“Kline Brooks is on the phone for you,” my assistant, Madeline, buzzed in.
I shook off the confused stupor, moved the rogue folder that had slightly muffled her voice, and answered the phone.
“Kline.”
“Hey, T,” he greeted casually. I bounced my knee, and the sole of my dress shoe tapped erratically on the tile underneath my desk. “I need to talk to you about—”
“You don’t need to talk to me about shit,” I broke in, knowing I wouldn’t be able to sit through a hot minute of him going on about mergers and acquisitions and technical internet mumbo jumbo. “But I sure as fuck need to talk to you.”
“Huh? What are you talking about?”
Too amped up, I did the exact opposite of burying the lede. I shot that shit straight into the stratosphere before a launch countdown even commenced. “I fucked Cassie last night.”
“What?” he asked on a shout.
“Well, I guess,” I corrected, “she actually fucked me. I don’t even know how it happened or what happened or, shit, any of it, really. I’m confused as fuck.”
Shock would never keep Kline stumbling for long. As expected, he composed himself quickly and started asking questions. “How are you confused? Weren’t you there? Aren’t you the reason it happened?”
“No!” I snapped, just as flabbergasted as he was. “That’s the thing. I mean, I was there, but I didn’t need to be. I didn’t start anything. It just sort of happened, and then it was happening, and fuck me, it was really fucking good. But I still wasn’t in control of anything.”
“Maybe that’s why it was good,” he joked.
I scrunched up my face in mock laughter. “Not the fucking time, dude.”
“No. Oh, no,” he denied. “It’s exactly the right time. This is what you would do to me, and I can’t tell you how good it feels to be the one doing it to you.”
“Fuck you.” Both middle fingers saluted him rapid fire like rounds from a gun. It didn’t matter that he couldn’t see it. It made me feel better.
Kline just laughed.
“Ah, shit,” I grumbled when I realized my only other option was to hang up the phone. A sounding board had never been more necessary in my day-to-day life, and I didn’t have anyone else to talk to right now, so I was just going to have to take his shit and like it.
“Fine. Make your jokes.”
“Thanks,” he said. “I will.”
My eyes narrowed at his glee, but I dove right into the basics anyway. “She fell asleep on my dick.”
“O-kay,” he ventured. “Maybe I shouldn’t be hearing these details.”
I ignored his delicate sensibilities. “Right after she orgasmed. Like creamed all over my dick—”
“Jesus!”
“And then, boom. Out like a light. There I was with my dick in the sweetest pussy it’s ever entered, and I literally couldn’t fuck it. I mean, I could have, but even I draw the line somewhere, and that would have been creepy as fuck.”
“I don’t know what to do with this,” Kline admitted. If my savant of a friend didn’t have the answers, I didn’t know if anyone would.
“I don’t either. She used me as a goddamn sleep aid!”
The roll of what I now considered his constant chuckle clucked in my ear.
One thought bled into the next with no transition, and as all of the worsening details came back to me in waves, I just kept on blurting. “She’s still at my apartment!”
“What?”
“This morning, she wouldn’t leave.” I rubbed at the tense skin of my forehead. “I think maybe she’s moving in with me.”
“Good God. Slow down. She’s not moving in with you, for fuck’s sake. And if she is, this is completely out of my depth.”
Fuck. I knew she probably wasn’t moving in with me. I mean, that’d be fucked. But so was last night, so really, maybe that was right on point. I didn’t know. It was a miracle I even knew my left hand from my right anymore.
“I’m going to have to consult with Georgie.”
“Don’t spread this shit around!”
“If you think I’m not telling my wife this as a way to earn points, you’re cracked.”
“I hate you right now.”
“Yeah, well, I’ve hated you for years, and you’re still around. I’d imagine it works the same way in the other direction.”
No answers. No advice.
And no chance of getting over any of this until I got to the bottom of it.
Around noon, I decided to take a break from screwing with Thatch via text message and took a shower. As I brushed my wet locks with one hand, I ran the other across the granite counters of his bathroom and checked the pads of my fingers for evidence. Nothing. Not even a speck of dust. For a single dude, he did a relatively good job of keeping his place clean. Almost a little too clean.
Yeah, maybe I’d screw with Thatch just a teensy bit more. Because, let’s be honest, I was finding an awful lot of enjoyment out of bugging the hell out of him.
I grabbed my phone off the counter and typed out a text as I headed into his closet.
Me: Do you have a maid?
Thatch: Rita is a very nice lady who comes to my apartment twice a week.