The Hating Game (25 page)

“I called Danny about something for work. Something to do with my
interview.
You already know this! Forgive me for not wanting to spill my secrets to the person I'm competing against.”

“Answer my question.”

“No, and no. He's helping me with something I'm using in my presentation. It's a design job, and he's a freelancer now. He's doing me a massive favor, working over the weekend. But I couldn't care less if I never saw him again.”

His insane eyes dial down a few notches. “Well, I couldn't care less about Mindy. It's why she left me for my brother.”

“You could have told me. Back in your apartment, on your couch. I would have tried to understand. We were almost friends then.” I realize something else that's bothering me. He didn't trust me with this.

“I finally have you coming over to sit on my couch and you think I'm going to tell you about how I was such a terrible boy
friend she ended up with my brother? It's not really a glowing endorsement of my character. Gee, wouldn't you want to stick around after hearing that?” I can spot the faint wash of darker color on his cheekbones. He's embarrassed as hell.

“Why am I even here? Moral support, remember?” I watch him try and fail several times to start.

“If anyone has broken my heart, it wasn't Mindy. It was my dad.” He puts his hand over his face. “You were always right about why I needed moral support. No big conspiracy. It's medicine. Me quitting, failing, disappointing. You're here because I'm scared of my own fucking dad.”

“What did your dad do?” I can barely ask it. When I think of dads, I think of my own. A big, funny sonic boom since I was a kid, always surprising me with Smurfs and beard-burn cheek kisses. I know there are bad dads. When I see the look on Josh's face, I wish to god he didn't have one.

“He's ignored me my entire life.”

It sounds like the first time he's spoken those words. He looks at the ground, miserable. I creep closer to him. Another weird kaleidoscopic twist? His hurt makes my own heart hurt.

“Has he hit you? Has he forced you into medicine?”

Josh shrugs. “The British royal family have an expression. The heir and the spare. I'm the spare. Patrick was firstborn. Dad's not one of those people who's willing to dilute his efforts, if you know what I mean. They were only ever planning on having one kid too. I was a surprise.”

“You would have been wanted.” I have his crumpled cuff in my hand now, and I give him an awkward little shake. “Look at how much your mom loves you.”

“But to Dad, I was not in the plan. Patrick has always been his
focus, and look where he is now. The best son, effectively the only son, making Dad proud on his wedding day.”

He won't meet my eyes. We're mining some old, deep, painful territory here.

“Nothing I did rated a mention. Dad wouldn't pay a cent toward my tuition, but Mom did. I studied my ass off, like a complete sucker for punishment. Nothing pleased him.” The bitterness in his voice sounds like it is choking him.

My anger has steamed out of my pores now and I can't do anything but put my arms around him and hug until my arms ache.

“I thought if I could become a doctor too, maybe . . .”

“He'd notice you.” Just like his mom said.

“And meanwhile perfect, golden child Patrick, who can do no wrong, was making it look easy. The thing about Patrick is, he's so nice. He's so goddamn nice. He'll do anything for anyone. Even get up in the middle of the night and drive over to help me with you. Man, can he be any nicer? It makes it impossible for me to hate him. And I want to. So bad.”

“He's your brother.” I link my arm into his. “It's obvious he'd do anything for you.”

“There's a perfect son, and then there's me. I may as well be the best at something, even if it is being an asshole. I'll never be nice. You need to imagine what it was like growing up with a parent like him. I've had to make myself this way.”

I think of him stomping around at B&G, trying to hide his shyness and insecurity behind that mask.

“I hate to break it to you Josh, but underneath it all, you're nice too.”

“I've got no interest in being the second best at anything. I'm never being second again.”

His voice is iron-clad with determination. I think of the promotion, and some deep part of my brain sighs,
Oh fuck it.

“Is this why you've always hated me? I'm so nice. I'm way too nice and you've always hated it.” I tug the sleeve of my dress a little straighter.

“It killed me to watch you try your heart out for people who were using your kindness. It made me want to stand up for you, and protect you from it. I couldn't though, because you hated me, so I had to get you to stand up for yourself.”

“And my niceness made it impossible to hate me?” Hopefulness has rendered me pathetic.

He puts a thumb under my chin and tilts my face. “Yeah.”

“Well, this is a sad story.” When he kisses me on the cheek, I know it is an apology, and I suspect that I'll probably accept it.

“Don't get me wrong. I didn't have some traumatic childhood or anything, I always had a roof over my head and so forth. And my mother is the best,” he says, affection in his tone now. “I can't complain.”

“Yes you can.”

He looks at me, surprised.

“No one should ever be ignored, or made to feel unimportant. You've achieved a lot of things in your career, and you should be proud of yourself.” I emphasize the last word. “You can complain all you want. I'm Team Josh, remember?”

“Are you?” I hear some of the tension melt out of him a little. “I never thought I'd hear those words fall from your Flamethrower lips. Not after tonight.”

“You and me both. So what happened after you completed premed?”

“Surely your dad must have taken notice of you then.”

“Mom made the biggest fuss ever. She threw a party. It seemed like everyone who'd ever known me was invited. It was at our house here. It's on the beach. I suppose it was a great party, in retrospect. But Dad wasn't there.”

“He skipped it?” I hug him, resting my cheek on his chest. I feel his hands slide up my back, like he's soothing
me
.

“Yeah, he didn't bother to swap shifts at the hospital like Mom had asked him to. He skipped it entirely. When Patrick completed premed Dad gave him our grandfather's Rolex. For me, he couldn't even bother turning up. He's always known I wasn't cut out for it. Watching me try so hard made me pathetic.”

“So him not turning up to the party means you haven't spoken to your father properly for five years? You've got to see it's hurting your mom. She's got permanently sparkly eyes from trying not to cry.”

“That night I got incredibly drunk. I was sitting down there by myself on the sand by the water, emptying this bottle of whiskey into my mouth. Alone. Melodramatic. Behind me is the house, filled with people, but no one had noticed the guest of honor was gone.”

He looks a little amused, but I know underneath it is a deep hurt. I remember looking at him once in the team meeting, a thousand years ago, and wondering if he ever felt isolated. I know the answer now.

“So you sat out there? Drunk? What did you do? Go in and make a scene?”

“No, but I realized something I'd worked so hard for—his approval—had resulted in absolutely no outcome. I'm like him, maybe. Why try? Why bother? I decided then and there to quit trying. I'd go and get the first job I could.”

He turns me a little in his arms, and when he holds me close again, he's rubbing my shoulder like I'm the one who needs comfort.

“I stopped making any kind of effort to engage with him, and it was like the biggest source of stress in my life was removed. I stopped. I thought, when he wants to be a father to me, he'll make the move.”

“And he hasn't?”

Josh keeps talking like he hasn't even heard me.

“The thing that gets me is, when I switched to doing an MBA at night while working at Bexley, he was unimpressed. Like he'd had any kind of opinion. Like I wasn't even noticed or acknowledged enough to disappoint. But I have. Over and over, my entire life. My career is a joke to him.”

I'm surprised by how angry I'm getting. I think of Anthony, his face permanently twisted into a sarcastic expression.

“He's lost something special in you. Why is he like this?”

“I don't know. If I knew, maybe I could change it. He's just been that way with me, and most people.”

“But Josh, this is what I don't get. You're so overqualified for what you do at B and G.”

“We both are,” he tells me.

“Why do you stay?”

“Prior to the merger, I nearly quit every day. But I already had the family reputation as a quitter.”

“And post merger?”

He looks away, and I see the edge of his mouth beginning to curl in a smile.

“The job had a few good things about it.”

“You enjoyed fighting with me too much.”

“Yeah,” he admits.

“How did you end up working at Bexley, anyway?”

“I applied for twenty jobs in a fit of rage. It was the first offer I got. Richard Bexley's lowly servant.”

“You didn't even care? I wanted to work for a publisher so badly I cried when I heard I'd got the job.”

He has the grace to look guilty. “I suppose you'd think it was unfair if I got the promotion now.”

“No. The process is based on merit. But Josh, you've got to know. It's my dream. B and G is my dream.”

He doesn't say anything. What
could
he say?

“So you really didn't bring me along to show Mindy you'd moved on with some hot little dweeb?”

I know his face better than my own, and I can't see a trace of a lie. When he speaks, there is none.

“I couldn't face him without you. I am an embarrassment. Dropped out of med school, administrative job, lost the girl to my brother. I'm nothing to him. Mindy and Patrick can have ten children and be married for a hundred years for all I care. Good luck to them.”

I let myself say it. “Okay. I believe you.”

We sit in silence for a moment before he speaks again. “The worst thing is, I keep wondering what I'd be now if I'd stuck with medicine.”

“I've got so much inside me I have no idea about. I'm like the mayor of a city I've never seen.”

He smiles at my phrasing. “If you knew the kind of little miracles happening every moment you breathe in, you wouldn't be able to handle it. A valve could close and not open; an artery could split, you could die. At any moment. It's nothing but miracles inside your tiny city.” He presses a kiss to my temple.

“Holy shit.” I clutch at him.

“You wouldn't believe the stats on people who go to bed one night and never wake up. Normal, healthy people who aren't even old.”

“Why would you tell me this? Is this what you think about?”

There's the longest pause. “I used to. Not so much anymore.”

“I think I preferred it when I thought I was full of white bones and red goo. Why am I now thinking about dying tonight?”

“Now you see why I can't do small talk. Sorry Dad scared you about the cake. He's jealous he can't let himself go enough to enjoy something. I don't think I've eaten cake in a few years. Man, it was good.”

“Filthy little pigs, the pair of us. Want to go downstairs and see if there's any left?”

He looks at me with guarded hope. “You're not leaving?”

I remember my plans to get the bus home. “No, I'm not leaving.”

It's helpful he's still sitting on the dresser. It means when I step closer and take his face in my hands, I can reach him with only a little tiptoeing. It means I can feel the tingling sparks jumping in the air between our lips, his sigh of relief that tastes sweeter than sugar. His pulse jumps under my fingertips. It's a pretty convoluted game we've played to make it to this moment.

It's helpful he's still sitting on the dresser, because I can pull his lips to mine.

W
hen I kiss him, his exhalation is long, until he's surely completely empty. I want to fill him back up. I don't realize it until a few minutes of dreamy, melting minutes have passed that I've been talking to him with my kiss.
You matter. You're important to me. This matters.

I know that he understands, because there is a fine tremor in his hands as he slides one fingernail up the side seam of my dress, across my shoulders to my nape. He tells me things, too.
You're who I want. You're always beautiful. This really matters.

He toys with the zipper of my dress for a tiny, jingling eternity, and then pulls it down. It makes a sound like a needle dragging across a record. He deepens the kiss, and I push closer in between his knees, and wild horses could not drag me away from this man and this room. I will kiss him until I die of exhaustion. When I feel the sharp edge of his teeth on my lips, I know I'm not alone in this.

I let the dress drop and step out of it, bending to pick it up. Self-consciousness prevails and I hide behind it a little, until I look so silly that I have no choice to hold it aside. I had to wear an ivory bodysuit under the dress, like a little swimsuit, to give it a
smooth line, and it has little suspenders holding up my stockings. Sleepysaurus, it ain't.

Josh looks like he's been stabbed in the gut.

“Holy shit,” he says faintly.

I hand him the dress and put my hand on my hip. His eyes eat every line and curve of me, even as his hands neatly fold my dress in half. My legs are ridiculously short, and I don't have the benefit of my heels, but the way he looks at me makes my tiny knees weak.

“You've gone a bit quiet on me here, Josh.” I slide my finger under the shoulder strap of this ridiculous thing I'm wearing, and pause. I see his throat swallow.

I put my hands on his neck, squeeze briefly in a strangle, then slide them down. He's so solid, heavy, the heat radiating from within the muscles flexing under my palms. I step in closer, and put my face into his throat, and breathe him in. I close my eyes and beg myself to remember this.
Please, remember this when you're a hundred years old
.

His hands slide down my waist to take my butt in both hands, and when I begin to kiss his throat he squeezes me tighter.

“Shirt off. Come on now.” My voice is rough and cajoling. He begins unbuttoning his shirt, looking dazed. When he shrugs out of the shirt I can see his back in the reflection of the dresser mirror. “You've still got paintball bruises. I do too.”

My free hand is groping along his chest, and I break off the kiss to watch myself do it. The muscles are all stacked together like LEGOs. I press my fingertips to watch his flesh give. His hands haven't moved from my ass, but his fingertips have slid down to stroke the little ribbons holding up my stockings. To stop myself from making an embarrassingly loud moan I kiss him again, wriggling closer to him.

“I had it all planned.” He finally finds his voice again, moving
me backward smoothly to the bed. He hauls the coverlet away and lays me back against the sheets with easy strength.

“It was going to be a little more romantic than a hotel room.”

Josh, thinking about romance? My heart can't take it. He captures my mouth in a kiss, and it's so gentle I could cry.

“See,” he says into my mouth. “I don't hate
you,
Lucy.”

His tongue touches mine, tentative, shy. He drops himself down on his elbows, caging me with his biceps, and it triggers the memory of him pressing me against a tree, shielding me, covering me.

I was always covering for you.

I sigh, and he breathes it in. “That's it . . .”

I stretch and wriggle underneath his weight. “You're so big. It gets me hot.”

“And you're so tiny. It makes me wonder about all the ways we'll fit together. It's all I've been thinking about since the day we met.”

“Oh, sure. The momentous day you looked at me, head to toe, then out the window.”

He's giving my throat the softest bites imaginable. He slides his fingers into mine above our heads and we're now holding hands. How did we get back here? To this tender place after the blaze of anger burned us both up? It's so sweet, so completely soft and gentle and
Josh
.

“If we do this tonight, I'm not going to let you get weird on me.” His eyes are solemn as he braces himself up a little. “Are you going to have one of your infamous freak-outs?”

“I don't know. Very possibly.” I try for a joke but he's not remotely amused.

“I wish I knew how much I have of you. How much do I get?” He's kissing me on the throat again, fingers tightening on mine.

“Until the interviews, you get it all,” I say into his skin, and he lets out a shaky breath, like I've offered him forever, not a few days.

We begin kissing again, and the friction of my thigh against his groin is spurring him into a slightly heavier rhythm. His mouth is wet, soft, delicious. The moment he stops, even to take a proper breath, I tug him back.

After an eternity, he tangles his hand in the strap on my shoulder. He runs it lasciviously through his fingers pulling it taut, releasing it with the faintest snap, and then does it again.

“The zip's at the side,” I tell him. Technically I think I begged him.

He ignores me completely and instead slides his finger down to the bow between my breasts. “The smallest bow I've ever seen.” He dips his head and bites it.

We're going so slowly, I wouldn't be surprised to open my eyes and see daylight. He's always completely different from what I expect. Soft instead of hard. Slow instead of fast. Shy instead of brash. My previous boyfriends and any of their egg-timer foreplay attempts are distant memories now that I'm experiencing the intense pleasure of lying underneath Josh.

He slides a hand into my hair and the scrape of his nails against my scalp makes my skin break into goose bumps. He licks them. He coils up smoothly to kneel between my feet, seemingly just for a better view. It works for me. I watch his stomach flex, and I make a sound like
ohhgah.

“How do you even look like this?”

“I don't have anything better to do than go to the gym.”

“You do now.”

I sit up too and drag my mouth across the muscles, and I do what I've always wanted to. I get my hands on his ass, and it is fabulous.

His hands slide into my hair and I begin making out with his stomach. I can't help myself. I find a little bit of hair, and look up to see he's got a light dusting on his chest, in a line down, disappearing beyond the waistband of his suit pants.

“Horny eyes,” he tells me shakily.

“No kidding. I want to snort you. You always smell amazing.” I press my nose into his skin and breathe in as hard as I can, and he begins to laugh. I look up at him and grin.

His fingers are resting on the zip at my side.

“I'm completely covered in bruises,” I say by way of a disclaimer. I suck my stomach in, looking at his abs.

“You're cute when you get shy. I'll go slow.” He eases one strap down, lets it rest against my arm. He does the same with the other one. He bites his lip. “I'm going to sit down. I feel too tall.”

There's a brief reshuffle when he leans against the headboard and I settle between his legs and rest back against him. His hands spread over my shoulders, and my eyes close as he begins to rub, the sweetest, most strangely timed massage. Most men would be unzipping and feeling by now, but he's not most men.

“You sat like this when you were sick.”

He continues to massage, the friction between us blooming outward. He scoops my hair away and presses his mouth on the side of my neck. I'll barely be able to remember my own name at this rate.

He slides his hand into the satin and weighs my bare breast in his hand. Slowly, gently, his fingers pinch.

“Oh, yeah,” he groans, and presses his mouth back to my neck.

I hear the sound I make. The kind of harsh intake people usually make from extreme pain. Except I feel like I'm halfway to orgasm.

“Imagine all the things we're going to do,” he says, almost to himself.

“I don't want to imagine. I want to know.” My feet are scrambling uselessly against the sheets, like I'm being electrocuted.

“You will. But tonight isn't enough, I can already feel it. I've always told you, I need days. Weeks.”

I barely notice the zipper sliding down. He's easing me out of the stretchy satin, because the feeling of his big palms smoothing over me is sublime. I'm being coddled and patted, skin warmed, everything admired. When I manage to open my eyes, his breath is steaming hot underneath my ear and the cream fabric is puddled at my waist. He unclips my stockings and leans over my shoulder to look at me.

“Mmm.” He hooks his fingers into the sides of the fabric at my hips, tugs it down my legs and I'm naked except for my stockings.

I see the leg of his suit pants, which makes my nudity feel even more vulnerable. I bring my knees up, trying to hide myself, but there's no point. He makes kind, soothing sounds against the back of my ear. His huge hand strokes down my hip, my thigh, then clasps my waist. The other hand follows suit.

“Lucy,” is all he can seem to say. “Lucy. How am I going to walk away from tonight? Seriously. How?”

I get goose bumps. I'm wondering the same thing. I let my head drop to one side, and we kiss.

I'm hoarse and breathless. “I'm gonna die tonight. Please take your pants off.”

“I want that embroidered on a pillow,” he says, and I laugh until I'm gasping.

“You're so funny. I've always thought so. I could never laugh, but I wanted to.”

“Ah, so that's one of your rules.” He slides off the bed, hand on the button at his waistband. “So the aim of the game is to not laugh?”

“The aim is to make the
other
person laugh. Come on. I'm getting cold.” I'm getting impatient, more like. He pulls the sheets and blankets over me when I shiver and I watch him like a lecherous creep as he manages to ease the zip down on his pants.

“I have my own rules. And the aim of the game is different for me.”

Watching Josh take off a pair of suit pants is on another level. He's in these stretchy black trunks. They're badly bent out of shape in front.

“Do tell. Come on.”

He slides those shorts down, and my mouth drops open. Seems that even my fevered imagination was woefully inadequate. I'm about to tell him that he is
glorious
when he snaps the lamp and we are plunged into darkness.

“No! Josh, that's absolutely not fair. Light on. I want to look at you.”

I flail my arm at the lamp but when he slides into the blankets and I register the warmth of his body against mine, we make identical sounds of disbelief. Skin to skin. The heat of it.

I have no idea where he is precisely. He's all over me. I think I feel his breath in my hair, but we roll a little and when he sighs it's down near my rib cage. It's disconcerting and erotic and I nearly jolt out of my skin when he slides one hand across my ribs.

Another hand is dispensing with my stockings, smoothing down my legs. He's touching my ankle and gently pinching at the little curve of my waist. I've got hands sliding all over me.

“You're so soft it's ridiculous. Everywhere my hand slides, you fit me. I was so right.”

He demonstrates. Throat. Breast. Ribs. Hips. Then he shows me his mouth fits perfectly too. My skin heats with every kiss
and press. He licks at the sheen of sweat beginning to mist across me, and I hear a faraway sound that I realize is me. Whimpering, begging noises. He takes no notice and shows no pity. He presses his perfect mouth on whatever section of skin he pleases. Inch by inch, he is charting me like a map. Which is all very well, except that Josh has a body that I need to get my hands on. When he's partway through traversing the upper curve of my spine, my pleading whispers begin to wear him down.

“Please let me touch you.”

He relents and rolls me over, and I run my hands down his neck to the big muscles at the tops of his arms. I squeeze. I bite. I use both hands to stroke down one bicep, weighing the muscle in my hand. It's such a pleasure, to be touching someone else. It's satin, this skin. My palms tingle from stroking it. My mouth fits everywhere that I can kiss him. My eyes are adjusting, and I can see the glint in his eye as I take my time, testing every new muscle, tendon, and joint that I encounter.

In the dark, I slide my body against his, feeling his sighs, and I tug him down to lie on me properly.

“I'm pretty heavy. I'll flatten you.”

“I've had a good life.”

He laughs, husky and pleased, and obeys me, pressing me down so firmly into the mattress I lose half the air in my lungs.

“Oh, so good. So heavy. I love it.”

He kneels up after another minute because I am gradually dying. I reach down between us and take hold of his intriguing hardness. He lets me fondle and play until his every broken breath convinces me of the fact that he's falling apart at the seams, and it's because of me. I can't think of anything more I could win. But then I feel his mouth against my hip bone, and then he starts kissing my thighs.

I have to laugh, both from the tickling of his stubble and the memory of our uniform argument from a lifetime ago. He kisses my thighs in openmouthed reverence, whispering things I can't properly hear. They feel like they must be complimentary words; the hot breath punctuated with licks, bites, more kisses. I could never withstand the soft pressure of this mouth, and there's no doubting his intention. My legs fall open, and I stare into the dark at the ceiling.

The first touch is a swirl. The kind of lick you'd make to the top of a melting ice cream cone. I breathe in so hard I nearly snort, and he kisses my inner thigh, a reward. I can't form any human words.