The Apartment: The Complete Affair (6 page)

Lying down in the oversized bed, Ethan prayed for sleep to find him again. That small bit he had earlier in the apartment with his mystery woman had been the most peaceful sleep he’d had in a long time, not just in the past week. As he lay there in the dark, he let his mind travel again to soft lips and delicious kisses, to delicate fingers stroking his hair. He wanted to hold her again. He wanted to bottle her up and keep her for nights just like that one.

And with that thought, he finally fell asleep.

* * *

Frantic kisses… bodies entwined in a heap on the floor… soft moans turning into pleasured cries… beautiful hazel eyes… fading… fading… fading…

Searching… looking everywhere… looking for someone… looking for anything…

Empty…

Empty room… empty drawers… empty bank account… empty…

Nothing but a hastily scribbled note:

“Dear Ethan…”

* * *

“NO!” Ethan screamed, sitting straight up in the foreign bed. He was pouring sweat and his heart was pounding in his ears.

Glancing at the clock, he saw that it was just after 3 a.m. It was the longest stretch of sleep he’d had yet.

He lay back down into the soaked sheets and cringed. When he tried to close his eyes, the images came back again. Rolling over to his side, he tried to distract himself and calm down.

After another hour passed with no luck, he punched the mattress in frustration.

Fuck you, Rachel. You fucking liar
.

The next morning found Lily sitting at the small desk in her upstairs bedroom. It was still dark outside, just after 6 a.m., and she was wrapped in an old, ratty blue robe with a towel around her head. Two large, orange-striped tabby cats twined their way around her ankles, but she hardly noticed them; she was too busy staring off into space.

Her jacket.

She still couldn’t believe that in her haste to leave that place, she’d left her jacket behind. Just thinking about it made a fresh wave of panic roll over her.

What the hell have I done? We didn’t even use anything! There is no excuse for this. Thank God I get the shot, but who knows what the hell he has?

She put her head in her hands, closing her eyes in frustration. Behind her lids, she saw flashes of vibrant jade eyes and luscious pink lips.

“Dammit!” Lily huffed, slamming her hands down on the desk.

All night she had been haunted with his image. She had sat there between her father and her fiancé, pretending to watch the game, all the while reliving every single touch in her mind. Every kiss. Every thrust.

And goddamn, could that boy move.

Regardless of how sick Lily was with herself over her thoughtless actions, she couldn’t convince herself it hadn’t been worth it. Well, perhaps
worth it
was a bit of a stretch. She wasn’t quite sure the guilt she was feeling was worth it, and if she ended up with some rare strain of herpe-gono-syphil-AIDS, that probably wouldn’t be worth it, either.

Amazing
. That would probably be more fitting.
Mind-blowing
. That was certainly the truth. Lily had never felt any amount of pleasure remotely close to that before, and it had happened so fast that her head was still spinning.

She thought back to the uncomfortable moment when Scott had tried to kiss her goodnight before leaving to hang out with his friends from work. He had given her a friendly hug and leaned down for a quick peck on the lips, and Lily needed to stop herself from jerking her head back out of guilt. She knew it was wrong to let him kiss her where another man’s lips had recently been, and she couldn’t even bring herself to look him in the eye when he pulled away. But even physically, the kiss itself had just felt
wrong
. His lips were the wrong texture, the wrong shade of pink. They didn’t make her knees feel weak as soon as they touched her own. They were cold and dry.

She had never noticed anything off about his kisses before; they had always seemed perfectly adequate. They were never unpleasant, but they had never kept her up at night obsessing about them, either. Lily had been with others before, a couple guys she dated in college while she still lived in Minneapolis, and they had all been fairly similar: adequate, but nothing to write home about. She just assumed that reality was nothing like the steamy encounters she hungrily devoured in books written by people like Maggie Foster.

It wasn’t as if she was frigid. She had plenty of good memories with her little “friend” that was tucked away in her nightstand. And when Scott managed to really put some effort in, which didn’t happen often because it required him lasting longer than about three minutes, Lily sometimes felt a few warm tingles. She had just never felt comfortable asking him for more, and he had never thought to ask. The few times he had tried to go down on her had been such awkward, embarrassing fiascoes that she just let him think she didn’t have any interest in that. She’d heard people joke that there was no such thing as bad head, but Lily would beg to differ.

She wondered briefly if her beautiful stranger would have more skill in that department. She remembered how strong his tongue had been as it swirled inside her mouth, instantly recalling the taste of him. She shook her head to clear her mind, knowing that it was useless to fantasize about something she would never get to experience. It also made her feel even more guilty when she realized how thoroughly she was comparing Scott to a man whose name she didn’t even know.

She thought about her jacket again, deciding that she would simply have to get it back. She needed to get it back in her hands so that she could stop focusing on it. She debated simply leaving it there and forgetting about it, but she really couldn’t afford another one right now and Scott would never understand what was so hard about just going back to get it. He didn’t know that retrieving her jacket meant possibly running into her stranger again.

Remembering that she only had a half-day of work that day, she figured that she could just pick it up on her way to the gym and have it out of her mind that much sooner. If she was lucky, perhaps Mrs. Knight could even go up and get it for her.

A loud yowling interrupted her thoughts. She looked down to see one of the large cats staring up at her expectantly, while the other one pawed at her foot. She sighed loudly and smiled at the one who was staring at her. “I suppose you’re hungry, huh, Wembley?” When she was treated to another loud whine in return, she decided it was time to put her worries aside and finish getting ready for work.

“Okay, just a minute, babies. Mama needs to get dressed.” She stood up and waded through the furry bodies, making her way to the small closet. She took the towel off her head and draped it over the doorknob, shaking out her damp hair. Throwing on a pair of scrubs quickly, she brushed out her hair and left it to air dry as she opened the door to the hall. “Come on, tubbies,” Lily called behind her to the portly felines who were already following her eagerly. “If you ask me, I think you two have had enough to eat.”

As much as Lily liked to tease them, she wouldn’t have them any other way. She loved their jiggly fat tummies; they reminded her of how much they’d changed from when she first got them.

Wembley and Boober were brothers from the same litter and had been dumped at the animal shelter where Lily had worked while attending school at the University of Minnesota. There had been six kittens in total, all malnourished, and Wembley and Boober were the frailest of the group, which meant that nobody wanted them. Nobody but Lily. She couldn’t stand leaving them there every night when she went home, so one day they came home with her.

Her roommates were a bit cross with her at first, but after watching her try to nurse them back to health, they couldn’t resist the adorable kittens. Before long, her roommates were all doing their part to sneak them some extra scraps, hoping to fatten them up—and fatten up they did.

Lily walked into the kitchen and filled their food dishes, jumping out of the way before they knocked her over. She took a package of ground beef out of the freezer and put it in the refrigerator to thaw, planning to make a simple meatloaf when she got home later that night. Pouring herself a bowl of cereal, she sat down at the small table and began to eat, trying her hardest to keep the memories from coming back.

After a few minutes, some loud thumping came from upstairs, quickly followed by the awkward thump and drag of George limping down the stairs with his cane. He had recovered enough to return to work, but some cold mornings still left him feeling a little stiff. Distracted by the loud thumping, Wembley and Boober turned away from their now-empty bowls and tore off back up the steps, looking forward to a long day of sleeping on Lily’s warm bed.

“Goddammit, Boober!” George yelled as the hefty tabby ran over his foot, causing him to stumble down the last two steps. “Swear to Christ I’m gonna string them up by their tails one day,” he grumbled to himself as he joined Lily in the kitchen.

“No you won’t,” Lily muttered, her mouth full of cereal. “Or else I’ll string
you
up,” she finished after she swallowed her bite. “Besides, you love those cats. Admit it.”

George sat down next to her and looked her in the eye with his most deadpan expression before smiling at her, causing his 70s porn stache to curl up at the corners. “Yeah, they’re alright,” he replied, wondering if Lily knew just how much they cuddled on his lap whenever she was gone. “So, half-day today?”

“Uh… no, actually,” she lied quickly. “They changed a few things around on the schedule. I might end up being there a full day, and then the gym. I’ll have to see how it goes.” Changing the subject quickly, she added, “I’m gonna make meatloaf when I get home.”

Her father looked at her, and Lily felt as if he could see the lie on her face, but he simply shrugged. “Okay, whatever. I’m at work until after five tonight anyway.”

Sighing with relief, Lily stood up and kissed him on the head. “I should get going. See you later, Dad.” She threw on her coat and grabbed her repacked gym bag, closing the door behind her as she left. On the drive to work she wondered why she had lied so considerably about her schedule. By the time she had pulled into the parking lot, she had convinced herself that it was simply to allow her more time to get her jacket back—just in case Mrs. Knight wanted to talk again, she wouldn’t feel so rushed.

It was the typical morning in the office: Pap smear, Pap smear, pregnancy test, ultrasound, Pap smear. Lily assisted where she was needed and answered calls from concerned patients. At one point, she and Becky shared a laugh over how obvious the flirting had become between Jason and Natalie, who seemed blind to the fact that people had noticed their little games of grab-ass.

Before long it was noon, and Lily’s shift was over. “Let’s get this over with,” she said to herself as she headed to her car. When she pulled up to her usual parking spot outside the gym, she was disappointed to see a CLOSED sign on the door of the dance studio. She got out and took a closer look, groaning when she saw that Mrs. Knight would not be opening up until 4 p.m. today.

That’s just great. I didn’t want to wait around all day for this. I want it done now
.

She huffed off to the gym, not knowing what else to do, and changed quickly into a pair of gray sweats and a brown t-shirt that had the words
Band Meeting: Present
across the front in white letters. This time she signed in for an elliptical machine, taking her trusty iPod with her and queuing up her favorite workout playlist. Soon she was running to the sound of Scissor Sisters and almost feeling like normal.

She closed her eyes to enjoy the beat and was instantly bombarded with flashbacks from yesterday evening. Only now they had a soundtrack. She could feel his hands grabbing her, his lips kissing her flesh, and his hips bucking to the rhythm of the music.

She opened her eyes again quickly, a warm flush spreading over her face. Her favorite thing was to get lost in a good beat, and she wondered quickly what it might be like to actually have sex with someone to music, since Scott always wanted lights out and said music was too distracting. Once the thought entered her mind she couldn’t shake the fantasies of trying it, with
him
.

Dammit, this is getting me nowhere!

She turned off the machine, and for the second time in two days, gave up out of frustration. After leaving the locker room again with her bag, she noticed a rear exit down the hall that was eerily similar to the one at the dance studio. Wondering if it led to the same alley, Lily looked around quickly to make sure no one was watching and slipped out the back.

There it was. The door to the apartment building.

Deciding that she couldn’t wait any longer and intending to simply check the door and pray it was still unlocked, Lily quietly went up the stairs. As she got closer to the top, she could hear loud rock music blaring from the other side of the wall.

Shit!
She had hoped no one would be there yet.

Lily could tell from the thin streak of light on the ground that the door was cracked open, just like yesterday. Over the music she could hear odd noises that sounded almost like a staple gun punching through the floor. She knew that she should get the hell out of there, but something was drawing her closer. She wanted to peek at him one last time. She wanted to know what he was doing in there to make that noise.

She wanted to see him without being seen.

The song was almost over. It was now or never. She slowly inched forward, holding her breath as she watched her hand getting closer to the door. Just as her fingers came close enough to push it just a little further open, the song ended and she could hear the sound of footsteps. It startled her so much that she reached forward too fast and her hand bumped the door. A loud creaking sound echoed through the hall.

Lily backed up quickly, intending to run away, when the door was suddenly yanked open. There was her beautiful stranger standing before her, sweaty and out of breath, staring down at her in shock. He was messy and disheveled, wearing a black V-neck t-shirt and dark, paint-splattered jeans. Somewhere in the background Lily could hear a sexy techno song starting to play by one of her favorite bands, Prodigy. She stood there, frozen to the spot, and an insane thought entered her mind: this band’s heavy techno beats always made her either want to dance or screw—and this guy didn’t look like he was in the mood to dance.