by Roxy Harte
“Simon? Simon!”
The line goes dead. Well, crap. I crawl back under the covers and listen to the wind and rain, hoping none of the big old trees around my house fall over.
It is some time later when I awaken to pounding on my front door. The wind is still whistling around my house. I think that Simon was insane to drive over here to tell me we couldn’t fly out. He’s insane! Grabbing a flashlight from a nightstand drawer, I hurry through the dark house. I open the door, smiling, then realize it isn’t Simon under the big yellow raincoat, but Geri. “What are you doing here?”
“I had to see you. I drove all night.” She pulls off her dripping raincoat and leaves it on the porch before stepping into the foyer.
“That will blow away,” I say. “Hand it here.”
She does, I carry it dripping to the hall bathroom where I lay it in the sink. “You drove?”
“If you haven’t noticed, there’s a storm out there off the coast and not only is the ferry down, but flights are grounded too.”
“Yeah, must be some storm.” I say, trying to see through the big picture window as I walk back into the living room. It is darker than before, seeming like night. I busy myself by lighting some candles. “Must be some woman who drew me back.”
I don’t comment. I don’t know what to say. I don’t want this to be another false start at a relationship that doesn’t have a chance. I remember how real my dream was. Am I dreaming this now? I don’t think I will be able to bear it if I wake up again. I light a few more candles, on the fireplace mantle and on the coffee table. I turn off the flashlight and set it on a small side table by the sofa.
“I’ve had a lot of time to think,” she says.
“You’ve been away a week.”
“That’s a long time to think about someone when you’re thinking you might never see them again. I didn’t want the last time I saw you to be the last time I’d ever get to see you.”
“Ah, that’s what this is about.” Enlightenment dawns a bit slowly. “Which one called you, Meg? Tina? Because it isn’t going to change anything that you are here,” I say, not believing I’m saying it. “I’m going back to Tokyo, and this time I’m sinking my heart and soul into the project. I’m not going to get sidetracked by what I think I want or need, because I already have everything I need to be happy. I know who I am. And I’m okay with that.”
I don’t mean for the last part to come out as an angry jab, but that’s exactly what it comes out sounding like.
“You’re right.” She nods. “You’ve always known who you are and you’ve never apologized for being yourself. I’m sorry if I made you think you have to be something you aren’t to be with me.”
I shrug.
“When do you leave?”
“As soon as the airport clears it.”
“Wow. That’s soon.”
“Yeah.” I sigh, sitting down on the couch. She sits beside me. Wasn’t I just sitting here with Simon? God, how ridiculous is this?
“I can’t believe you are here.” I pull my knees up to my chin, hiding behind arms and legs. She tips her head back against the couch, closing her eyes, her eyelashes flaring out over her cheekbones. She looks so soft, so relaxed. And I’m a wreck, trembling beside her.
You are so beautiful.
Her eyes open and she turns her gaze to me. It is like she heard my thought, because she blushes, like she always does when I tell her she’s beautiful.
“You are beautiful.” She reaches her hand out to touch me, settling for running her hand over my arm.
“It’s what makes this so hard.”
“Please don’t tell me anything else that is going to make me hurt any more than I already hurt,” I beg. “I can’t take it. I fell in love with you! And you wouldn’t—”
“I know. I know. I’ve been a complete and utter moron.” She scoots closer, pulling me into her arms even though I stay wrapped up, a tight ball of uncooperative arms and legs. “I can’t stand being away from you.”
She pulls me nearer. “I want to be a part of your life.”
Simon’s words from only hours ago echo through my brain. I’d rather be your friend than not part of your life at all. Is that why Geri’s here, to make certain we can be friends?
I lean over to kiss the dark freckle above her lip just because I’ve wanted to for so long. She smiles at me, letting me pull back into myself. We’re still touching, but I am as stiff as when she first put her arm around me.
“I can’t believe you’re here,” I repeat, not wanting to ruin everything again, but needing to know. “Did Meg call you? Tina? Are you supposed to talk me out of going to Japan?”
Her face turns serious and she looks at me a long time before answering. “They both called and I panicked that you would leave and I might never see you again. So I drove through a storm hoping to get here before you left. I’m tired of running from you. From everyone. I haven’t really dated since Sheila. I hate to admit it, but she made me fear love. I don’t ever want to hurt as badly again as I did when she walked out of my life. Being with you has reminded me what it means to be aware of my beating heart again. I’m not here to keep you from going to Tokyo just like I know you would never interfere with my need to travel sometimes. I just knew that I had to come here and offer to share my life with you, because I think what we both feel when we are together is some kind of once-in-a-lifetime magic that goes way beyond love.”
Pretty words.
I try to get my cynical self in check, but Simon has really done a number on my mind too. And to think, a week ago I would have been happy with I love you.
“I’m too late, aren’t I?” she asks.
“I don’t know, Geri. My heart still pounds like crazy when I see you. My body wants you to make love to it. Like now. It doesn’t want my brain to think too hard on this...but the problem is that my brain is thinking and I know that you will never be able to handle being in a long-term relationship with Simone Sinclair, porn star.”
“What happened to retiring and being a normal person raising a baby?”
“A lot happened in seven days.”
She nods and the look that crosses her face isn’t a happy one. “So what’s it going to take to be a part of your life?”
“Acceptance of who I am and what I do is a start. Whether I’m a porn star or a porn producer, I’m still the same me that you’ve known all these years...and I’m relocating to Tokyo, so you figure it out.”
She doesn’t leave, she doesn’t pull away. She holds me, silently, and after a while, I relax against her because the storm and her warmth are lulling.
Minutes or hours later, I fall asleep against her, and after a while, she must sleep too because when I wake again, it is deep night and the storm no longer whistles around the house. Rolling off the sofa, I don’t try to be extra quiet, but don’t want to wake her either. I realize fairly quickly that nothing is going to wake Geri. She looks exhausted, even in deep sleep.
In the bathroom, I prep the next pee stick and then pass it under my urine. I’m so nervous, my hand shakes. It isn’t a long wait. Negative.
“Shit.” I go to bed, crawling under the covers, leaving Geri asleep downstairs on the couch. It hits me that I’m done fighting for I love you from anyone. Maybe because she said the words and the words didn’t change anything. If anyone wants to love me, they can, but I’m done trying to make it happen and they’ll have to prove it with actions not words.
I toss and turn, deciding to just be happy with the happy moments that happen each day and having Geri on my couch definitely counted. It seems like I might never fall asleep but then I am waking up, and find Geri sitting on the edge of the bed.
She holds my discarded pee stick in her hand and tears run down her face. Are you okay?”
“I’m okay,” I say resolutely. “I’m going to have to be. Four more days of this, waiting to figure out if it’s positive or negative, I might go insane.”
She nods. “I’m sorry I fe
ll asleep. You could have woke me up.”
“I’ve slept the whole time you slept,” I assure her. “Worry is hard work. I think I’m still exhausted.”
She lies down beside me and I feel her shoulders shake, her silent tears becoming a forlorn sob.
“Oh, don’t do that. You’ll get me started,” I beg.
She pulls me into her arms and, for a second, my heart races, thinking that she might ask me to stay, but then she doesn’t and I don’t know what to think. I kiss her shoulder, kiss her neck. She’s still wearing the same clothes she arrived in and I decide that she needs to be wearing none at all. “I need a shower, take one with me?” I ask, standing, holding my hand out to her. She nods, taking my hand.
In the bathroom, I pull off my clothes, adjust the water temperature, and climb under the shower spray. Through the glass doors, I watch her undress and feel like I shouldn’t be watching, but I can’t help myself as her shirt comes off, then her pants. I am surprised to see that she is wearing girls’ bikini underwear, white cotton, but still, girls’. Her bra matches. It is the same half-cami style that she wore the first time I saw her take off her clothes. She’s much more relaxed this time and I wonder what the difference is.
She pulls the bra over her head and lowers her panties. She isn’t strapped on, no hidden package, just girl, and I wonder about that, but only until she turns around. She ducks her head when she opens the glass door. I step into the corner, making room for her, enjoying her shyness. She turns to face me, putting me eye to eye with her perfect breasts. I palm a bar of soap and start to rub it over her chest and then dropping down just far enough to lather her breasts. I focus on them only long enough to draw her nipples to tight buds then lather her stomach and hips, her ass cheeks and then finally just a tease between her legs. She doesn’t shave. And her mons is beautiful covered in downy, blonde-brown hair. I lather her pubic hair and then play with the suds, swirling, dipping my finger deeper.
She growls, taking the bar of soap, insisting, “My turn,” and her voice sounds tight with desire. I stop her, explaining, “I can’t. Three weeks, remember?”
Nodding, she pulls me into her arms, tucking her face into my neck and, over the spray of the shower,
I barely hear her say, “I love you.”
Kissing her shoulder, I convince myself that I only heard what I wanted to hear. I’m so good at that.
A while later, we lay side by side in my bed. The storm is over and dawn is breaking clear and bright. “I want you. I think we could sixty-nine...as long as I don’t orgasm...would that be okay?”
She nods and it is only slightly awkward as we reposition with me on the bottom and her on top. I wrap my hands around her thighs, pulling her closer just as she licks her first tongue stroke over my clit.
“Oh God. This might be harder than I thought.”
She slides her tongue to a less sensitive spot. “Better?”
“Much.” I stick my tongue out tentatively, but then as my lips close around her clit, it becomes second nature. I lick her, suck her, sliding my tongue in circles around her clit, just like I would if she had a dick instead.
I suck her clit into my mouth and keep sucking, hard and fast. I slide my fingers between the lips of her labia, teasing, not penetrating. I feel her hips start bucking against my face and even then I’m not willing to let go, not until I hear her moans turn to sobs. “Oh God, Simone, oh God! What you do to me.”
♥
Two hours later, I am climbing into Simon’s Escalade, leaving Geri in my driveway, sitting in her Jeep, looking stunned and confused. I kissed her goodbye, not saying the words. I didn’t have any words in me to say, not I love you, or I’ll miss you, though both would have been true. I try not to think too hard about when or if I will see Geri again, I just face forward, hidden behind dark sunglasses, not daring to look in the rearview mirror because I don’t think that she ever looked in hers the times she was driving away from me. Because if she’d have looked, she’d have seen me doubled over, sobbing, and I don’t think she would have kept driving if she’d seen me like that. I know if I look and I see her in that condition, it would break my heart, but I don’t know if I could turn around if I knew she was crying. Have I grown so cold? So uncompassionate?
No, I’m a coward. I don’t look because my future is in Japan and I know that if I look and she’s sobbing, I won’t go. I close my eyes and grip the door handle with a death grip.
“Are you okay?” Simon asks from beside me.
“I’m okay. This better be a fucking hellacious spa you’re taking me to.”
He smiles, reaching over to squeeze my thigh and the warmth of his touch is welcome. He’s always been there for me, through the good, through the bad, he’s seen it all. I don’t hate him, not at all. In a way, I need him and he needs me, but I don’t want to dwell on that.
Chapter Nineteen
♥
Spa experience does not even begin to describe my first day in Japan. I lie on a cushioned chaise with my eyes closed, a warm mist wafting around me from the hot springs. I’m tempted, but I won’t climb in the very hot water, not while there is still a chance of pregnancy...and I have one more pee stick before I can call it a failure.
Bird song fills the small, sheltered area, finches of all colors roosting in thick clumps of lacy green bamboo. A small waterfall bubbles gently behind me and soft music filters out through an open door.
A petite, dark-haired woman with green eyes and a teasing smile massages my fingers. When I close my eyes, I see her naked, perhaps tied in rope. I want her, not for me, but for the production company. I could make her famous. I imagine Simon having the same thoughts about me twenty years ago. He said once, “We’re not so different,” and I hate to admit it, but he’s right about that. I can imagine stripping my masseuse and bending her over the massage table. I imagine what her skin would feel like beneath my hands, what her come would taste like on my lips.
I am like Simon. However, I wouldn’t manipulate the girl with sweet words. I wouldn’t make her fall in love with me to get her naked in front of my camera.
As long as I’m being honest with myself I have to admit that I’m good at this business. I was good at being a porn star and I have no doubt I will do just as well on the other side of the camera. And damn it, I miss being in the studio.
I can do this. Alone.
I’m glad that Simon and I had the long flight to talk things through. My role, his role. He liked the new name Simon Simone Productions, though he thought my name should be first, Simone Simon. I laughed and told him that since I was taking eighty percent of the profits, he should be happy with having his name first. Besides, although I didn’t tell him, the other way seemed too much like a marriage.
We ate dinner on the plane and, though it was very elegant, it wasn’t romantic. It wasn’t business either, it was just two old friends.
“I hurt you when I wasn’t supportive of your decision to have a baby. I was just shocked, surprised, and I didn’t want to be a father again.”
“I never once asked you to be my baby’s father.”
“I know.” He looked into his glass of wine and swirled it. “You know, Jeremy was a lucky kid. His father was a jerk, his mother disappeared, but he managed to find you. I think he’d tell you that he thinks of you as his mother.”
I snorted. “I’m glad I could be Jeremy’s friend.”
“A friend doesn’t go to every single baseball, soccer, basketball game of his life. A friend doesn’t hunt him down and convince him back home to the father who didn’t even have a clue where to look when he ran away. You always listened, you always took an interest, and you always knew exactly what was going on in his life. I was always too fucking busy to raise my son. You weren’t and that’s why I told you I wouldn’t give you a baby, not because you are a porn star, not because you are too old, but because of my mistakes. I was a horrible father to Jeremy...I don’t want to screw it up a second time around.”
“Don’t worry. I’m not looking for a father,” I said. “I’m not even pregnant...yet.”
“No, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying that if you do have a baby, I won’t screw up. If you let me into your life, into your child’s life, I’ll be there.”
“I think the implantation failed,” I admitted.
He lifted my dropped chin and made me look into his eyes. “So, try again. I’m sure that there are fertility clinics in Tokyo,” he winked, “and if there isn’t any Caucasian sperm...I’ll donate some.” We clinked wine glasses and laughed. As if.
But the conversation did make me feel better. I’m not a quitter. I will try again.
I relax deeper, the woman massaging my hands really knows what she is doing. I’m trying not to think too hard, but I’m dwelling on Simon’s words. I have to just focus on the happy moments of each day. And last night’s dinner was a happy moment. A very happy moment. It’s a good thing he’s back on a plane to the States, because I would hate to think that I’d end up naked with him again just because he was nice to me.
I smile, my brain recalling all of the frenzied, naked moments with Simon. I think I can file those memories under very happy moments...as long as I can keep the pain of not being able to make him love me out of it...and I don’t even believe that anymore. Simon loves me, but it isn’t a fairytale love...no white picket fences in our future. I’m okay with that.
The masseuse rubs her hand up my arm, signaling we are done, and I open my eyes, finding her magical green eyes staring at me intently. “When your baby come?”