And with that said, we’re both remembering why he thought he could never have it. Does he feel guilty? Because I do, even if Six did pretty much everything wrong.
“Where do your parents think you are?” I ask.
He runs a hand through his hair. “I said I was out with friends,” he says. “I hate keeping secrets but my mom can never know about this. She still has it in her head that Joel and I will be close one day. I think, mostly, she wants him to have someone to lean on when they’re gone. She’d be devastated if she knew.”
I force myself to smile. There’s no reason what he’s saying should hurt. I guess a part of me wonders if it’s entirely for Beth’s sake that he wants to keep it a secret. I’m hardly the sort of girl his buddies from med school seek out.
“I won’t say anything,” I tell him. “Jumping from one brother to the next wouldn’t do my public image a lot of good anyway.”
This really can’t go anywhere, but it only occurs to me now that I’ll probably never see him again after he leaves my room. He lives in some awful, war-torn country and has no plans to leave and if he did plan to leave, he’d have to lie to everyone he knows to make anything between us happen.
He raises himself on his forearm, pushing the hair away from my face. “I really like you, Drew. If I wasn’t already leaving…I’m not sure I’d be able to stay away.”
If he wasn’t already leaving, I’m not sure I’d have let this happen in the first place. But that’s a little too much truth for this moment, and the clock is ticking.
So instead, I pull him toward me and try to forget this ever has to end.
33
JOSH
It’s hard to believe I looked forward to this meeting in DC a few weeks ago. Yes, I knew even then it would be tedious, full of politicians attempting to sound earnest, like they really care about the state of Somalian refugee camps when they can barely care long enough to listen to me speak. But I was excited by the possibilities it offered. With more funding, we could improve security enough to get a decent medical team in place, if nothing else.
Right now, though, even that possibility pales beside the memory of Drew stretched out in bed Monday morning, naked beneath a thin sheet.
What would she say if I told her I needed to see her again before I leave? She’d probably panic.
We’ve exchanged a few texts since I left her cottage four days ago. Casual, funny texts when what I want to do is write her every minute of every day. I want to tell her that I can’t get Sunday night out of my head and that I felt obsessed with her before then, and now it’s like I’m never going to get a full breath again if I don’t manage to see her.
The morning session ends and afterward is the standard bullshit lunch in the Senate dining room, where phones are forbidden and the menu looks like something from 1940—every dish involving meat and gravy.
“I heard a rumor,” says the senator beside me, “that your brother plays guitar for Breaking Milk.”
Heads lift, and suddenly I’m an object of interest at the table.
I sigh. What’s wrong with our society when my idiot brother is fascinating but the plight of starving children and amputees without appropriate medical equipment is too boring to maintain interest? “Yeah,” I reply, cutting into my pot roast. “He is.”
“Ohmygod,” says the staffer across the table. She’s in her late twenties and seemed like a reasonable person until now, with her eyes wide and her mouth hanging open. “He was just in Hawaii. Were you with him?”
I attempt to smile, but I imagine it looks more like a flinch. “Yeah, family trip.”
“So you know Drew Wilson?” she asks, and suddenly the whole table is listening. My jaw grinds. I resent the fact that Drew’s name is linked with my brother’s at all. It never should have been for even a moment.
“We’ve met,” I say guardedly.
“Are they engaged?” she asks. “I heard they got engaged in Hawaii.”
My laughter is so angry it fools no one. “No,” I reply, cutting myself off before I can say more, before I can say She dumped him and he’ll never lay his hands on her again.
Except…is that even true? They travel in the same circles. Will they run into each other at a party? Will she forget all the reasons she wasn’t interested in him anymore? Once upon a time, the idea of the two of them together irked me. Now it makes me want to put my fist through a wall.
I rise, placing my napkin on the chair, and excuse myself. The second I’m in the hall I pull out my phone. I don’t know what I can possibly say or what I hope to accomplish. Swear to me you’ll never get back together with Joel would sound completely jealous and psychotic—which is pretty much how I feel. I open my texts, and the most recent one is from her.
Drew: I just saw you on TV.
And in the midst of all my stupidity and jealousy, I smile. And realize how much I miss her. How that one night with her in LA wasn’t nearly enough.
Me: I didn’t take you for a C-SPAN viewer.
Drew: Avid. When I’m not singing about how much I love nudity. You’re wearing a suit!
Me: I figured you’d make fun of me for that.
Drew: I was tempted to, but you look really good in a suit. It’s my new favorite outfit. Though I was mostly imagining you removing it while I was watching, TBH
I picture Drew on a hotel bed, watching me as I tug off my tie, sliding a skirt higher and higher while her thighs spread wide. Fuck.
Me: Well, now you’ve got me imagining it too.
Drew: Imagining yourself undressing? I’d think that wouldn’t be a novelty at this point.
I laugh.
Me: You’re there too.
Drew: Come to New York and I could be.
I suddenly feel breathless, my heart beating hard, this weird surge of testosterone like I’m a teenager again. It’s been a very long time since I’ve blown off my obligations for a woman.
It would be unbelievably irresponsible. And I already know I’m going if she’s serious about this.
I could, I reply and then wait, holding my breath, watching those swirling dots as she phrases her reply.
Drew: Peninsula. I’ll leave you a key under the name Sexy Viking. DO NOT remove the suit until I get there.
34
DREW
Talk shows are normally the bane of my existence—obstacle courses filled with landmines and quicksand. They entail skirting around all questions about my love life and my childhood, and the implied questions about how I made it big when a thousand more talented women did not. I can speak ill of no one and have to act abundantly grateful to people and entities I hate: my manager, my family, my record label. One wrong step and within hours it will be circulating over the news and social media.
Tonight was different. Because messing up wasn’t the worst thing that could happen. Instead, I worried something might delay Josh, or delay me so I couldn’t get back to Josh. If we’d been under nuclear attack during the show, my primary concern would have been its impact on the train schedules.
Don’t get your hopes up, I tell myself. He probably came to his senses.
But my hopes are up anyway. I rush through the interview, distractedly decline the host’s invitation to some after-party, and practically run all the way to the waiting car.
I’m dialing his number before I’m fully seated. “Are you at the hotel?” I demand.
“No,” he says, sounding aggrieved. “There was something on the tracks near Philly. We got delayed. Pulling in now.”
“I’m in the car on the way back to the hotel. Are you at Penn Station? We’ll pick you up.”
“You don’t have to do that,” he says. The background noise changes from quiet to chaotic and echoing. He must be at the station. “I can just catch a cab.”
I can’t explain the weird trip of anxiety I feel. I can’t explain that I don’t want to be separated from him for even one minute if I don’t need to be, that I panic at the idea of him wandering outside Penn Statio
n at night, though I’ve been outside Penn Station plenty of times without feeling worried once. Is this how he felt when he saw me leaving to run in the dark in Waikiki? It can’t possibly be.
“We’ll be there in two minutes,” I say, making eye contact with the driver in the rearview mirror. He nods. “Send me your location. And don’t get mugged.”
He laughs. “I could fight ten guys at once. At least ten. All at the same time. Tarantino movies are a pale imitation of my fighting skills.”
“You,” I reply, feeling unduly aggravated, “sound absolutely ridiculous.”
We arrive at the entrance near 8th and 31st and I stare at the sea of people there, willing one of the dark shapes roaming around to suddenly materialize into Josh.
When one of them suddenly does—in a suit and overcoat, bag slung over his shoulder—it feels like I’m suddenly made of confetti and champagne, all of it bubbling and fizzing inside me at the same time.
I roll down the back window. “Hey, big boy. You looking for a good time?”
His face lights up with a lopsided grin and he walks toward the car, opening the door and sliding in beside me in a burst of winter air and warm skin.
The driver has thoughtfully put the privacy glass up. “Hey,” he says, turning his head toward me, linking icy fingers through my warm ones. His lips press to mine, hard and fast, as if he can’t help himself.
When he pulls back, I place my palm on his jaw because I just want to keep looking at his face. He doesn’t seem to want to look away from mine either.
“You’re actually happy to see me,” I whisper.
He raises a brow. “I just sat on a train for three and a half hours simply to spend the night with you. Is that really a surprise?”
The answer is both yes and no. When I think of the guy I ran with, the guy who watched me like a hawk the whole muddy, treacherous climb down the Kalalau Trail and who kissed me like he’d die without it at the airport—then no.
But when I think about Joshua Bailey, MD, cold and brilliant and intimidating, rattling off facts in front of senators with barely hidden contempt, generous and selfless and far too good for me—yes, it’s a little surprising.
“I guess not,” I reply. “I do give a really good blowjob.” I crack a smile but his is muted in response.
“That’s not why I’m here,” he says, holding my eye. Something in his expression, in his tone, chastens me: Don’t make this cheap. Don’t make this out to be the same bullshit you have with everyone else.
I swallow. “Yeah, I know. Sorry.”
He tips my chin up with his index finger. His lips glance off mine once then press again, just holding there while he breathes me in and out. “Don’t apologize. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t hope there was a blowjob somewhere in the next seven hours.”
I glance from him to the privacy glass. “I could ask him to circle the block.”
His eyes fall closed. “Fuck. Now I’m hard. All you had to do was offer and it happened that fast, Drew.” My hand unlinks from his and travels, hip to groin. He wasn’t lying. It’s lovely and long and firm. I manage to give it one solid squeeze before he removes my hand.
“Not here,” he says through gritted teeth.
“No?” I ask.
“I have a pretty specific fantasy involving you doing that, and you’ll probably want to be undressed when it happens.”
Joshua Bailey has specific, filthy fantasies about me. The muscle in my core clenches so hard it hurts.
In the hotel room, he pulls me against him the minute the door shuts behind us. We shrug off our coats, and his hands slide to my thighs as I kick off my heels.
I tug at his belt and then stop myself. “Wait,” I command, then go to the bed and lie back against the pillows. “Now undress.”
He grins and slowly, seductively pulls off the jacket, his eyes on me. His button-down is smooth as glass, molding to the curves of his chest. He raises a brow. “Are we good?”
I laugh. “Hell no. Now the shirt.”
His mouth tips up at the corners. “I’m feeling objectified,” he says, making quick work of the buttons.
The shirt falls open. He tugs at the belt, undoing the buckle without instruction, and pulls the zipper down on his neatly pressed pants, watching me the whole time with that slow smile on his face.
The shirt flutters to the floor. The pants follow. There’s a bulge in his boxers that makes me dizzy.
“Now—” I begin, and he shakes his head.
“It’s my turn, Drew,” he says, walking toward the bed. “Pull the dress up.”
It’s a short dress. There is little pulling required. I remove the panties without being asked and let my legs fall open. His lids flutter closed for a moment and then he kneels on the edge of the bed. His lips go to my left thigh, and begin to work their way up.
“I—” I begin.
“Shhh,” he says. His tongue sweeps over my center. “Your time in charge is over, for the moment.” His mouth closes over me. My hands fist the bed sheets at my sides, and all I can do is hold on for dear life.
It’s the middle of the night and I’m lying with my head on his chest and his hand on my hip—just like we did when we were camping except, you know, naked. He really ought to get some sleep and so should I, but this is it. The last time I’m going to see him. “What’s the rest of your week look like?” he asks.
I list it out for him—more interviews here, a two-day press junket in London for a charity thing beginning the moment I arrive, a performance, interviews in Paris, another charity thing, more interviews, a single night off, and then the tour continues as planned.
He runs a hand over my back. “That’s a lot.” His brows are pulled together in that way they are when he’s worried. My heart melts a little.
I smile. “I just spent two weeks in Hawaii, so it’s hard to argue I don’t get enough me time.”
“Do you need to argue it though? How are you even going to function in London all day if you haven’t slept on the plane?”
I look at him. I already know he won’t like the truth. That he will look down on me for the truth, which is that when I can’t keep my eyes open, Davis will locate some cocaine or anything else that might work and prop me up. That I get through a lot of these things like the corpse in Weekend at Bernie’s, dressed up and carted around while someone else moves my limbs. I want him to be the one person I don’t lie to, even if the truth is ugly, but I find in this moment I’m not quite ready.
“I’ll manage,” I reply.
“I still don’t see why you have to,” he argues. “You’ve never said a single word about this guy Davis that makes him sound like someone you’d want around.”
I shrug. “Davis made me what I am. If it weren’t for him, I’d still be playing guitar in a dive bar somewhere, sleeping on friends’ floors.”
“From the sound of it, you’d be happier if you were.”
Maybe I would be if I hadn’t come this far, but going backward now would be a huge failure. “It’s kind of like when you’re driving and you make a wrong turn, but there’s no way to get off the road,” I explain. “I keep waiting for my chance to exit and it never comes. Just like you at the camp. You could do just as much good here, you know. You were so persuasive yesterday. If I had one iota of useful knowledge, I’d have been signing up to help.”
He flashes me a dimple in the dim light. “I think you might be biased,” he says, and there’s something so sweet in his gravelly voice I don’t doubt he’s right. I’d go anywhere he asked me to based on his voice alone. For that dimple, I’d go twice.
“Well, you’ll never know unless you try,” I say. “How about this? You leave your vital work saving lives, and I’ll record a song on acoustic guitar that my fans might not like.”
He laughs. “Yes, that sounds fair.”
I knew I wasn’t going to change his mind, and it’s not as if we would ever be a couple even if I did.
Nothing is going to change. A
nd I’m so sickeningly disappointed by that.
35
JOSH
I’m the one who drives my mother to the oncologist. My father—who has spent years blathering to Joel and me about honor and being a man—is too busy with work and screwing the woman who manages his practice.
Moving as far away as I could and becoming the furthest thing from my father—it was my own, quiet fuck you to him. And now my mother is dying and I’m the one who’s fucked. I’m the one who’s going to be thousands of miles from her, unable to help.
I waited to confirm it until we were home, but I already knew. I knew it the moment I stepped into the Honolulu airport and saw that desperate look in her eyes. It said Let me have this last vacation with you all. Let me pretend.
And so we pretended. Now we’re here to face facts.
The oncologist comes in. He wants to cut out the diseased parts of her liver and put her in an experimental trial. She says yes to all of it. She knows she will die, but she simply wants more time to set us all straight before she goes.
Once again, I allow her to believe something that isn’t likely to happen.
“I was able to get a little more leave,” I tell her on the way home. “I can take you to get the port put in.”
She squeezes my hand. “I wish we were doing something slightly more fun, but thank you.”
My jaw grinds. I hate that I can’t stay.
“Have you heard from Drew?” she asks suddenly.
My tongue prods my cheek. Ever since New York, Drew and I have been texting a hundred times a day. It’s as if that was the moment we took the cork off the bottle, and I don’t see how it could ever go back on. I wake thinking of her, I run thinking of her, I eat thinking of her, I jerk off thinking of her.
I’ve never experienced anything like this obsession. And it isn’t just sex, though God knows when she video calls from an interview, whispering from the bathroom and wearing the thinnest possible tank top, those are the thoughts that come to the fore.
The Devil And The Deep Blue Sea Page 18