Friday Night Chicas Read online

  “Just in case you were wondering, this is Tyler’s place,” he said behind me.

  “I’d never have guessed. What about your place?”

  He hid his hands in his pockets. “I’m living here for now. Can I get you—?”

  “No, thanks.”

  “—something to drink?”

  “Sorry.”

  “No, it’s OK.”

  With my track record, there shouldn’t be any breakables in the near vicinity. “Great place.”

  He looked around, his hands in his pockets. “It is.”

  “Is your brother okay with us … with me being here?”

  “He’s not here right now for me to ask.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “It’s fine.”

  “I don’t do this very oft—I mean, at all.” Why I didn’t keep my mouth shut, I’ll never know. “Do you?”

  He shook his head.

  “So what now?” There was a little voice in my head that sounded like Lydia screaming at me to shut up and kiss him.

  Sebastian licked his lips, staring down at the top of the sofa that separated us. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

  “Yes,” I answered a little too eagerly. I took a breath. “I wouldn’t be up here if I didn’t.”

  He seemed to be wrestling with some uncertainty. “You’re real honest, you know that?”

  Not knowing where he was going with this, I crossed one foot over the other and answered the best I could. “I try to be.”

  I saw his shoulders rise with the breath he took in and then settle back down. “Hold that thought.”

  He swiftly turned and crossed the room to one of those sleek CD players mounted on the wall. The sounds of a piano filled the room around us, followed by a tender guitar and a contemplative cello. He came back to take my purse out of my hands and the rest of me in his arms.

  Norah Jones’s voice sang about a carousel and a clown, as he kissed me back into that sensual place where it was just him and me, a boy and a girl with the music and the city lights glittering beyond the windows.

  “I like dancing with you,” he murmured.

  I shushed him as I slid his hands around my waist.

  Sebastian smiled down at me and, my lips tickling with nerves, I smiled back. Taking his time, he slid his hands up my back and with his fingers he gently held my face to the light, kissing my forehead, temples, cheeks, and chin until he arrived at my lips. His savored mine and then I opened them for him to taste my tongue.

  A moan slipped out of him and into me.

  He backed me away from the living room and I broke the kiss to see where we were going. “Hey.” His fingers whispered into my hair. “Besame,” he said in Spanish.

  I unbuttoned his shirt and then yanked it out of his pants. That brilliant rush of power lit through me as we passed out of the light and into the shadows of his bedroom. I slid my hands over his hot skin and paused over the metal loop around his right nipple.

  “Oh,” I murmured, drawing a circle around it. “This is a surprise.”

  “There’s a long story where that came from,” he said, faceless in the dark. Without those eyes of his taking in everything, I felt even more powerful.

  “You can tell me later.” Ever so gently I tugged it and his breath hitched. “You like that, huh?”

  His hands tightened over the caps of my shoulders.

  His nipples beaded and I pinched, teased, and pulled at them until he rubbed himself against me.

  “Goddamn,” he hissed, fisting his hands in my hair and then giving me an open-mouthed kiss. This was the first time I was making a guy wild for me and the sensation made me hungry to do more to him. But he twisted away when I reached for his chest.

  Coming up for breath, he asked, “Are you leaving as soon as this is over?”

  I didn’t like that he used “this” to describe what we were doing. Then again it was exactly what it was. There really wasn’t an “us” or “we.”

  “Not if you don’t want me to,” I said.

  “I don’t want you to.”

  And then I did what I’d never done before, made love to a man I’d met just a few hours before.

  With the men before him—not that there had been many—I always welcomed them on top of me, with promises and expectations on my mind.

  But with Sebastian I devoured the man. Not that he complained either time. We met flesh to flesh, moving from moment to moment with nothing on my mind except multiple orgasms.

  And when we curled together, fingers intertwined, I fell asleep with a little curve to my lips, knowing that I’d just made love without falling in love.

  Chapter Eight

  Men will do and say anything to get you on your back. And when they’re done, you’re tainted goods.

  —Lydia to Isela

  I rolled out of Sebastian’s arms, trying to regain my balance in the murky morning light that filtered through the sheer curtains. I looked back down at him, curled up to the indent my body made in the mattress.

  My spine bowed as I sighed. I didn’t know if I should congratulate myself for a job well done, or kick myself for something incredibly stupid.

  That would depend if Sebastian woke up as the same cool guy I’d met last night.

  The ding of the elevator echoed in the cavernous loft. My heart seized to a stop. Tyler.

  I smacked one hand over my left breast and peered over the bed for my dress. It lay on the floor where the carpet met the hardwood floor, my panties not that far behind. Only a reed partition secluded us from the living room.

  Keys rang against a tabletop and I fled to the bathroom.

  Leaning against the rippled glass door, I felt a freak-out erupt in full force. I did not want to meet Tyler as the girl Sebastian brought home last night. Shit, shit SHIT!

  The marble floor felt like glazed ice as I hopped over to the sink. How was I going to do this? My hands shook from the horror of saying hi to Tyler Banks while picking my clothes up off the floor.

  The first time I ever broke all of my rules to be with this incredible guy, this is what happens. God was punishing me for this. Unlike Lydia, my one-night stand wouldn’t end up as my husband or as the father of my child. Mine would be a catastrophy.

  Taking a deep breath against the panic that threatened to strangle me, I leaned against the cold granite counter. On the other side of the door, my cell phone sang from wherever I left my purse.

  “Isela?” Sebastian called, his silhouette looming through the glass door. He gently rapped with his knuckle. “I think your phone’s ringing.”

  I twisted one of the towels off the rack and wrapped myself up. The door handle turned. With wild-woman hair and mascara raccooning my eyes, I was about to live my worst nightmare.

  “Isela, can I come in?” Sebastian asked through the crack in the door. I twisted on the faucet, gasping when the stone-cold water filled the palms of my hands.

  “Hey there,” he said. Over the rush of the water I heard his bare feet padding over the floor and stop right behind me.

  “Hi,” I said between slaps of cold water over my face. “Would you get my dress?”

  “Yeah, sure. Look I need to—”

  “I’m not letting you see me like this. So go get my dress and I’ll come out.”

  Sebastian switched off the faucet. I looked up but water dripped in my eyes.

  “Okay, now you know what I look like in the morning,” I joked. But he didn’t laugh or even grin. Sebastian just stood there in his boxers. He opened his mouth to say something, but nothing came out.

  “My brother’s home,” he said.

  “But it’s okay that we’re here, right?”

  He didn’t even look at me. Rejection pierced right through the center of me.

  Sebastian wasn’t man enough to say that he wanted me to leave quietly. He looked like the guy I’d met last night, except not in the eyes. Unlike last night, his eyes now told me nothing.

  “Go get my dres
s,” I said, not letting him see what that did to me. Casually I reached for a Kleenex and rubbed mascara off my skin, like there’d been plenty of morning afters for me.

  He reached for my bare shoulder. I jerked away from him.

  His eyes met mine briefly. “Stay here,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”

  And then he left me alone, closing the door behind him.

  * * *

  After Sebastian wordlessly handed me my clothes and shut the bathroom door, I waited for God knows how long to get the courage to walk out.

  But Sebastian wasn’t sitting on his bed waiting when I ducked out the bathroom door. I thought about hiding here and then decided, fuck it. I’m not walking down the service stairs or scurrying to the elevator when the coast was clear.

  If Sebastian was ashamed of last night, then that was his damn problem.

  With shallow breaths, I marched into the main room.

  “Oh hi,” Tyler said, when he looked up from his newspaper and saw me standing there.

  My heart never raced so fast. “Good morning.”

  His smile was friendly. He was buffer than Sebastian and darker in the way that surfers are. But the brothers had the same sun-streaked hair and green eyes.

  And unlike his wimpy brother who I never let be on top last night, there was no judgment in his eyes. “Do you want some coffee?” he invited.

  I grinned sadistically, almost eager for Sebastian to walk out and find me making small talk with his brother. “Yes, please.”

  Sebastian didn’t know who he was dealing with, thinking he could woo me and then hustle me out the door like someone whose name he forgot.

  The muscles in Tyler’s back rippled when he reached for a cup. “Ty should be out in a second,” he said. “He had to take a call from his agent or someone like that.”

  I stared down at the coffee he placed in front of me. Maybe I heard him wrong.

  “I didn’t know he was seeing anyone,” Tyler said. I looked back up and he paused to wipe the back of his hand over his washboard stomach and then held it out to me. “Oh, sorry, I’m Sebastian.”

  I went completely still.

  When I didn’t take his hand he cocked his chin up. “Are you okay?”

  I couldn’t even breathe much less ask if this was a joke. But it had to be a joke. No way could this be for real.

  This guy was going to crack any moment and admit he was really Tyler, so that the brother I slept with last night was really Sebastian and—

  “Hey, Sebastian, could you give me a moment with Isela?” That came from the guy I’d slept with, who now stood at the other end of the counter from me.

  Well, at least he remembered my name.

  Chapter Nine

  Mom says men and women can’t be friends. You know what I think? I think she’s full of crap.

  —Isela to Lydia when their mom found out she had a male roommate

  I got as far as the entry hall when Sebas—I mean—Tyler called my name.

  I hopped up and down, pulling on my shoe. The other one I’d aimed at his head when the world finally righted itself after I absorbed the shock.

  “Hold on a second,” he said behind me.

  I stabbed the elevator button, keeping my back to him.

  “Isela, please let me—”

  With a quick pivot I snatched my shoe out of his hands and shoved my foot in it. My throat felt stuffed with the rage and the humiliation that boiled in me. I couldn’t have asked for the fucking shoe if I tried.

  “I meet a lot of people. A lot. And I don’t always click with them. I swear I’ve never done anything like this and I know I should’ve told you the truth last night—”

  “That’s what they all say, you miserable fuck,” I said, stabbing the elevator button so it would arrive faster.

  He blinked in surprise. “Please don’t go like this.”

  “Just stay away from me.”

  One moment I was facing the elevator door and then I spun. I jerked to a stop, and he held me by both arms. My purse clattered to the floor. I countered with a left hook, which he dodged and then caught with his strong hand.

  “Get off of me!” My voice bounced off the walls around us.

  “Just listen to me.”

  With all of my might I thrust him back. Not caring that all along he was the one who could give my career a second chance, or that his brother listened from the kitchen, or that my voice traveled up two octaves with the strain of speaking past my tight throat. But I really let him have it. Except it might not have come out very clearly because everything just poured out of me: my mindless jobs, my missed opportunities, my embarrassment that I’d thought he was ashamed of me earlier in the bathroom.

  The elevator doors whooshed open.

  When I was done, I breathed like I’d just run a mile.

  “Isela, I tried to tell you but I didn’t want it to—” he said in a voice weighted with guilt. “I am so sorry.” He bent down, picked up my purse, and handed it to me.

  I snatched it back. “So am I.” I spun to the elevator and walked in, holding on to this much of whatever dignity I had left.

  My back hit the wall of the elevator as I hid behind the panel and punched the lobby button in a frantic staccato.

  Just as the doors shut, a tiny blip of hope made me wish he’d slip through and beg for my forgiveness. I blinked back my tears and the elevator gave way to the lobby.

  I’d flown so high last night, caught up in the moment of him and all this bullshit fantasy. And for a second there I was so full of myself for screwing that asshole’s brains out. Yeah, I was real hot shit.

  A piece of my nail flew off and pinged off the brushed metal handrail, but I wrestled my purse open and got my phone.

  Lydia picked up on the first ring. “Isela?”

  “It’s me.”

  “I’ve been waiting all morning for you—”

  My breath hitched and I clapped my hand over my mouth too late.

  “What’s wrong?” she demanded. “Where are you?”

  “In the elevator,” I managed.

  “What elevator? Do I need to call nine-one-one?”

  “No.” I sniffed and wiped my tears away. I wasn’t shedding any tears for him. “I slept with him.”

  “You did—” She gasped. “The brother?”

  “No.”

  “Huh?”

  I quickly explained everything.

  “Hold on,” she said, and I heard her running. Some more rustling and then she came back on. “Okay. Explain that to me again. You slept with the real one, but he said he was his brother?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Was he good?”

  “Jesus, I knew I shouldn’t have called you.”

  “Don’t hang up! Shit!” Something tumbled in the background.

  “Where the hell are you? Do you have me on speakerphone?”

  “No,” she hissed. “My mother-in-law is here with the baby. I’m in the closet.”

  I’d met her mother-in-law and if I were Lydia, I’d never come out of that closet. “I’ll let you go.”

  “Don’t you dare! So what happened?”

  “I threw your shoe at him.”

  “What!”

  “I got it back.”

  “M’ija, you never throw the shoe. You stab them with the heel.”

  “This isn’t funny. I’m hanging up.” But I clung to the phone. It was second best to the way Lydia would hold me if she were here, and I really needed something or else I’d fall completely apart.

  “Are you going to be okay? Do you need me to come up there?”

  “No.” The thought of her, my mom, and home loosened a tear down my cheek. No one there would lie to me.

  “We can kick that white boy’s ass. Key his car,” she offered.

  My lips trembled as I laughed in spite of myself. We did that to her husband’s Dodge Swinger back when they were still dating and I was just a kid in high school. He never knew it was us. If he had, he never
would’ve married her.

  “And he’s not white,” I explained. “He’s Peruvian.”

  She snorted. “I don’t know no Peruvians and if I ever do, I ain’t gonna like them now.”

  I opened my mouth to say he wasn’t like that but stopped myself. That’s what hurt so bad. Sebastian hadn’t been like that last night. Last night, he’d been perfect.

  “So what are you going to do now?” Lydia asked.

  I took a deep breath and the elevator dinged when it stopped. I didn’t want to think about it. I’d gambled and lost my only chance. All I wanted was a cab, my Supergirl pajamas, and my own bed.

  “Don’t say anything to Mom or the family. Please?”

  “I won’t.” I could tell by the gravity of her voice that she wouldn’t. “You call me when you get home, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  I stepped out into the lobby that smelled like new carpet and wrapped my arms around my body. The sun felt good on my bare skin and I stood there in the square of light before I started to dial 411. God knows how much a cab in L.A. was going to cost. And I hoped the check card I’d stuck in my purse last night had enough to cover it.

  Down the hall a door slammed shut. I turned and there was Sebastian—I mean, Tyler—whipping his head to peer down the hall and back to where I stood. Still barefoot but in his rumpled khaki shorts and Ruby’s T-shirt, he stomped over to me with his hair swinging like some grumpy caveman.

  “At least let me drive you to your car,” he said.

  I might have lost my pride, my dignity and my shoe, but I held onto my silence.

  “Isela, you have to walk through Skid Row to get back to Broadway.”

  I hit Send and then told the information operator, “Los Angeles.”

  “Please, Isela. Let me do this for you.”

  Clenching my jaw, I weighed a free ride versus a cab ride I really couldn’t afford versus walking through Skid Row in a sheer dress with no bra and heels. I mean, come on, when you’re broke and Skid Row separates you from your car, a girl has to think long term in these types of situations.

  So I let him drive me back to my car and a future that probably included working at some wedding video outfit or hocking flammable polyester clothes at Toda Moda.

  “I was going to tell you,” Tyler eventually said, his knuckles white as he gripped the steering wheel. “I tried when we were in the bathroom but I couldn’t. And I told Sebastian to disappear because I didn’t want you to be embarrassed and so you wouldn’t find out like that but he … Are you even listening?”