Page 23 of Games We Play
They lay in silence for another ten minutes. Sloan eventually extinguished her cigarette and suggested they wash up. No cuddling. No pillow talk.
Leah knew this would happen. Although she was prepared for the insinuation that it was time for her to leave, she didn’t think it would come so soon. Yet as soon as she popped out of the bathroom, freshly washed and looking for her clothes, Leah knew a ride home was imminent.
She didn’t expect Sloan to offer her use of the Mercedes. She called Sean the driver and announced that he was to take Leah home as soon as she was ready. This was made more official when Leah admitted she lived only a ten-minute drive away from the hotel. While Sloan sat by the window in nothing but a navy-blue robe, Leah got dressed and patiently waited for Sean’s text that said the car was ready.
“Thank you,” Leah said. Sloan sat with her legs crossed in Leah’s direction. “I mean… thanks for dinner and the ride home. I don’t mean thanks for…”
Sloan put her phone down. With the lights back on, Leah could see every small groove in her lover’s scalp, even though it was covered in a light layer of dark hair. “I know what you mean. Suppose I should thank you as well.”
“What for?”
“For not suing me, of course.”
Leah chuckled. “You’re funny. Why would I sue you for money when getting sex out of you is so much more satisfying?”
Sloan raised her perfect eyebrows, now more stunning when they were the centerpieces of her visage. “Maybe I should be apologizing to you. That wasn’t my best.”
“It wasn’t?”If that was her worst, then sign me up for the rest of my life.“I thought it was great.”
“I promise you, I’m usually much more of a Top in the sack.”
Tingles Leah thought she had shed returned to her skin. “Not sure how you could be. That was… well, it was exactly what I like.”
“I always strive to be better. In every aspect of life.” The text came to her phone. “That’s Sean. Head downstairs and he’ll find you in the lobby. Have a good night, Leah.”
So, that was it, huh? The best sex of Leah’s life, and it was already a memory.Better to have memories than none at all, I guess.Leah left a frigid peck on Sloan’s cheek as she left, never looking back.
It wasn’t until halfway home, when she rode in the back of a Mercedes by herself, that Leah realized she never went back to work that day. Nor had she told anyone in her family that she would be out so late.Mom’s gonna flip.Leah was thirty years old and still afraid of her mother’s wrath when she went sneaking home.
Sure enough, Janet sat in the living room, poring over the monthly finances, when Leah quietly came through the front door and hung her purse up on the nearby hook.
“Where the hell were you?”
Janet could be as aggressive as Sloan, but the differences in tone were striking. One woman made Leah’s toes curl. The other made her blood curdle.
“Sorry. I completely lost track of time after I…” She couldn’t tell the truth. She couldn’t say that she had been irresponsible enough to go out on a random date with a businesswoman andthenwent back to her place for some hot, somewhat kinky sex.Not kinky enough, honestly, but I’m not truly complaining.“After I got back to work. There was a really big order that needed to be finished by tomorrow morning, and I was the only one available to do it.”
Janet sniffed, eyeglasses still pointed at the family ledger. “Don’t scare us like that. Do try to remember to at leasttext,Leah.”
“Us?”
“Karlie’s been asking for you since dinner. She says you brought her home and then disappeared. How could you leave her here like…”
Leah stopped listening. She removed her jacket and headed upstairs to her sister’s room.
Karlie was already asleep, curled up in her twin bed with the covers bunched up around her chin. The heating pad was on her desk chair, near an empty bottle of generic ibuprofen and a fashion magazine.
“Sorry I stayed out so late.” Leah sat on the edge of her sister’s bed and refrained from brushing away the hair on Karlie’s forehead. “You know how it is. You think one thing’s gonna happen, then something else comes up.” Maybe she would try to explain further one day, but not now. Not even if Karlie were wide awake and pain free.
She rolled over in bed, grumbling.
Leah pressed her hand against her sister’s side, feeling the slow and steady breaths of a seventeen-year-old girl on the brink of womanhood.She grew up so fast. Yesterday she was a tiny baby who could fit in one hand.Leah had been there when Karlie was born. She knew what this child had looked like fresh from the womb. Bloody. Screaming. So tiny that she was taken straight to the NICU and kept under observation for three whole weeks. Leah had cried more than Janet.Because I didn’t understand what was happening. I was too young to understand.
She hadn’t wanted to understand, honestly. Those middle school years were like a giant blur now. Trying things she had no right trying. Discovering mature concepts her childlike brain could not handle.Even now, I feel like I’m too young.What kept her feeling so young and immature? Was it being trapped at home? Or was it the people she was trapped with?
I felt like an adult tonight with Sloan.
She would never see Margaret Sloan again. She didn’t live in Portland. She lived in that faraway city called Chicago, a place Leah had never been and had no reason to visit. If their paths crossed again, it would be months or years from now. Sloan wouldn’t recognize her, like she hadn’t that day.
