WG2E All-For-Indies Anthologies: Viva La Valentine Edition (35 page)

“Exactly.” She set her mug on a coaster as
ripples of nervous excitement rushed over her skin. He set his mug
down and reached his hand across the back of the couch, catching
the ends of her hair between his fingers.

“You’ve got great hair, Celia.” He leaned
closer and pulled a strand under his nose for a sniff. “Smells as
good as it looks.”

Be strong, she reminded herself as she leaned
in and met him in the middle of the couch. She wasn’t going to
sleep with him on the second date, no matter how much she yearned.
No matter how good he smelled. That same musky, male scent. He
looked so big in her small apartment.

He took her mouth this time, no hesitation,
no lingering, but a full on assault that left her grasping for
sanity in the soft fibers of his sweater.

She pulled back reluctantly. “David. I can’t
sleep with you. This is only our second date, and even that’s a
little fuzzy.”

He sighed and leaned back against the couch,
gave the back of his neck a quick rub. “Is this about the three
date rule?”

“What three-date rule?” she asked in her most
innocent voice.

“Come on, we all know about the rule that
says you can’t have sex until the third date. We think it is crazy,
but we know about it.”

“It’s more a standard of good judgment than a
hard and fast rule.”

“So what makes the second date so much worse
than the third?” he asked. “Why not the forth? Seems like you gals
should try to bleed us out of more dinner and movies before giving
it up.”

“Oh,” she sputtered out a laugh. “Now who’s
the cynical one?”

“Spill it, Celia. You started all this.”

“Fine.” She clasped her hands together and
reminded herself that she wanted to be honest with him. “By the
third date, you pretty much know if you want to have sex with a
guy. Date two you might still be unsure, and then sex could ruin a
good thing or make you feel like you’re a little bit slutty. If you
both want it, but you don’t give it up by the third, you’re risking
him not asking again.” She shrugged and spared him a glance. “It’s
a bit of a tight rope we walk.”

“Sounds more like a very blurry line. What’s
wrong with two mutually attracted adults having sex after the
second date?”

“Not the first?”

“Well,” he said with a sheepish grin. “I
guess I kind of agree about that being too soon — if you’re
interested in doing it again.”

She slapped him on the shoulder. “And yet you
asked me to your place at the hockey game.”

“For dinner!” He graced her with a devilish
smile. “I wouldn’t have tried anything then.”

“Really?”

“Well,” he said. “There is this vibe.”

“Yes,” she nodded as the vibe shot straight
to her belly. “There is the vibe.”

They leaned into each other again, their
honest conversation forgotten, lost in the melding of bodies. He
pulled her closer and let his hands roam over her breasts. Her
fingers grazed the soft skin beneath his sweater. They moaned and
rocked.

“Celia, are you sure about using that flimsy
excuse?” he asked on a pant while his hands undid the scarf around
her neck. “Technically this could count as our third date.”

“This is definitely not our third.” She
pulled his head back and feasted on his mouth. “And rules are
rules.”

“Rules are meant to be broken.”

She sat back with a sigh, her breath coming
in short bursts of desire. “David, I can’t.”

“Okay, okay.” He let his hands slip from her
waist and faced forward on the couch. “Tomorrow night. Please tell
me you’re free tomorrow night.”

“I’m free.”

“Dinner. My place. Eight o’clock?”

“Your place?” she asked.

He shot her a grin. “I don’t have
roommates.”

She smiled and nodded. “Good thinking.”

He took another sip of coffee and set the mug
down, then grabbed Celia, lifting her toward him for another
mind-melting kiss. “Are you sure?” he asked. “We’re just delaying
the inevitable.”

Before she could answer, a loud boom sounded
behind them. Celia jumped and turned her head just in time to see
Tara’s cat bolt around the divider that had fallen onto the floor.
She clutched her heart. “Oh, that darned cat!”

When she looked up at David, his face had
gone slack and his eyes appeared glassy and wide with shock. He’d
dropped his hands and sat completely still, staring into the mess
that was Tara’s side of their bedroom.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

“Please tell me your roommate’s not Tara
Fincher.”

Oh, God. Please, God, no. “Yes.” She
scootched back against the far end of the couch and swallowed the
meal that threatened to make a return appearance. “Do you know
her?”

“Uhhhh, yeah, you could say that.”

“The psycho ex?”

“Totally psycho.” He ran his hands through
his hair and shot to his feet. “Jesus, Celia. How can you live with
her?”

“Me?” She stood up on shaky legs. “How did
you date her? I…I can’t even picture you together.”

“It wasn’t long and I wouldn’t exactly call
it dating.”

“What would you call it?”

His shoulders stiffened and a flush ran up
his cheeks. “Something to pass the time until she became a
squatter.”

“A squatter? What in the world are you
talking about?”

“She moved into my apartment — uninvited —
and refused to leave. She moved her shit in while I was at work. I
couldn’t get her out.”

“Why would she do that?”

“I don’t know. I had to threaten to call the
cops before she’d budge. The girl is mental.”

Celia stumbled back onto the couch. “You and
Tara.”

He followed in her footsteps and lowered to
the couch beside her. “It was short-lived and meaningless. Less
than meaningless.”

She looked up into his smooth-talking green
eyes. “You mean it was just sex.”

“Yes,” he said, and then thought of
backtracking. “Well, yes. It was nothing more than sex.”

She put her hand to her queasy stomach. Her
own special Valentine had had sex with Tara. Gross. “I think you
should go.”

“Celia, wait a minute.” He gently laid his
hand on her knee. “How do you know her? Are you…friends?” He said
the word as if it were impossible.

She couldn’t look at him, could barely stand
the thought of him in the apartment. “She’s my friend Bob’s friend.
I needed a roommate and she needed a place to stay.”

“So you’re not friends?”

“Not really,” she said. Now she remembered
what she’d eaten. Halibut. “She’s never here. She pays her share of
the rent and bills on time and she doesn’t steal my stuff. We just
sort of share the space.”

He stood up and slapped a hand to his head.
“Bob Norton?”

“You know Bob, too?” she asked.

“We work together. His firm’s a client.” He
sat back down. “How do you know Bob?”

“He went to law school with Beth.”

“This feels a little like When Harry Met
Sally. What did Billy Crystal say? Eight million people in the city
and this was bound to happen.”

“Except this isn’t funny.”

“No,” he agreed. “It’s not.” He looked over
at her with a silly grin on his face. “You’re the hot
roommate.”

“What?”

“Bob,” David said. “He told me Tara had found
a place and that she had a really hot roommate. That’s you.”

“You’re the Wall Street conservative with a
stick up his ass.”

He opened his mouth, tried to form words, and
shut it again. “She said that?”

Celia nodded and remembered that when she’d
asked where Tara had moved from, she thought it odd that she’d
lived with a conservative. Tara was anything but.

“Celia.” He reached for her hand and rubbed
her knuckles with his thumb. “This thing between us means a lot to
me. What happened with Tara was such a huge mistake. It was a
nothing relationship that snowballed into something when she moved
in without asking. We never talked about anything, not our
families, not our work, nothing.”

“You just had sex.”

He blew out a big breath. “Yes, but…look, I
wasn’t seeing anyone. I ran into Bob one night at a bar and she was
there. He introduced us and within a few minutes she was all over
me. I didn’t have a reason to say no.”

“But it wasn’t just once. You lived
together.”

“No. We didn’t.” He got up to pace in front
of her television. When Harry Met Sally sat on the coffee table
between them. “She’s got that weird show schedule and I work during
the day. We met at my place a few times over lunch, and then one
day she just moved her stuff in. The doorman had seen us together
and she turned on the charm. I couldn’t get her out.”

Celia took a steadying breath and got to her
feet. “This is a little much for me right now, David. I’m going to
have to think about this.”

He nodded, but made no attempt to leave.
“Okay, okay, I get that. But, Celia? I care about you. I would hate
it if the thing with Tara messed this up between us.”

Six

“Beth?”

Her friend sighed on the other end of the
line, and Celia knew she’d called too early. “I know you’re calling
to brag about how wonderful sex was with David, and after the night
I had with Gary, I just don’t want to hear it.”

“I didn’t have sex with David.”

There was a pause on the other end of the
line. “Then why do you sound so weird?”

“Tara had sex with David.”

“What?” Beth asked. “Are you drunk?”

“At seven in the morning?”

“You’re not making any sense.”

“David and Tara used to date.”

“Shut up!” Beth screeched. “Are you kidding
me?”

“I wish.” Celia glanced at the bedroom part
of her studio, where her roommate slept like the dead. “What am I
going to do?”

“When did they date and for how long?”

“Well, he said he wouldn’t call it dating,
just having sex, and I can’t figure out if that makes it better or
worse. But Beth, she moved in with him. Without asking. And he
threw her out, which is how she ended up here with me.”

“Wow,” Beth said. “That’s one hell of a
monkey wrench, and it sure makes Gary look like a saint.”

“I don’t know how to feel,” Celia whined and
rubbed the afghan throw against her cheek. “On the one hand, it was
over a year ago and he makes it sound like it meant nothing. He’s a
guy, so of course he’d jump at the chance to sleep with Tara. She’s
so physically perfect. And that’s another problem! How can I
possibly compete with a dancer? Not just her appearance, but
her…flexibility. And she’s a nut case! I mean, our arrangement
works because we’re never here together, but seriously, the girl
has a few screws loose, and it doesn’t take long to figure that
out.”

“It doesn’t sound like he did much thinking.”
Celia heard the toilet flush and knew Beth had gotten up to go to
the bathroom. “First thing you need to do is take a deep breath and
calm down before you hyperventilate.”

“How can I calm down? And what am I supposed
to do?” she asked with a hysterical edge to her voice she knew she
had to tamp down when Tara began to stir. “I really like him. I
mean really like him. I don’t want to stop seeing him because of an
old relationship, but I’m not sure how to get past this.”

“I think you need to give it some time to
sink in,” Beth said. “And as much as I know you don’t want to, I
think you need to talk to Tara and get her side of the story. That
he’d get involved with her is a huge red flag, and if things didn’t
go down like he said they did…I think you may want to jump ship
while you can.”

“I know I need to ask her, but I can’t do it
now. I’m too upset and she’s a scary bitch if she gets woken
up.”

“Go to work and try to put it out of your
mind. When you can talk to Tara, I think you should.”

Celia sighed and looked over at her
spikey-haired roommate lying prone on her bed. Even with the black
satin sleep mask hiding her light blue eyes, she looked like
Sleeping Beauty with a buzz cut. “I know I do, but I don’t have to
like it.”

“I’ll be there for you when it’s over, no
matter how it goes.”

“We should be lesbians,” Celia said. “We’d be
the perfect couple.”

“Yeah, but when we had a fight, who would we
call?”

• • •

David did the unprecedented. He sent flowers
to Celia’s office with a hand-written note that said, “Thinking of
you,” because he didn’t know what else to say. He spent the morning
tracking down Bob and waiting for his return call. By three, they
finally connected.

“Celia Mason,” David said. “Tell me
everything you know.”

“Well,” Bob began with a throat-clearing
cough. “For one thing, she lives with Tara Fincher.”

“I figured that out.” He wanted to slam his
head against the desk or reach through the phone line and slap Bob
across the face. “How could you sic Tara on Celia like that?”

“David, look, I know you had a bad experience
with Tara, but —”

“A bad experience? She’s crazy, and now she
lives with Celia. How could you?”

“Tara’s an artist. They’re wired a little
differently, that’s all.”

“Wired like a serpent.”

Bob chuckled. “How do you know Celia?”

“It’s a long story, but damn it, I like her.
She’s the first girl I’ve met who makes me want to dip my toe back
into the pond, and she lives with Tara.”

“If it makes you feel any better, they’re not
friends. I don’t even think they see each other that much.”

“Celia explained that, but now I look like an
ass because I had sex with her roommate.”

“Yeah,” he admitted. “That can’t look
good.”

David didn’t want Bob’s sympathy. He wanted
action. “You need to smooth this over for me, Bob.”

“Why’s that, Dave? I didn’t have sex with
Tara.”

“I keep trying to find someone to blame and
the most logical person is you.”

Bob let out his trademark sigh. “What do you
want me to do?”