“I’ll take that as ‘yes.’” He deposited her beside the door. “Call me if you need a cab, but you’ve got five grand in your bag, so you should be fine.”
Tabby gaped at him. “Are you seriously doing this? You’re not gonna?—”
“What? Take you upstairs? Give you everything you want when you can’t even admit you want it? No, I’m not.” Toby pointed at his door. “Go ask your bar boyfriend to do that to you. And when it can’t hold a fucking candle to me, come back and beg me to do it properly.”
He turned and headed for the stairs, so angry he could hardly think. No one else did this to him. Pushed him this hard. Made everything hurt. He raised a hand to his shoulder and touched where she’d scratched him. His fingers came away red. She’d made him bleed. As pissed off as he was, the evidence of how volatile Tabby DaSilva could be when she needed dick made him smile. This still wasn’t over. She’d be back, and he’d be ready.
8
“I’ve ruined everything,” Toby said for what felt like the millionth time.
“You haven’t,” Jessica A said soothingly, but he noticed Maisy’s eyes narrow over her Aperol spritz.
“What?” Toby pressed. “What are you thinking?”
“You might have, dahling.”
“Goddammit!”
He’d gone upstairs after Tabby left, so angry he couldn’t even pull himself off. Instead, he’d paced his house like a madman, arguing with her in his head.
Then he started jacking off. Three times in a row, gripping his dick with a fury he hadn’t known since he was fifteen and miserably guilty over every wank, convinced God was tallying them on his big ‘Going To Hell’ whiteboard. He pictured Tabby chained to his office wall, pleading to get fucked. Saw her crying while she tried to rub her clit, swearing she’d never be rude to him again. In his mind, he spanked her, choked her, screwed her ass, then her mouth.
“You want some dick?” he imagined saying as he rubbed it across her forehead. “Scream for it.”
And in his fantasies, she did. She screamed until the cops came running.
It scared him sometimes how dark things got in his head, and while he’d learned girls could get down with a lot of twisted shit, he had no idea if Tabby regretted what he’d done in his hallway. He’d texted her afterwards to ask if she got home safely, but she hadn’t replied. Her silence freaked him out worse than anything. At this point, he’d take a photo of a guy’s asshole over that.
“It’s notthatbad,” Victoria said. She was four chardonnays in, and her eyes were a little unfocused. “Toby made her come, didn’t you, Toby?”
He felt himself flush to his collar. All the experience in the world couldn’t get him used to how open Maisy’s friends were about sex. “I, uh, yeah.”
“And she’ll be back to finish the tattoo.” Mary-Lynn smiled at him. “I think just give her some time, sweetie.”
“What does she look like, this girl?” Victoria demanded. “You said she’s alternative-looking, didn’t you?”
Toby shot a glance at Maisy. She’d advised him not to show pictures of Tabby to the gang, lest they stalk her on social media and slide into her DMs demanding to know why they weren’t already married with three kids.
“That’s just what they’re like, dahling,” Maisy had said, rolling her eyes. “Unless it involves microsurgeries, ‘discreet’ is not a word they put stock in.”
But Maisy was staring blankly ahead, unable to assist him.
“I mean, she’s got a lot of tattoos, and she’s big on Instagram?” Toby said, bunting as hard as he could.
“What’s her handle?” Victoria asked, almost knocking over her wine as she extracted her phone from her pink purse.
Again, Toby looked to Maisy, and again, she was out to the ballgame. He hesitated. He didn’t want the girls stalking Tabby, but he didn’t have many other options. And also, he wanted to look at her. That was the thing about having a crush: you tried to look at them as much as possible.
“TabbyDee,” he said. “Two E’s.”
Suzannah, Mary-Lynn, Jessica B and Jessica A clustered around Victoria as she searched Tabby’s profile. Maisy, who had known precisely what Tabby looked like since ‘The Night of the Negronis’, stayed right where she was, picking at her fennel salad. Toby wished they were alone. He had a feeling there was something Maisy wanted to tell him that she wouldn’t broach in front of the girls. She’d listened intently to his story of last night along with the others, pressing him for more details at times, but she hadn’t said anything definitive, which worried him.
“She’s lovely,” Mary-Lynn announced, looking up from the screen. “Blue hair!”
“Yeah,” he said, trying not to smile like an idiot.
“But these are all old pictures,” Victoria muttered. “Where’s something new… oh there’s a story from yesterday...”
