by Joey Bush
“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 inside 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.
“Well,” Isla said, as we stepped out of the closet and pulled the door shut behind us, “that was a good way to kill some time.”
34.
Isla
When we got back to New York, we took a few days to just lie low. I called Sophie to tell her that I was back in New York, but I left out the part about everything with Alfie. That was the sort of story you had to tell in person.
“You’re with Levi, aren’t you?” she said. “That’s why you’re in New York.”
“I’ve got a whole lot to tell you when we come back to Bel Air,” I said. “That’ll be in a few days.”
She exhaled loudly. “Oh boy,” she said. “I can just imagine.”
Levi and I stayed in the penthouse, ordered takeout food, slept late, watched movies and bad daytime TV, had sex. It felt like we were safe in this bubble where it was just the two of us, immune to everything else that was going on in the rest of the world. I kept my phone off and didn’t turn it back on until three days later, while Levi was getting ready to go into BCM.
I was sitting at the kitchen table, eating a bagel, using Levi’s laptop. I went online, first to Instagram, which I used occasionally, then Facebook, which I used even less. But an acquaintance had posted a link to a fundraising page for a family that had just lost the father in a car accident. There were three kids, the mother was pregnant with the fourth child, due in three months. I barely knew the acquaintance, definitely didn’t know the family, but I clicked on the link and then the donate button. I started browsing the site, clicking the links, looking at the pictures, reading the stories. There were people looking for money to go back to school, to pay off loans, to cover funeral expenses, to fund humanitarian trips to foreign countries, to help pay for alternative treatments because their health was failing. It was easy to fall into a sort of rhythm, make the donation anonymously, and then click to the next page.
I liked imagining the surprise, the happiness, probably the relief, in many of these cases. They’d wonder who on earth the money could possibly be from.
“What are you up to?” Levi asked, coming out of the bathroom. He’d just taken a shower and had a towel wrapped around his waist. I could still smell whatever soap he’d used.
“Just disbursing some of this wealth,” I said. He came and looked over my shoulder.
“Who is that?”
I shrugged and clicked the donate button. “I’m not sure, but they’ll be able to pay for their daughter’s orthodontia treatment now.”
“You’re just giving money to random people?”
“Yeah. Why not?” I pointed at the screen. “See, they have a goal amount here, and I’m just contributing whatever’s needed in order for them to meet that goal.”
He watched for a minute as I went through and made some more donations.
“That’s really nice of you,” he said.
“You’ve never done something like that before? Never just gave some of your money to someone because they needed it?”
He frowned, pressing his lips together. “Not really,” he said. “It never really occurred to me to do so. Which sounds like such a fucking shitty thing to admit out loud, I realize that.” He rested his hands on my shoulders and then started gently massaging my neck. “You’re a good person,” he said. He leaned down and nibbled at my earlobe. “And that’s quite a turn on.”
I turned away from the computer and stood up, tilting my head back as we started to kiss. His fingertips moved lightly up and down my sides. I pulled my shirt off and he pulled out the end of the towel he’d tucked in and it fell to the floor. Damn, he looked good. He reached around and unhooked my bra, then pulled the straps down and let it fall to the floor. He brought his hands up and put them on my breasts, massaging lightly, making my nipples erect. I ran my fingertips down his torso, over his drum-tight abdomen, to his erect cock. I stroked him slowly and kissed his neck, moving my tongue in circles.
We pulled back and he pushed the laptop over to the end of the table and lay back. I climbed on top of him, easing my hips back until I felt his cock sliding into me. I rested one of my hands on his chest as I sat all the way down. We stayed like that, motionless for a few seconds, and then I started to move my hips back and forth. He reached up and started playing with my breasts, making my nipples harder. His cock felt huge inside of me. He brought one of his hands down and began rubbing my clit with his thumb as we fucked, overwhelming my whole body with this most intense warm tingling sensation. I felt my breath catch in my throat as my heartbeat started racing. We were both covered in a light film of sweat, which made the smooth skin on his torso glisten. His abdominal muscles flexed, showing off their perfect definition as I swiveled and rocked my hips on top of him.
My whole body felt like it was electrically charged, and that my energy was intermingling with Levi’s and we were becoming something bigger than just the two of us. I knew he was feeling this sensation just as strongly as I was. He had closed his eyes and his brow was furrowed and his jaw clenched. He was gripping my hips now, almost as though he were squeezing my awareness into that epicenter in the middle of my pelvis, the place where all the good feelings seemed to be emanating from. How was it even possible that one person could make you feel so good?
I let out an anguished sounding cry as I came, a sound that would’ve made you think I was in horrendous pain or something terrible had just happened, but the truth was, I couldn’t remember ever feeling better.
Levi let out a similar sounding cry. “You’re incredible,” he said.
I gently eased myself off of him, holding onto the edge of the table as I lowered my feet back to the floor. I could feel my inner thighs still trembling. “I think you’re going to be late for work now,” I said.
He put his hands behind his head and lay there, a satisfied grin on his face. “And you know what?” he said. “I couldn’t care less. That was worth it. And then some.”
35.
Levi
I was a little late when I finally made it down to BCM, but Cal was on a call with a client, so I was able to slip into the office without having to hear it from him. I’d be joining him for a meeting later today with the research team to go over new asset selection. For right now, though, I could enjoy my coffee and read over the Wall Street Journal, which I was still having trouble getting totally interested in.
So when my phone started ringing, I happily dug it out of my pocket, eager for the distraction. I hesitated, though, when I saw who was calling.
It was Ella. But I picked up the phone, because I didn’t like the way we’d left things in Ibiza, and part of me hoped she was calling to say she had calmed down and that everything was all good.
“Hi,” she said, in a tone much softer than I’d ever heard her use before. “Levi, it’s Ella.”
“I know who it is,” I said. “How are you?”
There was a long pause and then a sigh. “I’m terrible, actually. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you, and the way we left things in Ibiza. Are you back in New York?”
“Yes. Are you?”
“I am. Can we . . . can we meet up?”
“I don’t know if that’s such a good idea, Ella.”
“Okay, fine. I can say this over the phone, too. I just thought it might be better to do it in person. I’m sorry about everything I said to you. It was out of anger. And shock. I . . . I’m hoping that you’ve had some time to think things over and that maybe we can just put all of this behin
d us.”
I smiled and plucked a pen out of the container on the desk. I doodled on the corner of a yellow legal pad. “I’m so glad you called to say that,” I said. “There’s nothing I’d like more than to be able to do that.”
“I knew all that was just a big mistake,” she said, laughing a little. “I knew you didn’t mean it. The two of us—we’re meant to be together.”
“Wait—what? I thought you just said you wanted to put this behind us.”
“Right. Like, I want to forget that whole conversation even took place. We can pretend it never happened. You just said yourself that you’d like nothing more than to be able to do that.”
Shit, she was persistent. I knew why, though: She wasn’t accustomed to hearing no. She wasn’t used to not getting exactly what she wanted.
“We definitely can put it behind us,” I said. “But I don’t mean pretend the whole thing never happened. I’d like to be able to continue to be friends with you, Ella, but so far as us being together like we used to be . . . I’m with Isla now. So things can’t be exactly how they were. You have to be okay with that, Ella. Otherwise, I don’t think that we’re going to be able to be friends.”
Silence.
She was quiet for so long, I thought she’d hung up. “Hello?” I said. “Are you still there?”
“I’m here.”
“Look, Ella, I’m sorry. I know this isn’t what you want to hear. But—”
“My father’s going to be coming down there to talk to you.”
I stopped doodling. “Really? Really, Ella? You’re sending your dad down here because you don’t like what I’m telling you? That’s a little unnecessary, don’t you think?”
“No,” she said icily. “It’s not.”
“It is, though. He’s just going to be wasting his time. It’s not like your dad is going to come down here and say something that’s going to make me change my mind.” Maybe I needed to tell her to fuck off. Maybe that’s the only thing she would understand.