by Bey Deckard
Tim’s dark brows sloped downwards, and a crease appeared over his nose, but he didn’t say anything for a long time. When he finally looked at me, he seemed sad but somehow resolute.
“Okay. You say anything. What I need more than anything in the world is some time to process things. To work on myself, I guess. I’ve been alone for a long while. Jumping into something like this… I need to know that you’re serious. Because no matter if this thing between us actually works in the long term or sputters out after a few more days, I’m worried that it’s going to wind up on public record and… There’s no going back from that.”
There was a hollow growing in the pit of my stomach.
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying give me ninety days.”
“Ninety days?”
“Think of it as a warranty. You can take back anything you’ve said for ninety days, change your mind, whatever, no penalty. We’ll just chalk it up to fate being a major bitch, and we move on and try not to be too hurt about it. But, if you still want me once the warranty runs out, well… We’ll give it a try.”
I took a deep breath and shook my head slowly in confusion.
“I don’t understand.”
“Give me ninety days to miss you. To think about you. To think about us being together. To grow some balls. And… You take ninety days to figure out if I’m worth the media shitstorm that’ll hit.”
“You are.”
“You don’t know that.”
Rubbing my palms on my knees, I bit back a retort. In the five days that I’d known Tim, I’d learned that he was more stubborn than I was, and that sort of argument would go nowhere.
“So, I just go home, and what? Sit on my hands for ninety days?” It was hard not to sound angry.
“All we’ve been doing is fucking and sleeping and fucking and watching movies and fucking and eating.” His grin was a shadow of its usual coy self.
“And talking…”
“And talking. But I can’t keep my hands off you, and you’re just as bad, so we’re not talking as much as we should be, given that you’re trying to whisk me away with you.”
“Ninety days,” I said faintly. “Emails and texts?”
“No contact unless it’s an emergency.”
“You’re being ridiculous.”
“I’m being cautious.”
“How in the hell are we supposed to get to know each other better if we’re not actually communicating?” I said, more anger creeping into my voice.
“I need to know that you don't just see me as some sort of novelty,” Tim said quietly, “and that you’re actually serious about this.”
“Jesus, Tim. I am!” I replied, frustrated. “And you’re not—why is it so fucking hard for you to accept that I might like you for who you are?”
“And who's that?”
“Someone who sees me for who I am… who sees the man and not the actor.”
Tim smirked, but his eyes had gone soft. “Listen… It’s only ninety days, Stu. Less than three months. The problem with online relationships is that you forget that the person snores or that they pick their teeth—it all gets overwritten by sanitized text in short order… Emails that are distilled down to flowery words about desire and intention without the imperfection of reality. No… This way you get to play back your memories. Examine them without my input. Maybe even obsess over them. But, even if you remember things in a rosy glow, ninety days, I think, is long enough to either tire of waiting and then move on, or realize that what you’re feeling here”—Tim tapped my chest lightly—“might be worth investing in.”
Bugger it all, it made good sense, but I hated it nonetheless.
“I snore?” I muttered.
“Jesus, Stuart… is that what you took away from—” Tim stopped when he saw I was just trying to make a lame joke.
“You can have your ninety days,” I conceded with a scowl. “Now, can we please use the remaining time we have together to apply ourselves entirely to creating more memories that I will pine pathetically over?”
Tim wrapped his arms around my neck and kissed me softly. I slid my hands up his bare back, and he made a quiet little sound of pleasure before he rose up on knees to straddle me on the couch, bending my head back so he could kiss me deep.
It felt like we were already saying goodbye.
Seven
Ninety days later
I HUNG UP WITH GREG, feeling happier and more excited about a role than I had in quite some time. It was an indie movie—a Swiss-Welsh collaboration—and I wasn’t even the leading man, but the part just felt right… the way Maksim, the Ukrainian gypsy, had felt. However, there was something else that was continuously pushing all other thought out of my mind.
Before I’d left Montreal, Tim had made me swear to call or email only in the event of an emergency and that, at the end of ninety days, he would be the one to contact me, since he was the one who had asked for the time to begin with. I’d agreed, but only after he allowed one caveat: if I hadn’t heard from him by the deadline, I could call him if I still felt something… just to say goodbye.
He’d called me a masochist and kissed me, refusing to see me off at the airport. Tim had been dry-eyed when I left, but I liked to think that he shed a few quiet tears once I was gone. For my part… I must have looked absolutely bereft because the driver of the Montreal limo service Greg liked to use, usually known for being very discreet, actually asked me a few times if I was all right. I was clearly not, as evinced by the liberal tots of whiskey I kept pouring into my glass—I barely remembered getting to the airport and nothing of the flight home.
However, once I’d recovered from my momentary lapse, I made it my singular mission to get my act together so that when, not if, Tim called me, I could offer him a much more stable environment than the one I had found myself in prior to the call from Claire that had set events in motion.
Though it turned out that I was overly optimistic about having my divorce finalized by the time the “warranty” ran out, Claire was true to her word about making it as painless as possible. In truth, neither of us was particularly hurt about the split. She had been my anchor, and I hers, for a long time; but when her acting career had failed to flourish—eclipsed as it were by my own, however shite my roles—things like envy and fatigue had taken root, and we had grown slowly apart. My son Joshua was born in the wake of our problems, and though I will never, ever regret his birth, he was conceived in a desperate attempt to mend something that no longer had any reason to be. Claire claimed to be happier, and I believed her. Now, it was my turn to be happier.
If only Tim would email…
I had driven myself halfway crazy staring at his Facebook page, locked out by the friends-only setting, forced to make do with the one slightly blurry profile picture I had access to. I had read every single review he’d written over the last ninety days, and then I’d gone back and read every review he’d ever written about my movies. I don’t know why I had been so blind to it before… His deep appreciation for my work was blatantly obvious in his writing.
I had even nervously bought myself a small dildo over the Internet to practice with—imagining that it was Tim who was on the other end—so that I would have an idea of what to expect, should things take a turn in that direction. I knew that Tim wanted me that way, and that made me want it too.
If only Tim would call…
It was silly to expect him to be up so early. It was just past eleven for me, but that meant it was just after six in the morning for Tim, and he was not an early riser. I knew I had to find something to do all day to distract myself or else I’d be checking my email or my phone every thirty seconds until I heard from him.
Please god, let me hear something.
I tapped out a quick message on my phone to the maid service to make sure that there were fresh sheets on the bed in the modest three-bedroom flat I had rented on Colville Terrace. I then sat down i
n front of my laptop to write an email to my lawyer to ask him how long it would take the paperwork for the sale of the yacht to be finalized—I had to adjust my budget to accommodate the pretty drastic pay cut I was taking with these new roles, and I knew it really was absurd to own both a small sailboat and a yacht.
Then I looked at the time and saw that only fifteen minutes had passed, and I groaned. I’ve never been good at waiting.
As I was thumbing a quick text to my trainer, asking whether he wanted to work out with me for a few hours, a call flashed across my screen, and my heart stopped.
There was no mistaking whose number it was.
Not caring that it looked like I was just waiting by the phone for his call, I answered it right away, but it took me a second before I found my voice.
“Tim?”
“Hi! Shit… Hang on,” he said, and there was a loud surge of voices that cut out a moment later when he put me on hold. A few seconds later, Tim returned, and he sounded a little breathless. “Sorry. Sorry… I should have waited a few minutes before calling.”
“How are you?” I said, sounding stiff and awkward.
I hate you for making me wait. I am furious at you for all the lonely, stupid nights we could have been spending together instead. I have never been so angry and sad and hopeful in my entire life. I will break. I will crumble to dust. Do you want to be with me? Can you be with me? Be with me. They were all things I had written to Tim, twenty or so emails sitting unsent in my drafts folder, ranging from long, bitter, hurtful rants to the single word that neither of us had any business using after knowing each other for less than a week.
“I’m glad to hear your voice,” I added hastily.
“So… Are you tired of waiting?” asked Tim. There was so much hope in his soft voice that the relieved sigh I let out was almost cartoon-like in its exaggeration.
“Yes! Good Christ, yes. Blast me if I ever let you put me through the like again, you bastard. You gorgeous bloody bastard.”
Tim laughed, and I quickly clicked over to the flight information I had saved on my laptop.
“If I can get to the airport in time, I can hop on a plane and be in Montreal before midnight,” I said, squinting at my screen. “Or… if I—”
“Uh, Stu…” said Tim, and I heard a loud, echoing woman’s voice in the background. “Here’s the thing: I did something really crazy last night.” There was another rush of noise and someone called out. It was an incredibly, impossibly familiar sound. My pulse, already speeding along, seemed to double.
“Tim, where are you?” I could barely breathe.
“Um. I’m at Heathrow,” replied Tim with a smile in his voice. His excitement was palpable.
“What? How?” I was gripping my phone so hard that the case creaked in my fist.
“Overnight flight. Oof… Talk about jet lag.” Tim chuckled, but there was a strained quality to it, like he was trying to keep it together. “I actually missed my flight in Toronto, otherwise I would have arrived about three hours ago.”
I looked at the time. It would take about forty-five minutes if I hopped into my car right then—more if the traffic on the M4 was bad.
“What terminal are you at? Two?”
“Why? Oh. Don’t worry… I’m about to hop into a cab”—Tim interrupted himself to speak to someone else—“Yes! That would be great. Yeah, thanks. Stuart? Sorry… Yeah, I’m hopping in a cab right now. I’m coming to you. Where do you live?”
I quickly gave him my address in Notting Hill, my palms as sweaty as they had been the day I scored my first movie role. I heard Tim relay my address, followed by a rather cheeky reply from the cabbie and an awkward laugh by Tim.
“I’m going to need you just to translate,” murmured Tim; it was as if his mouth was up against my ear, and my breathing became a little more uneven. “I should be there soon, right? I’ll call you again if—”
“Don’t hang up,” I said hurriedly.
“But…”
“I don’t care about roaming charges or international fees or any of that rubbish. Stay on the phone. Talk to me.”
“Okay.”
“You made me wait three months. I’m not waiting anymore.”
“Anything you want, Stuart.” He sounded amused. I heard him take a deep breath and settle himself. “What do you want to talk about?”
“Tell me what you did after I left you.”
Tim chuckled. “What? You want to know if I cried?”
“Did you?”
“Yes. Does that make you feel better?”
“No!” I said, shocked, but when he laughed again, I had to smile. “Okay, I may have cried too.”
“Real tears or actor tears?” His tone was teasing but fond.
I brought up the website for a local florist who did same-day delivery and clicked through their offerings until I found the roses. Orange, for passion.
“Real tears, you git. What did you do after?” I prompted him.
For a moment I wondered whether it was okay to buy him roses. Did men give each other roses? Then I remembered what he had said:
If it works for you, it works for me. The trick is not to overthink it.
How would I react if Tim bought me roses? My grin got wider, and I clicked the purchase button. If Tim bought me roses, I would tease him about it, and then I would lay him down in my bed and cover him with kisses softer than any flower petal… before I pricked him with my thorn.
“Hey! You asked me to stay on the phone, and you’re not even listening,” chided Tim. “You’re just sitting there giggling to yourself. What’s so funny?”
“I’ll show you when you get home,” I said.
There was dead air for a few seconds before I realized what I had said.
Home.
However, Tim resumed talking a moment later, and I could hear the smile in his voice.
“Does that mean you cleared out a drawer for my stuff? Because, I have to admit, I brought an awful lot with me. I might need two or three…”
Did hearts truly swell? Because it felt like my ribs were about to crack. Thankfully, I was saved from uttering any incoherent nonsense when Tim resumed his story.
“After I threw all the Chinese containers in the trash, I shaved my head, and then I jumped in the shower. Is this really what you want to hear?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Then what?”
“You’re ridiculous.”
“And you’re amazing.”
After another brief pause, Tim continued telling me about his day—all of his days.
I leaned back in my chair and closed my eyes, just listening to the sound of his voice as he told me trivial things, silly things. I smiled, imagining the subtle expressions that animated his kissable face and how his graceful hands always moved as if to illustrate his words, while he sped along through the cold winter day towards me and the warmth of the fire between us that ninety days could not extinguish.
∞
Other Books by Bey Deckard
Baal’s Heart Trilogy
Caged: Love and Treachery on the High Seas
Sacrificed: Heart Beyond the Spires
Fated: Blood and Redemption
F.I.S.T.S.
Sarge
Murphy
About the Author
Bey Deckard currently lives in the wilds of Montreal with his best buddy, a spotty pit bull named Murphy.
[email protected]
www.beydeckard.com
re