Tease Me Once by W. Winters
Braelynn
The mall is busy and humming with people as Scarlet and I stroll through the wide, tiled hallway. I’ve always loved the mall. The crowds, the food court, the shops and sales. It’s full of life. This particular mall is one of my favorites. It has high ceilings and a second floor with endless stores to shop and get lost in.
“We’re here,” Scarlet says with a grin. “Are you sure you’re ready for this?”
I take another sip of my latte and smile back at her over the cup. “Hell yes I am.”
We enter an excessively large home goods store, one of my favorite places to shop, and both of us grab carts from a row near the door. We wander through each aisle, picking up items and putting them back down. More than a few go into my cart. A new set of dish towels. A pretty shower curtain. It’s freeing to be able to put my own touches on my place. I can decorate however I want and it wasn’t until this moment that the realization hits me. I’ve never had a place of my own. I’ve never truly been on my own.
“What do you think of this?” I ask Scarlet, holding up a welcome mat.
“Oh my God, ‘Take off your shoes and bring in the booze?’ It’s cute,” she says. “It’s so you. Get it.”
I toss it into the cart with a smile that won’t quit. It comes with another new feeling too. Declan pays me so well that I don’t have to calculate the cost down to the penny and hunt for a coupon. I still have a coupon, though. I wouldn’t come to this store without one.
I might be saving up, but I would rather be frugal and save where I can.
We turn onto the bedding aisle and I let out a cheerful sigh.
“I’m so happy for you, Braelynn,” Scarlet says. I told her about the fitted sheet. We’re actually here on that mission, although the two hours we spent wandering while chatting and my already half-full cart would say otherwise, and it feels damn good. The aisle is exactly how I pictured it would be. Sheets in all colors and materials.
I let my fingers trail down the row of them as I search for the perfect sheets.
“I think I’m going to get a whole set.” The fitted sheet was a small dream. I imagined just one piece of cloth. Enough to make my bed comfortable and not much more. With the check deposited, and a cushion already in savings, I have plenty to get a full set.
We start to wander slowly down the aisle, and I see one and then another that I like. One’s an abstract peony in soft muted colors, the other an off-white with a texture to it. “I want to look at them all before I decide,” I tell Scarlet, although it’s more me to myself so I don’t grab every single one that strikes my fancy.
“Do you work today?” she asks.
“Yes,” I murmur, running a sample of a flannel set between my fingers. It’s very soft, and it would probably be too hot for my place. Flannel sheets aren’t necessarily year-round sheets. More of a winter item. A bit expensive, I think to myself … but then I remember. I can have any set of sheets I want.
“You working every day now?” Scarlet hands me another set to look at. I take my time with it. My shift isn’t until this evening, every night at six, so there’s absolutely no rush. I nod to her, and she smiles. “He must really like you.”
“It’s intense,” I find myself admitting. It doesn’t seem like a good thing or a bad thing to say, just a neutral description of how Declan is. “He’s intense.”
“I think everybody at The Club would agree with you,” Scarlet murmurs. “All the Cross brothers are like that. They’re all broody, my way or no way … is he like, all gruff all the time?”
A bit of nervousness creeps into my thoughts. “I know he’s trying with me.” I think of him coming into my apartment with takeout and insisting on talking. It had to be hard for him.
Men like Declan don’t have the chance to grow up talking about emotions and apologizing, hell a lot of people don’t live with that simple comfort. I know I’m one of the luckier ones only because of my mother. But men like Declan? Hell no. They grow up focusing on survival above everything else. Simply living to see the next day. I know it wasn’t easy for him to sit with me and say he was sorry for how things had gone … and then do it again the next day. “It takes a lot for a man like him, but he’s working at it.”
“So you two are really involved, then?”
I don’t answer her. Mostly because I’m not exactly sure and I don’t want to ask. I don’t want to be given an answer that pops the bubble of content that I’m in. We look through several more sets of sheets. I’m excited to choose one, but at the same time … I’m wondering something else. I’m wondering where Declan sleeps. I wonder what his bedroom is like, and whether he likes sheets in a dark hue or a light one. If he likes a comforter that’s big and fluffy or heavy. These are the simple things about a person that are impossible to know unless you actually go to his house and sleep in his bed.
I know there’s a sofa by the bookshelves that pulls out in his office, right near the full bath and I know he’s stayed in his office more than once. But that’s not his home. I have no idea what his home looks like.
“You not going to answer?”
“What?” I peek up and Scarlet’s fists are on her hip, pushing in the baggy cream sweater she wears. Even with it not being formfitting, she looks small under the sweater. With black leggings she appears casual and laid back, unlike her raised brow.
“I asked if you guys were really involved,” she questions with a knowing smirk.
“Yeah … we’re … involved more than just sex, I think.”
“Like he could take you home one day and show you off at a family dinner?”
My stomach flutters at the thought of that. “Does it scare you?” Scarlet questions when I don’t answer.
I remain silent. I don’t want to talk about the things that scare me. I run my fingertips over a set of sheets with a high thread count and then I look at the price tag. My eyes go wide. I’ve never spent that much money on sheets.
“What’s going on, Braelynn? If you won’t tell me, let me see your phone.”
“There’s nothing on it.” We reach the end of the aisle and turn around. There’s a whole other side to choose from. The sheets on this side are pricey at this end and will get cheaper as we go back down. Pink? No, maybe not, though it is a gorgeous pale color. It’s quite girly and I’m not sure I want my first place to look … childish. And it could absolutely come off childish if I go with pink. So the sheets go back and I keep looking. I don’t want anything satin. I would feel like I was about to slide off the bed.
“No dick pics?”
I choke on a sip of my latte and have to pat my chest to get the coughing to stop. I can’t imagine what kind of pictures Declan would send to me … or take of me. The things we do together don’t lend themselves to cute selfies that you share with your friends. Scarlet laughs at me. “Okay, no pics. Let me see the messages, then. How is he texting you?”
I unlock my phone, find his name in the list of messages, and hand it over to her. My heart races. This is something I’m used to doing with girlfriends. We all hand around our phones and analyze the texts that men send to us. But this feels different. It’s Declan, and Scarlet works for him too. “It’s simple,” I tell her, as if in apology. I’m not really apologizing. He’s not a man who goes on and on in texts.
“Love is in the details,” she says, shaking her hair back away from her face. “You keep looking at the sheets and let me look at these.”
I try to go back to shopping, but I can’t stop stealing glances at her and gauging her expression. I want to know if she sees something that I missed in the messages Declan has sent me.
The way I feel for him obscures a lot. It’s confirmation bias, we see what we want to see. I’m sure I do. There’s a constant lurking fear of his world and all the darkness that lies there, but as soon as I see his name on the screen, heat overwhelms me. I want him to text me so much that I could have missed red flags. Scarlet scrolls and scrolls, not giving away anything although at one point she narrows her eyes. I lift another set of sheets off the shelves and close my eyes. I try to imagine slipping into bed between them, but instead something else pops into my head. Declan, his arms crossed over his chest and a half grin on his face, looking down at these sheets. On my bed. Maybe he would turn back the covers and run his hand over them too. What did you buy these for, little pet? he would ask.
A shiver runs down my shoulders and I fucking love it.
I open my eyes again and look at Scarlet. She has the straw of her Starbucks in her mouth. The cup is in one hand and my phone is in the other. I’m about to say something when the phone rings.
“Shit.” Scarlet’s face goes white, all the color draining away in an instant. “Oh my God.” She’s really shaken. The ringer isn’t loud, but there is a good volume to it. I had it off silent so I could use it for an alarm this morning. She almost drops her drink, but catches it at the last second and shoves the phone back into my hand.
“It’s okay, it’s okay,” I say, trying to laugh it off and lighten the mood. “It’s an unknown number. We won’t worry about it.”
“That scared the shit out of me,” Scarlet says, and I know it did. She runs a hand through her hair. She paces away from her cart and leans against the shelves. “Just about gave me a heart attack.” It takes her a minute to shake it off.
“Are you okay?” I question her although she’s starting to seem a little crazy. It was just a phone ringing … not a gunshot or something intense happening at The Club.
“I’m completely fine,” Scarlet says, attempting to play it off. “And he doesn’t give shit away. I could like, literally hear his voice in those texts.” Before I can respond she adds, pushing her own cart behind mine, “You should also learn the art of sexting.”
“How about we look at the rest of the sheets, instead?” I joke and just like that, it’s all back to free and easy and putting thoughts of Declan on hold.
We spend another fifteen minutes in the bedding aisle. I go with a set of cream sheets with a higher thread count than anything I’ve bought before. They have a soft cotton feel, no slippery satin, and they’re somehow lightweight and sturdy at the same time. It’s going to feel freaking amazing to sleep on these. I also pick out a new comforter, a high-end one that I could absolutely see in an expensive hotel, in a coordinating color, just a slightly darker cream from the sheets but with that texture that caught my eye earlier, and new pillowcases. “Your bedroom is going to be the lap of luxury,” Scarlet says. She has her eye on the sheets too. “I didn’t think I wanted new bedding, but maybe I do.”
It takes a few more minutes for her to choose a set of her own, and we make our way to the checkout counters. It’s a busy day and there’s a line. We get into one together, me first, then Scarlet. When I look back at her, she’s obviously distracted, biting her lip and staring at the magazines near the back of the line.
“Are you okay?”
Her expressions brightens up and her red lips curve up in a smile. “You’re a good friend, Brae. But I’m fine.” She waves me off.
I greet the cashier and as she’s ringing up my items, my phone buzzes. “I have to warn you,” I turn to face Scarlet with the phone raised, “I’m getting a call.”
Scarlet laughs. “Go ahead, answer. I’m fine.”
I’m expecting it to be another unknown number, or a spam call, but instead it’s my mom’s name on the screen. “Hi, Mama,” I answer quickly. “I’m at the checkout counter at the mall; can I call you right back?”
“Braelynn,” she says in a tone that chills my blood.
“Mama, is everything okay?”
Scarlet’s gaze whips to mine and I can’t pull my eyes away as my mother says, “No, nena,” sympathy coating her words.
My stomach goes cold at her tone, and it drops to the floor. I turn away from the cashier and from Scarlet, wrapping an arm around my stomach and drop my voice. “What happened?”
“I have to tell you some news,” she says, her voice shaking. “Is there a place you can sit down?”
