Page 3 of Tonight's the Night
1
Joshua
My world isfull of people who are morally bankrupt and ethically deficient and I am no better than any ofthem.
My fist curls around my glass of scotch and I toss it back as I stand from mychair.
“She wants seventy percent.” My client’s voice sounds from the phone on my desk. “Her father talked me out of the prenup the night before the fucking wedding. I’d burn the bitch if she wasn’t finally pregnant. Is there a way to invalidate an agreement if you entered it underduress?”
“Being convinced not to pursue a prenup because you were too distracted snorting coke off a stripper’s ass doesn’t count as being under duress,” I husk, putting my finger in my collar to loosen mytie.
I walk to the window in my office, overlooking the pool and guest house out at the back of my property. This client still lives in Manhattan because he’s only 27 and thinks making seventy grand a month at his firm means he doesn’t have enough money to buy something “good.” I insert my fingers between two of the venetian slats over the window and split them to get a look at what’s going on a story belowme.
“Jesus Christ,” I grit through my teeth, slamming my glass down on my desk. My fists curl at my sides. Angela is doing a back-stroke through my swimming pool and I can see the pebbles of her nipples from here. I am going to hell for the thoughts I’ve had about her for the past year. Since she was young —tooyoung. Hell, she still is. Half my age. A perfect, lithe woman with a ripe youngbody.
I watch as her long limbs work in the water, dipping below the surface and emerging from it like four pendulums. Her movements are lazy and more than a meredistraction.
My client resumes telling me about his latestwoe.
“She knew what this was before she signed up. Why the fuck would anyone marry me if it wasn’t for my money?” heboasts.
“And this is a source of pride for you.” His guffaw rasps into the room. He mistakes my dry insult for a compliment. “Listen to me. Don’t talk to her again. Don’t talk to her attorney. I’m the only one who talks to either of them from nowon.”
“Daddy?”
My daughter’s soft voice sounds from the crack in my open door and is followed by a light, staccato rapping on theframe.
“One second, honey.” I punch the button on my phone to end the call without saying goodbye. Then I wave my daughter into myoffice.
She walks forward, pushing the door to make her way toward a chair facing my desk. I take a seat behind it. The formality is unnecessary but then I see Angela follow her into the room and suddenly the formality isverynecessary.
“Hello,” I say, clearing my throat as the young woman and the source of all the new friction in my life saunters in. Maybe she thinks I don’t see her in a sexual way. Maybe she thinks I don’t remember what happened between us a year ago. Maybe she thinks I don’t want her — my nineteen-year-old daughter’s nineteen-year-old friend. If that’s what she thinks, she is beyondwrong.
I’ve never been proud of having casual sex, but it’s not something I’m ashamed of, either. Since the divorce I’ve been getting to work on me, which means I give myself what I want, when I want it, and I’m not shy about going after whatever the hell that is. My wife left me - she had an affair with one of my business partners, in fact - and the quiet family man and slightly nerdy divorce attorney I once was shed his skin over the course of several months when my brother started insisting I come out with him and indulge in some of the more carnal pleasures that he had been advocating for all through our young adultlives.
And as long as the women knew what they were getting into, I was okay with whatever happened between us. And what they were getting into - a relationship that would last only one night - was a firm boundary I’d set after my divorce. Emily lived with me, my ex-wife and I getting fifty-fifty custody, and I didn’t want women coming into and going out of her life. I got to a place where I don’t even blame my ex-wife for leaving me anymore. I was too focused on work and too focused on being a good provider that I’d neglected the woman I should have been providing for in more ways than justfinancially.
That night a year ago, I knew the girls were in the guest house. I’d suspected they’d also snuck some boys in there, but I knew that with Angela around there would be an external check on any sort of mischief their group of friends would get into. Angela, the voice of reason, was always the girl in their friend group who cautioned her peers against excess. When my daughter had her first boyfriend, Angela was their joint plus-one at all academic or social events. When my daughter was experimenting with makeup, Angela opted only for a slathering of sunscreen out at the pool and questioned the sense in putting on makeup just to sit around. Emily wanted to lounge with a magazine; Angela wanted toswim.
Angela was always conservative but now she looks liberal, in every sense of the word. She looks free and happy but with a tight coil inside her that is just waiting to spring open. Maybe a year away at college did this toher.
She walks into my office in her bikini, her long brown hair matted against her back as though she’d only run the most perfunctory pass through it or maybe not toweled it off at all.Tease.The bikini she’s wearing is bordering on obscene, and it’s not just because it’s made of a series of strings and small pieces of fabric that leave little to the imagination. Every smooth curve of her body, every taut inch of sun-kissed skin is barely covered and where it is there’s merely a scrap of fabric or a thinstring.
And the bikini is white, as though to make her glowing, tanned skin all the more tempting. Droplets of water slide down her shoulders and her smooth, taut stomach, down to the edge of the bikini bottom that is hanging a little too low on her hips. I don’t have to look straight at her to guess that she’s waxed, though my mouth waters when I wonder just how bare she is. She must be partially waxed, at least — the line of her bikini is too low and shows off too much skin, skin that would absolutely be covered with a dusting of hair had she not removedit.
The top of the bikini barely contains her two small, tear-drop shaped breasts, hanging high on her chest as though they defy gravity. The string of the triangle top is tied around her neck, yes, but the material looks so loose as to not be serving any actualfunction.
She smiles at me as she slides her wet bikini-covered ass into a chair across mydesk.
“What are you girls up totonight?”
“We’re going to a party,” my daughter sings, bobbing her head left and right. “It’s just a little reunion and then we’re going to sleep over at Angela’shouse.”
I breathe a sigh of relief. I know that Angela’s aunt is an absolute hard-ass and will demand the girls be back at her house and in bed before midnight and that they won’t get into any trouble. She’s absent-minded, yes, but she’sserious.
My daughter is responsible but with a mild wild streak that her best friend lacks and I’ve kept myself on an even keel for her benefit. Hence keeping my one-night stands far away from her and setting as good an example for how a woman should be treated as possible. I want her to demand more from her husband than I gave my wife - and part of that means showing her an amicable divorce, coexisting and coparenting peacefully with my ex, and being respectful of women — and that means using discretion and being clear aboutexpectations.
My eyes track from my daughter’s to Angela’s. I know my relief that the girls are staying at Angela’s house tonight isn’t just the outcome of wanting to know my daughter will be well taken care of and will be continuing her track record of being responsible; I know it’s also because I don’t want to think about Angela being in the arms of any other man besidesme.
