by Imani King
* * *
“I want the memory of looking down into your eyes as we made love.”
* * *
She knew before they slept together that this was a one-off for him. She hadn’t cared then, and had decided to sleep with him anyway, so there was no point in wanting something she could not have. She was a practical woman with a phenomenal career ahead of her, and she did not have time to worry about Vlad, or any other man for that matter.
You are running away before he can.
She looked at him as he slept beside her, his face and body so beautiful to her that she felt tears well up. She pushed them back down, and snuggled into his arms for just one more minute. In his sleep, Vlad pulled her closer against him, and kissed her temple.
Just be glad that you had this time with him. You’ll be fine.
She decided to creep out of bed and leave before he woke up. It was cowardly, she could admit that too, but it seemed like a better alternative to a conversation that ended with “see you never.” She moved out from under his arm slowly, praying he wouldn’t wake up. After a full five minutes, she tried to slide off the bed gracefully, but flopped onto the floor and landed on all fours, frozen. She waited to hear if he had woken up, but he didn’t move at all.
This is really dignified.
She crawled across the plush carpet and grabbed the sweatpants, pulling them on. She couldn’t find her panties after a ten second search, so she gave up on them. She couldn’t remember where the t-shirt was until she thought really hard. Vlad had removed it in the hallway last night, so with her face flushed at the memory of The Hallway Incident, she crawled out there and retrieved the shirt.
She felt almost victorious as she slowly stood up after putting on the t-shirt. She really wanted to get out of there before he woke up and they had a super awkward encounter. She was a big girl, and she could accept last night for what it was—two adults simply enjoying themselves.
She watched Vlad from the doorway for a few moments, trying to convince herself that she wasn’t memorizing how he looked as he slept. She had finally turned to leave, her chest aching, when she spotted her dress hanging in Vlad’s closet next to his bed.
Cursing inwardly, she dropped down to all fours again and crawled over the entire expanse of his enormous bedroom to the closet. She stood up slowly, attempting to make as little noise as possible, and removed the ruined gown from the hanger. Ruefully, she rolled it up and tucked it under one arm before dropping to the floor once again. And right there, in her line of sight, were her custom made heels.
Sounding like a truck driver inside her own head, she leaned forward and grabbed the shoes. Having convinced herself that the only chance for a dignified retreat was to crawl, she put the straps of the shoes into her mouth, tucked the dress under her arm again, and made much slower progress toward the bedroom door.
This is not a good look.
Annoyed at her inner commentary, she stood up immediately when she reached the door for the second time. She glanced back at Vlad for only a minute this time, figuring she had already pushed her luck enough, before she turned and jogged lightly down the hallway.
She found her clutch in the living room and pulled out her phone to call a taxi. Unbelievably, she was told it would take forty-five minutes for them to get to Vlad’s home. Knowing that staying there was not an option, she tiptoed to the foyer, and opened the fifteen foot arched solid mahogany doors with as little noise as possible.
She made it, she thought after she shut the enormous doors behind her. She lightly jogged down the front steps and stepped onto the driveway.
Damn, it was a pebbled forecourt, something she hadn’t remembered from last night. But she had been wearing heels last night, and had been so shocked by the size of Vlad’s home, that the driveway could have been on fire for all she would have noticed.
Get on with it. Don’t be such a sissy. You did not do all that crawling just to get caught now.
So she started to walk down the driveway, hopping from one bare foot to the other, as the pebbles hurt her feet. She considered putting her high heels back on, but figured she was already enough of a hot mess—shimmery, four-inch silver sandals did not need to be added to the mix. It was bad enough that she had stolen his clothes. She figured he would consider it a small price to pay in exchange for her having left before he woke up, thereby alleviating him from the ‘morning after’ talk.
I am quite the benevolent soul.
Wondering what, exactly, she had done to piss off Karma, she continued to trudge down the driveway, the stones cutting into her delicate feet. Even so, she felt freedom looming in front of her. She was almost to the street, where she could just find a shady patch of grass to sit on while she waited for the taxi.
Then she turned the last corner and saw it—Vlad’s closed gate—something else she apparently had not noticed last night.
It stood there before her like the Berlin Wall. On one side was an embarrassment of riches (emphasis on ‘embarrassment’), and on the other side was freedom. She knew that was not exactly the history of the Berlin Wall, but she was out of time to consider other metaphors. She needed to be on the other side of that obstacle.
Slowly, she walked up to the huge gate (why was everything so gigantic here?), and stared at the electronic keypad that allowed access to and from the house.
Not the ‘house’. The mansion. The estate. The castle. Whatever.
She was irritated now, which was much more preferable to the fear of being discovered. She figured there was no way Vlad would see her out here so far from the house. The mansion, the estate, the castle, whatever.
She had absolutely no idea what the code could be, and there was no way she was going to try some combinations and hope she figured it out. With her awful luck this morning, the police would come after the third wrong code. So, she took the only remotely feasible option at that point.
I’m going to climb it.
Never mind that the gate was solid wood, with barely any places for footholds or handholds. And never mind that the last thing she had climbed was a tree over twenty years ago—she could do this. Well, there was the rock wall at the gym—she’d climbed that, right?
You never climbed that. You walked up to it, looked up to the top, told your personal trainer to shove off, and threw your helmet in the bin.
Ignoring all detractors, even the one inside her head, she tossed her clutch up and over the gate. Except she didn’t quite make it, and the clutch hit the gate, opened up, and fell with all of its contents raining down upon her. She heard the crash of her cell phone on the pebbles, and her lipstick hit her on top of her head. She sighed and tried again—there was no way that she could climb the gate while holding all of her stuff. She tossed the cellphone again, and it made it to the other side, which she considered a victory.
Great, now you have a broken cellphone on the opposite side of the wall. Go you.
Flinging her wallet, clutch, and lipstick with much more gusto, she got them each over on the first try. Or second, but why be technical? She was equally as successful with each of the shoes and the dress. Well, one of the shoes was stuck in a tree on the other side, but so what? It was on the other side.
Feeling the adrenaline flow through her at the thought of imminent freedom, she figured she needed to get herself over the gate too, since it was probably pretty close to forty-five minutes at that point, and all she needed now was a taxi continuously honking and waking up Vlad, while she was still stuck on this side of the gate.
She placed one bloodied foot on the bottom “rung” of the gate, and was just about to step up, when she noticed a bright pink cylindrical shape on ‘her’ side of the gate. Sighing, she got down. It was her never-leave-home-without-it emergency tampon. It must have fallen out of her clutch, too. She could just imagine Vlad finding that—her humiliation would be complete.
Having no pockets, no bra, and no panties to stuff the tampon in, she put it in her mouth like she was a dog
holding a stick. It would occur to her later that she should have tossed it over the gate like the other items, and her only excuse would be that she had been trying to think without coffee. Really, coffee had magical qualities. It made her funnier, nicer, and definitely smarter.
So she tried again, this time with the tampon firmly clenched in her mouth. She put her foot on the little ledge she called a rung, and pulled herself up about four inches.
At this rate, you’ll be over by this time next week. Vlad will never notice.
Determined to get over the damned gate come hell or high water, she kept going. The only other option was to head back to the house. Mansion, estate, castle, whatever. She’d have to wake Vlad up, and explain to him her misadventures, and at that point, climbing the metaphorical Berlin Wall seemed preferable.
“Going somewhere?”
She turned around slowly while she still clung to the gate, four inches above the ground.
There stood Vlad, all handsome and debonair, with a gigantic grin on his face.
“Erhmm,” was the sound that came out of her mouth before she remembered the bright pink tampon, spit it out, and tried again. “Actually, yes,” she said with conviction.
Die on the hill, girl. Die on the hill.
“Can I help you in some way?” he said, as he walked right up to her and lifted her off the gate.
“Hey!”
“It’s okay, Thania. If you really want to leave, I will have my driver take you home. There was no need for you to go through all of…this,” he said as he gestured to the pebbled driveway and the bright pink tampon. He placed her gently on the ground, and she immediately flinched in pain.
“What’s wrong?” he exclaimed.
“Nothing,” she mumbled, moving from one foot to the other. “It’s just that my feet…”
“Let me see,” he demanded, and she decided that she did not like his tone.
“No.”
“What? Why?” he demanded again. “I can help you, you know,” he continued as he smiled gently at her.
Maybe you should die on another hill. Some other day.
“Okay,” she said softly, and he immediately picked her up again and then sat down with her on his lap.
“Let me see.”
She turned one foot over, and he made a tsk-tsking sound in the back of his throat. She tried to pull her foot away but he wouldn’t let her.
“Stop,” he said, and she crossed her arms. “This is bad, Thania. What were you thinking?”
She looked at him as he gently held her foot in his hand, and wondered the same thing.
“I wanted to leave,” she said simply, as if her behavior had been perfectly normal.
“Okay. Why didn’t you just wake me up? I would have driven you myself, or had my driver take you if you preferred.” He made it all sound so reasonable, as if she hadn’t had to worry about an awkward conversation.
I think it’s safe to say at this point that we did not avoid the awkward conversation.
“I don’t know. I just wanted to leave,” she said again, while she tried not to feel his body against hers, and tried not to notice that his chest was bare and so, so sexy in the early sunlight.
“Let’s go in the house,” he suggested. “Stay with me.”
Her heart lurched when she heard that, but she quickly convinced herself that it wasn’t what he meant—it must’ve been just a language issue.
Ignoring her confusion, Vlad picked her up and carried her down the driveway, as if she weighed nothing.
Was there anything this man couldn’t do, she wondered. He’d taken a few steps back to the house when she told him to stop.
“I need my stuff,” she said to the front of his naked neck.
“What stuff?” he asked as he looked around. “Do you mean that bright pink thing?”
“No! I mean my other stuff. You know, my clutch and my dress and my shoes…”
“Well, where are they?” He turned around in circles while he looked for her stuff, and soon she was dizzy.
She told him to stop again. “It’s on the other side of the Berlin Wall.”
“Excuse me?”
“Your gate! It’s like the Berlin Wall! Impossible to climb!”
He still held her, but she could tell he was trying very hard not to laugh. Jerk, she thought unkindly.
“The Berlin Wall, huh?” he said, and he burst out with laughter, the sound so rich and satisfying, that she couldn’t help smiling herself.
“How did you get your stuff over the Berlin Wall?” he asked, still laughing.
“I threw it,” she replied and he laughed again.
He walked over to the electronic key pad, punched in a short code, and she felt like she was watching the parting of the Red Sea.
“Well, that was easy,” she said dryly.
He giggled—actually giggled—as he carried her through the gate to find her stuff. He walked over to the grass and put her down gently, and then he went all around to gather up her things.
“Did the Berlin Wall do this?” he asked, as he held up her shattered cellphone.
“Sort of,” she replied, and he hid a smile.
“It seems you have somehow misplaced a shoe,” he said seriously, after depositing the rest of her things in her lap.
“It’s up in the tree,” she mumbled.
“Pardon?”
“I said, It’s. Up. In. The. Tree.”
He looked up to where she pointed, saw her sparkly high heel, and promptly went over to climb the tree and retrieve her shoe.
“Thank you,” she said stiffly as he placed it in her lap with her other things.
“What were you trying to avoid?” he asked her seriously, after some tense silence.
“An awkward conversation,” she replied, and then she burst out laughing, and he followed suit. She laughed until her sides ached, and then she felt so much better about the entire thing.
“Come on, Berlin frau,” he said as he swung her up into his arms again. “Let’s take care of you.”
And he did take care of her. He sat her down in one of his massive kitchen chairs, and dragged out a First Aid kit. She insisted she could do it herself, but he wouldn’t let her.
“What if you stab yourself with these incredibly sharp scissors?” he said as he held up a tiny pair of scissors, maybe two inches long, with a rounded, safety tip.
“Very funny.”
But he’d been very sweet, and cleaned out every one of the cuts on her feet before putting on some antibiotic ointment and wrapping them like she’d broken her ankles.
“Isn’t this a bit much?”
“I’ve realized that with you, I can never be too careful.”
She rolled her eyes at him, and then he made them breakfast. She had been completely relaxed by then, as she ate a delicious omelet and drank some superb coffee.
“This was so good, thank you,” she said sincerely, as she sat back in her seat.
“I’m glad you think so. And you’re welcome,” he replied. Suddenly, the awkwardness was there again, front and center.
“I had such a nice time with you last night,” he said after about a minute of silence.
A nice time?
“Yes, I did, too. I really enjoyed the gala, thank you for inviting me.”
He looked closely at her then, as if trying to figure her out.
“You didn’t have to sneak out like that this morning, Thania.”
“Oh, I know,” she said breezily, determined not to show how much she already cared for him. “I just have so much to do today. I’ve got my new fashion show coming up soon, I think I mentioned that.”
“Yes, you did,” he replied slowly, still searching her face.
She felt herself start to blush, and he finally looked away.
“Can you arrange for your driver to take me home, please? I really have a lot to do today,” she repeated, her feelings way too close to the surface for her liking. She needed to get out of there.
&
nbsp; “Yes, of course.”
He stood up slowly and looked down at her for a few seconds without saying anything. Then, he walked over to a phone on the kitchen counter, pressed a button, and had a brief conversation with someone in Russian. After that, she went to the restroom and hung out in there for ten minutes, ostensibly cleaning up, but really she was killing time until the driver was ready. She dreaded saying goodbye to Vlad.
Don’t think about it. At least he hasn’t said he’ll call you sometime.
He knocked on the bathroom door, jolting her into turning off the water that had been running the entire time she’d been inside. She opened the door, and Vlad stood there with a small bag filled with the items she’d tried to escape with. He handed it to her and she started to walk to the front door, as he followed slowly.
When she reached the big mahogany doors, she turned and kissed him on the cheek. He looked surprised, but before he could say anything she started down the steps toward the driver and the town car that waited for her. She turned and waved goodbye jauntily.
Don’t say anything. Please, for the love of God, please don’t let him say anything.
“I had a really nice time,” he called out to her, but she didn’t turn around. “I’ll call you sometime!” he yelled just before the driver slammed the door.
She was heartbroken.
“He said he’d call me sometime,” she said into her cellphone.
Both Asha and Daya groaned. She knew they would want an account of the gala, so she decided to get it over with on the ride home.
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Asha said, for once sounding animated. “Men are such assholes,” she continued, and Thania heard Daya laugh.
“Vlad isn’t an asshole,” Thania said, and her friends were silent. “He’s really not,” she insisted as she wondered why she was bothering.
She wasn’t going to see him again. At that thought, her chest constricted and she took a deep breath to keep from crying.
“He was very clear that he does not want a relationship,” she continued. “I knew what I was getting into when I slept with him.”