Submission: Guilty Pleasures #3 (BBW Erotic Romance) (6 page)

“You know, Leslie, that’s fine.
Don’t tell me. I won’t pry it out of you. But for all this time that I’ve been
seeing Jake, when I told you there were things I couldn’t discuss, you managed
to make me feel guilty for not telling you, because you were my friend. And
because I felt guilty, I told you things I really wish now I hadn’t said.” I
stopped for a breath. My voice had risen, taking on that tone I hate, the tone
I get when I’m on a roll, apparently enraptured with the sound of my own
righteous voice.

 “Abby, it’s not the same...”
Leslie looked back at me with wide eyes.

“How is it not the same?
Confidentiality is confidentiality, whether it’s you in HR or me with a request
from Jake. It’s exactly the same. But you have some deep need to get all the
juicy details out of me, now that I actually have some. And I’m finally fed up
with it.”

I watched as Leslie stood,
silently gathering her lunch, her coffee, moving to the door. She stopped,
speaking to me without turning around.

“I know you’re under a lot of
stress right now, Abby. I’m hoping that outburst was a result of that and not
something else. Let’s just pretend we didn’t have this conversation.”

She was gone before I could say
anything, the only thing left behind the smell of her coffee. I massaged my
temples, willing myself to push the encounter out of my mind, for now. I had
enough things to drive me crazy and this, at this moment, wasn’t something I
could dwell on. I was being a lousy friend, but I had to trust that my
friendship with Leslie could withstand the other issues complicating my life.

––––––––

L
ate that afternoon, as I was
diligently working through my emails, the phone rang. I prickled at the
interruption, contemplated letting it go to voice mail but decided to answer
it, thinking it might be Leslie. In hindsight, I’m not sure it was such a good
idea.

It was Stacy.

“Abby, I know I told Chase I
wasn’t going to get in the middle of his personal business, and I’m not. But I
am getting into the middle of yours.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I’ve talked to Jane.”
There was a moment of silence.

My heart was thumping
uncomfortably in my chest. I closed my eyes, not wanting to hear what Stacy had
to say, but powerless to stop her.

“Abby, I think we should talk.
Come to the club.”

––––––––

“C
hase is never here on
Thursdays.” Stacy met me at the street door, sensing my hesitation.

She led me into Chase’s office,
pointing to one of the chairs in front of his desk. I sat down, remembering the
first time I’d come here, to Chase’s club. I’d sat in this same chair,
immediately drawn to him, knowing then on some level I was playing with fire,
just not realizing how all-consuming that fire would be.

“When did you talk to Jane?”

Stacy was sitting in Chase’s
chair, looking even more petite behind his big desk.

“She came to the club on Sunday
night. We talked a little bit, nothing unusual, nothing out of the ordinary. I
was busy...Chase had taken the weekend off last minute, said he was exhausted. So
I was riding herd on the masses.” She made a dismissive gesture with her hand.

“No big deal, but I didn’t have a
whole lot of time to talk with her. But then, out of the blue, she called me at
home this morning. Said she had something to tell me...almost like she couldn’t
wait to spit it out.”

Stacy hesitated a beat, holding my
gaze. “She told me she was seeing Jake again.”

I’m pretty sure the shock was
evident on my face; it usually is.

“You’re kidding? Or she’s lying?
Please tell me it’s a joke or something...anything.”

I thought back to the last time I
saw Jake, leaving him on Saturday morning...after spending the night. I thought
we’d come so far, he’d finally been honest with me, completely honest when he
said he hadn’t wanted to find Jane, wasn’t interested in seeing her again. How
had that changed?

“Did she say when he saw her?” My
voice was shaky, my palms suddenly clammy.

“Saturday night. At that dive
where she works. She said he was waiting for her when she got there to start
her shift. Stayed there until she got off work.”

A frown creased Stacy’s forehead.
“Abby, that’s not all. She said he slept with her...that night. And a couple
times since.”

A couple of times? My face felt
numb, my lips struggling to form words. “It’s only Thursday.”

Stacy nodded. “Yeah, I know. I did
the math. As near as I could tell, from what she’s said, he’s been seeing her
almost every day since Saturday night.”

She leaned forward. “But you have
to know that this is Jane; sometimes what she says and reality aren’t quite the
same.”

“Do you think she’s lying?” Maybe
there was a glimmer of hope.

Stacy shook her head. “No, not
this time, not about seeing Jake, I mean. But she may be exaggerating a bit,
blowing it up to more than it is, or have her days mixed up. I think she’s
still using, which is why Chase keeps an eye on her, or has me do that, when
she’s here. It’s why I knew about Jake in the first place, when she was his
sub. And why I do tell Chase about her, what she said about Jake. He calls her
a loose cannon and he’s not far off the mark.”

I shook my head. None of this made
sense. Then something else, something very ugly reared its head.

“Stacy, did she say he was
sleeping with her or she’d gone back to being his submissive?”

Stacy grew serious. “Oh. Abby, she
said she was sleeping with him. As in, just sex, not as a sub.”

My heart was pounding so hard I
could hear it in my head. I must have looked devastated. Stacy came around the
corner of the desk, wrapping an arm around my shoulder.

“Oh, Abby. Honey, I’m sorry.” She
hugged me, her tough as nails exterior slipping away briefly.

“If any man did that to me, he’d
be out of my life for good.”

––––––––

I
called Jane’s number when I got
home from work on Friday, not really knowing what I wanted to say, other than I
wanted to see her again. Why I wanted to torture myself, I didn’t know. Maybe I
wanted her to tell me Stacy was full of shit. But I didn’t think that was the
case.

She didn’t sound surprised to hear
from me. “I knew you’d call, knew you’d want to check up on Jake. You’re that
kind of girl. Yeah, if you want, you can come talk to me.” She gave me an
address in a dismal part of town. When I found the building, it was just as
dismal as its neighbors.

I climbed the narrow stairs to the
third floor. It smelled of stale grease and the seemingly ever-present miasma
of cigarette smoke. I couldn’t imagine Jake here, but then again, the Jake I
thought I knew and the Jake I was uncovering seemed to be two vastly different
people.

Jane answered my knock, wearing
only a short robe belted around her waist. The scarlet color set off her pale
skin and raven black hair. Despite myself I instantly compared myself to her:
slender legs, tiny waist, waves of black hair...high cheekbones.
Of course he
likes her; she’s got the perfect body.

She pointed me toward the kitchen
table, pushing aside a stack of magazines and newspapers from one end,
begrudgingly clearing a space for me on the sticky Formica.

“You want coffee? I have some
made, but no creamer. Only some of that artificial sweetener crap.”

I shook my head. “No, nothing.
Thanks.”

“Suit yourself.” Jane sank into
the chair opposite me, fishing a cigarette out of a crumpled pack. She lit a
match, the smell of sulphur filling my nose, followed by the smoke from her
cigarette.

Jane squinted at me through the
blue haze. “So, you know about Jake. Stacy told you, didn’t she?”

She laughed, a rough bark of
sound. “I knew she would.” She tapped the ash from her cigarette into an
overflowing ashtray.

“I don’t go in for deep analysis
of why I do things. Too much shit in there to dig through. But in this case, as
the shrinks would say, my motive was transparent.”

She waved the cigarette at me,
holding it between her slender fingers. “I wanted to know if you two still have
some kind of relationship...have some kind of connection. Figured if I told Stacy
and you called, you were still involved. And by the looks of it, I was right.”

 Her eyes narrowed as she
regarded me through the smoke. “I suppose I should thank you. If you hadn’t
been in the picture, he never would have bothered to come looking for me. Lucky
me.”

There was a long pause while she
took another drag from her cigarette, the end glowing bright red. She blew out
a trail of smoke, leaning forward, watching my face.

“You’re real quiet today, aren’t
you? No questions for Jane, no pitying looks for the poor damaged girl Jake
screwed over. Because now I’m not the girl he screwed over...I’m the girl he’s
screwing.

“And I bet he’s not screwing you
right now, is he?” She sat back, crushing out her cigarette.

“I didn’t come here...”

“Yeah, you didn’t come here to
talk about Abby or Jane. You’re here to talk about Jake. I get it.”

She shook out another cigarette,
holding it unlit between her fingers as she went on.

“So let’s talk about Jake. What do
you want to know this time about Mr. Meyers?”

The match flared again, smoke
rising to join the cloud hovering just below the ceiling. It was hard to
breath; I felt like I was suffocating, from the smoke and from the crushing
weight in my chest.

“When? When did he come find you?”
My voice was steadier than I felt.

“Last Saturday. Found me at the
bar. Either you gave him the name or he remembered I worked there. Either way,
he was waiting when I started my shift. Can’t say I was real surprised he was
there. It’s like that movie...what’s it called? Something Separate Degrees...Six
Degrees of Separation, that’s it.” She exhaled another cloud of smoke toward
the ceiling.

“Except it’s just you and me, and Jake.
Only a few degrees apart.”

Her blue eyes were far sharper
today than they had been at the bar, not red-rimmed, no dark smudges beneath
them, despite the choking cigarette smoke. Jane’s body was almost humming,
vibrating at some high frequency, some frantic energy running through her. I
remembered Stacy had said she had done drugs...still did drugs.

Those blue eyes were locked on
mine now. “And that really pisses you off, doesn’t it?”

“I’d be lying if I said I was happy
about it.” I wasn’t sure where this conversation was going. All I wanted now
was to be away from Jane, from this dingy apartment, from the stinging sense that
I’d been made a fool of by Jake. But I needed one more answer.

Jane gave me a catty smile. “Looks
like the nice girl finishes last here, all dressed in her pretty little skirt
and blouse.”

“That depends.” I took a deep
breath, disregarding the potential for immediately contracting lung cancer.

“Are you his sub, or just a friend
with benefits?” I held her gaze, saw her eyes widen just a fraction. I willed
myself not to blink and for once, bluffed my way through.

Jane sat back, her intensity lessening
slightly. But something else filled the gap.

“I don’t think it would be good
for my mental health if I went back to being Jake’s sub, do you?” She took a
deep drag from the cigarette, crushing the latest on top of the
still-smoldering butt of the previous cigarette.

 “Let’s call us fuck buddies
then. That’s good enough for me and apparently it’s good enough for Jake.”

She blew a stream of smoke in my
face.

I fled the apartment.

––––––––

I
called Chase as soon as I got
home, for no other reason than to hear his voice. It was early, for him; he was
still at the condo.

“Are you okay? Abby, what’s
happened?”

“I saw Jane...” My voice cracked,
tears spilling down my face.

“Abby. Listen to me. You do not go
see her anymore, regardless what Stacy tells you. Jane’s not stable and you’re
not safe. And don’t go seeing Jake either, in some attempt to make this right,
or make sense of it, or whatever you think you should do. Call him, if you need
to talk to him. But don’t go see him. I’d forbid it if I thought it would do
any good, but I know it won’t.” There was a pause.

“I hate to think of you with him,
for any reason. You know that. It drives a knife right through my heart.”

I was crying too hard to reply.

“Abby? Do you hear me?” Chase’s
voice was insistent.

“Yes, Chase. I do.” My voice was
barely a whisper.

“Come here, Abby. Come over to the
condo. I’ll stay home tonight, let Stacy handle the club again. Serves her
right for getting in the middle of this. I have half a mind...”

“Don’t, Chase. Don’t be mad at
Stacy. She’s only trying to help.” I sniffed a little, my tears slowing.

“Fine. But come see me, please. I
don’t care if you’ve decided to never see me again...you’re upset and I don’t
want you to be alone tonight.”

I hesitated briefly.

I did want to see Chase.

This was the end.

There would be no Jake and I. It
was over.

“I’ll be there in a little bit.
There’s something I need to do first.”

“Fine. I’ll call Stacy. Take care
of whatever you need to, do it quick. I’ll be here waiting.”

––––––––

W
hen I pulled up to Jake’s house,
there was a car parked beneath the portico, not one of Jake’s, but a battered
and rusty car of indeterminate make. I parked behind it, running through the
wind-driven rain to the door to the house, ringing the bell.

I peered through the glass of the
door, watching for Jake to appear, ringing the bell again. The wind was blowing
in erratic gusts, fine waves of rain drifting over me, making me shiver.