by Claire Adams
“Um . . . let me fill that out for you,” Isla said, taking the clipboard and pen. “Actually, hold on.”
She got up and went over to talk to the woman behind the desk. When she returned, she had a few damp wash rags. “Here,” she said, handing them to me. “Clean your hands off with that one, and hold this one up to your face.” She looked at me closely. “The bleeding isn’t nearly as bad now, at least.”
“Thanks,” I said as I tried to wipe the blood off my hand. It had all happened so fast, though I could see Alfie’s face in my mind, the satisfied expression. Christ, he must’ve wanted to do that for a long time.
“How long do you think we’re going to have to wait?” Isla asked.
“I don’t know.” I didn’t mind waiting, though. Now that we were out of there, I felt a little more at ease.
“Does it hurt?”
“It’s not so bad. It was stinging like a motherfucker for a while, but now it’s more numb than anything else. Talking feels a little strange.”
She winced. “I bet.”
“Listen,” I said. “I’m really sorry about all of this. About everything. I wish you hadn’t gotten involved in any of it. I never would’ve been able to forgive myself if he had done something to you.”
“I don’t think he would have. I mean, yeah, it was scary and kind of fucked up, but I didn’t get the feeling like he would’ve killed me or anything. Maybe that was naïve, I don’t know. I’ve never been in that sort of situation before.”
I started to smile but then stopped when it felt like the skin on my face was going split even further. “I would hope not.”
“No. This is definitely the first time I’ve ever been taken hostage and woke up to find myself tied to a chair.”
“Woke up?”
“He did something . . . I came out of the bathroom and he came up behind me and put this rag over my face, with whatever that shit is they use to knock people out with.”
“Jesus,” I said. “Isla, I am so fucking sorry.”
“It’s okay.”
“And . . . I’m also sorry about you having to see that whole thing with Ella.”
She stiffened. “Oh, you mean me walking in on the two of you kissing?”
“Yes. She just showed up. I wasn’t expecting her to be there, and I certainly wasn’t expecting her to kiss me. That is the truth.”
“It looked to me like the two of you were both enjoying it quite a bit.”
“I did kiss her back,” I said. I could’ve denied it, but I wanted to be honest. “I did, but more like a goodbye, I guess. Which might sound corny, or maybe sounds like a flat out lie, but that’s all it was. I didn’t initiate it, and I wasn’t kissing her back because I wanted it to go any further. If you had only shown up a few minutes earlier, you would’ve heard me telling her that I was with you, and whatever had previously gone on between her and me was going to have to stop. She didn’t take it well.”
Isla stopped writing on the clipboard. “You really told her that?”
“I really did. And it didn’t go over well. At all. I thought that she’d be cool about it, but she was going on and on about how we were soulmates and that hooking up with other people wasn’t supposed to mean anything because we always ended up coming back to each other. I know you might not want to hear all these details, but the reason I’m telling you is so you know that I mean it when I say I want to be with you. I really do. It would’ve been easy as hell to just go along with what Ella was saying, if I didn’t feel so strongly about you.”
“Thank you for telling me all that,” Isla said, putting the pen down and balancing the clipboard on her lap. “It definitely wasn’t what I was expecting to walk in on. But I believe you. Part of me is having a hard time believing that you’d want to be with me over someone like Ella, but I’ll believe you because you’re telling me.”
“I do,” I said.
“Then I should say I’m sorry, too. Because that stuff Alfie was saying back there, about Project Revenge and everything . . . that was true as well. In the beginning, anyway. I obviously don’t feel like that anymore. I wasn’t expecting to feel like this about you at all.”
“So the real reason we started hanging out again was because you wanted to get back at me?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“But . . . I thought you said none of that bothered you.”
“It did,” she said. “It did a lot, actually, although maybe there were some times when I was just being overly sensitive. You could be so nice to me when it was just the two of us, but then it seemed like whenever your friends were around, you were always making fun of me. Of course I tried to act like it didn’t bother me, but it did.”
I took her hand, feeling a deep shame rise up in me. I could not remember exactly the thoughts that were going on in teenager Levi’s head when I’d said those things to Isla, but it had been something along the lines of wanting to have a laugh, thinking she wouldn’t mind because she’d be part of the group, too, even if her inclusion was because I was making fun of her. Alfie was right: I did used to think that I could just do whatever it was I wanted, say whatever I wanted, and not have to deal with any of the consequences. I wanted to think that if I had known how bothered Isla was by the whole thing that I would have stopped, but I couldn’t be certain that I would have. Back then, anyway. I was different now.
“I deserve it,” I said. “I totally and completely deserve it if you decide to up and leave. Right now, even. I wouldn’t blame you.”
“I’m not going to do that.” She squeezed my hand. “Now that we’re together, there’s no one else I would rather be with.”
Just hearing that made me feel better, made it feel like going through this thing with Alfie was worth it, even. After Isla finished filling out the paperwork, she turned it in and then we sat there for a while, though not as long as I had thought we would. A nurse called my name and led us into an exam area, pulling the curtain around us.
“So what happened here?” she asked. She looked vaguely familiar, someone that I had probably seen around at the clubs. She looked at the clipboard. “Levi Bassett,” she said. “I know you.”
“You look familiar.”
“Maria,” she said. “You probably don’t recognize me in this uniform.” She leaned toward me a little. “I was at Creamfields, with a bunch of my girlfriends, and you helped us out?” she said in a low voice.
I could see Isla out of the corner of my eye, looking more and more uncomfortable with each word that Maria said.
“Oh, right,” I said. “I remember.” I’d had a couple extra Lush on me and had given them to Maria and her friends.
Maria was snapping on a pair of blue latex gloves. “So what happened to you?” she repeated. She looked at Isla. “Did you want me to check out your nose, too?”
“I think it’ll be okay,” Isla said. “We just . . . I ran into Levi and I had . . . I had a new box cutter in my hand. I’m not sure how it even happened, but my nose ended up getting smashed and his face got sliced.”
“Mmm,” Maria said. I could tell she didn’t believe a word of it, but if I wasn’t going to say anything to dispute the story, then she’d let it go. She came over to where I was sitting on the edge of the hospital bed and gently examined the side of my face.
“You’re lucky,” she said after a minute. “This is a deep cut, but it’s very clean. You’ll need stitches, but I’d say the chances are good that this will heal with almost no noticeable scar.”
I raised my eyebrows and looked at Isla. “Think we should call Alfie and tell him the good news?”
“Uh, no, definitely not,” she said.
“Let me go get what I need and we’ll clean you up and get this stitched up,” Maria said.
I looked at Isla. “I had just given her some . . . party favors,” I said. “That’s what that was all about. We never . . . were together or anything like that.”
“You know what?” she said. “It’s all in the past a
nyway. If you did, it doesn’t bother me. I don’t want to be that kind of girlfriend, who’s going to be upset by things that happened in your past.”
Maria came back in with the supplies she needed, including a hooked needle that I didn’t want to imagine going into my face. I let my eyes close while she cleaned the cut, which brought on a whole new round of stinging sensation, followed by a sharp poke when she gave me some local anesthetic. After that: totally numb. Ahh. Still, I kept my eyes shut as she did the stitches, because though I couldn’t feel the pain, I could feel the movements, the light tugging on my skin, and it was honestly making me a little queasy. I wasn’t going to hurl though; no, I wouldn’t give Alfie that satisfaction, even if there’d be no way of him knowing I’d done so.
When Maria was finished, a doctor came in to sign off the discharge papers and give me a prescription for some painkillers.
“Thanks,” I said to Maria, once I was given the okay to leave. “Appreciate the good work you did.”
“No problem,” she said. “Just keep that bandage over them for the next twenty-four hours or so, and then you can take it off. If you get them wet while taking a shower, just make sure to dry them the best you can, okay? They’re dissolvable stitches, so you don’t have to worry about coming back in to get them out. And be gentle with yourself.” She looked at Isla. “Both of you, okay?”
“Okay,” we both said.
We left the hospital and got back in a cab and I gave the driver my address. As he started to drive, I turned to Isla. “We’re going to leave,” I said.
She nodded. “That’s fine by me.”
“I’m not waiting for Anders.” I looked out the window. “We’re going to go back to my place, get our shit, and go to the airport. We’ll get on whatever flight we can.”
“Are you sure?” Isla asked.
I nodded. “Absofuckinglutely.” I doubted that Alfie would come around again; he had what he wanted, but then again, maybe he’d decide that he wanted more. “I know it probably seems a little abrupt, maybe a little dramatic, but I just don’t want to be here right now. I want to get back to New York. I’ve had enough adventure for the time being.”
It didn’t take us long to get our stuff and get down to the airport. The soonest flight we could get on would take us first to London, then would fly us into JFK. That was fine; I didn’t care. I just wanted us to be out of Ibiza as soon as possible. First time for everything, I suppose.
“We’ve got some time to kill,” I said. “Are you hungry? Do you want to just walk around or something?”
I wasn’t hungry at all, but I couldn’t sit still. It felt as though I’d taken some bad speed.
“I’m not that hungry,” Isla said. “But I wouldn’t mind taking a walk.”
“Great.” I jumped up.
As we walked, I could feel people’s gazes going to my face. Some of them looked away quickly; others let the gaze linger, and I could see them trying to work out the possibilities of what exactly had happened.
I heard someone calling my name. “Levi!” I turned.
It was Mathias, this guy I knew from Norway that I often ran into in Ibiza. “Hey! I thought that was you! You coming or going . . .” His voice trailed off when he saw my face. He was with a pretty blonde woman I didn’t recognize, who also blanched when she saw my face, but tried to cover it up with a smile.
“Leaving, I’m afraid,” I said. “Back to New York for a while.”
Mathias nodded. “Great. Yeah, I’ve got to get out there soon. What . . . what the hell happened there, man?” He touched his own cheek. “That looks serious.”
“It looks worse than it is.”
“What, did you and Ella get into a lover’s quarrel?” he asked with a laugh. I glanced at Isla.
“This is my girlfriend, Isla,” I said.
Mathias gave me a half-smile, half grimace. “Touché,” he said, shaking Isla’s hand. “I apologize for being so dense. Lovely to meet you. This is Martine.”
“And where might you two be headed?”
“Rotorua.”
I nodded. “Where is that again?”
“New Zealand.”
“That’s what I thought. I’ve never been.”
“Why don’t you guys come with? It’s gorgeous. Truly spectacular. You look like you could use a little rest and relaxation. Martine’s cousin has an amazing villa, and a yacht we can take around the Bay of Plenty. It’ll be a blast. New York can wait.”
In the past, I would’ve agreed to this invite in the heartbeat and gotten a one-way ticket to Rotorua and spent the next couple weeks doing exactly what Mathias had said: resting, relaxing, and having a good time. And there was a part of me that was saying we should do it, we both deserved it, that Rotorua would probably be a great place to just decompress and try to forget about everything that had just happened here, but what I really wanted right now was to get back to New York. Get back to my familiar stomping ground and lay low for a while.
“Sorry, man,” I said. “It’s very tempting, but we’re just going to stick with the original plan.”
“Sure, sure,” Mathias said agreeably. He took a step forward and kind of leaned into me, turning us away from Isla and Martine. “Listen,” he said in a low voice, “we’ll be back here at the end of the month. It’s going to be Martine’s twenty-fifth birthday, and we’d like to celebrate in style. There’s going to be fifty of us, I think. Will we be able to get enough Lush for everyone to double dose? With some extra, of course; there will be people trying it for the first time and I know that they’re going to want more.”
“You’ll have to talk to Alfie about that,” I said.
Mathias made a face. “I’d rather discuss it with you.”
“I’m not doing that anymore. So I’m afraid I won’t really be that much help.”
His eyebrows shot up. “You’re not?”
“No.”
He looked at my cheek again, and I could see him starting to put two and two together. “Right,” he said, stepping back. “I get it. Well, I guess all good things must come to an end, then. Is it . . . is it still going to be the same?”
“I think so. I don’t expect that Alfie would be making any drastic changes.”
“That’s good to hear.” Mathias shrugged. “The end of an era. You had a good run. It’ll be weird to start going to someone else, but that’s all right. Anyway. We best be on our way. Enjoy New York!”
“Later,” I said.
“What was that about?” Isla asked as they walked off.
“Oh, the usual. He wanted to know if he could get some of the fun stuff.”
We started walking again, and I pulled my sunglasses down over my eyes, hoping that I wouldn’t run into anyone else that I knew. We wandered past little kiosks and shops. I was getting a drink at the water fountain when Isla suddenly grabbed my arm and pulled me through a half-open door.
“What are you doing?” I said. We were in some sort of supply closet; there was a mop bucket and shelves with paper towels and spray bottles and big bottles of cleaning solution.
“The door was partially open and I peeked in and this looks like a good spot,” she said. She was unbuckling my pants, and then sliding her own shorts down, not bothering to take her shoes off as she stepped out of them.
“Good spot?”
“I want you to fuck me in here,” she said. “Right here, right now.”
She grabbed my cock. I glanced toward the door, just imagining some poor unsuspecting janitor coming in to find us here. There was a utility sink and a small counter that she pulled me over to. She leaned up against the counter, shimmying herself back so she was halfway sitting on it.
“I’ve actually never had sex at an airport before,” I said. “I’m sure this is all kinds of illegal.”
She pulled me toward her. I licked my fingers and brought them between her legs, though she was already so wet. She pushed my hand away, though.
“No,” she said. “I want your cock in
side of me. And I’ve never done it at an airport either, so I guess this makes it the first time for both of us.”
She wrapped her legs around me and I held onto her hips. My cock slid in easily and she smiled, letting her eyes close. I could hear people outside the door, the sound of suitcases being pulled along, two people going by, arguing loudly in a foreign language I didn’t recognize. The idea that we were doing this with only a door and some walls separating us from the hundreds of people that were walking by on the other side excited me and seemed to magnify everything I was feeling.
It was as though all the stress and anxiety about everything that had happened the past twenty-four hours could be expelled, right now, and I think that’s a little bit how Isla was feeling, too. I fucked her harder and faster than I had ever done before, and she responded by squeezing her legs around me even tighter, biting down hard on her lip to keep from crying out too loudly. I was trying not to make any sounds, either, so I tried holding my breath, which just made everything I was feeling even more intense.
I could tell she was close to coming, the way her muscles were tensing around me, as though she were trying to pull me even further in than I already was. I didn’t know how long I’d been holding my breath for, but the pressure inside my skull felt enormous, eclipsed, though, by the incredible feeling spiraling up from my balls, into my torso, down my legs, up my spine, into the very base of my brain.
The climax hit us at the same time, and we clung on to each other, both whimpering, both letting out enormous gasps for breath. Holy fucking shit.
I held onto her, breathing into her neck, feeling her legs relax around me as my dick slowly started to get soft inside her. I could feel her pussy muscles still contracting and I breathed in deeply, thinking that there was no nicer place to be than right here.
Finally, we pulled apart and got our clothes back on.