Unsuitable Men (8 page)

He didn’t even need to know the details. Anyone who made Tracy—tough as nails, Tracy—react like this had to have done
something
that merited a beat-down.

“Some guy,” she said vaguely. “It doesn’t matter.”

“The guy you were sitting with?”

“Brendan,” she said firmly, sounding a little more like her take-charge self. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Then why won’t you tell me?”

“What would it matter? What would you do about it?” she asked, her voice tired.

“I would fuck him up,” Brendan said, looking her in the eye.

Tracy looked at him for a moment and then the next thing he knew she was crying noisily again. Brendan stood there for a moment and shaking his head, pulled her into his arms.

“I’m sorry,” he said, stroking her hair. “You don’t need any more drama. I’m
sor
. . .”

“No, you
idiot
,” Tracy pulled back a little and looked up at him. “I wish you would. If I knew how to find him, I’d
love
it if you’d fuck him up.”

And then they were both laughing, Tracy through her tears, and Brendan with relief. He kissed her on the forehead and held her tight.

“You don’t want to go upstairs and get some rest?” Brendan asked.

Tracy said nothing but shook her head.

“You do realize you’re going to have to go up there sooner or later,” he said.

“Yes. Later,” she mumbled against his chest.

“You want to go someplace else?” he asked. “Or stay here?”

“Someplace else,” she said, right away.

Brendan couldn’t believe he was doing this. He was dog-tired, having been up for pretty close to twenty-four hours straight. But still he hadn’t gotten a wink of sleep since he brought Tracy back to his place. She was sleeping a peaceful sleep, her head on his chest, one arm wrapped about him while he tried not to think about how well she fit in that space, how good it felt having her there. And then he tried not to think about the many nights that Meghan had tried to maneuver her way into sleeping at his place; nor about how readily he’d offered up that privilege up to Tracy.

But she was scared
, he argued with himself.
What was the alternative? A hotel?

Yes, as a matter of fact. What difference would it have made? She just wanted out of her townhouse. She would have settled for the Holiday Inn if it came to that.

But instead, he’d made the call to drive all the way back across the Brooklyn Bridge and bring her here. Because he wanted to.
She’d stepped across the threshold and looked around, her face devoid of make-up, dressed in sloppy sweats and a t-shirt, and scuffed Keds that looked like she used them as house slippers. She took in the décor and turned to smile at him; a little smile, a sweet, very un-Tracy-like smile.

This is nice
, she said.
I like it.

And for some reason that pleased him. It pleased him more than it should have. But he could tell she was tired. Her eyelids were slower to reopen each time she blinked. She’d been up most of the night too, and he didn’t much want to think about some of what she had to have been doing and with whom.

I don’t have a guestroom
, he told her apologetically.
But you can have my bed.

He led her into his bedroom suite where once again she looked around, taking everything in. Without all her usual finery, she was prettier than he’d ever seen her before, and he wondered whether she knew that; that she didn’t need all those extras.

If you need anything
, he said, feeling inexplicably nervous.
I’ll be just out . . .

But Tracy just shook her head, and saying nothing, led him over to his bed as if it were her own. She sat on the edge and extended a hand, pulling him down toward her. When he lay back, she just fit herself in the crook of his arm, rested her head just over his heart and within minutes was fast asleep. He had toed his shoes off and when she was asleep, Brendan did to same to hers, and just watched her for awhile.

The key, he told himself now, was not to think. Just go with it. He closed his eyes and concentrated on the feeling of his chest rising and falling, with the weight of Tracy’s head. Her hair was damp, and smelled like coconut. He exhaled and felt a few strands stir with his breath. She sighed as though mirroring his actions back to him, and moved even closer. Before long, Brendan felt the beginnings of a dreamless sleep begin to tug at the corners of his mind.

He awoke what seemed much later to the smell of bacon and was momentarily confused about where he might be. He didn’t have a single thing in his refrigerator except for Vitamin water, of that he was certain, and in his freezer, there was only vodka. And yet someone was cooking . . . who
the
.
. ? And then it came back to him. The long evening at Lounge Two-Twelve. The panicked phone call. The trip to Park Slope and then back.

Brendan sat up and rubbed his eyes. He was wide awake now, well-rested and clear-headed. He brought Tracy here but it was a mistake, made in a moment of weakness. She was feeling unsafe and vulnerable and he felt protective, but it was time to erect those boundaries once again.

He washed his face, brushed his teeth and headed up to his kitchen, taking the stairs slowly, hoping she didn’t get all emotional on him when he told her he was driving her home. But when he got to the top of the stairs the sight that greeted him stopped him dead in his tracks.

Tracy had changed while he was asleep and was now wearing one of his dress shirts, which looked immense on her small frame, and she had belted the waist with what looked his one of his ties. Her feet were bare and she had let her hair out so that it was a semi-kinky, wavy mass about her face, not the severely straightened bob he was used to seeing. She didn’t even notice him at first because she was so busy moving about the kitchen, taking strips of bacon out of the oven on a cookie sheet he hadn’t even
known he owned. She bit into one slice and licked her fingers, closing her eyes in pleasure at the taste. Brendan had never seen anything so sexy in his life.

Shit.

Then she turned and noticed him for the first time and smiled at him, the same sweet smile as earlier. The same un-Tracy-like smile. Except now he was beginning to believe that it was very much a Tracy-smile, just one that she reserved for very few occasions, or very few people. And he wondered whether he would be one of the lucky few who were privy to it from now on.

“Hey,” she said. “I didn’t want to wake you so I just borrowed a couple of your things and went to get us something to eat. You do know that sports drinks are not officially a food group, right?”

Then she was taking a baguette out of a
Dean &
DeLuca grocery bag, along with eggs, juice and a wedge of soft cheese. She moved around as though she’d familiarized herself with where everything was, and Brendan swallowed, trying to remember why it had seemed so essential that she leave.

Tracy looked up at him again as he made his way closer, sitting at the breakfast bar, watching as she worked, beating eggs, slicing cheese and bread.

“I got some olive oil spatter on this shirt,” she said apologetically. “And honestly, I don’t think it’s going to come out.” She winced as though she expected him to be upset.

“That’s okay,” he said shaking his head.

“It’s one of your Armani
Collezioni
shirts,” she said. “Sorry. But I couldn’t find anything in your stuff that wasn’t a designer label. Don’t you ever just go to Target like normal people?”

“When was the last time
you
went to Target, Tracy?” Brendan teased.

“I
beg
your pardon. Riley and I go to Target at least three times a month,” she laughed.

“Sure you do.”

“You should come with me sometime. Best. Date. Ever.”

Brendan smiled.

She was so busy with the cooking she didn’t seem to notice that she said the word ‘date’ in connection with something they might do together. It was almost impossible to connect this woman with the calm, cool and collected ice queen image she usually projected. For whatever reason, for the moment she seemed to have let her guard down around him. Maybe this was who she was all along. The person only Riley saw.

For years he’d wondered how two women, so different could be so close. Riley was the personification of warmth; one of those rare, open-hearted people who loved you right away and had to be given a damn good reason not to. Tracy had always seemed like the just the opposite.

She grabbed one of the barstools and placed it in front of the cabinets where he kept his dishes, visible through the glass doors. Brendan couldn’t recall having ever taken a dish out of that cabinet so it took him a moment to realize that Tracy intended to use the stool as a ladder.

“I can get for that you,” he said getting up quickly.

The last thing he needed was to have her fall and break her neck on top of everything else that had happened to her in the last twenty-four hours. By the time he got to her, Tracy was already standing on the stool and Brendan found himself face to face with
her
pelvis. He hated himself for the twitch he felt in his groin
;
after all she’d been through a trauma the night before. But a hard dick had no conscience.

“I got it,” she said opening the cabinet and grabbing two dishes. She handed them down to him and he tried not to look too hard at the apex of her thighs as he took them.

“Placemats?” she asked.

Brendan looked at her blankly.

“Placemats, Brendan? You know? The things that go under dishes when you’re eating?”

“Oh.” He shook his head, coming back down to earth. “I don’t think I have those.”

Tracy rolled her eyes. “We are
definitely
going to Target.”

They ate sitting at the breakfast bar, talking about Shawn and Riley’s soon-to-be-born baby and making bets on who would be the pushover parent and who would be the hard-ass. And as they laughed and talked, Tracy got up and poured his juice, made him more eggs and then cleared up when they were done. Then she hung out in the kitchen with him while he rinsed the dishes and put them in the dishwasher, her legs stretched out and resting on his stool.

He kept reminding himself that he needed to get her out of his apartment, and kept giving himself deadlines to mention taking her back to Brooklyn. First it was,
in a half an hour
; then when they returned to his bedroom and Tracy turned on the television, it was
after the stupid chick flick she seems to be so into
. And then she drifted off to sleep, curled around one of his oversized pillows and he changed the channel to a baseball game. Brendan didn’t know when he fell asleep himself, he only knew that when he woke up, it was dark and Tracy was still sleeping, but this time she was curled around him and he was too tired to get up, or to think of waking her, or to even consider driving her all the way back to Brooklyn. And by then, he finally admitted to himself that he didn’t want to.

“I don’t like those,” Brendan said swatting away the red linen placemats Tracy held up for him.

“This is the fifth choice you’ve vetoed,” she said. “I’m starting to think you don’t want placemats.”

Brendan laughed. “You think?”

Tracy sighed. “Okay. Fine. We don’t have to stay. Let’s go.”

She had dragged him to the Target in Harlem as a joke, and for some reason Brendan didn’t seem to be getting the punch line. But she had been so taken over by the domesticity of the place, and the odd comfort of shopping for household items with Brendan that for a moment, Tracy forgot that she should probably be going home, and that by now he probably wanted nothing more than to get her out of his hair.

But going back to her empty townhome seemed like such a bleak prospect compared to yesterday and today, just hanging out with Brendan in his apartment, watching movies, sleeping and walking to the gourmet market to grab food for each meal. For some reason, Brendan was averse to stocking his refrigerator, so they’d gone to the market a total of four times, each time buying only enough for the next meal.

They didn’t talk about why she was there, or when she would go home, but now it was clear that her time was up. It was Sunday afternoon; the weekend was drawing to a close and real life would soon begin again.

“I appreciate the thought,” Brendan said following her toward the exits. “But I don’t cook, Tracy. And if I’m in that kitchen at all, it’s not to sit and eat a meal using a place . . .”

“Fine,” she said, cutting him off. “You don’t have to explain. You don’t want placemats. I get it.”

She walked briskly, now wanting more than anything to get out of the store herself, feeling silly all of a sudden for coercing him there, acting out some asinine domestic scene that he had no desire to participate in.

“Tracy,” he said. “
Tracy
. . .”

“What?” she stopped and turned to look at him. “We’re leaving, just like you wanted. So what
is
it?”

Brendan looked at her for a moment. “Are you sure you’re okay to go home?” he asked.

Tracy shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. I have to.”

“But if you’re really not ready . . .”

“If I’m really not ready, then what?” she asked softly.

Tracy saw that there was real concern in his eyes. He was such a good guy. A good guy who had a girlfriend he probably couldn’t wait to get back to.

“I’m okay,” she said, forcing herself to sound more confident than she felt. “And he didn’t hurt me, Brendan. At least not physically. He didn’t . . .” she trailed off into silence.

He reached up and touched her hair briefly, surprising her.

“You
ever going
to tell me what happened?”

She shrugged again but said nothing. She couldn’t imagine telling Brendan what Kelvin said. Because what Kelvin said was true. And she didn’t want Brendan to know about that side of her. Right now, he was treating her like porcelain, like she was something precious that might break if anyone dared utter even a harsh word in her direction. She couldn’t remember the last time a man had treated her that way, or if another man ever had.

He extended a hand which she took, without hesitation.

The brownstone was as she had left it. All was in order downstairs, but upstairs the bed still bore evidence of Friday night’s little encounter. The sheets were in disarray, and as soon as Tracy entered the room with Brendan, she hurried to pull them from the mattress, balling them up and tossing them aside. Once stripped, she remade the bed with clean, fresh sheets and lit a scented candle. Brendan watched her from the doorway, stepping aside when she dashed downstairs, returning with a large dark trash bag into which she deposited the sheets she’d stripped from the bed.

“There,” she
said,
her voice falsely bright. “Done.”

She knotted the garbage bag and tossed it down the staircase.

“So,” Brendan said. “You straight? How’re you for dinner? You need to go out and grab something for later,
or .
. ?”

“I’m fine,” Tracy said shaking her head. “I’ll walk you out. I need to drop this bag at the curb for trash pick-up tomorrow anyway.”

“You have anything else that needs to go out?”

“Yeah. Kitchen trash,” Tracy said. “Could you grab that for me?”

“Sure.”

When Brendan turned to head downstairs, she kneeled by the bed and looked around until she found what she was looking for. Until Brendan mentioned other stuff that might need to go out, she’d forgotten the used condoms. She vaguely remembered Kelvin dropping them unceremoniously next to the bed when they were done. She stuffed them into her bathroom trash and grabbed that bag as well, knotting it tightly and then joining Brendan downstairs by the front door.

They walked together to the curb and dumped the trash bags near the growing pile of refuse that Tracy’s neighbors had already put out for Monday morning. Then it was undeniably time for Brendan to go. For a moment, they stood there awkwardly, neither of them knowing what to say or do. Tracy
felt as though they’d turned a corner, crossed into new territory. However you wanted to say it, it was obvious that whatever they were now was something very different from what they had been just 48 hours earlier.

“You took really good care of me,” she said. “Thank you.”

“You know it’s no problem, Tracy.” He didn’t look her in the eye, and seemed almost embarrassed to have her mention it.

“I want to thank you properly,” she said. “Maybe we can have dinner or something this week? If you want. If you have time.”

“Yeah,” he nodded. “Sure. Call me. If this week isn’t too slammed, let’s do that.”

Tracy watched as Brendan got in his car and started the engine, and was still standing there when he drove away. Then, remembering that she was once again all alone, she dashed up the steps and back into the townhouse, locking the door and setting the alarm.

Tracy sighed, glancing down at her cell phone, wondering why it hadn’t rung. It was four hours since she’d called Brendan and left him the message inviting him to dinner. Four hours and he hadn’t so much as texted his acknowledgment, let alone an acceptance. And here she was, sitting at lunch with a client, looking at her phone every five minutes instead of politely listening to how great the man’s trip to the South of France had been.

The truth was Tracy didn’t much like her clients. They were generally over-privileged people who had so much money that now their money made more money, eliminating the need for them to do any actual work. They were soft and indolent, and with a sense of entitlement that was often sickening to witness. They were rude and patronizing much of the time, even to her; because even though she helped them keep and grow their wealth that was all she was to them: help.

The current asshole she was lunching with was Jason Miller, a thirty-five year old dotcom millionaire who had sold his company and was now living on the interest of the proceeds. He occasionally played with chunks of his fortune, almost like a gambler, curious about whether he could double, triple or quadruple his money in ever shorter periods of time. Having only been wealthy for about eight years or so hadn’t stopped him from behaving like he was one of the Rockefellers or
Rothschilds
. His net worth was rumored to be around $80 million, but his investment with Tracy’s funds totaled only about five hundred grand.

Glancing at her phone, she wondered whether it was worth it to piss him off by ducking out for a moment so she could try Brendan again. Maybe he hadn’t gotten her message. She’d done that in the past, let a message linger without listening to it. Maybe he didn’t even know she’d invited him to dinner. That seemed far more likely than the possibility that he was just failing to call her back, or ignoring her.

“Ms. Emerson,” Jason Miller said with a smile. “I’m getting the impression I don’t have your full attention.”

And God forbid.

Tracy smiled back at him. “Of course you do,” she said, sliding her phone into her purse and setting it aside.

Unlike most of her colleagues, she walked a very fine line with her clients. Not only were there very few Black hedge fund managers to begin with, there were very few women. And as someone who was both those things, she was constantly on guard, making sure she not only met but exceeded every expectation or goal set by her clients and employer. It was a tricky thing to accomplish with investing, because no one could predict the markets, so even her missteps had to be spun to look like something else entirely.

Jason Miller, she suspected, just liked to dabble. He liked feeling like he was a mover and shaker and had perhaps grown bored now that he wasn’t actively managing or building a business. These lunches, where he could bring people like her to heel, and remind them that they worked for him, were probably just one way he maintained his sense of self-importance. Tracy was prepared to indulge him, however painful it might be, because behind his five hundred thousand dollar investment could be much, much more.

After lunch, there were two other meetings and then a conference call with a group of European investors, so it was well after eight that evening before Tracy was able to leave the office. She checked her phone and there were five missed calls. Three were from Riley and two from her mother. She called Riley back as she was riding in the car service’s Lincoln, on her way home, hoping that she would be on the line long enough to make a call to her mother in Georgia impractical because of the lateness of the hour. Thankfully, her mother was still old-fashioned enough to believe that it was ill-mannered to call past nine p.m. unless it was an emergency.

“You’re not in labor, are you?” she asked Riley when she picked up.

“No, unfortunately not,” Riley said groaning. “And I’m losing my mind from boredom over here. I don’t know what’s going on at work, and Shawn watched me all weekend like a hawk. Come to think of it, where the hell have
you
been? You never called me back. I wanted to hear how the opening of the club was on Friday.”

Oh. That’s right. She hadn’t told Riley about the weekend.
But for some reason she didn’t want to subject it to examination just yet.

“The opening was fine. They did a great job with the decorating of the space.  And of course, your husband left as soon as he could.”

“Yeah, he got back early. That’s why I wanted to talk to you. I wondered how it was with Brendan. Was Meghan there?”

“She was. And I found other company.”

“Oh.”

Tracy let that hang there for a moment. Even if she didn’t feel ready to share everything, she wasn’t planning to lie to her best friend either. She just hoped like hell, Riley didn’t ask any pointed questions.

“Well I’m still at the condo if you wanted to stop by this week,” Riley said after a few more moments of silence. “Shawn is in Philly with Brendan for a couple of days, so we can have some girl time.”

Brendan was in Philly?
He hadn’t mentioned that he was going away. But of course, why should he? If he did mention it to anyone, it would be to Meghan. Still, it felt unexpectedly hurtful that they’d spent all that time together and she’d mentioned dinner and he didn’t think to tell her he would be out of town. Tracy went through the rest of the conversation with Riley on auto-pilot and when they were
done she called Brendan’s number, opted to go directly to voicemail and left him a very nasty message about his failure to communicate. Doing that made her feel tons better and once home, she was able to eat her dinner with gusto and after a shower, fall directly into a deep and dreamless sleep.

The cacophony of a dog barking woke her up around two in the morning and Tracy sat upright in bed, wondering who was out in the street with their dog at this ungodly hour. It took her a moment to recall that the barking was the ringtone she’d set for Brendan’s number.
Now
he wanted to call her back?
At two thirty-six a.m.?

She grabbed the phone from the charger and hit the answer button.

“What is it?”
she hissed.

“What
is
it?” he repeated, his voice calm. “You call and leave me that shitty message and then you want to know why I’m calling you back?”

“I don’t think it was shitty,” Tracy said, trying to clear her mind and bring it to full wakefulness. “It was direct. I was letting you know how I felt about . . .”

“About what Tracy? The fact that I didn’t share my travel itinerary with you?”

She said nothing. Well, if he wanted to look at it
that
way.

“You are so
spoiled
,” he said. “I told you I had stuff this week and that I might be
slammed,
didn’t I?”

Tracy said nothing.
Oh, yes.

“Didn’t
I?”
he insisted.

“Yes,” she said meekly.

“Then
what
is your fucking problem?”