And Gloria had had it. How could he not know what was wrong? Her frustration showed in the tone of her voice. “What do you want from me, Oz?” she asked him.
Oz didn’t seem to understand that question either. Although he still had that slight Greek accent, his English was impeccable. It was the reason behind the question that was stumping him. “Excuse me?” he asked her.
“What do you want?” Gloria asked again. “I’ve been waiting upstairs for you since eight last night.”
“And I told you I couldn’t get away that early. The casino---”
“What do you want?” She was tired of his excuses.
“I want you,” Oz responded. “What do you mean what do I want? That’s what I want. I want you.”
Gloria shook her head with eyes filled with doubt.
Oz was stumped again, his face frowned. “What?” he asked her. “I want you. What’s so weird about that?”
“Weird? There’s nothing weird about that. There’s nothing true about that either,” Gloria added, and then turned back around.
He tried to grab her arm again, but she jerked away from him and headed for her car as the valet drove up.
Oz stood there. What was her problem, he wondered? Why could they never seem to be on the same page? But as she rounded her car and was about to get inside of it, that odd feeling only she made him feel came rushing back. It felt as if his heart was about to leave with her. As if she was his heart. And without thinking, and as she got in under the steering wheel of her car, he got in too, on the passenger seat.
Gloria, surprised, looked at him. “Oz! Where are you going?”
“Wherever you’re going.”
“I’m going home!”
“Then why are you sitting him yapping about it? Let’s go,” Oz said, and closed the passenger door.
Gloria didn’t understand why he didn’t just give up on their relationship too. Didn’t he see that they weren’t ever going to make it? She saw it long ago, but kept trying to hold on. Kept hoping and praying that he’d finally change. But if what happened since eight last night didn’t convince her that she was living in a fool’s paradise, nothing could. Why didn’t he see it too?
“Why can’t you see,” she started saying. She was just about to ask him that very question.
But as if he knew what she was about to ask, Oz cut her off. “Let’s go,” he said with a little irritation in his own voice. “Just drive, okay?”
Gloria stared at him, and then shook her head. She loved him, even though it was a hopeless love. But because she loved him and hated when they parted on bad terms, she put her car in gear, and drove off. She was going home.
CHAPTER TWO
She lived in a modest three-bedroom home in the suburbs. She had a mortgage, but she got that mortgage on her own. No help from her rich father. No help from her wealthy boyfriend. And she aimed to keep it that way. Oz called it the Little House on the Prairie, which, to Gloria, showed how little he knew about that TV show. Her big brother Teddy, who also happened to be her best friend, called it quaint and cute. She called it home.
When she parked in her two-car garage and they made it inside her home, she headed for her master bedroom in the back, while Oz headed for the kitchen. He opened the refrigerator and began searching inside. “Where’s the liquor?” he asked. “Don’t you have any liquor around here?”
“No,” Gloria said from the back of the house.
“Whatta you mean no?” Oz asked and closed the refrigerator door. He still had that need to party riding with him big time. He figured a shot of whiskey or bourbon or whatever would help bring him back down. “Glo?” He began heading for the backroom.
“Whatta you mean no?” he asked as he made it to the entrance of the master bedroom.
“I don’t stock up on liquor,” Gloria responded to him.
But when he saw her standing there and taking off the last of her clothing, which was her panties, he froze in place. That body was going to be the death of him yet, he thought.
But Gloria wasn’t giving his lustful look even a glance. She pulled her bedcovers back and got into bed. She had a business to run, and usually tried to get to the diner, to help with the breakfast crowd, by nine at the latest. She needed to get some sleep.
But the damage had already been done. Oz was hard as a rock just from that quick look at her naked body. And the boy had to have it.
He walked further into the room and began taking off all of his clothing too. He was naked in seconds. Gloria wasn’t so thrown that she didn’t see him removing clothing. She wasn’t so in need of rest that she didn’t see his big, thick penis standing at attention right before her very eyes. That penis inside of her would have been a fantastic end to the evening had he shown up at eight like he was supposed to show up and cooked her dinner and treated her, not like some afterthought, but at least like somebody dear to him. But that was a fairytale ending in their world. That seemed like an elusive dream for her and Oz.
But Oz wasn’t trying to dream. He just wanted to get inside of Gloria and to feel that warmth he always felt all those other times she let him in.
But as soon as he was fully undressed and had walked around to the backside of the bed about to climb in behind her, she turned and looked at him. “What are you doing?” she asked him.
Oz grinned. “Exactly what you think. I’m getting in bed. With you.”
“Not before you take a shower, you aren’t,” Gloria said.
“You didn’t take a shower,” Oz shot back like some kid.
“I did shower, for your information. I took one before I left home.”
“So did I!”
“And,” Gloria added, “I took one before I got into your bed after midnight this morning. Hit the shower or sleep on the couch. Your choice.”
Oz still had a buzz from the night. The last thing he felt like doing was showering. But Gloria didn’t play. When she said the couch or the shower, he knew she meant it. He also knew he wasn’t about to sleep on any couch. Not with all she had to offer between those sheets.
He hit the shower. But even as he stepped in and allowed that warm water to drench his tired body, he couldn’t stop grumbling. He could have any woman he wanted. Women who wouldn’t give a damn that he’d been in that casino all day and night and needed to bathe it off. They’d be thrilled just to be with him. Why, then, was he taking her shit?
And the way he had to run behind her at The Drakos. That was not a good look for him. His reputation was going to be shot to hell if he kept that up, as if he, the great Oz Drakos, was Gloria Sinatra’s lap dog! Or boy toy. Or whatever his staff probably was laughing and calling him. Why would he put himself through this?
The same reason, he knew, that he still wanted her even after she rejected his advances the first time they met. The same reason he stayed with her when he found out she was the daughter of mobster Mick Sinatra. It wasn’t her big, beautiful eyes. Or her luscious lips. Or her slamming body. It was her. She never made it easy for him. She made him work to be with her. She was like that line in the movie Arthur, when Lisa Minelli, a shoplifter, wanted to be with Dudley Moore, a rich boy. But Dudley’s butler, the actor John Gielgud, told Lisa she couldn’t shoplift her way into Dudley’s heart. “This is a tie that you cannot steal,” he said to her.