“I can’t help it.” Seriously. I can’t. C’mon. I’m a guy. A guy who hasn’t had sex in three days. Would you begrudge a three-days-dehydrated man a sip of a water bottle waved like a semaphore flag in front of him?
“Yes, you can.” She gives me a quick kiss on the cheek and scampers out, leaving me with people on the phone from the other side of the world ready to scream at me, a hand that touched the gates to Heaven, and a raging hard on.
This is all someone’s fault.
But none of that matters, because life is unfair, and the only way to deal with it is to keep on living.
And scream back.
CHAPTER THREE
Andrew won’t let me get out of this one. “Hold on. Back up. This ‘incident’ at Shannon’s apartment. Say that again? Her mom walked in on you two having sex and recorded it? Was it under-the-covers sex or let-your-freak-flag-fly sex?”
“What the hell does it matter? My future mother-in-law saw me naked. You don’t recover from that. Ever,” I shoot back. And for the record, it’s always let-your-freak-flag-fly sex. Always.
We’re weightlifting. There are two ways to deal with an unwelcome hard on. Masturbate, or go to the gym. Because I have a strict rule about sex at work—it must involve another human being—I’m left with one option.
The gym.
At Anterdec, that means going into Andrew’s office and entering a swipe card along a reader installed in the wall. You’d never know the hidden gym is in there. While he’s a fitness freak with a spin cycle in his main office, he’s also a free-weights nut with a deep fear of being outside because of his deadly wasp allergy.
All I know is I get to work out and pump as much blood as possible out of my pelvis and into my legs and arms. It’s the blood immigration program, complete with free relocation and a puppy if you move. After two hours of being yelled at by people with accents that make them sound like they really need to put another shrimp on the barbie and poke a skewer through their eye, I need this. Gym time. Pump out the rage.
Blow out my muscles.
The words pump and blow are killing me, though. Shannon got called across town for a client meeting and swears she’ll meet me at eight o’clock tonight in my apartment. If she’s not there at exactly eight, I’m sending out a search party led by a one-eyed trouser snake.
I’m sure Jessica Coffin will have a field day tweeting that.
Andrew’s trying very hard not to snicker. “Marie just barged in to Shannon’s bedroom?”
“Yes.” I’m lifting forties, working my triceps, on my back on a yoga ball. Andrew grabs them out of my hands and gives me fifty-fives. It takes effort, but I can still press them. I imagine the blood fleeing into my arms.
Too bad the desire can’t be relocated.
“With a camera crew?” Andrew’s standing over me, looking down, eyes filled with the kind of laughter no older brother ever wants to see in his little bro.
“Yep.”
“And the camera crew was because...”
“She showed up with the grandsons of one of her yoga clients. That old lady named Agnes.”
Andrew touches his ass tenderly. “The pincher?” Marie had convinced him to attend one of her yoga classes a few months ago, by promising a direct path to the studio in the winter, insect-free.
“Yep.” I drop the fifty-fives and motion for the sixties. Andrew hands them off and chugs from his water bottle. “Marie said they were doing a documentary on her.”
“Marie? Why? Is she some kind of celebrity?”
“The local cable access channel was doing some show on her life as a ‘reinvented woman’ who found a new career in her fifties, and she wanted them to shadow her as she visited her kids.”
We’d been so deeply, intensely involved in being naked and sticky and perfect that we hadn’t heard the front door open. Then bam! A doorway full of Marie and chattering and screams and shoving, and all I really remember from the whole thing was Chuckles, rubbing his front paws together and doing a Dr. Evil imitation. And shouting, from me. Lots of shouting. Then Shannon, sobbing, and...
Andrew winces. “They caught you doing the two-backed nasty on camera?”
“Hey! Don’t talk about red garters—er, Shannon like that. That’s my future wife you’re talking about.”
Andrew’s jaw goes slack. “Red garters?” See that thin line of drool running down his mouth, the vacant look in his eyes? Told you. It’s Man Soma. Mention garters and we check out, controlled by hormones. Pavlov’s bell in lingerie form.
“And a corset.”
He groans, a sexual sound that borders on lewd. Then again, among the testicled, this is the expected response, but still.
I frown. “Quit thinking about Shannon like that.”
“I’m not thinking about Shannon.”
I sit up. This is new. Andrew doesn’t date. Not the way normal people date, at least. Andrew’s admin picks socially acceptable women and sets them up for business meetings that start with a handshake and end with a Walk of Shame.
“Who are you thinking about?”
“I’m—Amand—no, no one.”
“A man?” Oh, boy. This conversation just veered into new territory.
“Not a man! I don’t date men.”
“It’s cool. Not judging if you do. Look at Tim Cook. The CEO of Apple can be out and proud—”
“But I am not gay! I didn’t say ‘a man’!”
“Yes, you did.”
He’s flustered. This is fun. Andrew takes a deep breath and runs his hand through increasingly-wet hair. Funny. He hasn’t lifted enough to be that sweat-soaked. “I said ‘aman’, not ‘a man.’”