Page 10 of Dead Serious with Benefits
As far as my mother was concerned, I was a source of grievous disappointment.
However, as I looked around my little party, I had to empathize with her; disappointment seemed to be all too common in life. Especially because, like her, I was the author of that particularly disappointing work. I wasn’t responsible for the partygoers’ behavior or personalities. Still, I was the one who had arranged the party in the hope that a new group of people might make things…interesting. However, it was quickly becoming apparent that new faces were not the answer to my dilemma; boredom and grayness were creeping in further, and perhaps I should consider retiring for the night.
Taking a deep breath, I stopped by the bar for another drink before going through my penthouse toward the back. My bedroom was and had always been the one place I never allowed guests to go without my being there. I wasn’t the sort to believe in anything being sacred. Yet I still believed a person should have a space that is wholly and utterly their own. My bedroom was one of those places for me.
I stopped as I passed the mirrored doors to the balcony that wrapped around almost my entire penthouse. There were mirrors all over the penthouse, and this one stood from ceiling to floor. I peered into it with a critical eye more out of habit than any genuine interest in whether I was still presentable. Some of the training my mother had insisted on had stuck. It was just a check to make sure I hadn’t turned into a slob while trying to enjoy myself.
If I had been worried, it was unfounded. The bright green bow tie was a little loose, but it was near the end of my night, so I undid it, loosening the top two buttons of my dress shirt as well. Honestly, the whole getup was unnecessary since people wouldn’t care if I was impeccably dressed, but that was the power of habit for you.
Reaching up, I flicked a stray piece of auburn hair back into place, ensuring it was neat without being stiff and unnatural. Leaning forward, gray eyes stared back at me, searching my face for flaws or details that might have been missed. I was apparently growing laxer in my skincare because my pores were getting larger. Other than that, though, the same face I was used to seeing peered back at me with an all too familiar bored expression. The same flat chin and broad jaw, cheekbones that were somehow both distinct and yet blended in. It was the face I always thought was better suited for a linebacker or bodybuilder than a hedonistic socialite, but that was life for you.
My attention was pulled away from my reflection when I realized a group was standing at the balcony’s edge, peering down, and talking with concern and excitement. Raising my brow, I walked toward them, unnoticed as I leaned on the railing and looked down at what held their attention.
It took me a moment before I saw what was so interesting. There was a building next door, its roof a few stories below my penthouse. Standing on the roof’s ledge was a man, his hand wrapped around a light pole whose bulb had apparently given up the ghost a while ago. There was enough light for me to make out his size and shape. He was about average height, probably just shy of six feet, with broad shoulders and narrow in the rest of his body, but that was all I could really make out.
“Shit, I hope he’s not going to jump,” one of the group said nervously, looking around for a rope or something to throw the shadowy figure below us.
A woman scoffed. “People kill themselves all the time in this city.”
“Jesus, Lydia,” another woman grumbled. “Just because it’s common doesn’t mean it’s not fucking sad.”
“You be sad then,” the first woman said with a snort. “I just hope if he makes a mess that it’s cleaned up before I go home.”
That prompted a discussion that bordered on an argument as they disagreed on whether the man was planning on jumping, what the reason could be if he was, and if it was really something to worry about. The rest of the group was like so much of the city, vaguely curious or bothered, but lacking the motivation to do much more than talk before turning their backs and ignoring what was happening within sight of them.
I suppose I wasn’t much better because now I was intrigued by the potential melodrama happening within a stone’s throw of my penthouse. Humming thoughtfully, I measured the distance from where the man stood at the edge of the building. It would take me some time, but...hmm, why not? It might be far more interesting than anything that had happened in the past few hours.
Still unnoticed by the group, I walked back into the penthouse and through the front door, waving vaguely over my shoulder when someone called my name from the living room. The elevator gave a soft jingle as the doors slid open, and I stepped in, pressing the button for the lobby and sighing when the doors slid closed. The soft feeling of interest was interrupted by a new tone coming from my pocket.
With a sigh, I pulled out my phone and rolled my eyes, debating on not answering it but knowing that would probably create a worse problem. “Hello, Mom.”
“I hate when you answer the phone like that,” she complained.
“What? Greeting you? Being friendly and polite?”
“If you think I can’t hear the exasperation in your voice under all that fake politeness, then you’re clearly more inebriated than I feared.”
“Which means you were worried. Mother dear, have you been spying on me...again?”
“Keeping an eye on my errant child is hardly spying.”
“I know this has been a difficult concept for you to wrap your normally sharp brain around, but I am a grown adult capable of minding his own affairs. A trait I inherited from someone other than you.”
“Mmm,” she hummed angrily as the elevator stopped at the bottom of the building. “So you have been drinking...among other things.”
I sighed. “Well, that answers a couple of my questions.”
“What questions would that be?” she asked as I stepped out of the elevator.
“Now, now,” I chided her as I waved the doorman, David, behind the desk, sat upright when I walked out before relaxing when he saw it was me. I liked David; he didn’t take his jobtooseriously, but just seriously enough to be relied on to keep trouble out of the building that wasn’t invited. The first time I’d seen him, I’d wondered how they could trust security to a man who looked like a strong breeze would send him tumbling down the road. That was until I witnessed him take down someone a good half foot and several pounds heavier and drag him out, only to return to the lobby with the same laid-back smile and a quick joke on his lips. The fact that I was pretty sure he could not be bribed by my mother was a bonus. “That would be telling, and you know I hate to spoil a good mystery. Just like I know how much you enjoy solving them without help.”
“As I’ve told you before, these games were...understandable when you were younger, but you are almost thirty. Don’t you think it’s time that you gained a little maturity?”
By ‘understandable,’ she meant she had tolerated how I lived my life, marking it as the product of a willful child that should come around one day and understand the wisdom she had to teach. Not that I didn’t know her patience had been dwindling over the years, and had grown to an exponential rate of decay the closer I got to thirty. I wondered what the limit of her patience would look like and when it would come, and now I had to suspect that it wasn’t that far off.
I wasn’t surprised that I was coming to the point where there would be no more patience or tolerance. Then again, it was probably the fact that I was an only child.
Her pregnancy with me had been...difficult, and she had been told in no uncertain terms that another child would come with the risk of death for herself and the child or damage the child’s development. The idea of adoption was out of the question, and since she couldn’t carry a child safely, in vitro wasn’t an option either.
