His Treat Read online

  His Treat

  Penelope Bloom

  Contents

  1. Emily

  2. Ryan

  3. Emily

  4. Ryan

  5. Emily

  6. Ryan

  7. Emily

  8. Ryan

  9. Emily

  10. Ryan

  11. Emily

  12. Ryan

  13. Emily

  14. Ryan

  15. Emily

  16. Ryan

  17. Emily

  18. Natasha, Steve, and William

  19. Ryan

  20. Emily

  21. Epilogue - Ryan

  22. Epilogue - Emily

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  1

  Emily

  Droplets of water snailed their way down the passenger window of Lilith’s car. She was pretty much my only real friend, and she was also my only access to private transportation around the city. I was admittedly over-bundled against the light chill of the early Fall morning, but I’d been waiting all summer to wear my comfy clothes, and I could always peel some layers off if I got hot.

  I ran my fingertips over the letter in my jacket pocket. I’d made such a habit of carrying it around and re-reading it that I’d ended up turning the paper soft, but I still brimmed with equal parts excitement and dread when I touched it. The letter meant a new start. A chance to take a real step toward my dream. For years, it felt like I’d been circling the idea of becoming a real, professional artist with about the same drunken lack of direction as a toddler on a bike with one training wheel. I never could just go in a straight line, and every time I thought I was getting closer, I’d zip right past it and have to circle around to start the process all over again.

  This time was going to be different. The letter in my jacket was that straight line. It was a direct flight, and even I couldn't mess this one up. I just had to show up at the airport in January. It would be as simple as breathing. Then again, I had sleep apnea, and apparently breathing wasn't always the simplest thing in the world for me, so that was a bad analogy. The point was, I could do this.

  It was my favorite time of year. It was Fall. Summer was over, or at least coughing up its final, dying words. I knew summer was supposed to be the best. It was the time of swimsuits, parties, picnics, and throwing a frisbee to your golden retriever in the park. Yeaah! Go, Summer! Except that had never been my reality. For me, Summer was underboob sweat, staying in all day because I'd rather not melt outside, and getting the yearly sunburn that reminds me why I don't ever want to get a sunburn again. Oh, and the influx of air conditioner commercials about "beating the heat" that pop up on the radio.

  Well, screw you very much, Summer. It was over for another year, and now it was the time of horror movie marathons and for M&Ms to put out their Halloween themed commercials. The leaves were turning every shade of yellow, orange, and red you could imagine. Rainy morning or not, I couldn’t help feel the familiar excitement of the coming holidays. This morning had been the day I waited for all year—the one where you can feel the change as soon as you step outside. The air had that crisp, energizing quality that made me want to tackle my day, even if tackling my day should've had the appeal of tackling a three-hundred pound, sweaty man with patchy body hair.

  I'd always loved Halloween. Maybe not so much for the holiday itself, but more because it was the first wave of the cold-weather holidays I spent all year looking forward to. Except for this year, they'd be more than just another round of holidays. They'd be the last few months before I flew overseas and started art school in Paris. No matter how many times I thought about it or how often I re-read the acceptance letter, it still didn't seem real.

  “Stop looking so happy over there,” Lilith groaned. She wore a thick bar of eye-liner, a perfectly straight row of black bangs, and a black lace choker on her pale, slender neck. She had the perfect porcelain skin and features of a beauty queen, but she wore a constant expression that let you know, without any shadow of a doubt, she resented the fact that she had to exist.

  If she had to be here, she’d make sure the universe knew it had made a mistake.

  I’d had the good fortune of meeting her in high school, and we’d been unlikely friends ever since. Maybe it was because she only survived school from my notes and study help, or maybe it was that I’d managed to save her from the worst of the bullies she seemed to attract. Either way, I liked her, and I guess it was for the same reason people inexplicably liked cats. Want to poop on my pillow because I went out of town for a day? Want to pee directly outside your litter pan even though it’s perfectly clean? Or maybe you want to just make sure gravity still works for the tenth time this week and knock my drink to the floor. That was Lilith, well, minus the bathroom habits, as far as I knew. Deep down. Deep, deep, down, I knew she still needed affection just like everyone else. And I liked how hard she tried to pretend she didn’t.

  “I said stop it,” she repeated in her usual deadpan. “I can see you smiling from the corner of my eyes. It’s going to make me barf.”

  “Can’t help it. It’s Fall,” I said the words in a singsong voice, partly because I knew outward happiness was like Lilith’s kryptonite.

  She grimaced. “Good, then maybe those disgusting creatures you’re trying to grow in our kitchen will die soon.”

  “Plants, Lilith. They’re called plants, and considering they’re inside, I’m sorry to say they will probably survive.”

  “Accidents happen, though.” She didn’t take her eyes from the road, but I thought I saw a little glimmer of pleasure in them as her thoughts turned murderous.

  “What kind of person doesn’t like plants?”

  “They smell.”

  "Ooh!" I said, pointing to a billboard on the side of the highway. "Pumpkin Spiced Lattes! We're half-way through October, and I haven't even had one yet. We have to. Please.”

  “Ugh.” She gave me a sideways look—showing no concern for the fast-moving traffic in front of us as she stared me down

  A nervous smile twitched across my face. “The road,” I said quietly.

  She languidly dragged her eyes back to the road. “It’s not going anywhere.”

  “Technically, no, it’s not. But we are. At about… Ninety,” I said, leaning to the side to glance at the speedometer. I laughed, but my heart was pounding. I was pretty sure a few more seconds would’ve had us careening off the road to our fiery deaths. I had too much to live for to die young. The last season of Game of Thrones was still coming, I had never eaten a poached egg, and my bucket list still had at least ten items left unchecked, starting with ice skating with a gorgeous guy at night to the soundtrack of Dirty Dancing.

  In all seriousness, if I died before I made it to art school in Paris… I was definitely going to come back to haunt Lilith. I’d use my artistic skills to draw ghostly penises in the fogged up glass of her shower doors, and they wouldn’t be the high-school variety of graffiti penis. They’d be disturbingly detailed and lifelike. I’d… well, actually, that was about as far as my haunting creativity went. But if the time came, I’d think of something better.

  Lilith shrugged at being reminded to watch the road. It was hard to say when she was amused, but I thought I could sense it radiating off her like heat. I probably seemed innocent to the world and breakable to her, even after the years we’d known each other. In her cat-like way, I think she was pawing me closer to the edge of a long, hard drop to the floor just to see what would happen.

  I looked out the window as we took the exit. Stores had already started stocking the she
lves with Halloween gear from candy corn to pumpkins, and I'd watched no less than two horror movie marathons, even though I had the same tolerance for being startled as a chihuahua on the Fourth of July. Freddy Krueger scared me the most. I mean, what's scarier than a guy who gets you in your dreams? At least with the other bad guys, you can not be the horror movie bimbo who doesn’t realize that basements equal death, upstairs equals death, and barns full of thrashing equipment definitely equal death. Honestly, if I was in a horror movie, I’d gather up all my friends, look in the mirror, and try to figure out which one of us looked most like the cute girl next door. Everybody else was dead, and the guy who looked most like a jock was probably secretly the killer. Predictable or not, I still watched horror movies from behind a big pillow.

  I told Lilith she could park and let me run in to grab the coffees, partly because I wanted a taste of the weather, but more because I’d seen how much she frightened fast-food workers. She once told me how she had found a dead fly, saved it in a zip-lock bag, and then dropped it in her fries to get free food at a restaurant. The worst part was I was pretty sure she didn’t really care about saving the money. I think she just liked tormenting people.

  I wrapped my scarf a little tighter around my neck. Yes, my scarf. It was scarf weather, and I don’t know if I loved anything more than wrapping what was basically a baby sized blanket around my neck and nuzzling into it all day. It made me wish we could bring back capes. I’d never seen it in one of those medieval shows or movies, but I’d bet my life that people spun their capes around and used them as blankets when they were just hanging out around the castle.

  Just feeling the crisp air outside made me want to skip and clap my hands together, but I knew Lilith would probably spontaneously combust if she caught that much happiness in the rearview mirror, so I controlled myself.

  I managed to get our coffees without traumatizing anyone and slid back into the car a few minutes later. Lilith took the coffee from me and sipped it. She groaned. “Ugh. Disgusting.”

  “What?” I asked. “Did they mess it up?”

  “No. It’s fine. I knew it would taste like this.”

  I raised an eyebrow, waiting for her to explain.

  She glared at me. “It’s easier to hate everyone who drinks these if I remember how gross they are.”

  “Riiight,” I said, nodding like I understood. I sipped my drink and then paused. I expected her to laugh, maybe even just a little, but her face showed no expression.

  I smiled to myself. She might not think she was funny, but I enjoyed Lilith and her… moments. She definitely had the same kind of charm of a cat. They might act like they hated you and were too good for you, but you just knew they still wanted scratches even if they’d never actually admit it. I wondered what Lilith would do if I scratched behind her ears, but decided she could do more damage to me than a cat, so I kept my hands to myself. I still planned to find a way to make her smile eventually, even if it meant I’d have to bring her a dead bird.

  We pulled up to the retirement home a little while later.

  “Want me to walk you in?” asked Lilith.

  I grinned. “No thanks, mom.”

  “Whatever. I’m gassy anyway. Probably better if I don’t move around too much right now.”

  “Believe it or not, I could’ve gone all day without knowing that.”

  “It’s your lucky day. I’m running a two for one special.”

  “What? On things I didn’t need to know?”

  She nodded.

  I could see she was waiting for permission and had a feeling I was going to regret it, but I sighed. "Okay. Go ahead."

  "I see a gray man with no face who stands in the corner of my room some nights. He watches me sleep. I wake up paralyzed, and I can't move anything but my eyes—”

  “Perfect!” I interrupted because I already felt chills rolling across my skin. “That should help the insomnia I’ve been dealing with. I’m going to go teach some grumpy seniors to paint now. Thanks for the ride.”

  “Oh. William is going to be there today. It’s on his schedule. Just a head’s up.”

  William Chamberson was Lilith’s boss. She worked as his secretary, and I wasn’t sure if she was giving me a head’s up because she thought I still had a crush on the man, but I’d never had one to begin with, whether she believed me or not. My middle school boyfriend cheated on me by holding hands with another girl just a few days after we’d officially announced we were “going out.” So, yeah, I was basically an expert in the kind of life-changing pain unfaithfulness can cause. William was married, and my inner middle schooler would, like, never even think about having a crush on a married man, even if he was drop-dead gorgeous and charming.

  William was a twin. His brother was Bruce Chamberson, and they were the CEOs of a multi-million dollar corporation. I’d met both of them a couple times in the few weeks I’d been running painting classes here. One of the seniors was William’s grandmother-in-law, and his wife, brother, and brother’s wife regularly came by for poker night with the seniors.

  Bruce was the buttoned-up Superman type, with a jawline that could break through brick walls faster than the Kool-Aid man in a 90s commercial, eyes that could make you break a sweat, and the lean, muscular body to match. His hair was always perfectly in place, and it only took a few seconds of watching him to see that he either had O.C.D. or was dangerously close. If you liked your men… well, actually, if you liked men in general, then it would’ve been hard to find fault with him. Except the whole being married part, of course.

  Then there was William. If Bruce was Superman, William was what Superman would look like if he liked to party, had never met a comb, and had a slight problem with kleptomania. Together, they were an unlikely pair, but it was highly entertaining to watch them clash, which they always seemed to do.

  When I first learned Lilith was working as a secretary for some ultra-powerful businessman, I'll admit, I wondered what kind of boss could put up with her. As soon as I met William, I got it. Lilith was the scheming cat, and William was… I guess he was more like a fox with a little bit of a puppy's enthusiasm and good-naturedness thrown in. He seemed carefree and innocent at times, but there was a cunning genius hiding behind his easy-going nature. I could imagine the amusement in his eyes if Lilith dropped her deadpan humor on an important client or give someone the cold shoulder because she was in the middle of a text.

  I carried a small bag of supplies in through the front door, greeted the familiar faces on my way in, and started setting up in the recreational room they’d given me as a classroom. The money from this gig wasn’t great, but it was money, and it was a job related to art. That was a win, in my book. Ever since I’d set my sights on being an artist, I’d carried a chip on my shoulder. Nobody ever thought twice about making jokes when they learned what I wanted to do. “Oh, you’re an artist? So which Starbucks do you work at?”

  They could all stuff it. Because I didn’t work at a Starbucks. I worked at… Well, I worked at a retirement home, and sometimes picked up odd jobs. Besides, when I had worked at a coffee place, it wasn’t a Starbucks, thank you very much. It was actually a Starbucks copycat, which might have been worse. Still, they could stuff it.

  I was setting up what each student would need at their table when I heard a voice I didn’t recognize outside. I craned my neck to look into the hall and saw the man who was speaking. One of my eyebrows arched involuntarily.

  I liked what I saw, and so did my eyebrows—one of them, at least. I had the oddest hint of familiarity about him. He looked kind of like a guy I knew from high school, but I’d gone to high school in a middle-of-nowhere town outside the city, so the coincidence was bordering on impossible.

  He was straight-backed and built like an athlete. His hair was cut short and dark, and my eyes immediately sank to his mesmerizing lips. He was clearly very passionate about whatever he was saying, but I paid about as much attention to his words as a high schooler at the end of seventh peri
od.

  He was that guy. The guy you dream up when the lights are dimmed, and you're five minutes into a bubble bath. When candles are flickering beside the tub, and you've got a little silky smooth music floating through the air.

  I could’ve authored a few thousand fantasy situations right then and there. Fifty Shades of That Guy. One where I’m standing beside my broken down car on the side of the road—forget the fact that I don’t own a car—and he plants his tattooed hands on the hood and takes a look. “I’m going to need to get under your hood, miss. And it’s going to be a dirty job. And I’ll have to use my biggest tool. My penis. I’m going to have sex with you.” Yeah, my dream guys aren’t very subtle.

  Or maybe I’d be cornered by three hooded men in a dark alley and he’d come in swinging. Once the bad guys were on the floor, he’d scoop me into those chiseled arms and whisper sweet nothings into my ear the whole way back to his apartment.

  “I lost my dentures.”

  It took me an unnerving moment to realize the words hadn’t come from Mr. Fantasy’s lips, but from the infamous Grammy, who had walked up beside me. She was William’s grandmother-in-law, and she was the quintessential misbehaved class clown of the retirement home.

  “O-okay…” I said.

  “And I found Earl’s,” she said, bursting out in laughter as she smiled and flashed a pair of horribly fitting teeth.

  I gagged a little. “Why would you—what?”

  “The bastard beat me in poker last night. Now he’s going to be beating his food into a liquid if he plans to eat.” She cackled again as she hobbled toward her seat. She moved like she was a frail old woman, but I’d seen through her act. She could move with the ease of someone much younger, but she liked to play the part of the sweet old granny because it helped her get away with more of her shenanigans.