Inside my emotions do flips, cartwheels, and fist pumps in the air.
He lines my lips while his purse into frustration as I struggle to keep from grinning, actually beaming!
“I have a vagina, you know?”
Vibrant white teeth peek through his uncontrolled smirk. “I heard that rumor.”
“Can you deal with it?”
He glides the gloss over my lips. “I’ll deal with you, and you can deal with your vagina.”
I laugh as he lifts me off the vanity counter. Reaching the edge of my bed, I stare at my dress then shrug my shoulders. He’s gay … so screw it! “Will you zip me up?” I ask, dropping my robe to the floor and slipping into my dress with my back to him. “Do you like my body?” I grin.
He zips my dress with slow ease, just the tips of his fingers grazing my skin near the top of the zipper. “It’s … fine. I haven’t paid it much attention.” His voice breaks on the last word.
“Touché.” Bending forward, I grab my heels and slip them on. “But it doesn’t do it for you, right?” I turn, but he’s not here. “Trick?”
“Downstairs,” he calls.
I make a cautious descent down the stairs in my heels. “You should come with me. Steven is working and I hate to go alone so—”
“It’s not my thing.” Trick leans his side against the front door, hands in his pockets.
Grabbing my clutch, I chuckle. “It’s not mine either. On a good night I get called into the hospital, but I’m not on call this weekend so I need another excuse to leave early.”
“Thanks, but no thanks.”
“Oh come on, we’ll eat and leave, an hour tops.” I close the space between us. He straightens, looking down at me and maybe even a little … nervous? My chest presses against his; I tilt my chin up and bat my eyelashes. “Pretty please.” Why I torture myself is beyond me, but I can’t stop. Maybe I’m a masochist. Being around Trick and knowing he doesn’t want me the way I want him is masturbation without the release.
Trick takes a step back and clears his throat. “I’m not dressed for the occasion.”
“There’s no dress code. It’s at my father’s house.”
He rubs his fingers across the dark stubble on his chin. “You’re dressed pretty fancy for ‘no dress code.’”
Slipping off my heels, I race upstairs and change into black skinny jeans, a red Maroon 5 T-shirt, and black boots. “See, no dress code,” I announce, bounding down the stairs.
Trick looks me over with a smirk and a head shake. “I didn’t take you for the rebel type anymore.”
I switch out my handbags again. “What can I say? You’re a bad influence. I might even dye my hair black again. Come.” I look back and grin as I lead him to the back door. “I’ll drive.”
We pull out of the garage. “Where does your father live?”
“Barrington Hills.”
“Of course he does.” Trick stares out his window.
Yes, my father lives on a large sprawling estate in Barrington Hills, but his wife owns it. I live in a single family dwelling in Lincoln Park that my nana bought me. She calls it, and my debt-free college education, a gift from my mother. I live two blocks from her townhome that she downsized to after I left for college. Trick thinks I’m rich … but I’m not.
However, I could have been.
“Was it Gemmie?”
Trick glances sideways at me.
“Did she mention my plans for the night? I don’t remember telling you, so how’d you know to show up and save me from looking like a peasant?”
He grins and rubs his palms against his thighs, like it’s a nervous habit. “Yes, she texted me. Called it a 9-1-1 emergency.”
“Oh jeez!”
“I texted her back that you didn’t need my help.”
I give him a quick glance with wrinkled confusion tugging at my brow. “But you came.”
He shrugs. “I did, but she didn’t need to know that.”
“So peasant girl did need your help?”
“No. I just wanted to see you.”
A grand display of fireworks ignite inside then quickly fizzle from the damp thoughts in my head. Is this what having a gay BFF is? All the compliments women dream of their lover saying, but not in a foreplay way. It’s spooning and cuddling after sex … without the sex. Shit! Is this what I want?
*
My new enigmatic friend keeps the conversation focused on me for the forty-five minute drive: my decision to take an ER job instead of joining the Peace Corps like I had originally planned, my love of medicine, my most challenging cases. He doesn’t ask me about my family and that thrills me. For forty-five minutes I’m Darby, physician assistant, compassionate humanitarian, recovered misfit—friend to Patrick Roth. Then we cross the black iron gates to the Hart-Carmichael Estate and I become Darby Carmichael, girl who can’t even imagine what it’s like to grow up homeless on the streets. Trick doesn’t say it, but I feel it and see it in his eyes.