After His Banana, page 10
Miles considered me. “No. When you go to the fanciest restaurants, you don’t wolf down the food. You savor every bite. You’re not some diner on the side of the highway, Rey.”
“Do I still get to be a classy restaurant if I want to return the favor?”
Miles grinned. “Yes. And I am going to take pleasure in making you wait.”
Bastard. I was too proud to beg at this point.
Miles idly adjusted my panties, fixing the elastic so it was straight again. Even the simple touch made me explode with hunger for more, but I kept it inside. “I will tell you something. I’ve never tried this hard with anyone. Never even close.”
I reached down and took his hands in mine, smiling. Then a sinking feeling struck me in my stomach. I couldn’t let this keep going on without admitting the full truth. Maybe it was silly and he’d just laugh it off, or maybe he’d feel betrayed and say he hated me. But it was his right to know and make that choice.
I took a deep breath. “Miles, there’s—”
Someone knocked at the door.
“Mr. Chamberson? William wants to see you in the lounge.”
“O-okay,” Miles called. “We’ll be up in a few.”
“How does he know your—wait, William? I thought you said this was the wrong boat?”
“Did I actually say that, or did I imply it? I can’t remember? I know the plan was to just imply it.”
In an instant, I went from wishing I could get Miles’ pants off to wanting to kill him.
16
Miles
Rey jabbed a pillow toward me. For some reason, I flinched away like it was a sharp sword.
“What were you thinking?” She hissed.
“That you said you liked simple more than fancy rich people stuff. Really, you only have yourself to blame for this. I was just being a good listener.”
She slammed the pillow in an overhand swing that was surprisingly deadly. It caught me in the eye, and something sharp ignited a red line of pain down my cheek.
Dramatically, I twisted and fell to the ground, clutching my face. “Aarrghh!”
Rey fell to her knees, trying to gently pry my hands away from my face. “What? It was just a pillow!” She sounded a little hysterical. “What happened? I’m sorr—”
I pulled my hands away.
Rey sat back with a disgusted look in her eyes. “It’s not even red. The zipper must’ve scratched you or something.”
I grinned. “I thought maybe you’d seem less on the verge of panic if I got a smile out of you.”
Rey rolled her eyes, which I took as a sign of slight victory. “I’m still mad at you.”
Once she was dressed, we were met with a very peevish looking staff member in the hallway. He pointedly kept his eyes about six inches above our heads, like a properly trained professional.
“Lead on,” I said, giving Rey’s ass a squeeze for good measure.
She jumped like she had been shocked, and then shot me a look of disbelief. “Can you control yourself at all?”
“In general, or around you?”
“Either?”
“Yes and no.”
She tried to pretend she wasn’t amused but couldn’t fool me.
After a short elevator ride, a brief walk down a hallway lined with windows that gave us a view of the city across the bay, we reached the lobby. Uncle William was sitting at one of the many couches in the large, window-framed lounge area on top of the ship. Grammy sat across from him.
They appeared to be playing a game of Battleship, for some reason.
William looked up at us, then did a double-take. “Sex hair? Nice.”
I didn’t even have to look at Rey to know she was blushing so hard her eyes were probably turning red.
I cleared my throat. “You asked to see us?”
William nodded absently. He stuck a colored peg into one of his ships and sighed. “Congratulations, old hag. You sunk my battleship.”
Grammy smugly noted the spot she’d hit on her side of the board.
I felt my voice growing tense with annoyance. “Did you need us for something urgent?”
“What?” Uncle William asked, “No. I had a feeling you two were getting feisty, and one of my favorite things in the world is interrupted sex. I actually paid this Polish guy to set off our car alarm at pre-determined times once. He kept your Aunt Hailey and me from having an orgasm together for three solid days. By the time I finally came, I was surprised I didn’t propel her straight into the ceiling with the force of it.”
Grammy let out a long, disappointed sigh. I thought she was about to chastise him for talking about her granddaughter in front of her, but instead, she wagged a finger. “Three days is all you could last? Try ten.”
Uncle William’s head pulled back. He wore an expression between disgust and awe.
I looked at Rey, who was even redder than I imagined she would be. I leaned in, whispering. “Are you okay?”
She barely moved her lips when she responded like she was afraid Uncle William could read them. “He knows what we were doing.”
“Well, yeah. He probably saw on the cameras, anyway.”
She turned toward me, eyes wide. “Cameras?”
“I’m kidding. There are probably not cameras in most of the rooms.”
Rey didn’t look like that made her feel much better.
“So,” Uncle William said. “Are you two going to sit or keep whispering about whatever dirty shit I just interrupted you from doing?”
I was about to suggest Rey and I join them, but then I saw the look on her face. I remembered how stressed she’d seemed by the idea of missing classes, and realized she was probably just doing her best to keep her cool but was freaking out on the inside.
“Actually,” I said. “I was wondering if there was any way you could turn the boat around and drop us back off at the port. I think I left my fridge open.”
Uncle William gave me a dry look. “You left your fridge open, so you want me to turn my massive, penis-size confirming mega yacht around? You want the hundreds of staff members to update their itinerary for the day because your fridge is open?”
I dipped my chin slightly, raising my eyebrows. “Yes?”
“Okay. One sec.” Uncle William pulled out his phone and typed something. Within seconds, I felt the boat shudder. From the windows, I could see we were turning around. “Did you want a helicopter ride to your place and back here?”
I hesitated. “Would you and Grammy be piloting this helicopter?” Uncle William was infamous in the family for his helicopter piloting. We still weren’t sure he actually took the training courses to get his license. It was entirely possible he bribed his way through it and had just been figuring out how to fly by trial and error.
“Nah, sorry.” William held up his thumb, which had a Band-Aid on it. “My flying hand is compromised. Aunt Hailey bit me in the passion of the moment the other night, and it’s still healing.”
“She…” Rey said slowly.
“Better not to ask questions,” I muttered. “Well, thanks. Sorry to bail on the boat ride so early.”
“It’s all good. Warm refrigerator stuff is no joke. So did you want the heli ride or no? Captain Mike is usually hanging around the rooftop bar near the helipad. Just give him the code word. Cherry Pie. You’ve got to wink after you say it, too.”
“Is he at the bar because he’s drinking?” Rey asked. “We could just get an Uber or something. It’s really not—”
Grammy snorted. “What, are you scared of a little helicopter crash?”
Rey stared at Grammy, clearly trying to figure out how she was supposed to answer that. “Yes?”
“Crashes are like rough sex, dear,” Grammy explained. She was holding one of the tiny battleships from her board, waving it around as she spoke. She had an unfortunately slow and unhurried way of speaking, which gave more than enough time to let my mind create images of everything she talked about. “If you try to brace yourself and prepare for the moment of penetration, it’s only going to do more damage. The secret is to relax. Melt into the moment and just—” She bared her teeth, and her eyes were distant like she was lost in some old memory. “Just dig your nails into him and ask for more. Men love that. Just when they think you’re a sweet little flower? That’s when you flex your pussy and—”
“Right,” Uncle William said. “You lost me at ‘flex your pussy.’ Grammy, you and I both know you haven’t been able to flex anything, let alone your pussy, for centuries.”
She crossed her arms, glaring. “I used to be able to hold a beer bottle between my butt cheeks. Hard enough that my man could unscrew the cap with one hand.”
“And I used to be able to last an entire car ride without having to take a piss.”
I put my hand on Rey’s arm and started slowly backing her away while Grammy and Uncle William continued to bicker.
Once we were on our own again, Rey stopped walking and faced me. “What made you think about your fridge being open?”
“I just felt bad making you miss class. Figured we had our fun already, so there was no reason to keep dragging you out to sea.”
She rolled her head to the side as if she was trying to see me from a different angle. Then she scrunched her nose and leaned in, surprising me with a quick kiss on the lips.
I held up a finger in warning. “Put your lips on me again, and I’ll make sure we hit an iceberg if that’s what it takes to keep you here.”
She looked down, smiling. “Maybe you don’t need to be so worried about me getting away.”
“Is that right?”
“Maybe.”
17
Rey
Penny was participating in a science fair at one of the local convention centers. Almost every other contestant was at least college-aged, and some were adults. I headed over to meet her and see her project after I finished up my classes for the day.
Surprisingly, I was doing a good job of keeping up with my work, class attendance, studying, and projects. I’d expected the introduction of Miles into my life to be more like a bottomless drain that sucked all my time and focus into it, derailing my carefully laid plans.
Instead… It was just nice. I liked looking forward to the next time we were together, especially after our little misadventure on his uncle’s yacht. I wasn’t even mad about the way he’d tricked me into thinking we were breaking onto the wrong ship. Miles was fun, and I was realizing more and more that fun was something I’d been sorely missing in my life.
All work and no play made Rey a dull girl, it seemed. Thankfully, Miles appeared to be ready to inject a lifetime of fun into a few weeks to make up for it.
I stopped inside the convention center and checked my latest text from Miles.
Charming Bastard: Not feeling as patient as I was on the boat. Craving you.
He added a bunch of drooling emojis, because Miles texted like a middle schooler. It still made me smile and chew my lip as I typed up a response.
Rey: I had a dream about you last night.
Charming Bastard: You can either tell me every detail now, or I’ll torture it out of you.
Rey: You had no legs and I had to take you places in a wheelbarrow. But all you ever wanted to do was get ice cream and smoke weed.
I grinned. In reality, I’d dreamed about him taking things further on that cream colored couch. About him putting his head between my legs and taking me from every position. It had all flashed through my thoughts like dark wildfire, and I’d woken up feeling little echoes of his fingers inside me. He could torture me all he wanted, but I’d never admit any of that to him.
Charming Bastard: Wow. Is there some psychological significance to that? Like how you’d still be committed to me if I was a legless bum?
Rey: Maybe it was my subconscious trying to warn me that you were a legless bum.
He responded with several crying and laughing emojis. I smirked, then shoved my phone in my pocket and went to find Penny.
I found her in a corner of the large, carpeted room standing beside her project.
She was dressed professionally in a navy-blue pantsuit, which she looked adorable in. She bounced on her toes when she saw me, trying to stay put and look like a proper little scientist. After a few seconds, she broke character and rushed over to hug me. “These guys from MIT came by a few minutes ago and loved my idea!”
MIT? My mental cash register went up in a mushroom cloud explosion at the mere mention of an out of state, expensive college. I just had to remind myself this was why I worked so hard. It wasn’t only about my dream. It was to help Penny get to hers because if I didn’t do my part, she wouldn’t even get the same chance I had to follow her dreams. Then again, there was almost no way she wouldn’t wind up getting all the scholarships she could want, but I still wanted her to be able to go to her little camps and do anything else in the meantime.
My response was a split second late, but Penny gave no sign of noticing. “That’s amazing!” I hugged her tighter, then pulled away to look at what she’d made.
It was some kind of toilet, which she spent the next ten minutes explaining to me in excruciating detail. My main takeaway was that my sister was a genius and an awesome person, but I still had no idea how any of it worked.
I sat behind her booth with my laptop open. I’d been endlessly revising my paper on Miles, and I didn’t have much time left before I needed to turn it in. The truth was that I needed to learn more about him before I could really write it the way it needed to be written. And that only served to remind me how guilty I felt that I still hadn’t told him.
I knew I couldn’t tell him, either. If I really thought he was my best shot at getting the internship, then telling him the truth and risking my grade would be choosing a guy I’d pretty much just met over my sister.
“You okay?” Penny asked once a group of college students wandered off from her project.
I nodded. “Fine.”
“Fine,” Penny mocked. “You know what ‘fine’ is code for? It’s what people say when they are upset about something, and they want to talk about it without actually talking about it.”
I threw my hands up in frustration. “Okay. Fine. I really like this guy, but I lied to him about something kind of small. Except now I waited long enough that it’s starting to feel like it doesn’t matter if it was small, because it’s becoming big.”
“It’s the guy in that paper, right?”
I scowled. “You aren’t supposed to just get everything so easily. You know that, right?”
“Yeah, but I do. And here’s my advice. You’re getting old. I mean, look at you. Your prime child-rearing days are practically flying by every week. Pretty soon, you’ll be just some crusty thing on the side of the road that—”
“I’m not even twenty-five, you turd.”
Penny tried to hold back a smile. “All I’m saying is that you can keep making it complicated and lose your shot at the first guy who has ever actually liked you. Or you could try to make the best of it.”
“He’s not the first guy who has ever liked me. Okay?”
“Sorry. The first guy to like you in years. Am I being more accurate now?”
I messed up her hair, then remembered she had to look professional to present her project and smoothed it with my fingers. She glared up at me, half smiling. “I’m going to go before you give me any more of your demented pipsqueak advice. I need to go see someone. Are you okay here?”
Penny nodded. “I’m fine taking the bus back. Go see this dude you like so much. And use protection.”
I cringed. “Don’t—we aren’t—”
Penny laughed. “I’m kidding. At least I was until I saw how red you got. Ew. Keep your clothes on, you scamp.”
With a shake of my head, I made my way back outside and pulled out my phone to call Miles.
18
Miles
In the world of mottos, it could be said that some mottos rose above all others. Almost as if there was one motto to rule them all.
As far as dating was concerned, I think I knew the universal truth.
Understand what you can, embrace what you can’t.
I didn’t understand why Rey had lit a fire in me like no girl had before. But I didn’t need to. Just like I didn’t need to figure out if I was still partially motivated by my dad’s stupid command to stick with something for once.
All I needed to do was embrace it.
Even though the wisdom bouncing around in my head was shaman-tier stuff, I wasn’t in the middle of a meditation session. Nope. I was eating chili cheese Fritos and trying not to get the flavor dust on my shirt before Rey came over. She had called me and practically begged to hang out tonight.
I smiled to myself.
I had to admit, I usually had girls figured out by now. Most people were actually really simple once you got down to it. Everybody likes to see themselves as this complex masterpiece. I happened to know otherwise.
If you asked me—you would, if you wanted universal truth—the secret was this: everybody felt like they deserved a certain kind of life. Some people were assholes to themselves and decided they deserved to be miserable. Those people would keep seeking out shitty relationships to make sure they were properly punished.
Other people felt like life owed them a glittering, shiny little fairy tale.
Most sane people existed somewhere in the middle, and I firmly believed the key to happiness was helping people find their way to a life slightly better than the one they thought they deserved. Shoot too high, and they recoil. Give them exactly what they want, and they end up wanting more.
Usually, I thought I knew what a woman wanted by now, and I was well on my way to giving her a tantalizing taste of it.
Rey was turning out to be more of a mysterious package. Aside from my very benevolent desire to help her become a better person, I was also going to break something if I didn’t get my hands on her again soon. The little taste she’d given me on the yacht was great, but all it had done was make me crave more.
