Pretty In Ink Page 3

  “I’m not at liberty to say, Ma’am. And that is correct, he sent you a car,” he responded with a nod of his head.

  He reached toward me and shook the key fobs as if they were a bell.

  I glanced toward Riley and widened my eyes. As she began to walk in our direction, I shifted my eyes toward the man with the keys. “He rented me a car to drive so I wouldn’t get wet? And what do you mean you’re not at liberty to say? Who the fuck are you?”

  He stood stone-faced with his hands on his hips. “I’m Andrew, an associate of Mr. Wilson’s. And no, Ma’am, he didn’t rent a car. He purchased the car and had me pick it up for you. I was advised to deliver the car to you. Mr. Wilson was afraid the rain may hinder your ride home and prevent you from being on time for your meeting later this evening.”

  “So you’re giving me this car to drive so I don’t get wet?” I asked, attempting to contain my excitement.

  As much as I was against cars and associated them with confinement, living in Kansas was a far cry from living in San Diego, and not having a car was proving to be impossible.

  “No Ma’am. Not exactly. It appears Mr. Wilson purchased the car for you. He was under the understanding you didn’t have a car, and he wanted you to be able to get out of the weather. He said…” He paused and glanced down at his feet.

  As he shifted his eyes upward, he continued. “He said it was the closest he could get to providing you with San Diego’s weather.”

  “So you’re giving her a car?” Riley asked as she reached for the keys.

  He pulled the keys toward his chest. “No Ma’am. Mr. Wilson is giving her a car. I’m sorry, there’s a cab waiting, and I need to get back to the office. Mr. Wilson’s card is in the passenger seat. You may call him if you have any further questions.”

  I glanced at Riley and grinned. As strange as it seemed, I extended my open hand and shifted my eyes toward Andrew. He released the keys into my hand, nodded his head, and turned toward the door.

  “It’s the white coupe parked by the door,” he said over his shoulder.

  I glanced down at the two key fobs.

  BMW.

  Riley looked up with wide eyes after studying the keys. “Uhhm, those are keys to a BMW.”

  “I can see that,” I said as I walked toward the window.

  “So the guy you met at the grocery store bought you a fucking car?” Riley asked.

  I shrugged my shoulders.

  She chuckled, covered her mouth, and turned to face me. “You sucked his cock, didn’t you?”

  “No I didn’t suck his fucking cock,” I snapped back. “He just gave me a ride.”

  It was slightly out of character for me not to suck his cock, but for some reason I hadn’t. Maybe it was because it was ten o’ clock in the morning, and I hadn’t been drinking yet. One predictable pattern of mine was that sex seemed to always follow the consumption of alcohol.

  With Riley at my side, I stood and peered through the glass. A white two door BMW sat beside the curb in front of the shop. The window sticker from the dealership was still on the passenger side window. Without speaking I walked to the front door of the shop, opened it, and waited for Riley. Together we walked to the curb and stared at the car. After studying the key fob for a moment, I pressed the button to unlock the car.

  “Get in,” I said as I opened the driver’s side door.

  The inside of the car was a combination of light tan and black, and smelled of new leather. In slight shock, I sat in the seat and stared at the gear selector. A short but confusing moment later, I leaned back in the seat and stared down at the pedals.

  As Riley got into the passenger side of the car she handed me a business card, obviously the one Wilson had left on the seat of the car for me. The name “Wilson” and a phone number were all that was on the card. It was simple but mysterious in an odd sense. Maybe it was because I wanted it to be. I dropped the card into the center console, turned to face Riley, and shrugged my shoulders.

  “It’s a stick shift, but there’s no clutch pedal,” I said as I glanced around, trying to make sense of the many dials and levers. “How the fuck do you make it go?”

  “It’s just like mine,” Riley said.

  Riley’s ex bought her a new BMW for her birthday, and when they separated, she kept the car. She seemed to love driving it, and her knowledge of the futuristic spaceship-like cockpit would certainly be useful to someone used to riding nothing but a bicycle.

  “It’s a manual shift with no clutch pedal. It’s fun. See those paddles on the steering wheel?” she asked as she motioned toward the center of the steering wheel.

  On each side of the center of the steering wheel was a small silver lever. The one on the left was clearly marked with a minus symbol, and the one on the right with a plus symbol. After studying them for a moment, I nodded my head.

  “The one on the left shifts down and the one on the right shifts up. You just click them up and down, and there’s no clutch pedal, the levers do it all,” Riley explained.

  “No shit?” I asked.

  Riley opened the door, stepped onto the sidewalk and leaned into the car. “Let’s lock the shop and go for a drive.”

  I continued to glance around the car, nodding my head mindlessly as I tried to make sense of everything. A few minutes later Riley opened the door, lowered herself into the seat, and buckled her seatbelt.

  I had always explained how I hated cars, and rode my bicycle to make a statement regarding my opinion of the freedom it represented. As much as I did enjoy riding my bike in California, riding it in Kansas was an entirely different experience. The wind, varying temperatures, and rain made riding it on a daily basis almost impossible. For me to buy a car, however, would have been impossible. My rent, utilities, and booth rental at the shop was about all I could currently afford. To think some man I didn’t even know had bought me a car was impossible for me to comprehend, but him allowing me to use it for the afternoon wasn’t so much of a stretch.

  “Ready?” Riley asked.

  I buckled my seat belt, turned her direction, and shrugged my shoulders. I knew how to drive, but it had been a long time since I had done so. The futuristic cockpit of the BMW made me a little nervous to say the least. Riley having one and knowing the intricacies of it helped make me slightly more comfortable.

  “Yeah,” I said as I looked at the rectangular key fob.

  There was no key on the fob.

  “As long as the key is in your pocket or purse or whatever, all you do is push the button on the dash. It’ll start it. And you push it again to shut it off when you’re done. So, push the button and start it,” she said.

  I pushed the button on the dash and started the car. The low rumble from the engine echoed against the long line of brick buildings along the street. The rain had all but stopped for the time being, but the windshield was covered in droplets from sitting outside from what had now been no less than fifteen minutes. As I nervously searched for the windshield wipers, Riley reached over and pressed a lever on the right side of the steering wheel. I glanced up in time to see the wipers wipe the windshield once.

  “They sense the rain in that mode,” she said. “If it starts raining, they’ll wipe it off.”

  As strange as it seemed, I was nervous. “So…”

  Riley reached toward the lever in the center of the car and wiggled it.

  “Just push the gas, and flip those little levers up and down. You’ll get the hang of it here pretty quick,” she said.

  I situated my foot against the accelerator pedal, checked over my left shoulder for traffic, and pressed the pedal down after seeing no traffic approaching. The car felt as if it had been shot out of a cannon, lurching into the street with so much force it pressed my body into the seat. Within an instant, the engine was revving so high the sound from the exhaust was a loud shrill.

  I pulled against the lever on the right side of the steering wheel. The car lurched forward once again and the RPM’s came down slightl
y. I pulled the lever again and the car lunged slightly and the engine slowed down to a light drone. I glanced down at the speedometer.

  In the few seconds of driving, and without doing anything but trying to pull away from the curb, I was going 80 miles an hour.

  “Shit,” I shouted as I pressed against the brake.

  Riley laughed. “You’ll get used to it.”

  Living on the cusp of being poor white trash and seeing he clearly lived somewhere in complete contrast made me believe the differences between Wilson and me were enough that I would never get used to the things he may do to, for, or with me.

  However.

  I was anxious to find out.

  WILSON

  I doubt many thirty year old men worried about what their parents thought regarding the woman they were going on a date with, but I couldn’t seem to keep from doing so. As a child, my parents were protective of me, and as an adult they weren’t necessarily protective, but they were certainly eager to learn about my every move and decision when it came to women.

  I was still, and would probably always remain, their little boy.

  Their expressed belief of their hopes – or requirements – regarding my choice of female companions prevented me from being in a meaningful relationship for my younger years based solely on my fear of disappointing them alone. My own fear of making a decision which could ultimately crush me financially, or the possibility of encountering a gold digger who was much less interested in me than she was my finances all but prohibited me from acting on my infrequent sexual desires as an adult.

  And then I met Stevie.

  After I dropped her off and drove to my office all my common sense and fear of parental retribution seemed to be cast aside. I found myself all but dwelling on her current situation and not having a vehicle in what appeared to be the beginning of a three day rainstorm. As fate would have it, it was enough of an issue for me to act on it.

  There was no doubt I could have done things differently. I could have very easily rented her a car, provided her with a far less expensive car, or even given her one of my own vehicles to use, but I did not.

  I believed in looking back on how I handled the situation, I was no different than most extremely wealthy men. I wanted to be recognized as being so. As pretentious as it may seem to others for me to have sent her a new BMW, in reality it wasn’t pretentious at all. My current financial status would have allowed me to send her half of a dozen similar cars without noticing the deficit from my personal account. I was an extremely wealthy man, and I wasn’t acting beyond my financial means. If anything, I probably should have sent her a new Ferrari.

  Never having felt the way I felt about Stevie seemed quite out of place considering my knowledge of her, but that lack of knowledge was partially to blame for my reaction. I wanted to know more about her, and for whatever reason, I felt a burning desire to take care of her at any or all costs.

  Now concerned with my parent’s reaction to my decision, but harboring zero regret, I pulled into the driveway of her home. Although I had already made a mental note of the fact she had no garage, seeing the vehicle sitting out in the weather was a reminder of her lack of some of the luxuries I took for absolute granted.

  Dressed in jeans, leather loafers, and a V-neck tee shirt, felt slightly out of sorts, but not nearly as out of sorts as I felt picking up a girl for a date. My stomach was a mess, my face felt flush, and my nerves were on edge.

  I turned off the ignition, swallowed my mint, and opened the door. Before I was able to step from the car, Stevie walked out onto the porch, turned to face me, and smiled. She wasn’t dressed in jeans and a tee shirt, and if she didn’t previously own clothes to match what I was wearing when we met, she had apparently gone out and purchased some.

  Dear Lord, please allow this woman to see me for who I am, and not what I appear to be.

  As she stepped from the porch and began walking toward me, I stood and stared, incapable of doing much else. Somehow, however, I managed to stumble toward the other side of the vehicle and open the door. Standing beside the car with my mouth agape and my mind reeling from newfound understanding of her natural beauty, I gazed in her direction with wide eyes and a rapidly beating heart.

  She leaned a little closer, raised her hand to my chin, stood on her tip-toes, and kissed me on the cheek.

  And my heart stopped completely.

  STEVIE

  There are books available that give step-by-step instructions on how to build a nuclear bomb, plumb a house, or assemble a complete car from a kit. Computer science, mechanical engineering, and how to groom a dog are even explained in detail in the pages of books. There is no such literature, however, that gives detailed information on how to properly choose a mate – leaving the decisions on doing so to me – and so far, my choices were pretty sad. I had always felt I should be able to live life, and in the process, meet someone who was fully compatible with me, fall in love, get married, and live happily ever after.

  Wishful fucking thinking.

  The way a man was capable of making me feel in the first time we had sex, only to fade into complete nothingness when he wouldn’t return my text messages two weeks later, led me to believe something was wrong with me. It didn’t take long for me to learn that all men treated women the same way, and that I wasn’t being singled out nor was I excluded.

  It was just men being men.

  Eventually I realized that I, like every other woman on this earth, had fallen victim to a man simply doing what it was that he was destined to do.

  Use women.

  Still, I hoped. Sooner or later, I figured I’d find a man who would treat me right, or at least come close. I had been with Bart for a longer period of time than anyone, but after a few years his true colors were painfully obvious. Even through the beatings, I still hoped things would eventually change. I told myself it was the price I had to pay for being in a relationship, and I was even willing to pay it, at least for a while.

  One day I decided black eyes and a broken heart was too high of a price to pay for anything.

  Bad boys. Alpha males. Tattoos. Loud motorcycles. Rough sex. These were the things I was attracted to. Considering my loss record was at one hundred percent with my previous choices in men, I decided to give Wilson a try. He was obviously different, and in addition to the differences I was able to clearly see, I hoped he possessed differences deep down inside that I was unable to see.

  But my gut told me in time he was sure to end up being like all the rest.

  “What do you feel like eating?” he asked.

  His hair looked like he ran his hands through it and raked it out of his eyes. It was thick and brown and his closely shaved face had transformed into a full day’s growth of beard, probably from not having time to shave before he came to get me. All things considered, he looked marvelous. Instead of staring at him and making him think I was some kind of weirdo, I chose to look out the window and have him believe I was hard to get.

  I shrugged my shoulders and stared out the side window. “I don’t know.”

  I hated making decisions. I preferred the man make the decisions and tell me where we were going to go, what we were going to do, and what we would eat. In my mind, it was his job. And it was my job to grin and comply with his wishes.

  “I have a pretty broad palate,” he said. “I can eat just about anything.”

  “Donuts,” I murmured as I turned to face him.

  He shifted his eyes from the road toward me and slowly raised one eyebrow. “Excuse me?”

  “Donuts. I want donuts,” I said.

  His face washed over with surprise. “For dinner?” he asked.

  I nodded my head.

  Fuck it. I’ll find out really quick if he’s a prick or if he’s not.

  “Donuts it is,” he said as he glanced over his shoulder and changed lanes.

  “Ever had donuts for dinner?” I asked.

  “Can’t say that I have,” he responded with a shake of
his head.

  “Me neither,” I said. “But they sound good.”

  “They do sound good. I can’t even tell you the last time I had a donut,” he said.

  As his hair fell down into his eyes, he brushed it back with his hand as if it were second nature. The more I looked at him, the more I decided I really didn’t like bikers. I liked the thought of a biker, but I liked looking at Wilson, and I liked looking at him a lot. He was pretty in a manly kind of way and I was beginning to really enjoy it.

  “Chocolate Long John,” I said. “Best donut ever.”

  “Jelly-filled are my favorites,” he said as he turned the corner. “When I was a kid my mother used to bring them home…”

  He shook his head and gazed through the windshield as if remembering something magical from his childhood. His hair fell into his eyes again, but he didn’t bother to brush it away. After a long moment, he turned toward me and smiled.

  My heart fluttered a little.

  “Donut dinner,” he said. “I like it.”

  Earlier, as I sat at home and waited for him to arrive, I had visions of a nice night out. I had no idea what he had planned, but considering his career, his apparent wealth, and the fact it was our first date, I expected he would make an effort to impress me. Although he might not realize it, taking me to a donut dinner was doing just that.

  I shifted my eyes back to the side window and gazed out at the passing vehicles. After a few moments, he brought up the car, which was something I felt I needed to talk to him about, but really didn’t want to.

  “I’m guessing you found the vehicle satisfactory?” he asked.

  Still staring out the window, I responded. “I did, but seriously. I can’t accept it. I don’t know what you were trying to do, but you don’t even know me. You can’t just give me a car to drive.”

  “I most certainly can,” he said.

  I glanced over my shoulder. Sitting with both hands on the steering wheel and a smirk on his face, he shifted his eyes away from the road and studied me for a moment.

  “You look remarkable,” he said.