Stitches by Sam Mariano

4

Griff

I’m entirely too drunkto drive home.

The bar is closing, so that’s bad.

I should call for a ride. Uber or some shit. I squint at my phone, then blink, stumbling over my own feet as I make my way outside. Fuck, I am drunk. I can’t see clearly.

I don’t have the app I need, so I open up the app store, but it seems like a lot of steps. I have to touch the tiny fucking buttons to type in the name, then I’ll have to wait for it to download. I’ll probably need to sign up for an account or some shit.

Too much work. Fuck it.

I swipe away from all that and touch the green contacts icon. I scroll down toward Seb’s name, but I stop at the sight of Moira’s.

I’m drunk enough to tap it.

My head feels so heavy. It lolls back as I wait for the rings to stop. Finally she answers, her tone raspy from sleep. “Hello?”

“Hey, friend,” I say, grinning.

“Griff.” She clears her throat, trying not to sound sleepy. “Hey, what’s up?”

“Can you come pick me up?”

“Of course. Where are you?” Now she sounds urgent, like she’s afraid I beat the shit out of whatever asshole put his dick in my wife and got myself arrested. Not like she can’t bring the bail money considering who she’s married to, but it would still distress her.

“Callahan’s,” I slur, leaning back against the brick storefront. “I can’t drive. Way too drunk.”

“No, don’t get behind the wheel,” she says, and I hear the rustling of fabric. I close my eyes, imagining her pulling on clothes to come get me. That shouldn’t turn me on, but it’s probably the alcohol. I’m an ornery drunk. I should tell her to bring Seb so I don’t say or do anything idiotic when she gets here.

Instead I tell her, “Come alone.”

“Of course,” she answers, like that was a given.

It wasn’t though. I expected her to hesitate, and it almost makes me irrationally annoyed that she didn’t. It makes me feel like she pities me. Oh, poor fucking Griff, couldn’t even keep his wife satisfied so she had to surf a sea of other cocks to get off.

Fuck, that hurts.

And it’s insulting.

And I don’t want Moira to think I can’t please a woman.

“I don’t know why Ashley—It wasn’t because of me,” I tell her.

“Of course it wasn’t,” she agrees, vehemently. “Ashley has her own issues. It’s terrible that she betrayed you and hurt you this way. I want to kick her in the face.”

That makes me grin. “Yeah?”

“Oh yeah,” she says, gaining enthusiasm. “Nair in her shampoo, cut the butt cheeks out of her favorite pants. If it’s petty and mean, I want to do it to her.”

My grin widens. “You’re adorable.”

“I’m not adorable,” she mutters.

“You are. The meanest thing you can think of is cutting the butt cheeks out of her favorite pants. That’s fucking adorable.”

“I opened with kicking her in the face,” she states. “That was mean. And Nair in her shampoo? That’s super mean. Ashley would be ugly without hair. She even looks weird when she pulls her hair back in a pony tail. All of this is purely vicious—totally not adorable.”

“Yeah, with all this badassery, we better lock you up and throw away the key.”

“Damn straight,” she agrees. “Lock up your sons and daughters; I’ll corrupt them all and cut the butt cheeks out of their pants if they piss me off.”

I can’t stop smiling. That’s a nice change from earlier. We sit here for a few minutes in companionable silence. I don’t know how silence can be companionable over the phone, but I just listen as she gathers her things and gets in her BMW. I’m feeling the alcohol hard, but thankfully I have this building here to hold me up.

“Tell me something nice,” I tell her.

“Something nice?” she asks gently. “Like what?”

“I don’t know.”

That’s not helpful, so she has to think about it for a minute. “My sister finally had her baby. It was a girl. They named her Layla. I’ll show you a picture when I pick you up; she’s so adorable. Looking at it gives me just a touch of baby fever.”

My face screws up with displeasure. “That’s not nice.”

She sounds surprised. “Why isn’t it?”

“Because you’re going to have babies with Seb.”

Laughing lightly, she says, “Well, yeah, he’s my husband, so I should hope he’s the one I’m having babies with.”

“Like I said,” I mutter.

She falls silent. After a moment, she wrongly interprets why this bothers me. “I’m sorry, that probably made you think of—I meant to distract you with something nice, not rub your nose in… I mean, I don’t even know if you and Ashley were planning to have… Sorry. I’m just snowballing. Let’s pick a new topic.” She misses a beat, then she says, “You’re going to spend the night at our place tonight, and I won’t hear otherwise. I have the guest room already made up. Then tomorrow morning I’m going to make you and Sebastian both breakfast—and cookies,” she adds, inspired. “Because cookies make everything better.”

“You’re not his housekeeper, you know,” I mutter.

“No, I’m his wife.”

Just hearing that clear fact makes me surly as hell. “You do everything for him.”

She doesn’t reiterate what she already said, but she probably wants to.

“Ashley never made me cookies,” I mutter.

Displeasure seeps into her tone. “Ashley’s probably too stupid to read a recipe. Clearly she couldn’t read her marriage vows.”

Her words cause me to visualize Ashley with some nameless fuck. That image has played through my head about a thousand times today. I never saw it before—never saw the guy from the wedding, never even knew his name. I didn’t want to, after the fact. When I decided to stick it out with her, the best thing to do seemed to be to learn as little as I could about it so I had less to relive.

But Seb had to go and tell me there was footage this time, so once he left, I just had to go back and watch it. That was a mistake. Now I’m haunted by her enthusiasm—enthusiasm she hasn’t had for me in a long-ass time.

“I can’t get it out of my head,” I finally say.

Her tone is soft and understanding. “I can imagine.”

“Why am I not allowed to be happy? I tried so fucking hard.”

“Oh, Griff.” She says this like I’m breaking her heart.

“It’s just… impossible. Maybe it’s me. Maybe I’m the problem.”

“You are not the problem,” she states. “You are amazing and Ashley is an idiot.”

“Your name-calling is much less aggressive than your husband’s,” I inform her.

“Well, yeah,” she says, and I can picture her rolling her eyes. “Want me to step it up a notch? I can be meaner.”

I shake my head, completely fucking enamored. She’s made me feel better in the space of a few minutes than I’ve felt in… I don’t even know, months? “Sometimes I can’t get you out of my head.”

She falls silent again, but this time I doubt it’s companionable. For her, anyhow. I’m drunk as fuck; it’s just fine for me.

Instead of responding, she pulls in a moment later. I shield my eyes with my hand and look at her car as she navigates into a spot in front of me, then I walk around to the passenger side and open up the door. I practically fall inside, yanking the door shut and narrowly missing my foot.

“Fuck, I am drunk.”

“I figured,” she says, lightly, reaching over and absently patting my thigh. “You okay? If you’re going to be sick, please do it outside the car. I know Sebastian loves you and all, but he will kill you if you vomit in my car.”

I lean my head back and smile up at her. “I’m good.”

“Okay,” she says, laughing a little. “Put your seatbelt on.”

“Thank you for coming to get me,” I tell her.

“Anytime, Griff.”

I force myself to sit upright and buckle the belt around me. Moira waits, then puts the car in reverse and drives me back to her house.

Their house.

The house where Seb lives with his perfect wife who would never cheat on him.

Fucking Seb.

I love the guy, so I hate being jealous of him, but I am. The ache I felt years ago feels so much worse tonight. I was wrong about her getting dressed—the rustling must have been the sound of the bedclothes, because right now she’s dressed in a satin nightie—baby blue, like her eyes. God, she looks good. I want to forget she’s married to my best friend. I want to push her up against the wall, hike up that nightie, and fuck her until she’s crying out my name instead of his.

She shoves her key into the lock and opens the front door for me to come inside while she pushes buttons on the alarm. I follow her inside the darkened entryway, but fuck, I can’t keep my eyes off her. She offers me a little smile and takes her jacket off, hanging it on the coat rack. Then she moves up behind me and peels off my overcoat, hanging it up beside hers and Seb’s.

“Come on,” she says quietly, taking my hand and guiding me to the staircase. It’s not a far walk, but I’m so drunk she must not trust me to get there on my own. She lets go so she can walk ahead of me, but she glances back to make sure I don’t miss the first step.

If she looks back at me again, I miss it. My gaze starts at her bare legs, then drifts up to the short little nightie she’s wearing. She should not have walked in front of me. I can see practically all the way up…

Fuck me. She isn’t wearing panties. I’m at least 90% sure she is not wearing panties.

Seriously? She couldn’t pause long enough to pull on panties before coming to get me? Now I’m just thinking about the whole time she was driving me home, when she was sitting there with her exposed thighs and her panty-free ass and I was too drunk to notice.

Of course, not noticing is the right reaction. I should definitely not be noticing that my best friend’s wife has a bare pussy and a nightie so short it barely skims her ass.

Unaware of my thoughts, Moira opens the door to the guest bedroom and walks in ahead of me. “I made it up earlier in case you came over for the movie,” she tells me, glancing back over her shoulder. “So everything is nice and fresh for you. You have your own bathroom right through here,” she adds, pointing to the door. Her gaze wanders over my chest. “If you need a fresh suit in the morning, you might be able to wear one of Sebastian’s. You’re a little bit bulkier than he is, but it might work.”

“Nah.” I shake my head. “I’ll go home and get clothes. Thanks, though.”

Moira nods, but she looks reluctant to leave. “Do you need anything?”

Since I’m feeling ornery, I can’t stop a very bad idea from tumbling out of my mouth. “You could help me get undressed.”

Her eyebrows rise and her mouth opens just a couple inches, but then she catches herself and steps forward. “Sure, no problem.”

This is a mistake. This is a terrible idea. I look down at her as she stops right in front of me. When she looks up at me, uncertainty is written all across her pretty face. She hesitates before finally reaching for my jacket and pushing it down over my muscular shoulders. She swallows audibly and shakes the wrinkles out of it with impressive focus. She takes a step back, sets it aside, then comes back to stand in front of me. She looks up at me again, and I can’t help reading into those little glances. What is she thinking?

I don’t mean to ask, but my brain overrides my hesitation. “What’s on your mind, Moira?”

Her gaze drops to my chest pointedly, but I can see from the rise and fall of her chest, she’s breathing a little less evenly than usual. She adopts what I think she intends to be a stern look, but Moira’s like a kindergarten teacher who can’t even control the little people in her classroom. Sternness is not her thing. She can’t pull it off. She’s gentle and sweet. Still, since I’m her husband’s best friend, she tries for stern. She stares at the button hole as she undoes the top buttons of my shirt.

“I’m thinking that I feel sorry for your liver right now. You haven’t treated it very well tonight.”

God, she’s so close. I could reach out and touch her right now if I wanted to. Instead, I watch her fingers move down my chest, pushing little plastic buttons through the neatly sewn holes. I’m a head taller than she is, so looking down at her like this, I can see right down her top. I can see the tops of her high, rounded, perfect fucking breasts, not even restrained by a bra. I force my eyes away, but then I’m just thinking about the curve of her ass, her long, strong legs. She’s a runner, I think. I know she used to be, not sure if she still is. It certainly looks like she still is.

I want to touch her ass. I want to grab it and yank her against me right here in the guest room. I envision it, imagine her gasp as she falls against me, her hands moving to my chest to instinctively push me away. Maybe she would hesitate. Maybe I would see just a split second of longing in her pretty blue eyes before she did the decent thing and pushed me away.

I keep my hands to myself and my fantasies in my head, but fuck, I don’t want to.

Is it cheating if Ashley cheated first? Wait, no, Ashley isn’t the problem. Seb is. That bastard has never cheated, and he probably wouldn’t take too kindly to my pinning his wife against this wall and kissing the fuck out of her, my hands roaming down to squeeze that incredible ass.

Nope, he wouldn’t like that at all. I’m pretty fucking sure of it.

She probably wouldn’t, either. Unlike Ashley, Moira is actually happy with her marriage.

That brings me back down. Fucking reality is a real asshole.

What a shitty fucking day. I woke up this morning with at least a little enthusiasm for Palm Springs, now here I am, drunk and lost while Moira undresses me—and not because she wants to fuck me, but because I’m too fucking drunk to do it myself.

Suddenly I push her hands off my chest and scowl. I can unbutton my own damn dress shirt. She takes an uncertain step back, but waits for me to peel my shirt off and drop it on the floor.

Sighing, she bends down to pick it up.

I look down the front of her nightie again.

Dammit, Griff, quit that shit.

She drags her ass out of bed in the middle of the night to come pick you up; you stop acting like an asshole and pay her a little respect.

I have the best of intentions until she pops back up, tossing my shirt on the chair, and gets distracted by the sight of my bare chest. She looks vaguely surprised, and I’m not sure whether to feel insulted or flattered. She clearly likes what she sees—and why wouldn’t she? I log the gym time and I was born with a good arrangement of muscles to begin with—but still, that she sees Seb naked every day and still pauses at the sight of me makes me feel kinda good about myself. Seb and I look absolutely nothing alike. His appearance is more refined—dark hair, deep blue eyes, a touch of elegance to cover up all his rough edges. If Hollywood approached him tomorrow and asked him to be the new Bond, exactly zero people would be surprised.

Me, I could never pull that off. No one expects me to pull up in an Aston Martin with a Bond girl in the passenger seat and a tumbler full of expensive liquor in my hand, ready to take care of business in time for us to make our dinner reservations.

I vaguely look like the questionable man in all black that you would meet at a dive bar and slide an envelope full of cash to kill your spouse so you can collect the insurance money. It’s always worked for us in business. Seb is slick, he’s got the charisma and he’s a good wheeler and dealer. I’m good at playing bad cop, coming down hard on people and making them wiggle when they’re positive there’s no wiggle room.

Just not good at keeping my wife from fucking around on me, apparently.

Fuck, my mind had to go back there.

Moira has recovered from ogling my muscular chest and now she nervously plucks pillows off the bed and pulls back the blanket. She has to lean over the bed to do it though, and I cannot help looking at her ass again.

I just want to move closer. I’m not going to touch her. That’s my intention, but I’m too fucking drunk and I bump into her, knocking her on the bed.

I hear Moira gasp as she catches herself on the soft surface beneath her.

“Aw, shit,” I mutter.

Moira looks back, startled, then she laughs when I trip and catch myself on the bed.

“Oh, my God, you are so—”

I’m fairly certain she’s about to tell me how drunk I am, like I don’t already know, but the words die on her tongue. Instead of letting her up, I shove her little ass to the center of the bed and lie down beside her.

When I initially move so close to her scantily clad body, Moira looks understandably hesitant. I can only imagine what’s going through her mind as her eyes follow my every movement, then cautiously dart to my face. I settle in beside her, but I don’t make a move to touch her, so she tries to pretend this is a normal thing for me to do.

“You didn’t finish getting undressed,” she remarks, since apparently that’s all she can think to say.

“So finish undressing me,” I murmur, watching her.

“Um, I…” She hesitates, but loses whatever argument she has with herself in her head. Rolling her eyes, she finally says, “Fine.”

My heart kicks up a couple speeds as her hands move toward my belt. I watch her fingers as she pulls back the leather and pulls the prong from the hole. She’s careful—too careful—not to touch me as she slides the leather through the buckle, then drags it through the loops of my slacks. She leans over me and tosses the belt near the chair where the rest of my clothes are.

“Missed,” she remarks with forced lightness.

“Zero points.”

She cracks a smile, then it drops as she looks down at my pants. “I’m not sure I should take these off. Your drunken brain might get the wrong idea.”

I scoff, amused. “Probably. Don’t be offended if you encounter a hard-on.”

Moira blushes, but at least she doesn’t seem uncomfortable. “Like I said, probably shouldn’t take those off. If you want to, feel free. I can go grab a pair of Sebastian’s pajama pants for you, if you’d like. That would be much more comfortable to sleep in. You both have slim hips, so I think those would fit you just fine.”

My drunken brain tells me an okay thing to do right now is to reach for her hips and draw them closer. I’ve resisted the bad ideas up until now, but somehow this one travels through me before I can stop it, and before I know it… I do. She lets me pull her closer to my body, but she looks understandably uncertain about it.

“Griff, what are you doing?”

I know the right thing to do here is tell her to go back to Seb’s room, but that leaves mealone, and alone is the last thing I want to be right now.

I shouldn’t take advantage of her sympathy—and that’s exactly what I’m doing—but I can’t keep the words from tumbling out of my mouth. “Stay with me.”

I see resistance in her eyes. I see the very reasonable argument that she can’t stay with me because she needs to go back to her husband, my best friend, and while she feels terrible for me that my wife is a faithless cheater, she isn’t, so she isn’t going to lie here and cuddle with me while her husband sleeps alone in the next room.

Since I see that argument in her turbulent blue eyes, I add, “Please.”

It pokes a hole right in her perfectly good argument, exactly as I intend it.

Fuck, drunk me is an asshole.

But he’s a smart enough asshole, because Moira nods and stays put.

I don’t want to make her uncomfortable, but Drunk Asshole Griff isn’t as worried about it. I find myself reaching over and touching her face, running the back of my hand along her smooth cheek. I can’t help being drawn to her. I’ve never been able to help it. I was drawn to her at first sight, but that’s nothing new. Moira is an incredibly beautiful woman, so it’s commonplace for men to be physically attracted to her.

I tell myself it’s normal to think about her breasts and her ass, to imagine yanking up that pale blue nightie and pinning her body beneath mine. It’s normal to imagine kissing her, to think about how soft her lips would be, what she would sound like. Is she a loud fuck, whimpering and crying out? Or is she more soft sighs and low moans? She seems like she would be soft sighs and low moans, but then I think about the naughty stories she used to tell us. Maybe she’s dirtier than I give her credit for. It’s always the quiet ones, after all. When Seb says she was busy sucking his cock before dinner, I imagine him as the aggressor, but maybe she’s hungry for it.

Fuck, now I’m hard.

Now I’m picturing Moira opening her pretty little mouth for my cock, looking up at me with those big blue eyes as I slide into her throat.

“Fuck.”

“What’s wrong?” she asks.

I shake my head, tempted to roll on my back so I don’t have to keep looking at her, but that might draw attention to the tent currently erected in my pants.

I gotta get my head right before I end up doing something I’ll regret.

“What movie were we going to watch tonight?” I ask, to distract myself.

Her expression lightens, since this is a safe subject. “Sabrina. It was a Hepburn night.”

“Oh, well, I’m despondent that I missed that.”

She smiles and pokes me in the arm. “Whatever, you love it. Remember when we all watched Breakfast at Tiffany’stogether?”

“I’ve tried to block it out. I lost street cred that night.”

She grins up at me. “You still have all your street cred. I kept your secret so no one knows.”

“Mm hmm. They can smell it on me.”

“Remember when you guys made me watch Boondock Saints?” she asks, raising a pointed eyebrow. “You got me back.”

“Please. You thought the one guy was hot.”

She nods. “Got me there. He was hot. I can’t deny that. Still, not my favorite movie. I also watched Scarface with you guys. Nobody in that movie was hot.”

“And we watched—what was the one with the cheerleaders?”

Moira rolls her eyes. “Yeah, I’m sure it was a real hardship watching a league of hot girls jump around in skimpy skirts with exposed midriffs. I feel enormously sorry for the emotional trauma I must have inflicted upon you.”

“You should,” I mutter.

She smiled and shakes her head at me. “Just for that, we’re doing a Hepburn double feature next time. You should come over tomorrow after work. I’ll make you guys dinner—whatever you want—and then we’ll watch movies all night long.”

“I don’t like being your third wheel,” I tell her.

Her smile falls. “You are not our third wheel. We both love having you here. You’re our best friend. What’s third wheel-like about that?”

“You just described being a third wheel,” I inform her. “You two are a couple and I’m the friend that tags along. I’m not going back to that. I can’t.”

Her brow is creased and she looks a little sad. “You don’t like hanging out with us? I loved all those nights with you guys. You were just enduring them?”

“It was fucking torture.”

Not for the first time tonight, Moira looks completely disillusioned. “But why? We never tried to make you feel that way.”

“We, we, we.” I roll my eyes, rolling onto my back and bending one arm to rest a hand behind my head. “That’s why I had to stop coming around, Moira. It was too hard.”

“I don’t understand.”

I cut her a look. “Yes, you do.”

“I just said I don’t.”

“Girls like you always know. You used to torture me.”

Her jaw drops open. “Girls like me? What is that supposed to mean? And please elaborate on this torture, because I always remember being nice to you.”

“You’re too fucking nice, that’s the problem. You’re lying here in bed with me, both of us half-naked, you without any panties, because you’re nice.”

That leaves her speechless. There are a lot of things she could say, a lot of things she probably should say, but she knows I’m hurting, so she chooses not to. She keeps her mouth shut, simply rolling over and climbing off the bed.

I don’t ask her to stay this time.

It’s best she goes.