The Art of Endings Read online

  “But in all seriousness, Darren,” she said, her back still turned to him. “We’ve known each other way too long for the kind of foolishness you tried to pull this morning. Don’t you think?”

  At that last question, she turned and leaned back against the kitchen counter, still stirring sweetener and cream into her second cup of coffee. Her hair was still partly secured in the loose up-do that she’d worn to the event the previous evening, but her face was clean of make-up.

  God, she was pretty.

  Still, Darren wished she would smile more. With her smooth complexion, dark, dark eyes and perfectly oval face, she transformed from merely pretty to stunning when she smiled, her full lips parting to reveal teeth so even, they were no doubt the product of her orthodontist father’s hard work.

  “Look, I was just trying to . . .”

  “Sneak out before I woke up,” Paige said, nodding.

  Darren didn’t bother denying it. He did intend to sneak out before she woke up, and right now was wishing he’d been successful. She was right; they had known each other a long time, but he still felt unprepared to navigate these new waters. Paige used to be engaged to one of his best friends for god’s sake. She was one his best friends. And what they’d done last night put all of that at risk.

  “Paige, you can’t tell me you think this is a good idea,” Darren said.

  “I don’t know what kind of idea it is. I just know that I don’t regret one second of it,” Paige began, fixing her frank gaze directly on his face.

  “I don’t know what you want me to say,” Darren shrugged.

  What he wanted to say was that he didn’t regret it either. What he wanted to say was that he knew he should, but he didn’t. What he wanted to say, was that now—as a woman and not just the girl she was when he first met her—she had been everything he’d ever imagined she would be, and more. He wanted to say that, but he wouldn’t.

  “I don’t know either,” Paige admitted. “But if you do say something it’s bound to be the wrong thing.”

  “Paige . . .”

  “Nope,” she shook her head. “That’s all for now.”

  “Paige . . .”

  “Darren, no.”

  He laughed. “Will you let me get my sentence out?”

  “No,” she said, not laughing with him. “Because you’re going to ruin it. You’re going to make another joke, or make light of what happened last night. And if you did, I might have to throw my toaster at you.”

  Darren said nothing.

  “So, now, you’re free to go,” Paige said, her tone light once again. And when Darren just looked at her, she shrugged. “Seriously. Go do whatever it was you were about to go do when I caught you leaving. And you’d better call me later.”

  Then she took her mug of coffee and headed toward the bedroom, leaving him sitting there feeling like an idiot. Darren stacked the dishes in the sink and once he was done, paused, wondering whether he should go talk to her. But he still didn’t know what he would say, and worse than that, didn’t know what he would do. He might just grab her and try to reprise their last encounter . . .

  Out on U Street, he was finally able to take a deep breath, running a hand over his almost clean-shaven head.

  What the hell . . ? He really had to stop drinking.

  But as he put the key into the ignition of his truck, he knew he was kidding himself. It wasn’t the drinks, it wasn’t the party atmosphere at the reception; it wasn’t even the fact that the last time he’d gotten any was almost a month ago. Basically, something he’d been running from for more than a decade had finally caught up with him.

  Glancing at the time, he wondered whether it was too early to start rounding some folks up for some b-ball. A little three-on-three might work right about now to help him focus on something else. Anything else other than the memory of the sounds Paige made, and the way she looked . . .

  But it was Saturday morning and not yet nine a.m. so he didn’t hold out too much hope. Especially since these days, damn near all his boys were up under some female.

  Even Trey. Trey, who everyone would have sworn would be the last man down, had been definitively taken out of the game. Last Darren spoke to him, he was talking about maybe proposing. Proposing. The man who’d lived his life in a quest for hook-ups that promised no complications, was thinking about marriage. And to a woman with a very complicated past.

  Shayla had become a good friend of Darren’s as well. At one point he even had an eye on her himself. Shayla had the kind looks that crept up on you; a quiet, understated beauty that once you saw it, you kept noticing more. And with the kind of personality that people were just naturally drawn to when she let you get to know her. Where Shayla was concerned, Trey was all in, that was damn sure.

  Sprung. Whipped. Turned out. And so in love he couldn’t even see straight.

  Used to be that any attractive woman in sight was a potential conquest in Trey’s mind, but now, he was on the lookout for other men, constantly sizing up any dude who looked to be even marginally interested in Shayla. Occasionally, when he felt like messing with Trey’s head, Darren engaged in a little harmless flirtation with her, only because he knew what Trey couldn’t seem to get through his thick skull; that Shayla was all in, too.

  But still, Trey had brought some complications of his own to the relationship. Any day now, he would hear whether an ex hook-up’s soon-to-be-born baby was his. So far, according to Trey at least, Shayla had been fairly understanding about everything, since the hook-up in question happened before their relationship.

  Still, if the baby turned out to be his, Darren wasn’t so sure it would be as smooth a sailing as Trey hoped. The idea of a baby was very different from a living, breathing, crying infant. Not to mention the woman who came along with that infant. Shayla was cool people, but Darren wasn’t sure she was that damn cool. Few women were.

  Reflecting on Trey’s crazy life actually made him feel better. No matter how you looked at it, his situation wasn’t nearly as messy. By comparison, having spent one crazy night with Paige was no big deal, Darren thought as he pulled away from the curb.

  Nope. No big deal at all.

  Chapter Two

  Trey woke up the way he always did, with Shayla pressed against him. And like he always did—as though to reassure himself that she was still there—he ran a hand over her hip, reaching forward and between her legs. Most mornings, she woke up ready and rearing to go just like him, and if she wasn’t, he could get her there in pretty short order.

  Last night she’d been up late working, so he knew he shouldn’t wake her. But she was up late every night working these days and he needed some of her attention too. So if this was the only way to get it, so be it. He stroked her for a few minutes, feeling the moment she was awake by the subtle shift of her legs, and the way her thighs fell open for him.

  “Trey . . .” Her voice was a whisper.

  He loved the way she said his name.

  Outside it was still barely light, and the bitter cold was hinted at by the gunmetal gray sky visible through the leafless limbs of the dogwood tree just outside their bedroom window. Assured of her readiness, Trey pressed against her. Feeling her give way and envelop him, he involuntarily emitted a quiet sound of his own.

  Thank God for monogamy.

  To feel nothing but her skin against his skin, her heat, her wetness. There was nothing like it. Had he remembered this, he might have tried being monogamous a long time ago. But it wouldn’t be like this with just any woman.

  Trey arched forward with more force, wanting to go even deeper, as deep as he could. Shayla was doing that thing he liked, that little hip motion that drove him out of his mind. He reached up and cupped her breasts—36Cs he now knew. He knew all kinds of random things about her now. Things he never cared to know about another woman, things he thought a few short months ago, he would never get close enough to discover. They had been slowly revealed to him through the steady, reassuring daily hum of domesticity.
The routine nature, the predictability and constancy were things he would never have anticipated getting used to, let alone enjoying.

  Moving with more energy and determination, Trey could feel himself nudging against that sweet, soft spot, deep inside her that always made Shayla pant his name and clench about him. She was saying his name like that now, over and over again.

  Hell, he had to slow this down if he didn’t want it to be over in a minute. He had all morning, and that’s how long he wanted to go . . .

  “Oh god, Trey!”

  He paused. That wasn’t an Oh-God-Trey-it-feels-so-good, or a Oh-God-Trey-you’re-a-beast. It was an expression of alarm. Even through the mind-blowing, toe-curling pleasure he could interpret that tone. And as if to underscore the point, she was pulling away from him, prying his viselike grip from about her waist and sitting up. The sudden absence of her heat was like a wet towel to the groin.

  “I have a breakfast meeting!” she said, getting out of bed and heading for the bathroom. “I completely forgot. With that GW professor who might help get me access to some Larsen material.”

  It took Trey a moment to refocus, away from the fact that he was no longer wrapped around and buried inside Shayla. But once he absorbed the meaning of what she was saying, he leaned back against the pillows and groaned.

  She was leaving again. Lately, she was always leaving.

  “You have a breakfast meeting today?”

  “Trey, you have early meetings all the time,” she pointed out, glancing over her shoulder.

  “Never on a Sunday, Shay. Call her and reschedule.”

  “Him. And I can’t reschedule. This is the only day when we’re both free. I work during the week and he has classes to teach. This is the only time . . .”

  “Yeah, but it‘s my time,” Trey said.

  At that, Shayla stuck her head out of the bathroom and looked at him, obviously torn. “I know, baby, but . . .”

  “But what?”

  Exploiting her guilt didn’t bother him one bit. Between the temping and the academic research stuff, she was never around anymore. Hell, he made more than enough to support them while she finished this book she was working on, and went back to school if that’s what she wanted. As far as he was concerned there was no reason she had to work at all.

  Trey flung back the covers and looked down pointedly. “You’re really going to run out of here and leave me like this?”

  Shayla spluttered into laughter and came toward him once again. “That would be cruel of me,” she acknowledged.

  “Yeah, it would.” Trey pulled back as she crawled on her hands and knees across the bed. “And don’t even think about some half-assed hand-job just to placate me.”

  Shayla rolled her eyes, and then after a moment’s consideration, licked her lips.

  “Nah,” Trey shook his head. “Not that either.”

  “Trey, be reasonable. You know otherwise it’s going to take much longer for you to . . .”

  “I don’t care about being reasonable. It’s been almost a week.”

  “You say that like it’s a long time.”

  “For us it is.”

  “Okay, but you have to drive me downtown to my breakfast meeting afterwards.”

  “I can’t believe we’re negotiating about this,” he said looking up at the ceiling.

  “We’re not negotiating for sex, we’re negotiating for time,” Shayla said. She was straddling his torso now, poised to lower herself onto him, and Trey wasn’t about to do or say anything to stop her. He would drive her from DC to Los Angeles if she wanted him to.

  Damn that felt good . . . like she had him in her hand and was squeezing tight.

  Trey closed his eyes for a moment, but only for a moment. This was good, really good, her on top like this, so he could both see and feel as she softened, dissolved and finally came apart, every tiny sensation reflected in her amazing, amazing eyes. Telling a woman that the thing he’d first noticed were her eyes used to be a cliché, but with Shay it was true. As far as he was concerned, her eyes were unique in the entire world.

  She rolled her hips against him, her movements slow at first, and then she started with the little swirl thing again and Trey could tell she wasn’t thinking about that stupid breakfast meeting at all, her hips rising and falling, the pace increasing. He grabbed her hips, his fingers biting into them.

  So, so soft.

  “You’re trying to make this fast, aren’t you?” he said, his breath coming in short bursts.

  “No.” Shayla leaned forward and kissed him, right in that area between his neck and shoulder that she knew damn well became startlingly sensitive whenever her lips made contact with it. “I’m trying to make it good.”

  “You don’t have to try.”

  Flipping her over onto her back, and losing no time burying himself in her again, Trey increased the tempo, feeling as Shayla’s chest heaved against his. He’d come to know her body almost as well as he did his own—her sounds, her smells, the way she moved when she was about to let go. And the way she sometimes held out as long as she could, wanting to make it last. It had become their own private battle of wills—her holding out, and him trying to push her over the edge, wanting to see that look on her face and hear the way she screamed his name, feel her clamp her thighs about him and bite into his shoulder.

  Bracing his elbows on either side of her head and raising himself partially onto his knees now, Trey pulled Shayla into him. She panted, speaking unintelligibly and grinding herself into him. Trey reached down between them, using his thumb to stroke her at the point where they were joined until Shayla began convulsing, squeezing and releasing him, and finally becoming perfectly limp.

  Knowing that she was satisfied, Trey slowed his movements, taking his time savoring the wet, silken feeling of being inside her. Shayla murmured in his ear, then cupped her hands on either side of his face. Looking into her eyes as he moved, Trey felt the first explosion of his release and for long moments his mind went completely blank.

  Allowing himself a moment to recover, resting atop her, Trey felt as Shayla’s hand came up, her fingers raking across his scalp. He kept his hair low now, having long gotten used to being without the curls that Shayla used to run her fingers through. Her touch was light as a feather. Shayla kissed his neck again, in that sensitive spot, her tongue tickling him.

  “You better stop,” he said. “Or I’ll keep you in this bed all day.”

  “Nope.” Shayla suddenly shoved him aside and leapt up. “Duty calls.”

  Duty calls. Yeah.

  Trey fell face forward into the pillow.

  __________

  Tessa opened the door, and Trey saw that her hair was disheveled, her eyes still only half-open. When she focused enough to see that it was him, she turned away from the door.

  “Isn’t it a little early to be dropping by unannounced?” she asked over a huge yawn.

  “Get dressed, I’m taking you for breakfast,” Trey said.

  “Ahm, okay.” Tess glanced in the direction of her bedroom.

  “You have someone in there?”

  “No one who needs to disrupt your plan to provide me with a free meal,” she said. “Meet me downstairs in fifteen?”

  “Sure.” Trey shook his head and made a U-turn, heading back down the stairs.

  While waiting in his car he considered whether he should instead be in the office catching up on a few things. But he’d told Shay he would hang out in town and wait till she was done with her breakfast meeting and drive her back; and if he went to the office there was a significant possibility he would get immersed in work and lose all track of time. Besides, he hadn’t spent much time with Tess lately, which had him a little nervous. His sister was like a toddler. If she was too quiet, it was time to worry.

  Having raised her since their parents died when she was only eleven, Tess was always there, in the backdrop of his consciousness, much the way he imagined a parent must think about their child rather than in the m
anner of a sibling.

  Since she’d moved out of their childhood home, where he and Shayla lived, Trey had tried not to be too overbearing, so he seldom made unannounced visits to her Dupont Circle apartment the way he had this morning. Still, he missed her, and even more than that was mindful that as far as parents went, he was all Tess had, so he couldn’t afford to drift out of her life or let her drift out of his.

  He watched the entrance of the building and spotted Tess as she emerged with another young woman, Asian with short spiked hair and piercings—so many that they were visible from almost a hundred yards away. She and Tess spoke for a few moments before she turned and headed toward Connecticut Avenue, in the direction of the Dupont Circle Metro. Though they hadn’t kissed or even so much as hugged, there was a familiarity in their manner that Trey recognized. The kind you had with a one-night stand who you intended never to call again.

  Then Tess was looking about for his car and Trey honked the horn to get her attention.

  “You never introduce me to these girls you’re dating,” he said as she slid into the passenger seat next to him.

  “Because I’m not exactly dating them,” Tess said, a sly smile on her face.

  Trey forced himself not to react. It had taken him awhile to come to terms with the fact that his baby sister was gay, but what was harder to accept was that she seemed to have no inclination to develop a relationship of any meaning. There had never once been someone she described as a ‘girlfriend’ that he could recall; just a series of brief hook-ups.

  Thinking about it made Trey feel a stab of guilt. He shouldn’t be surprised. Why would she do anything different than she’d seen him do all her life? Until Shay, his life had been a series of hook-ups devoid of meaning.

  “So to what do I owe the honor?” Tess asked as they pulled away from the curb. She was twisting her long, dark hair and stuffing it into a floppy, grey knit hat.

  “I just wanted to see you, is that okay?” Trey asked.

  “Of course. But you’ve been occupied lately. How is Shayla?”