He waves his hand in a don’t worry sign.
“I’m good.” He smiles. “No, it’s sunny.” He listens again. “I start at three. I’m going to the market with Miss Hazen this morning to buy fruit.” He frowns, and his eyes meet mine. “Don’t tell her you called? Why not?”
My heart sinks as I wait for the reply.
“Oh . . . I see.” He listens, and then eventually, he smiles. “Okay, bye.” He hangs up.
“What did he say?” I blurt out.
“Not to tell you he called.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know . . . I forget,” he lies.
“You’re covering for him?” I gasp.
“He’ll call you, don’t worry.”
“When?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, is he calling you back?” I ask him.
“He said he’ll call me tomorrow.”
“Oh . . .” I go over the conversation they had, desperately trying to work out what it all means, and we walk in silence for a while.
“He likes you,” he says.
My eyes flick up. “Did he tell you that?”
“He didn’t have to.”
“Well then, how do you know?”
“Men know these things . . . and besides, how could he not?”
I smile. This adorable young man is everything and more. I link my arm through his, grateful for his friendship. “Let’s get an ice cream on the way home too.”
Eddie smiles broadly. “Okay.”
CHRISTOPHER
The restaurant is busy and bustling, loud music is playing, and in typical New York style, everyone is out on a Monday night.
The city that never sleeps.
My brothers laugh and chat, and with every moment that I spend with them, I feel a little more myself.
Jameson holds his hand and makes a fist. I’ve seen him do it a few times today.
“What’s up with your hand?” I ask.
“Fuck knows.” He opens his hand and makes a fist again. “My two middle fingers are sore, like, aching.”
I sip my scotch. “Did you injure them?”
“No.” He opens his hand again. “It’s in the knuckle and up into my fingers and down into the palm of my hand.”
Elliot winces. “That can’t be good.”
“RFI,” Tristan replies casually into his glass.
“What’s RFI?” I ask.
“Repetitive fingering injury.”
I snort my drink up my nose. “What?” I cough.
“No shit,” Tristan says in all seriousness. “It’s hard work keeping these women satisfied.”
“Right,” Jameson agrees. He opens his fist and closes it again.
Tristan holds out his two middle fingers and curls them up, simulating his fingering action. “Does this hurt?”
Jameson does it, and he winces. “Yes. It does.” His eyes flick around the table. “I do fucking have it,” he snaps, horrified.
“It’s all downhill from here,” Elliot says. “You’ll never get laid again if there is a kink in the warm-up chain.”
“Fucking hell,” Jameson mutters under his breath. “The warm-up chain is already well and truly fucked up by the three cockblockers who live in my house rent-free.”
“You mean . . . your children?” Elliot mutters dryly.
Jameson narrows his eyes as he crunches a piece of ice.
I smirk, amused.
“I’m hearing you, man. I got a huge-ass lock . . . so now instead of barging in, they just stand out there banging, screaming, ‘Open the door!'” Tristan curls his lip in disgust. “And now, with the RFI kink in the warm-up chain . . . I’m basically fucked.”
“And not in the right way.” Elliot smiles.
Jameson rolls his eyes and drains his glass. “This wasn’t in the brochure.”
The table erupts into laughter, and I look around the table at my three happily married brothers. “What was in the brochure?” I ask them.
“What do you mean?” Tristan asks.
“How did you know you’d met the . . .” I pause.
“The one?” Elliot asks.
“Yeah.” I shrug. “For interest’s sake.”
“Hmm.” Jameson runs his fingers over his stubble as he thinks back. “I didn’t really know at the time. Like, there wasn’t a lightning-bolt moment when I knew, as such.”
“Yeah, me too,” Tristan agrees. “But there was something different about her.”
“Like what?” I ask, my interest piqued.
“I guess . . .” Tristan pauses. “She was like this really cool friend who was way cooler than me that I desperately wanted to fuck.”
I chuckle.
“For me it was different. I didn’t . . .” Jameson purses his lips as he thinks. “I just wanted to be near her all the time. Like, I was obsessed with her, but different obsessed.”
I frown. “What do you mean?”
“I hated going home with her not there and would avoid it at all costs.”
I listen intently. This is all news to me. I thought they’d had this primal urge to marry their women the day that they’d met them.
“I felt more at home in her tiny apartment than I did in my penthouse,” Jameson adds.
What?
“Me too,” Tristan agrees. “I missed her. When I wasn’t with her, I missed her. I found myself rushing to get home and cook her dinner and watch television on her couch . . . and suddenly, somehow, it wasn’t about sex anymore.”
“Which is helpful now that you have RFI and a useless lock on the door.” Elliot holds his glass up toward Tristan.
Tristan chuckles. “Facts.”
“So what you’re saying is your sex life is shit.” I frown.
“Not at all,” he replies. “The sex is ridiculously good, but more than that, I wanted to talk to her because she was the first person who actually listened. My life became better because she was in it.”
My heart begins to hammer.
Sounds familiar.
“I guess my biggest thing for me was”-Elliot chips in-“I didn’t want to sleep with anyone else. I lost all attraction to other women overnight.”
I feel the blood drain from my face. I haven’t had sex in two months.
It’s like the urge has completely left my body. I would rather lie on my bed and watch Hayden read than have sex with another woman. I end most days jerking off in the shower and then happily cuddling her back.
Fuck.
“What’s wrong? You look like you saw a ghost,” Tristan says.
“All good.” I fake a smile.
The conversation changes subject, and I sit still as their words of wisdom roll around in my head.
My life became better because she was in it.
I glance over to see Elliot’s gaze fixed firmly on me. He raises an eyebrow, and I snap my eyes away.
Don’t even.