Chapter 53

Tiffany was sitting on the floor, her back against the bed. She had her knees drawn up to her chest. She was naked and staring at Phil’s empty closet. Phil noticed her eyes didn’t move. Nothing about her moved.

He walked into the room but Tiffany’s focus didn’t shift from the blank wall of the empty closet. He sat down on the floor beside the young woman and tried to see what she was looking at. He had wondered if she had put a TV in there until he noticed she was not watching anything.

Her head turned in his direction but she wasn’t seeing him. There was absolutely no expression on her face and Phil was scared. He put her arm around her protectively – and she blinked. Her hand moved upward and she touched his face softly.

“You’re real,” she said absently.

Phil gave a sardonic smile.

“That’s what I’ve heard,” Phil said in a light voice. “Although I have heard the word ‘legendary’ associated with my name.”

“You’re real,” Tiffany said again. She shifted slightly and put both hands on his cheeks.

“I’m real,” Phil said, his voice more serious this time. “And I’m here.”

Tiffany seemed to notice that she wasn’t wearing any clothes. She tried to get to her feet but stumbled. Phil put his hands on her hips to steady her. Her pussy was right in front of his face but he didn’t notice. He was looking up at her face as she looked down at him. Suddenly she sat down on his lap and hugged him tightly. She didn’t care that she was naked. She didn’t know she had any tears left but she found some and they fell freely.

“I’m so sorry,” she wailed. “I just wanted you to think about us. I wanted you to know you had someone here if you were bored with Hailey. I didn’t mean to hurt you. I didn’t mean to hurt Hailey. I just didn’t want someone to come between us. I didn’t really think Hailey would do anything. I just wanted you to recognize that we were here and willing.”

“Shh,” Phil said, holding her and stroking her hair. He didn’t understand half of her rambling. He felt her warm bottom against his bare thighs and one ever-erect nipple against his arm. One of the few statements he did understand that was she was here and she was willing.

“It’s OK,” Phil said. “We’re not going to worry about it. I hear you’re skiving off work today. I was going to the park. Why don’t you get cleaned up – and dressed – and join me?”

Tiffany didn’t appear to mind her nudity as she bustled around her room. She had tossed and turned all night – and slept on the floor – so she decided she needed a shower. The problem was she didn’t know which one to use. Each bedroom had a small en suite shower but the master bedroom had a large tub. She wouldn’t mind a nice soak but she also didn’t want Phil to get bored and leave.

She looked at her face in the mirror and found it puffy and red. She had wiped her nose so frequently that she had a raw patch on each nostril. She looked like hell, she decided. It was only fitting because she felt like hell, too.

She took a quick shower in the bathroom that now appeared to belong to Hailey. They both used the same type of shampoo and conditioner so it didn’t matter. She pulled on a pair of shorts that was far longer than her usual bun-huggers. The shirt she picked out was more conservative, as well. She even put on a full set of underwear, including a bra.

This was for renewing a friendship and mending fences. It wasn’t the time to get a thrill from seeing Phil – and other guys – check her out.

She walked as far away from him as she could on the way to the park. She sat down on the blanket and pulled her legs up to her chest again.

Phil sat down and stretched his legs out in front of him. It was reminiscent of the scene in the bedroom earlier – even to the point of Tiffany staring into the distance.

“I’m sorry you misunderstood my intentions,” Phil began. “I blocked your calls because I was angry and I knew I might say something that would make it impossible for us to ever have a friendship in the future.”

“I can see that now,” Tiffany admitted. “You have reason to be mad at me.”

“I think I have reason to be mad at all of you,” Phil corrected. “And I am. That doesn’t mean I don’t care about you. I do. I want you to know that.”

“I care about you, too,” Tiffany said. “I really do! It’s just ... it’s just...”

She sighed and shifted her gaze to the grass at the edge of the blanket.

“When I was little, 10 or 12 years ago, my Grandpa and my Dad and my brother would go and do a lot of things,” she explained in a small voice. “My mother already hated me and my sisters were already into boys, so I got to go with them. We rode go-karts and went mini-golfing. We went fishing and took walks. Then Grandpa died when I was nine. My Dad took over the company and became too busy. My brother turned into a teenager and a weirdo. One by one they all left me. All the people who cared about me disappeared from my life over the space of six months.

“For the next nine years, no one gave a shit about me. I could come home at three in the morning and no one batted an eye. If I skipped school it was fine. I got suspended for smoking weed in 10^th grade. My mother screamed me at but that was nothing new. It wasn’t because she was worried about my health. It’s because it embarrassed her in front of her friends. For some reason, Hailey took me under her wing when we first met. A lot of it was because of you. We talked at the dinner and Hailey was never more than a few feet away from you.

“Looking back, I can see she did it because of my family name. She’s smart but she only really knows the surface stories of businesses. She isn’t like you. You delve into the nuts and bolts. She hears what the media reports and believes it. She knew of Grayling Manufacturing so she took me in. Chelsea’s dad was the mayor of some city up north. Alexandra’s mother is the administrator at some highbrow private school. Katelyn’s family is the only one without a real pedigree, but I suspect Hailey brought her in because she thought if Katelyn was around we’d all walk free from whatever we did.”

“I can see that,” Phil admitted.

“Is that why you didn’t tell her about your mom?” Tiffany wondered.

“It just never came up,” Phil said. “I never meant to hide it from anyone.”

“Probably for the best,” Tiffany said with a frown. “The point is that I wasn’t really Hailey’s type of person. I knew what sort of shape my family was in. My mother had made it perfectly clear that it was my responsibility to save it since my sisters had been such utter failures. We grew closer but not really close until after Christmas. I know she told you about it so I’m not embarrassed. The thing is, Phil, I was never embarrassed around you. It didn’t matter that my family was an awful mess. You didn’t make fun of my skinny boobs or my straight hair.

“You just accepted me as I am – and I loved you for it. The more I was around you, the more you meant to me. The whole thing with the flirting and stuff made me feel really special. I could tell you found me attractive. I mean, Hailey is a walking wet dream and you found me sexy. I felt included for the first time since I was a little girl.”

She shifted uncomfortably on the blanket and wrapped her arms tighter around her knees.

“That’s why everything hit me so hard,” she continued. “When Hailey told us she thought you were screwing around with your assistant, it landed on me like you wouldn’t believe. I couldn’t figure out why you’d cheat on Hailey – on us – like that. It never occurred to me that Hailey was just venting. I thought in order to make an accusation like that in front of everyone she had to know for sure. She knows how we feel about you!

“When you disappeared for two straight nights it pretty much ended any doubts I had. When Jared Winsted invited me to a pool party and asked if I had a couple of friends for his friends, I knew what was going on. He had flirted with me since I started and we had hooked up the weekend before. I knew Molly would be game. She’s been waiting for weeks for an invitation for us all to play around. I wasn’t going to say anything to Hailey until she came out steaming Saturday morning. When Katelyn came back and asked us all to vacate the apartment, I decided we should go for it. If you could screw around on us, we could screw around on you.”

“There is no us in that way,” Phil said, wanting no misunderstanding.

“No,” Tiffany said. “But it felt like you were cheating on all of us. That’s why Katelyn wound up with that idiot. She looks up to you and if you could fuck anything with legs so could she. We all felt like you had left us. We all felt like you were cheating on us. It was personal for all of us but it was more personal for me. To me, you were leaving me just like the rest of them. I had managed to push away a person who loved me more than anyone else in my life. When you blocked my number, I just lost it.”

Phil hadn’t looked at things from her perspective. Her explanation made sense to him. When his parents had fought when he was young, it had always felt like a reflection on their love for him.

“It wasn’t meant to be anything more than it was,” Phil said. “I just wanted some time to myself. Trust is important in every relationship but it’s especially important in one that developed as quickly as ours has. One of the problems I’ve always had with how things unfolded with Hailey was that it always felt like I was dating all of you.

“That was a lot of pressure. I’m never been good at letting people get close to me. Suddenly I had four very opinionated, liberated young women who knew every facet of my life. I don’t blame you. I want you to know that. You made an offer – and maybe even arrangements – but Hailey followed through with it. I know there is a lot of blame to go around and I accept my share. I can’t trust Hailey not to do that again. I can’t trust you not to get pissed at me again and offer her the chance. I don’t know if I’ll ever reach the point when I can consider dating one of you.”

“Don’t say that!” Tiffany said. “Regardless of who is at fault, I’m going to get the blame.”

“There’s really nothing I can do about that,” Phil told her. “I’d rather take the blame but I can’t help what anyone else thinks. I think there has always been a residue of distrust with Hailey and me. The fact that she is what I term a ‘serial dater’ doesn’t help anything.”

“What are you talking about?” Tiffany asked, moving her gaze off the grass for a moment to look at him. She saw he was staring out across the small lake at the center of the park.

“In the months we’ve been together, she’s been out with me – alone – on a date four times,” Phil said. “She’s been out with another guy on what most people would construe a date or a hook-up twice. She enjoys the attention, the flattery, but she doesn’t want it from the guy she’s with. She wants to know that every other guy wants her.”