Free Timothy by Greg Herren Page A

look at—I’m thinking about buying a house on one of the islands across the causeway from the city—not here on South Beach, this is a bit too touristy and full of people for me, I want something a little more secluded and—would you listen at me? I’m rambling, aren’t I? You see what you do to me, Mouse? You make me feel as giddy as a schoolboy with his first crush, and I haven’t felt that way in years.”
    At least not since you met Timothy , I thought, and felt my spirits sink.
    I closed my eyes. He was still talking, but I wasn’t hearing anything he was saying. I was acting like a damned fool. Someone like Carlo Romaniello, a wealthy, handsome worldly man like that, would never be interested in me—a rube from Kansas who’d never owned anything nice before, who didn’t know what fork to use at dinner and bought his clothes secondhand or from a discount store. I didn’t know a cheap wine from a good one.
    And I certainly wasn’t attractive enough to be mentioned in the same breath as Timothy Burke.
    â€œI’ll be in front of your hotel in about ten minutes,” he was saying. “Can you be there by then?”
    I swallowed. Even if he just felt sorry for me, I enjoyed being in his company—and that was enough. “Yes,” I replied, opening one of the dresser doors and pulling out a pair of khaki shorts and a navy blue T-shirt. “I’ll be there.” I disconnected the call.
    When I came out the front doors of the hotel five minutes later, he was there, standing next to a red convertible Mustang with the top down. He waved, smiling. He was wearing a pair of khaki shorts himself, and a ribbed red tank top. Curly black hairs stuck out of the neck, and it showed off the strong muscles of his arms and shoulders. I opened the passenger door and sat down, buckling the seat belt as he started the car.
    And we did end up spending most of the week together. He took me to the dog track, where he lost a lot of money but I had a run of luck that saw me close out with over three hundred dollars in winnings. He took me to watch jai alai, which I never did quite understand, despite his patient explanations. We shopped in boutiques and stores—but I refused to allow him to buy me any more clothes. “You spent enough on the ones you already bought me,” I protested; even as he pouted in disappointment, I remained adamant. He looked at yachts, and we went out for rides with salesmen out onto the sparkling green waters of the bay and the Intracoastal Waterway.
    As the week progressed, I began to wonder why he never tried anything with me. He never tried to kiss me or hold my hand, or made any sort of move on me—or perhaps he had but I was too clueless and inexperienced to know what he was doing.
    One afternoon he took me on a picnic to a secluded private island, where we spent the afternoon relaxing on the sand and in the warm waters of the Gulf Stream. I, of course, wore my body-disguising cheap blue board shorts, but Carlo wore a white bikini that left very little to the imagination. I couldn’t help myself—I kept sneaking glances at his strong chest with the dark black hairs, his muscular legs, his flat stomach.
    He caught me looking at him and smiled at me. “Do you like what you see, Mouse?”
    Mortified that he’d caught me, I tried to think of something to say, but as usual, my mouth just opened and closed as my face reddened.
    He threw back his head and laughed, grabbing me by the hands and pulling me to him. “You are the most adorable thing,” he said, and he kissed me.
    And there, on towels spread out over white sand on a private island in the middle of a hot afternoon, I finally lost my virginity.
    The next day was my last full day in Miami. Valerie was already starting to feel better and was really looking forward to returning to New York. By now she’d stopped blaming the sniffling child from