Nights With Him(49)

“It’s hard, isn’t it? All the missing,” Michelle said, and while she’d never known the kind of love Sutton and Reeve had, she knew a thing or two about those pangs of longing. She’d experienced it in the deep heart-wrenching way that only death can bring when her parents had died. And she’d felt it for Clay for years, though in a vastly different way, of course.

Even so, it was a far-too familiar emotion—the empty ache she’d felt for years for her friend who she’d hoped would become something more. In college, at the height of all that loneliness, he’d come into her life. Beautiful and handsome, kind and smart, he was best friends with her brother. That made him forbidden, in a way, even though they’d had only one drunken kiss during her sophomore year. That kiss had done a number on her vulnerable heart. It became the match that lit the fire she’d been building on the kindling of her very own raw and untended emotions.

Now, years later, she understood enough about emotions to figure out there’d been a transference going on, a displacement of grief into unrequited love. In retrospect, she should have let go of the unrequitedness years ago. She should have known better. Perhaps she’d clung on to it to protect herself from more hurt. Perhaps believing that Clay was the one had kept her heart in that safe zone where it couldn’t be broken again, like it had the night her family fractured.

Now that she knew that, and truly understood it, she had started to move on from Clay.

Or maybe it was so much simpler. Maybe it was the birds and the bees. Perhaps it was Jack that made Clay start to feel more and more like a distant memory.

Great sex had a way of erasing the past.

“Missing is the hardest thing,” Sutton said.

“It truly is,” Michelle echoed, linking elbows with her friend as they walked down the street, two New York women, out on a quick late afternoon shopping break and talking about their hearts, and their men.

Not that Jack was hers.

Not at all.

“By the way, did you see that picture of you with Mr. Sex Toy Mogul?” Sutton asked in an offhand way.

“What?” Michelle stopped in her tracks.

“I saw it on Twitter. Someone was sharing it, and I was searching to check for Joy Delivered products. I think it was you in the picture. You were the gorgeous brunette he was spotted having dinner with at Gia’s, I trust?’

Michelle blushed, flashing back to Carla’s comments about public lives. At least she hadn’t been named. No one knew her. No one needed to know her. She flew under the radar, unlike Jack. She’d been right, though, about Jack being recognized by those women that night. They must have taken his picture. Hers too.

It was an unsettling feeling, having her picture taken without permission. Having it taken and posted online was even odder. But then she reminded herself it wasn’t a big deal. She’d simply had dinner. There was nothing wrong with that. It wasn’t as if she’d been filmed having sex on top of the Met Life Tower.

They resumed their walk, passing a drugstore.

“Oh, Sutton,” Michelle said. “I forgot. I need to pop into the store and get a pair of cheaters.”

“Since when do you need reading glasses?”

“I don’t need them for reading,” Michelle said suggestively.

“You dirty bitch.” Sutton said, her eyes lighting up. “Let’s go get you some cheaters.”

* * *

He’d said hello to the receptionist then headed straight to his corner office and shut the door, a clear sign he wanted to be left alone. His only companion was the view of Manhattan from the windows. He could see New York. No one could see him. His phone buzzed, and he was tempted to ignore it. But the possibility that it might be her again had him grabbing it from his pocket.

M: Remember that time you knocked on my office door after your first appointment?

J: Yes.

M: You told me you had unfinished business with my pussy.

J: I did. I still do. Only because I fucking love your pussy, so I’m always going to want to do business with it, to it, for it, and in it.

M: I have unfinished business with your fabulous fucking cock.

J: Now you’ve done it again. Why do you torture me like this?

M: It’s only torture if I’m going to leave you blue-balled.

J: Well, what’s your plan, beautiful? Because my dick is hard, and I have no intention of jacking off in my office, and I have two more hours of work to get through.

He waited, and waited, and waited. But no reply came.

“Fuck it,” he muttered, because it was time to focus.

He tossed the phone on his desk. He needed to take care of a few thorny issues with suppliers before the weekend, but all he wanted was to rid his body and mind of the residual tension from the day. The meeting with Denkler combined with the time at the shrink’s, in addition to all those jumbled feelings of fuck-uppery with Aubrey had him on edge.