The Crossroads Duet

by Rachel Blaufeld

  “I’m in recovery. Well, not actively in it, but I guess you kind of always are. I used to have a problem with drinking . . . and other stuff. And now, I don’t do any of it. I’ve been clean for almost five years, but I constantly work at staying that way. I’m sorry if you don’t think that’s cool or fun, but it’s me. And part of the program is we don’t lie about it or make excuses.”

  This was my opening. My chance to not lie or make excuses, but I couldn’t. This was becoming a pattern for me. I’d hated myself for doing it for years, and now I wanted to gouge my eyes out for doing it with Bess. Yet I couldn’t make the declaration of truth come out of my mouth.

  Instead I said, “I think it’s just fine. You, Bess, are cool and fun just as you are.”

  She wiped at her eye with her finger, swiping a tear out of the way, and an avalanche of guilt fell on my heart. But still, I couldn’t start the conversation that needed to be had.

  Before I could speak again, chirpy little Andi was back slinging our drinks onto the table.

  I took Bess’s hand once again, and asked, “How about some chips and salsa?”

  She nodded, and Andi chimed in, “Great! I’ll go grab that for you!”

  As she walked away, I asked the inevitable, “Is this okay?” while eyeing my glass of beer.

  “I think so,” she said slowly, then looked me in the eye. “Truthfully, I haven’t really been around drinkers for a long time. Other than when we last had dinner or I do dinner service at the hotel, I pretty much spend my time around other people who are dry. So, yeah, I think it’s all right. I’m really sorry to make you feel uncomfortable. I didn’t tell you about me with that in mind.”

  A thought hit me of at least one thing I could make right. “You know what? I think you’re pretty amazing to tell me, and you know what else? A Diet Coke sounds awesome right about now.”

  I lifted my hand in the air and waved our peppy server over. “I’m sorry, but I changed my mind. I’ll have a Diet Coke like the lady. Just take this and pour it out.” I handed over the beer and noticed Andi looked confused with a crinkle in her brow.

  “You can still charge me for it. I just don’t want it now.”

  “Oh, cool! Thanks,” the waitress said and left us again.

  After all that, dinner went smoothly as we washed down the saltiness of the chips with sweet soda and small talk about her job and mine. Totally mesmerized with the young woman in front of me, I couldn’t stop watching her. With brown hair and eyes nearly the same shade, she was naturally beautiful with nothing enhanced or enlarged. Just subtle, simple beauty. And I couldn’t take my eyes off of her.

  We plowed our way through some enchiladas before deciding to walk along the beach to work them off. When we took off our shoes and stepped onto the sand, Bess’s hair blew wild in the wind, her sweater billowing out from her small frame. I wrapped my arm around her back and pulled her in close. She smelled like fajitas and citrus, and inhaling deeply, I took my fill.

  “This is so incredible!” she said, tucked under my arm as we walked along the shoreline. “Wow! God, if I lived here, I would never leave. You’re right, who needs four seasons?”

  If you were here all the time . . .

  My thoughts were going haywire. I took a deep breath, trying to fill my lungs, playing it off as taking in the ocean air.

  “It is pretty damn incredible,” I admitted. “But you know, living here, we don’t do this stuff all the time. We work mostly and play a little. At least, that’s what I do.”

  Kicking up little bits of sand with her feet, she teased, “Yeah, yeah. Make a girl feel good. You probably have a different ‘hotel employee’ down here every week to soak up the sun and fun.”

  She had to pull her arm away from me to make the air quotes around hotel employee, and I felt her absence immediately. This woman did something to me, something no one else had ever been able to do—she’d melted a tiny layer of the permanent ice around my heart. A thick layer that even the Southern sun and humidity hadn’t been able to defrost.

  And yet she thought she was one of many “hotel employees” to catch my attention.

  “No way!” I stopped dead in my tracks and turned Bess to face me. When she stared down at our bare feet, I tipped her face to look at me. “Listen to me. I have never done this before. Never. Do you hear me?”

  She nodded but said nothing.

  “I’ve never invited anyone here, never got myself involved with a hotel employee—beyond a one-night thing, which I know isn’t what you want to hear, but it’s the truth. I can’t stay away from you, Bess. Like a lost puppy, I keep finding myself crawling back to you, and I can promise you . . . I’ve never felt that way about anyone.”

  She stared straight into my eyes for a moment, and then asked, “Again, why me?”

  I grabbed her hands and swung them behind her, pulling her in tight, trapping her in my embrace, then brought my mouth down hard on hers.

  I couldn’t tell her why, but I could definitely show her.

  Consuming her mouth with my own, pushing my way inside, my tongue seeking refuge with hers, twisting like I wanted to be doing with her body in the sheets. But she wasn’t ready for that yet, and neither was I. Because truth be told, I knew it would be addictive. I’d been obsessing over Bess in one way or another for several years, and right now with her tongue exploring my mouth and her body pressed against my erection, I recognized the disaster my life would become with and without her. She was my salve—the balm able to ease the pain of the past—and currently the flame lighting my body on fire.

  My lies had gone on too long. My chance to make anything right was long gone, but the ache I felt for this woman was so intense that it raged war with my conscience and won.

  Standing in the moonlight, the stars twinkling above us in a dark velvet sky, I wanted to lay Bess down in the sand, rip off her clothes, and plunge deep into her depths without a life jacket.

  And in that moment, I wasn’t worried about drowning.

  Bess

  I’d known from his e-mail that Lane had reserved a room for me at a nearby hotel that was a client of his. So I wasn’t nervous about my sleeping arrangements before I left Pennsylvania.

  But as he made love to my mouth on the beach under the starry sky, I’d never wanted to go home with someone so badly. I wanted to ditch any reservations—mental or physical—and hurry back to wherever Lane lived and do whatever I’d never done before.

  Which, looking back, was probably not much.

  Except, I wanted to do it all. And remember it. Savor it. Catalog it. Brand it to my brain.

  He’d pulled me close, captured me with my own hands and driven me hard against his frame. Then he released my hands, allowing them to wander freely. I was like a blind person feeling my way home, touching each and every plane and surface I encountered, finding my way to comfort. And paradise.

  Finally, I grabbed Lane’s back as his tongue sought refuge in my mouth. Gripping his T-shirt with fear that I would sink into the sand and disappear from the moment, I pried my eyes open to make sure this was actually happening.

  I captured his gaze, like two searing blue planets. Set against the dark sky, the color of his eyes was even more pronounced. His dark hair blending into the night, Lane watched me.

  I was kissing a man I’d admitted the awful truth of my past to, and he plowed through it as though it was no big deal. A man who wanted me enough to bring me to Florida and wait for me at the airport. Amazingly enough, he wasn’t running in the opposite direction, but pulling me closer.

  For the briefest of moments, a faint scent of pine crossed my senses, and I was reminded of AJ. Another man who recently devoured me, and at the time I thought I’d learn to like it. I was wrong.

  AJ might have brought me awake sexually, revived my appetite for the touch of another human, but his heavy-handed approach to get my attention left a bitter taste in my mouth, much like sugar-free candy. He might have looked like the real thing, but he w
as nowhere near it. Not even close.

  I knew how AJ’s mind worked—better than he thought—and knew he was chasing another type of high. It wasn’t necessarily about me. That’s how addictive personalities work.

  Lane was chasing me, and I didn’t know why. But instead of playing hard to get, I was toppling right on top of him.

  Literally.

  The kiss had deepened to a point of no return and with Lane holding me tight, we drifted toward the sand. He fell backward and I tumbled right on top of him, our lips never losing their connection.

  I brought my hands up to run through his untamed hair, dragging my fingers along his scalp, and my touch elicited a moan from somewhere deep inside his chest. I felt it reverberate against mine and answered with a hum of desire I didn’t even know I could make. With the water lapping the shoreline the only noise in the background, our symphony of moans filled the air around us. Even fully clothed, as our bodies drew together, Lane’s desire made itself known. I pressed into it, looking for friction, anything that might relieve the need that consumed me.

  He brought his hands up from where they were locked tight around my back and drew them over my shoulders, bringing my cardigan down with his fingers. My skin tingled and burned as his rough fingers made their way down my bare arms, the breeze doing little to cool the heat radiating off of me.

  We were like two teenagers, my hands tightly woven in his hair as he ran his up and down my arms, then brushed his fingers along my side cleavage. Grinding into each other, we pushed and pulled, desperately looking for release in the middle of a public beach in Miami. And I couldn’t have cared less.

  I never wanted to leave this moment. I wanted to stay there for the next twenty or forty years.

  “Bess,” Lane whispered, breaking the moment. His one hand remained steady on my arm as the other reached around to hold my neck when I lifted my head up.

  “Bess,” he softly repeated as he lifted his forehead to meet mine. “We have to stop.”

  I nodded, feeling my eyes start to fill with tears. What was I thinking? Was I that desperate to push this man to screw me in a public place?

  Thankfully, my emotions were masked by the night.

  “I don’t want to,” he said, rubbing his palm back and forth over the nape of my neck. “But we have to because I want more, so much more. I want all of you. And I need to respect what you said at dinner. You didn’t come here for a roll in the hay—or the sand—and that was certainly not my expectation. But in about three seconds, I’m not going to be able to stop.”

  “Okay,” I breathed out.

  He lifted his hip and ground into me one more time, allowing me time to digest his desire. “Believe me when I say I don’t want to. I want to carry you up to the road and check into the first hotel we see. I want to dive inside you, and I mean deep, any way I can. But I can’t tonight. I meant it when I told you we need to have fun while you’re down here, and if I get inside you right now, I may never leave for the next forty-eight hours. You won’t see daylight.”

  “Oh,” I said, but thought, Why not? I don’t need the daylight.

  But he was right. I needed to cool my raging hormones and take stock of what we were doing, which was pretty crazy for someone who was stone-cold sober.

  Before I could say anything more, Lane kissed me tenderly. It was a gentle caress, so different from the raging kisses of just moments before, but it stoked my inner fire just the same. Despite the cool night air, I was roasting.

  So, when Lane helped me to stand, I allowed my cardigan to fall while brushing the sand off my body. As I bent over to catch my sweater, the moonlight caught my tattoo, and Lane reached out to touch it.

  “Wow,” was all he said. His finger traced around the outline, then moved to the teardrops, circling them while his brow furrowed.

  I brought my hand up to cover it. I’d forgotten it was there for the first time in . . . ever. It struck me how long it had been since I’d bared my body or my true self to anyone. Sadly, I couldn’t remember the last time I did. I was probably drunk or stoned or high or all three. Yeah, I’d been naked with AJ, but he didn’t count. The lines were so blurred with him; he’d been my friend first, a shoulder to lean on during the worst of times, and then he took advantage of that.

  “I don’t normally uncover it, which is one advantage to not living in Florida where it’s hot all the time,” I said.

  “What is it? What does it mean?” he asked while continuing to trace the outline of the eye with his fingertip. I could see his brain churning, his eyes scanning the design over and over like the cars circling South Beach earlier. With a quick glance up at me, he asked, “Why is she crying?”

  Standing there on the beach, I looked anywhere but straight at him. “She’s crying because she’s me,” I said as I watched my pretty pink-tipped toes sift between granules of sand. “I guess you could say I’ve always been a lonely soul. At least, since I was a little girl and my mom walked out on me. I couldn’t shed real tears myself, so I had this put on my arm as a permanent reminder of the ones I held in when I stood in the doorway watching her walk away from me.”

  Lane grasped my hands and twined his large fingers around my smaller ones, bringing us face-to-face.

  I whispered, “Now it’s just a reminder of how stupid I was to put it there.”

  “You know what?” he whispered in my ear.

  I shook my head.

  Leaning closer again, he spoke into my ear, making sure it was just for me and me alone to hear. “I think it’s a reminder for anyone who cares for you to make it extra good for you. All the time, extra good. In bed, out to dinner or lunch, or just sitting and watching TV, everything in your life should be a little bit better than for everyone else because of what you went through.”

  I couldn’t speak. I’d never heard such sweet words, let alone ones meant just for me, and they sent a tiny shiver over my body. I chalked it up to being cold, but it really had nothing to do with that.

  When we turned away from the beach, holding hands as we walked slowly back toward the street, I asked, “So, what are your deep, dark secrets? I’m certainly spilling all of mine tonight.”

  Lane

  Pulling up to the five-star Hotel Dylan, I tossed my keys at the valet and yelled, “Leave it up front.” As if they wouldn’t. They kept all the hottest cars out in front, and my shiny midnight-blue German-engineered convertible was nothing less than the best.

  But that wasn’t why I needed my ride in the circle. I was going to require a fast getaway after checking Bess into her suite. The heat circling the two of us was thicker than the air in Miami in August. The heavy clouds of passion that were cloaking us in their dark fury were about to burst. And while I wanted nothing more than precisely that, I needed to escape.

  Fucking Bess right now would screw everything up. I wasn’t even sure what everything meant, but right now I felt as though the fate of my heart and mind were tangled up in a waitress from Pennsylvania, and I needed to dissect that wide open—but in the privacy of my home.

  “Good evening, Mr. Wrigley.” James, the dapper, way-too-chipper guy at the front desk, greeted me. “Welcome back to the Dylan. What can I help you with this evening? Will you be dining late with us? Should I call the restaurant?” he said with a wink.

  As usual, he was eating me up with his eyes, and I could only imagine what must be running through his mind. With the relaxed casual clothes I was wearing and my hair more mussed than usual, I looked nothing like I normally did.

  His cheeks pinked before he turned his gaze on the woman beside me. Bess was flushed from our time on the beach, her hair tousled and wind-whipped, long tresses partially obscuring her face and running down her back. Her gaze roamed the lobby while she wrapped her arms tightly around herself in her pink cardigan.

  “Hello, James. No, I’ve already eaten, but I’d like to check in my guest from out of town.”

  He leaned back, further inspecting Bess as his tongue took a lap aro
und his lips. He smoothed a hand down the skinny European suit hugging his frame, which set off his hair that was perfectly combed like a pop star’s. “I see. And who may she be?”

  “James, meet Bess Williams, a friend of mine from Pennsylvania.”

  Who knew my little gay blade, my hook-up for quick reservations at one of South Beach’s hotspots, would put me through such scrutiny?

  “I didn’t know you had any friends . . . from Pennsylvania,” James said drolly.

  I narrowed my eyes and said, “Well, now you do. Can we get Ms. Williams checked in for the evening? She’s had a long travel day.”

  “Yes, of course. Right away. Nice to meet you, Ms. Williams,” James said as he started banging away on the computer in front of him, his movements exaggerated.

  “Thank you,” Bess finally said.

  I wasn’t sure who she was addressing, him or me, but James answered. “Oh, that’s what I’m here for, doll.”

  When I eased my hand to Bess’s lower back, James eyed the action pointedly before he focused his laser beams on Bess, laying it on thick. “Have you been to our establishment before, Ms. Williams?”

  What was he insinuating? She wasn’t an available-by-the-hour type, and he knew it.

  “Um, no.”

  “How about South Beach, doll?” He winked and batted his eyelashes.

  She shook her head.

  “Well,” he said to her with one eyebrow raised, “it looks like you found the right VIP bachelor to show you off around town.”

  All at once, the scent of coconut coming from the candles in the lobby overwhelmed me. “Thanks for the vote of confidence, James. Do you have a room ready for Bess?”

  I wasn’t having a dick-swinging contest with a lightweight whose feathers were ruffled over my attention, or lack thereof. James knew I was about as hetero as they came, and he also knew I didn’t do relationships. But there was no fucking way he was swooping in and pretending to be best-fucking-friends with my date. If he was trying to get to me, it was damn well working.

  James stiffened slightly, then collected himself. “Of course. A suite just like you requested, Mr. Wrigley.”