Depths (6 page)

Would he?

Ugh. Maybe all the dildo chanting and male stripping is just pushing my hormones into overdrive.

“I didn’t expect to be here, either.” I can hear him moving around, like maybe he’s just waking up, and the first thing that crosses my mind is that he’s there with a girl. He’s newly single, and, though I’ve never seen him, he can’t possibly be bad looking. Who could have a laugh that sexy and not be hot? Shitshitshitshit! I interrupted Cohen’s rebound sex! “So, do you need me to leave a note for my dad?”

“Um, the message pretty much sums it up, but if you want I can repeat it. Unless you’re, um, with someone.” I wait, hoping he’ll ask me to repeat the message so we can stay on the phone for a few more minutes.

Wow, my life really had sunk to new lows, and it gets even worse when he tells me ‘no’ and my heart flops pitifully in my chest

“I’m alone, but it’s okay. You know Dad’s pretty OCD about how his work stuff is organized. He’d rather have the message than a note.” I wilt in the chair and wait for him to get off the phone. “So, that sucks that you’re working this late on a Friday night. You should have just let it go til Monday.”

“Are you kidding me?” I settle into Jacinda’s rolly office chair. “Mrs. Guarez has been a pain in the ass for weeks, stressing your poor father out like crazy. Now she’s going to be taken care of, and then he’ll be free of her and her constant bitching.”

I sink my teeth into my bottom lip. Damn! Mrs. Guarez
is
a pain in the ass, but she’s also a customer at his family’s business, and I definitely stepped over the professional line even more than Cohen and I usually do.

“Ah, Mrs. Guarez. Trust me, she’ll be back,” Cohen says, that great, gravelly voice a low rumble in my ears. “The pain in the ass ones never go away. But thanks for going the extra mile for my dad, Maren. That was really sweet of you.”

“No problem.” I pause, totally debating if I should fish for some personal Cohen life details. “Are you working late?” Fish it is.

His chuckle becomes a full-on laugh. “Tonight was one of those nights I
wish
I’d pulled an extra shift at work. Have you ever had a date so bad, it makes you contemplate a lobotomy?”

I cradle the phone close to my ear “Brain annihilation, huh? Sorry, but you have to spill now. I’m intrigued. And definitely wondering if I can one-up your story.”

“I doubt it.” I imagine what his smile looks like, because I can hear it netted over his words. “Unless you have a story where you end up covered in your date’s vomit?”

“No!” I cry, pressing my fingers to my lips so I don’t laugh. “Really? Was it food poisoning? Oh, poor girl. She must have been so embarrassed.”

“Well, maybe she ate something bad. But the half bottle of Tequila she sucked down across a couple double margaritas probably didn’t help.” He pauses like he’s wondering whether or not he should say the next words. “And the, uh, position she was in didn’t help.”

I feel a blush run over my cheeks and wonder if this conversation is about to go the way of the raucous party I can hear through the closed office door. “So, um, she was…”

“She was eager to take the date to the next level in my car. Which is weird, since she didn’t make any actual attempt to talk to me while we were together and seemed to think my name was Calvin.”

I giggle. “Uh oh. So her last ditch effort to salvage the date wound up a little less romantic than she expected?”

“Unless a puddle of vomit on my lap is what she was going for. I’ve been told I’m that kind of boring. Is that what the kids are into nowadays?” I love that he had this mad, crazy night, but is still laughing about it.

“Ugh. I don’t think I can beat that story. My worst was going on a date with a guy who left me at a party one of his friends’ friends threw. I wasn’t even that upset about him ditching me, because, frankly? He was a complete dickhole, pardon my French. But I’d driven us to the party, so when he wanted to leave and didn’t feel like coming to get me, he stole my keys and took my car home.” I grimace at the memory.

Cohen is very quiet on the other end. “He just left you there?”

He sounds pissed. Furious, even. I’ve never really heard Cohen’s voice like that, and we’ve been in some pretty infuriating situations. Missed orders with customers screaming in his face, employees not showing up leaving departments understaffed at Christmas, deliveries getting sent across towns…all kind of things that would test a saint’s patience, and I’ve never heard him use the tone he’s using now.

“Yep. And his friends were all talking about Danish cinema and how the climate changes are actually part of this big multi-layered government conspiracy and tortes are going to be the new ‘it’ food after people rebel against cupcakes. It was freaking ridiculous.” I wait for him to laugh, but the other end of the line is weirdly silent, so I rush to finish, “Thankfully my sister was right around the corner, and she offered to pick me up.”

“So he just left you there?” Cohen clarifies, his voice steely.

I feel embarrassed.

I feel like such a fool all over again. Ricky made me feel like a jerk the entire time I dated him, and I wanted the story of that awful night to be…funny or something. But, instead, Cohen makes me feel like an idiot, and I wish I could get off the phone.

“Yep. It wasn’t even the first time, either. Look, I’m at this thing for a coworker of mine.” I try to make my voice cool and breezy. Not the voice of a girl who gets left places by guys whose interest she can’t hold.

“Yeah, of course. I’ll let you go. Just, Maren?”

I can hear him hesitate, and I don’t want that. I don’t want him to stop saying what he needs to say.

“Yeah?” The artificial brightness in my voice makes me squint.

“I don’t know about the guy you were with that night, but I hope he was just some random asshole and not someone you dated long-term. I might be sticking my nose in where it doesn’t belong and all, but no guy should ever leave a girl alone anywhere. Ever. Even if she vomits on his lap. He should still get her home and make sure she’s safe. That’s, you know…that’s just my opinion.”

There are a few beats of silence while I collect my thoughts, and, finally, allow a smile to break across my face.

“You know what, Cohen? You’re a stand-up guy. And you deserve way better than a lapful of vomit.”

His laugh is the best sound I’ve heard in a long time. Deep and throaty, and disturbingly sexy. But so genuine and kind. “Thanks, Maren. Now, go enjoy your night off. I won’t hog your time anymore.”

“Goodnight, Cohen.”

“Goodnight, Maren.”

I click off and hold the phone hard in my hand for a few minutes.

Cohen. I wonder what he’s like when he’s not just a voice on the phone. I wonder what he’s like in person.

The screeches from the other room interrupt my Cohen Rodriguez daydreams and send me creeping into the living room. There are several bras piled on the table Officer Miller’s dry-humping, his navy blue man-thong practically falling off under the weight of so many dollar bills.

“Where have you been?” Jacinda shouts over the music.

“Just talking to a guy I work—”

“Dildo!” the entire room screams, stopping me in my tracks for a few seconds.

“It’s times like these that make a lap full of vomit seem almost appealing,” I mutter before heading back out into the throng.

I so need a Jell-O shot or five to get through this night.

***

Two hours later, I’m finally home. My sister texted me twice, just to check in, but I don’t text back. I haven’t broken the news to her about dropping out of my classes again. She’ll blame Dad like she always does. And I get it. It’s his fault, partially. And mine, of course. But it’s too much to think about right now in the dingy dimness of our apartment, especially since I never did those Jell-O shots after all.

The daughter of an alcoholic with a string of intoxication-related failures and arrests does
not
tempt fate by drinking even a little and driving.

Dad is snoring on the recliner, his arm hanging over the side, his fingers curled around the glass neck of his Evan Williams bottle like a child clinging to his cherished lovey. I pull it out of his hand and screw the cap on, making sure to tilt it away from me so I don’t catch a whiff. It’s not that I don’t drink, but I loathe the smell of whiskey. Just one whiff will make my stomach roll and churn. Smelling the thing that turns the person you love and respect into a blubbering mess will do that to you.

I throw a blanket over him, one of the dozens my mom knitted before she left. He won’t get rid of any of them, even though the weather in our area doesn’t really call for blankets most of the year. Also, they make him even more pathetically depressed.  

But I guess he likes being a sad sack.

I tuck the fringed end under his chin, the chin that used to be so strong and handsome. It’s lost in the extra weight all the drinking added to his body. His skin is pale with smatterings of broken blood vessels and a greasy sheen that always makes him look sweaty and unwashed. He looks old. Pitiful. But still like the dad who used to lie on the floor with me, reading from piles of books until I fell asleep pillowed on his arm.

I blink hard. I want
that
dad back. I want him so badly, I’ve let dreams slip away left and right on the off chance that maybe he’s there, deep down. Maybe he just needs one more night to drink, one more day to mope before he’ll stand up and say, “Alright, Pumpkin Pie, let’s get the yard cleaned up. Get the lead out.” And I’ll be here to help him when he does.

Except that fantasy is pretty hard to imagine now that the yard he loved was sold long ago because he couldn’t handle the mortgage on his own after the divorce. And all his yard work was done with Mom’s complicated diagrams tucked in his back pocket back then anyway. She’d come lean off the deck and say, “Thomas, it looks amazing. I wish I had your green thumb, babe.”

And he’d say, “But you got the sugar palm. You married the green thumb, smart girl.”

He’d wink and she’d blush and go make some delicious baked thing that would knock us all out. It’s weird, that their inside joke would become her business, Sugar Palm Baked Goods, and her business would lead to the end of their marriage.

I tiptoe to the dimly lit galley kitchen, where nothing sweet has ever been cooked, at least as long as Dad and I have lived here. I didn’t inherit my mother’s sugar palm or my father’s green thumb. Did I inherit anything useful or good?

Some days I feel like I’m just the outline of a person, with no real shape or substance.

My sister, Rowan, would tell me to let go of the past. Quit being a martyr. Let Dad face his responsibilities. But she’s tough and strong, like our mother. To the point where they both tend to trample other people if it serves their needs.

I’m not like that. Dad and I are softer. Givers. We get bumped and smashed by life, and, while Mom and Rowan could build a ship during a storm and then navigate a steady course home, Dad and I would cling to driftwood for dear life, constantly in danger of drowning.

I grab a bottle of water and some Ritz crackers and head to my room, closing the door tight and dropping my bag on the bed.

My party favors spill out.

Including a tiny silver vibrator and small tube of lube in a Ziploc baggie with Jacinda’s card.

I sit on the far end of my bed, munching on crackers and eyeing the sex toys. I’ve never used one, but I’ve usually had a boyfriend.

Tonight, I don’t have anyone.

I push my crackers away and pick up my phone, flipping to Jason’s contact. My thumb hovers over the ‘call’ button, but I never press it. I go into my photos and run through them until I find the hottest picture of Jason, which is impressively incredible. He’s at the beach, his shirt rolled and tossed over one shoulder, his smile so cocky it’s a hair away from arrogant jackass. Each glistening, gorgeous muscle shows in high definition as the sun glints off his wet skin.

Every single time I’ve ever looked at this picture, I’ve gotten instantly horny, even when I’m enraged at my own traitorous body for that. I focus on the picture and pick up the vibrator, but I don’t have any urge at this point to use it, and the weight of that depressing feeling makes me fall back in the bed with a thump.

When did life get so boring and sucky and…lifeless?

I grip the phone tighter in my hand, as an idea suddenly, crazily, presses against my brain and won’t shut the hell up.

I go into my messages and push the one I’ve saved a few times already, secretly.

“Hey, Maren. I hate to bug you, but you know that sheet you sent me? Well, I’m looking at it…”

Cohen’s voice is going on and on about columns lining up and dividends and taxable expenses, but I ignore the words. I just listen to that perfect, sexy, velvet voice.

And press my thighs together. This is faster and wetter than it ever was with Jason’s picture. I lie back on my bed and slide my hand down under the waistband of my sensible cotton underwear.

Damn.

I’m more turned on by the sound of Cohen’s voice talking about one of the most boring topics on earth than I ever was by Jason in person, even at his sexiest.