Battle of the Sexes

Chapter Six

Amity

The bubbles come all the way up to my chin.

The water is almost too hot, the water nearly too fragrant from my heavy hand with the bubble bath. It's borderline uncomfortable, but in retrospect, maybe that's what I was trying to do.

Relaxing eases the muscles and the mind, allowing you to sort through your day. I've tried desperately to avoid doing just that since I got home a few hours ago.

I've cleaned the fish tank. Changed my sheets. Attempted to fold a fitted sheet which was a good distraction for a full twenty minutes before I said screw it and shoved it back in the dryer and turned it back on. There's nothing else to distract me.

Lifting my leg, the water trickles from the tips of my navy-blue painted toes, down my calf, and pools into the waterline at my thigh. That's all it takes to remember Carver's throwback story and cause the knot in my stomach to twist around once more.

Those seven minutes in the closet were my first encounter with a boy and my only one for a very long time.

The get-together at Carver's was to celebrate the start of summer. It started pouring down rain and we were relegated to staying indoors. I was sitting on a window-seat looking over Central Park when I realized the others weren't talking. When I looked back, they were all looking at me.

"The bottle landed on you, Am," Carver said. He didn't look thrilled, but he didn't point out that I wasn't playing and didn't try to re-spin the bottle. "Ready?"

"Oh, go on," I sputtered, my heart racing so hard I thought I might pass out. "I'm not playing."

I tried to play it off like I didn't care, like it was a stupid game and I was above that. That's how I played off most things. These kids were my friends because our parents were; I knew that. But if that weren't true, the athletes and future Prom queens sitting around me wouldn't be caught dead in a room with a brace-face, chess geek like me.

"It landed on you," Carver insisted. "Let's go."

I press my head against the towel behind me and close my eyes.

I begged my mom to let me transfer schools to the other side of the city the next school year. After a summer of nagging, she finally relented. Calling in a few favors, I was admitted to an all-girl's private school for the rest of my high school career.

Of course, I ran into Carver and the others every now and then, but I kept it to a bare minimum. I always felt inferior to them anyway. Knowing they considered me nothing more than a game piece to them was more than I could tolerate. It was the gasoline that sparked my intense desire to become someone ... on my own.

"You're going down, Carver Jones."

Just saying his name aloud while I'm wet and naked causes my stomach to tighten. As his face, dotted with that lewd grin of his, flashes through my mind, my hand drops under the waterline.

"I'm just a red-blooded female," I say, repeating Hallie's words from earlier. "This isn't my fault."

My hand slides down my torso, my skin slick from the suds.

"This would be so much easier if he wasn't so fine," I groan, listening to the water lap against the edges of the claw-foot tub. "Why couldn't he look more like his father with his round belly and receding hairline and less like a cover model?"

Even giving into the fantasy Carver, the one that doesn't open his mouth other than to place it firmly between my legs, feels like I'm selling out to the dark side.

The throb grows harder, more unbearable, as I try to talk myself out of coming to the image of him. Just as I think I have it under control, his decadent smirk jolts through my memory.

"Screw it," I say, throwing my head back and finding some relief.

******

Carver

Looking out over Central Park, I take a sip of my martini—my second martini, actually. I hoped it would smooth out the raw edges of my nerves. It hasn't.

I've been on pins and needles since Salvo's stupid announcement that Amity and I would compete for the position. It seems like such disrespect to my dedication and love for the company. I'm a little, or a lot, incredulous that Salvo didn't think enough of me to forgo this time waster and let me get to work.

I wonder vaguely if my father has bothered to call and give his two cents. The familial part of me hopes so, that he would ring up Salvo and put his sway behind his son. The logical part of me knows he didn't.

John Jones loves me. This I know. My mom tells me so.

But if she didn't, I'm not sure I would.

Taking another sip, I watch the lights blink across the expanse of the park. This is my routine, my nightly "Welcome home" on the nights I do come home and don't stay at the office on my sofa.

There's nothing here that feels like coming home. And so many nights I stay and work so late that by the time I'd get here and get to sleep, I'd just have to get up and go back again.

I could've handled battling anyone for the CEO position; I loathe that it's Amity.

I've kept up with her through her parents over the years, hearing all about her adventures on the West Coast. She rocked business school, took over the first company she worked for easily, and even traveled to France for some baking seminar where she was offered a place at an elite institution. She turned it down.

Hearing Dennis talk about his daughter has always made me a little envious. He's so proud of her, rightfully so. And if I admit it, I'm a little jealous she did it outside her father's shadow.

Her face is as vivid in my mind as if she were standing right here in the middle of my living room. Her high cheekbones and long eyelashes are clear as a bell. Seeing her was like visiting a part of my past that I'd forgotten. Not that I'd forgotten abouther, because I haven't.

I've always had an affinity for Amity. We spent so much time together when we were younger that she was almost like a sister to me. I was cool with that. It was easy. It stopped being easy the older we got. Not because she was the group geek. I kind of liked that. But because the older she got, the more beguiling she became.

More intelligent.

Harder to see as my pseudo-little sister at all.

She was the black sheep of our inner circle, the studious, serious one you could actually talk to about something more than gossip. We'd talk late into the night while our parents hung out, discussing our futures and the books she was reading. She never looked at me like the other girls or giggled when I said something that wasn't funny. She called me out on my bullshit and that was refreshing.

"I shouldn't have taken that dare," I say, my lips hovering over the rim of the tumbler. "Where would we be had I not?"

The liquid goes down smooth, failing to release the kink in my gut. I hear her giggle as I set the glass down on a tray by the window, and without a second thought, my cock hardens. Before I know it, the tip is poking out the top of my briefs.

"You know what?" I say, palming my length. "Fuck you, Amity Gallum. Fuck. You."