut, but he pinned them to the mattress and looked up at me.