Dare Me

“And she’s not answering her phone?” Whatever look I gave Oz made him hold up his hands. “I know. Obvious question. I just had to ask.”

“I don’t know where to look anymore.”

“Then maybe you should stop.” We both looked at Ana. Her hair was down, wavy, flipped to the side. Her eyes were bleary from the drinking but there was ease and confidence in her voice that had me irrationally annoyed. I needed a break from her so I went off to the bathroom where I thought she wouldn’t follow.

Wrong about that.

“I need a minute.” I was leaning against the sink when she came in.

“Do you? I don’t see you needing this bathroom at all,” she contested playfully. “Considering your fly’s still up. Womp, womp.” I paused at her speech. It was the only other sign of her having had a few more drinks than usual.

“Right. Well, in that vein, I see you needing this bathroom even less. Women’s is across the hall.”

“Don’t play with me, Callum, you know why I’m here,” she rolled her eyes and fluffed her hair in the mirror. “Lake’s a grown woman. She left so let her leave. She’s finally doing you a favor.” I met her eyes through the reflection, dazed and glassy from keeping up with Oz but so certain in the words she had to say. I looked away when she reached into her neckline and pulled her tits up in her bra. “You should honestly be relieved.”

“I’m not.”

“You will be when you let this all go,” Ana exhaled drunkenly, kicking off her heels and leaning barefoot against the sink. I grimaced.

“Dirty floor.”

“Dirty girl,” she countered suggestively. I must’ve rolled my eyes because she groaned and caught me by the arm on my way out the door. “God, Callum, she’s dead weight. She. Is. Bad for you. And she made a decision tonight. Now you make one. It’s time for you to start making the right decisions again.” Ana held me in place and cast that sultry look of hers on me. With three neat snaps of her fingers, she undid the top buttons on her shirt, till I could see her round, pushed-up tits. “Do you know what to do or do I need to spell it out for you?” She undid my belt in a flash. Her hand slid into my jeans and palmed my dick till it grew reflexively hard. She pouted. “Poor baby. I know you’re stressed so I don’t mind doing all the work tonight,” she murmured, running her tongue along the contour of her parted lips. I watched it make a full, wet round before placing my hand over hers. She moaned, squee

zed a handful of my package.

But her eyes flashed at me when I slid her touch firmly off my cock.

“I don’t need it spelled out. But thanks for the offer.”

I left her in the bathroom. A muscle twitched in my cheek as suddenly, and might I add, disturbingly, her image fused with that of my father’s. Christ. Fuck my memories for doing this to me. Ana obviously wasn’t him. She just had the same brand of ruthless determination and the words she’d said reminded me of the ones he had left me with on my twenty-second birthday.

I need you to start making the right decisions.

It played before my eyes again.

It was my first birthday without Lake since I was six years old. I had just quit the job I’d been hired to out of my first internship. I had Logan, work friends, other friends hounding me to go out but I stayed in my apartment and chose my night’s company from all the flirty texts I’d gotten from girls. The one I picked who came over had my zipper down and her mouth open when the doorbell rang.

My dad.

I saw him increasingly less with every year following the divorce. Partially because he always kept trying to explain himself and his explanations always mentioned Lake. I wasn’t in the place where I was looking to hear her name, ever, and I’d never forget how cruelly he left my mom, so I gladly cut him out of my life.

Unfortunately, Logan didn’t. Our fathers were best friends. It was the only reason I’d ever thought to befriend Logan in the first place. We were polar opposites. A thousand differences set us apart but the most relevant one that night was the fact that he worshipped his father. Didn’t make a single move in his life until it was approved by Logan Senior. I wavered between relief that I didn’t have that relationship with my dad and vague envy over never knowing the feeling of needing to repay for the warmth and support provided since childhood. There was none of that with my dad when I was growing up.

But he made an attempt at it on that birthday. I didn’t answer his text about what my plans were, so he asked Logan’s father to ask Logan and was given the reply that I was staying home.

“I’m sorry.” He apologized to the girl when I opened the door and he saw her. She gave a tight-lipped smile, wiped her mouth and grabbed her purse before slipping out the door. In the hall, she flashed a call me sign behind my dad before tiptoeing for the elevators. “For you,” my dad said, handing over a small, black bag from the same store that he’d been buying me three hundred dollar ties every year. I reached into it. Another tie.

“Would you like a drink?” They were my first words to him as he walked in and looked around, feigning interest in what I’d done with the space.

“Whatever Scotch. Neat’s fine.”

I had no ice anyway. I drank my Scotch neat just like he did. It was no point of pride for me. I handed my dad the lowball as he took a seat on the leather couch.

“You asked Logan where I was?”

“The older one, yes. That friend of yours is trained like a dog by his father,” he said with, unless I was mistaken, a fond laugh.

“That’s a good thing?”