Staying True - A Contemporary Romance Novel (5 page)

“I acted foolishly that night.” She
spoke slowly, deliberately. “I let my emotions go unchecked over something that
happened earlier and you just happened to be in the line of fire. I felt
really—”

“Ridiculous?”

Silence.

“I suppose I could’ve stomped a
little less.” She laughed. “I hope you don’t mind that I called to explain.”

I loved her sexy tone. “Apology
accepted.”

“Well, technically I haven’t
apologized, yet.” Her voice teased.

“Well, you should. You can’t leave a
girl hanging back like that screaming out words like whore in the middle of a
hotel lounge.” I stirred the toothpaste into the whitening paste. “So, as far
as I see it, now you owe me.”

“Yes. Absolutely, yes.” She marched her
words out. “I owe you a beer next time you’re around.”

I wanted her to agree to a massage.
“Is that all?”

She cleared her throat. “Hm. What
more did you have in mind?”

I loved her charge. “No potato skins
or wings?”

She whispered a laugh and my tummy rolled.

“So why did you run anyway?”

“I just had a bad day.”

Her raspy vulnerability pulled on me.
“I could’ve helped you very easily.”

“I just didn’t know where you were
going with it all. It’s not every day I sit in the lounge of the hotel I help
manage and have a girl place her hands on my skin.”

“So you thought I was coming on to
you?”

Silence.

She cleared her throat. “We’re
getting off topic here. I just wanted to call and apologize for running off and
calling you a whore. That’s it.”

Too much hesitation teetered on the
edge of her words. “If you say so.”

“What is it that you want Miss
Ten-Minute Masseuse?” Nadia asked.

My endorphins flew. “I want ten
minutes with you.”

She chuckled. “Ten minutes?”

“Ten minutes.”

“Tomorrow night? Same place? Same time?”
she asked.

“Shall I bring my massage chair?”

“Just bring your pretty little self,”
she whispered before hanging up.

I stared at my reflection and a silly
grin stretched across my face. I loved guarded, strong and intense women. They
didn’t cling or wrap their possessive ideals around my life.

This could be fun.

* *

That next morning, I ran out of the
door to pick up my grampa for Sunday mass. I dashed down the side steps and
rushed past my landlord’s door. Just as I cleared the front landing, he popped
his head out to pick up his
Providence Journal
. He waved to me and
asked, “Got a second?”

I owed my rent payment a week ago. My
mind whirled trying to find an excuse to bolt. “I’ve got to run. My grampa is
probably pacing his front window. I’m already late.”

He formed his lips into a silent
whistle. “Okay, I guess I’ll just catch up with you when you return?”

“Yes,” I said with confidence. “Yes,
we’ll catch up then.” I skipped off wishing him a cheery day and undoubtedly
leaving him to question why he ever rented his top-floor attic apartment to me
in the first place.

His wife hated me. She always flagged
me down with squinty eyes. Whenever we crossed paths, she’d plop her hands on
her pregnant belly and complain about life’s expenses and how money didn’t grow
on trees. They owned an upscale house with a top-floor attic apartment across
the street from a gorgeous tree farm and she acted like she slept on a park
bench every night. She hated me. Of course it didn’t help that her husband, my
tall, scrawny, ruffled-looking landlord, always groped me over with his
wandering eyes. She caught him every time. I pretended never to notice and
would always end the awkward moment with a friendly tap on her shoulder.

I climbed into my car and
contemplated my next move. Beg grampa for a loan again or cancel on him and go
beg for some money on a street corner, doling out ten dollar massages?

I started the engine of my pride and
joy, my yellow Camaro. Grampa bought her for me the day I graduated high
school. She idled, purring like a kitty. I opened my console and pulled out my
dust wipes and wiped down the dashboard. Then, I pulled up a few pieces of lint
from the passenger seat and tossed them out of the window. I adjusted my
rearview mirror and noticed the trail of grime leaking down my back window. I
climbed out, opened up my trunk, pulled out the Windex and paper towels and
wiped the stains from the overnight storm. Just like always, once I started
cleaning one part of the car, everything looked dirty to me. So, I tore off
more paper towels and started wiping the smudges from the bumper and then the
trunk and then the side windows.

Before I knew it, half an hour had
passed. Poor Grampa had probably already eaten his blueberry muffin and was
standing in his front door waiting on me.

When I finally arrived, my grampa
swiped his hand across the polished dashboard, approving with a smile. I loved
that he noticed. I did it for him. We ended up enjoying our Sunday mass and
breakfast that day just as we did every week.

He talked to everyone who walked by
our table. He started with a smile, and then he would comment on something a
person wore or on the child a mother cradled in her arms.

My grampa loved to talk. That man
could converse with an ant all day if it would stay put on his fingertip and
listen. The women at the senior center treated him like a king because of it.
They liked to joke around with him. Once he told me one of the ladies placed a
whoopee cushion down on his chair and when he sat down on it, she choked with
laughter over it all. The ladies always complimented him, calling him a
gentleman and raving on and on about his handsome face and gorgeous thick hair.
They begged me to keep bringing him by so they could continue to enjoy him. My
grampa would grumble as we shuffled away and tell me that these ladies would
soon drive him to drink, and then two seconds later he’d wink and laugh. The
man adored these ladies and all of their attention.

I loved people of his generation.
They got life. They’d lived it. They carried in their aged brains the answers
to those questions most of us young people sought. My Grampa turned eighty-five
this year, and he understood life more than anyone else I knew. This man had
seen more in his lifetime in terms of advances in technology and in basic human
comfort products than any other generation that came before him or after him.

“You should have seen the time I
first saw an airplane,” he said time and again. “I couldn’t have been more than
twelve, maybe, I don’t know. This thing, it just swooped over my head one day
when I was out collecting firewood. I dropped to my knees.” He always lowered
himself when he told this part of the story. “I didn’t know what it was. For
all I know it could’ve been a giant bird or something. My instinct told me to
shoot it. Just get my shotgun and shoot the darn thing down and figure out what
it was later.” He always waited for a reaction at this point. I always giggled.

Nothing in my lifetime had ever
lifted me with such awe and intrigue as this airplane did for my grampa.

Now, here was a man who had lived a
serious life and yet still maintained daily doses of laughter. Most people were
miserable and whiny and self-absorbed in their plights as they interacted with
the harsh world around them. Not Grampa. To this day, I had only seen the man
lose his cool once and that was when he broke his plate in the sink the day
Grace left us.

He had lost lots in his life—colossal
losses that would drive most men to drink massive quantities of alcohol, to
walk around the streets carrying justified chips on their shoulders, and to
sink into pity from time to time.

Not him. He had witnessed the death
of three daughters, the death of his beloved wife, the loss of his beloved
girlfriend, the demises of too many family doggies to count, and then
inheriting me.

Chapter Four

Ruby

I always attracted clingy women who
tipped the balance between lust and going overboard by wrapping themselves
around me like a chain, choking all the life out of us before we even got
started. I suspected Nadia catered to her busy, important life too much to
cling.

I looked up at the clock. I had two
hours before I would meet her.

I crossed my legs over each other and
inhaled, raising my arms way over head and taking in the fresh air blowing in
from the open window. I saw her pretty face, her soft lips, her adorable
cheeks, her smooth skin, and that long, soft hair, flipping over her golden
shoulders.

My heart fluttered.

I stood, in a meditative pose,
stretching tall and wide and peeking through my window at a tree against a blue
horizon. Nadia’s face popped into my mind again, sending my heart on a
pulsating journey. I refocused on the leaves. They waved and flapped, dancing
with the wind.

I bent over at my waist and stretched
my hamstrings. The energy flowed. I clued in to the subtle, sensual tickles
dancing inside of me. My mind wandered to Nadia’s long legs, imagining her
toned calves and thighs balanced by a pretty pair of undies on top and freshly
painted red toenails on the bottom.

What a tango we could leap into.

I loved the lure of the dance; the
initial eye ballet, the gentle graze of the skin, the intense heartbeat, the
delicious flutters, and the gentle guide into that first soulful, mind-blowing
kiss.

I would get this girl to dance. It
had been two years since my last twirl. A girl needs to twirl. I deserved this.

Nadia

I arrived at the lounge first. It
smelled like chicken wings and garlic. A few stragglers sat alone at the bar
huddling over beers and whiskeys, picking at pretzels and staring up at the
game on the overhead screens. I joined them. I loved blending into this scene
to get a customer’s perspective. I sat inconspicuously in the same spot as the
night we first met. Shawna strolled up to me and cleared the last customers’
drink and napkins. She wore her hair in a low, side ponytail.

She wiped the counter. Her green eye
shadow complemented her olive eyes and soft rosy lipstick. Shawna was a
transgender woman who outshone most women I knew. She brushed me off whenever
I’d tell her this. “You’re just trying to raise my confidence,” she’d say and
quickstep away unable to accept the compliment. Her jawline didn’t curve like
most women. Instead it squared off with her neck, pitching sharply, as if
positioning to fight off the stubble she worked so hard at trying to hide
through brutal IPL Laser treatment sessions. Despite this, her cheekbones
defined her face with such beauty, sometimes I stared, mesmerized by her.

“Hey, so how did it go?” she asked.

“How did what go?”

“I’m assuming you called that girl
Ruby, right?” she asked.

“I did.”

She arched one of her green shaded
eyes at me. “That’s it? I did?” She mimicked me. “You’ve been sitting at this
bar telling me your Jessica woes, and you aren’t going to elaborate on this?”

I didn’t want to jump into a silly
conversation about how this girl’s beauty, sweet fragrance and innocent smile
lit my nerves on fire. “I apologized. The end.”

Shawna looked past me and chuckled.
“That’s not the end, my friend.”

I stiffened. I couldn’t even see her
yet, but I felt Ruby. The room came to life behind me. The air freshened. The
lights radiated more brightly as if smiling at me. I turned and watched as she
pranced her way over to the bar. She headed to me with her eyes aglow, her
bounce bright, her skin the perfect tone of ivory with a splash of rose.

My breath cut short. My body turned
to mush.

She walked straight into my personal
zone. “Thank you so much for calling me,” she whispered and embraced me. She
smelled as fresh as daisies.

I patted her back, taking up pleasure
in her golden waves. “Not a problem.”
Not a problem? WTF?

She slid back and wandered her soft
blue eyes around my face. “You know what I’m going to make happen?”

“I can only imagine,” I muttered.

“I’m going to get you to smile.”
Ruby’s voice was warm and amusing.

I purposely remained impassive. “Oh
really?”

She climbed on the bar stool next to
mine. “Women look prettier when they smile.” She flipped her hair over her
shoulder, then rolled out a softer, sexier smile.

My mouth dropped, thrown by her
candid attitude. I blushed and hid from it by guiding a stray lock of my hair
behind my ear. I warmed up to a small smile.

She flashed me a quick wink, sending
my heart stampeding out of control.

Shawna arrived just in time. “Hey,
pretty lady. What’ll it be?”

Ruby looked to me. “Let’s have
something sweet. What do you say?”

I wouldn’t want to disappoint her at
this point. “I heard Shawna here mixes up a delicious mango martini.”

Ruby slapped the counter. “Well, all
right then. Shawna, two mango martinis please.”

Shawna cocked her head. “Great
choice. Looks like we’re going to have some fun tonight.” She sashayed away.

“Shawna sure is different from most
people,” Ruby said, taking a napkin from the holder and wiping her part of the
bar. “She seems, oh I don’t know…” She continued wiping the bar, reaching out
in front of me now, brushing my leg with hers as she leaned in.

I recited a silent prayer that she
wouldn’t say anything derogatory about Shawna. I’d fought to defend her too
many times to ignorant people, and I sure hoped this pretty little thing would
not be another of those cases. “She seems kind of sweet?” I asked, offering
Ruby the path better taken.

She stopped wiping, and remained
close, close enough that I could practically taste her cherry lipstick. She
gazed up at Shawna who blended our mango martinis and joked with another
customer about the recent Sox game. “I wasn’t going to say that.”

I protected Shawna. Regulars in this
lounge knew better. We all protected her. We all loved her. Every once in a
while, we’d get people, usually men, whispering and staring at her with curious
eyes, trying to figure her out, jabbing each other’s sides and egging each
other on to crack on her. None of us stood for it. “Then what?”

“She’s more than sweet. She floats
around this place in love with what she does. Look at her.” Ruby tilted her
head and a piece of her hair fell down onto my arm. “She is choosing to spend
her time laughing and making new friends rather than sitting behind a desk
stuffing her nose in a computer screen all day long. She walks with a sense of
freedom.”

Shawna was far from free. She put up
a good front for sure. “She certainly does live her life according to her own
set of rules.”

“I admire her for that. I also admire
her hair. What I would give to have shine and fullness like that.”

“Some people are just blessed by
mother nature I suppose,” I said, floating on the coattails of her openness and
innocence.

Shawna returned with our drinks.
“Careful with these. They hit you quickly.” She placed them down and strolled
away.

We sipped our fruity martinis in
silence watching the Sox play Baltimore on the overhead flat screen. “I hate
baseball,” I admitted.

Ruby peeked up at me out of the
corner of her eye. “I can’t even look at you now that you said that.”

“Is that so?” I watched her lips
pucker around the thin straw, as she tugged at the martini. She was too
beautiful in this setting, wrapping those glossy lips around the straw, hugging
it, nurturing it, masking her playful grip.

She stopped sucking and wiped her
lips with her fingertip. I could just imagine how soft those lips would feel. I
twitched a bit. So I stood, crossing my arms over my chest now, slightly
intrigued and slightly disturbed at my buckling knees.

Ruby studied me. “You are pretty even
when you’re uptight.”

“I’m not uptight.” I struggled to
smile to prove her wrong.

“Darling, you’re so stressed that the
air can’t move around you.” Her soft eyes landed on mine and bathed me in
warmth.

“I need to use the ladies room.” I
ran away, rushing past the bar and pushing open the bathroom door. I walked
over to the sink and squared off at myself. My hair wilted just below my
shoulders and my brown eyes drooped. Where did those dark circles come from? I
wiped away some smudged mascara and tried on a smile. It looked plastic. I
didn’t even know her, yet, she already drove me to obsess. I would finish my
drink and leave.

I walked back out to the bar, sat
down, sucked down my drink and suffered a brain freeze. My temples pounded and
my head verged on exploding. I grabbed the sides of my head and sank into the
bar, whimpering.

Ruby curled up around my back like a
stole. She whisked my hair between her fingers and draped it over my right
shoulder. Then she leaned in. Her breath blew hotly against my neck. “Just stay
right where you are. I’ll take good care of you.”

Shawna crept up as Ruby’s silky hands
cradled the top of my shoulders. I waved Shawna away and she retreated in a
flash.

Ruby whispered into my ear. “Do me a
favor.”

“Hmm?”

“Close your eyes.”

“Okay.” I half-closed them.

She reached over my shoulder to peek
a glance. “All the way.”

I did as commanded. “Fine.”

She kneaded her strong fingers into
my tense neck. I moaned. “Oh God, that feels so good.”

“Hmm. I bet it does.” Her voice spun
out, ripe and succulent.

I quivered with each of her kneads. I
dropped my head and sank into the pleasure, not caring about curious
bystanders. She squeezed my shoulder blades and I moaned. “I’m sorry. These
moans are just slipping out.”

“Oh, darling, it’s okay. Who cares?
Enjoy the moment.”

I could just imagine how mushy I
would become if hot oil and naked skin were involved. I quivered again, and
moisture pooled between my legs for the first time in ages. “You don’t have to
keep going if your hands are tired.” I sat taller.

“Shhh.”

She caressed my shoulders in long,
sweeping grips and I just couldn’t contain the pleasure. I exhaled like she’d
given me an orgasm right there in the middle of the lounge. Like a kitty she
purred her words, leaning in close and releasing her earthy, fresh scent at my
cheek. “I could do this for a long time.”

How could I argue? I relaxed again
and let her refreshing spirit take me on a journey far away from Jessica and
from lawyer’s bills. I slid right into this sweet spot and let her take me
away. I zoned out of the bar, hooked on this mystical ride and imagined lying
in a hut somewhere on the coast of Indonesia, a warm breeze blowing through my
hair, the curtains waving, while her fingertips flirted with my bare skin. In
this dreamy state, she stood behind me, massaging my back, taking in my curves,
nibbling on her lower lip. Her hair, blonde and spiraled, hung down and tickled
my golden shoulders. Light jazz played in the background, filtered in between
our breaths, circling around us like a sexy snake, taunting us with its
dangerous venom just enough to send us reeling. Her hands traveled down my
spine, up my spine, across my shoulders and down to my breast bone where her
long fingers stopped just centimeters away from the curve of my breast. She
leaned in, cradled her chin in the crook of my neck and paused to draw in a
subtle, but noticeable breath. Her chest pressed up against my back and pulsed.
Soon, my heartbeat caught up in hers and in sync we connected as one. Her
spirit cradled me, protected me, anchored me to this moment, a moment when I
embraced this most raw and vulnerable state where I let go. I allowed myself to
ride on the tailwind of someone so pristine and detached from drama.

Then, her hands left my skin and I
heard her talking, talking to someone. I tried to open my eyes but they were
too tired, too relaxed. So I bowed my head and listened to her coax another
voice to pass her two glasses of water. Then, I heard more voices, the sound of
ice being scooped up, the sound of men yelling about baseball. As if tossed in
a pool of frigid water, I woke and jumped up.

“Where did you go?” Shawna asked,
tripping over giggles.

Ruby caught on to her giggles, too.
And, ultimately, so did I. I let the laughter roll, releasing years of
frustration, enjoying the lightness of my tension-free shoulders.

Somewhere in between giggling and
catching my breath, I’d released myself from my own prison. I could’ve skipped
around the lounge in a happy dance. Instead, I grabbed Ruby by the shoulders,
pulled her in, and laid a generous kiss on her surprised lips. She giggled
under my kiss and then softened in a sweet, lingering reciprocated touch of her
own. I pulled back first and looked away embarrassed. “I’m so sorry. That was
totally inappropriate.”