by Sunniva Dee
“I’m going to text him before he tries to call me. Tell him it’s over forever. He already knows though,” I add because that sounded childish and not enough.
“O-oh, I bet that’ll make an impact. He’s so going to listen this time. Because that’s what he did last time. Your boyfriend, wait ex-boyfriend, didn’t talk you around on the first try and drag you back to his bed by the hair or anything.”
“But I’ve learned from my mistakes. You’ll see. He’ll listen this time.”
“Awesome.” My friend drips sarcasm like a pro. “Text him.” She juts her chin at my phone on the table.
“Yeah. Later.”
“Oh really, so you can think about it first? Maybe change your mind?”
“No, Frieda. Did you see the last time I did this? I texted him in the middle of his week in London, and he broke his contract and left to find me. Instead of a career booster and a lot of money, he now has to pay a fine for the contract breach and the director is never hiring him again.”
“Seriously? Are you waiting until he’s done filming?”
“I guess. Tonight, I’ll text him.”
“Whoa, you’re in way deep if you care about that stuff.” She reaches over the table and touches my cheek. Her sudden compassion makes me tear up. I’m not at all settled with my decision.
“Anyway, it’s not like we’re a couple anymore. It won’t be a surprise. I don’t have to tell him we’re over in the message because that part’s already done. I’m just reminding him to not try and contact me again.”
“Just that.” She smiles a little, which makes me smile too. “Good thing your ex isn’t tenacious at all.”
It’s ten fifteen, and I’ve been home from my early shift for an hour. To make sure Ciro didn’t intercept me at Mintrer’s, I waited with texting him until I was home.
Thanks to Frieda, Sam knows about my decision. I had to tell him four times that I wanted to answer the door myself when Ciro arrived.
He knocks, and I do it. I open the door.
“How was work?” I ask what I’ve rehearsed, despite the insane flower bouquet he’s holding. My eyes are steel. His are unreadable.
“Nothing special, unlike you. Can I come in?”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Savannah, I’m... I’m leaving the country for a little bit.”
“What? What does ‘a bit’ mean? Days? Months?”
He shakes his head. “May I?”
I open wider so he can come through, a pang going off in my chest, replenishing and repeating in some weird serial emotion.
I’m not ready. I want him around. Not with me, but close enough for me to know he’s here. He can’t just leave.
“Ciro.” Sam is there, gaze brooding.
“Hey, man.” Ciro gets the vibe and doesn’t add a good-to-see-you or anything like it.
“We’re heading to the patio,” I say to Sam, as in not to my room. For a second, he hesitates, but then he steps back and lets us through.
“Savannah?” he calls out while I unlatch the backdoor.
“Yeah?”
“I’m here if you need me. Just holler.”
“Thanks, Sam.”
I groan inwardly at how possessive that sounded. I side-eye Ciro but find no response on his face.
“Are you filming?” I ask, sitting down in a narrow garden chair without armrests, uncomfortable yet handy. I want no room next to me for intoxicating men. No heated skin-against-skin sensation. I need no reminders.
“Yeah, that and an award ceremony. My agent and I have a few meetings set up too, for a couple of sponsorships.” He hands me the flowers, deep red orchids mixed in between the flamingo lilies and hibiscus this time.
“You’re doing well there, huh?”
“Yeah. It’s a strange market to be big in. Sort of a cult thing, it seems, but as Sharon says, it doesn’t hurt us.”
“How long?” Filming, an award show, some sponsorships. Shouldn’t be too long, right?
“Do you mind if I take you somewhere? I don’t want to do this here.” Aqua goes brighter, showing speckles of both silver and gold. That’s rare.
“Yes, I mind. If you want to talk, we talk here.” With the arm that isn’t full of his flowers, I gesture toward the chair across from me. There’s a whole table between us. “We always end up at your house anyway.”
“That’s only happened twice.”
I scoff loudly, adding an eye roll for effect.
“I promise I won’t talk you into coming to the bunker. On my honor.” He shrugs, shoulders hard with muscle. I know the feel of them well. “It’s just this place that’s killer at night, and I’d like you to see it with me before I leave.” He locks my gaze. “I’m leaving in the morning.”
“Tomorrow? What? How long have you known?”
“I don’t know, for a while? The trip snuck up on me, and I forgot to mention it with everything we’ve been going through. It didn’t seem important.”
Ah this is upsetting! Not because of now, of course, but because of before. He should’ve told me while we were still dating. “How can you just forget like that? ‘Didn’t seem important.’ Well, it’s important to me!”
“It is?” His eyes run over my face, quiet wonder making them even more beautiful than usual. Gah!
“That’s total betrayal, right there,” I blabber on, “to not let your girlfriend know you’re leaving for a really long time on a trip. And then you finally decide to tell me the night before. What kind of treatment is that?”
He closes in and kneels in front of me. Gaze content and sad at once. I get it. I see what he’s thinking. He can’t think that. I open my mouth to say more, but he embraces me, and I don’t want him to let go.
“Asshole.”
“Sorry, baby girl.”
We’re quiet, sitting like this. He doesn’t try to kiss me. It’s just his arms keeping me warm in the chilly California night.
Sam clears his throat from the door. “Savannah.”
“Yeah?” I sniff. Apparently, I need a Kleenex too now.
“You all right? You want me to throw him out?”
I shake my head into Ciro’s shoulder.
“Dude, Savannah’s gotta get up early tomorrow,” Sam rumbles in a voice more gravelly than his normal pitch. “Make it quick. I don’t want her to lose any more sleep.” Implying everything and not saying it out loud.
“Got it.”
And in that moment, I feel patronized by every man around me. It’s when I decide to listen to myself and only myself. As soon as the door creaks closed behind Sam, I loosen Ciro’s hold on me.
“I’m coming with you. Let’s watch whatever it is you want to show me. And then you’re driving me right back home. Understood? There will be no, absolutely no, coercion.”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
Ciro’s hands tremble on the steering wheel. I’ve seen him worked up before. Sad. Even angry. But I think that he’s nervous now.
“What’s going on?” I ask.
He glances at me before his stare returns to the road. “Nothing.”
“Are you going to tell me how long you’ll be in South Africa?”
“For two weeks. Fifteen days, to be exact.”
Pang. It could have been a few months, a year, but I’m not even thinking. “Fifteen days? What the hell? That’s a long-ass time!”
He turns, brows lowering then relaxing.
I can’t take my eyes off him. I can’t, because in a few hours he’ll get on a plane, and it’s not just for a few days to London. No, it’s to a continent I don’t know anything about, and it’s far, far away. What if he doesn’t come back?
“Not what you expected?”
“No! I thought you were going for a few days to, like, Germany.”
“Yeah? A few days is fine?” He’s indulging me. With that voice, it makes him impossible to deal with. If only he could do something stupid. That voice—it’s not helping at all.
I came along to be nice. Okay, so I’m curious about whatever he wants to show me, but my goal is obvious: I’m backing out. Heading off. Recreating Status Quo. Returning to B.C., i.e. Before Ciro.
“Do you have any idea how long fifteen days is?” I burst out anyway. “It’s a hell of a lot of hours.”
“That’s true. Are you saying you’ll miss me?” Soft, sweet caresses. Goddamn beautiful voice. No, this is Ana’s fault. Ana’s the one moaning like him. I never want to see her again.
I definitely won’t miss him. I’ve got my life. Classes have started too. I love my marketing classes. It’s where my future lies now that I’m branching out a little. Heck, even if he were a normal guy, I wouldn’t have time for him.
“Savannah?”
“Whatever. Maybe I’ll miss you.” And then I throw my hands over my eyes, and I start to bawl.
He doesn’t screech to a stop. He doesn’t keep on driving either. Instead, he does the used-to-PMS-thing and drives calmly until he finds a good turn-off where he stops the car.
“Baby girl.”
I wish he didn’t call me that. It makes me even more susceptible to emotional rainfalls. He takes me in his arms and clutches me tight, and I can’t bear it.
“Do you want to leave?” I sob.
“I’d like it better if you came with me.”
“I don’t remember being invited,” I sniffle. Then I claw a Kleenex out of my purse and dry my nose.
“Done deal. I’ll message Sharon asap. I’d love to have you with me. You could be my date at the award show.”
I huff a desperate laugh. “And the rest of the time, I can wait in your breakroom until you’re finished fucking someone a wall away? I don’t think so.” I expect him to freeze, be offended, but as always, nothing shocks this man.
He nuzzles my neck, kissing me.
“When are you going to stop subjecting yourself to this? Are you ever going to give up on getting a regular girlfriend?” I lean out of his embrace because I need to see his face in all of this. His eyes are moist. Goddammit, I hate it when his eyes are moist.
“Ciro, don’t cry. Please.”
“Nah. I’d never pity myself over my own choices, Savannah.” He angles his head back so he looks down on me from above his eerily perfect nose. Long enough to be masculine, its bridge is ruler-straight, and this pose makes him look majestic. I know it’s just that, a pose, a way to stop me from seeing how he truly feels when tears gleamed in his eyes.
“My mess is on me. I broke out of old money to live off my sexual urges. I’m not alone in the industry having issues with relationships. A lot of us give up and stick to flings. Those are easy. Even the serial flings are. But then there are those of us who do what I do.”
“And what’s that?”
“Serial-love.”
“That sounds trustworthy.” I grab a small tub of gum from my purse and offer it up as he pulls back onto the road. He takes one. I take two and swallow the last remnant of my breakdown with the first sugary explosion.
“If you know what’s good for you and you’ve got some self-preservation, serial-love is how you get back on your feet when a girl tosses you the pink slip. When she waves goodbye after shouting every dumpster-word she knows your way, you better have a backup plan.”
“So that’s your defense mechanism?”
His silhouette is still against the window. When he doesn’t reply immediately, I continue, “What do you do if—when it’s finally over between the two of us?”
He presses his mouth together, making that sweet plump chunk stand out at the center of his upper lip. I wonder if he knows what it can do to a woman.
Of course he knows.
I can tell him nothing he doesn’t know.
“You had to go there?”
I shrug like I’m law and murderer while I’m just some PMS girl with a sickened heart. “It’s up to you. I’m not holding you to answers. Just wondering.”
“Yeah.” His pitch breaks before he moves on. “Usually, I go to a club where the girls recognize me. I grind some. Choose a girl or two and take them home.”
To smooth, deep red silk.
“Do they snuggle with Princess?”
“What?”
“Forget it. Then what?”
“I’ll work, keep my mind off things. I don’t like to sleep alone the first weeks after a fallout. Generally, I do serial flings, but sometimes it’s just friends spending the night if they’re single and have nothing better to do.”
“Colleagues?”
“They’re just being friendly, you know.”
I don’t.
“So you have sex with them outside of work, and they sleep over?”
He chuckles soundlessly. “Pretty much.”
I swallow. I guess I get it.
He pulls the car onto another dark turn-off. “Once I’m me again, I repeat the cycle. I hurl myself out there like an idiot looking for a better half all over again.”
He turns toward me, a swift moment of focus before he checks out the road bumps ahead. “See, I don’t learn. My mother, back when we had any contact, used to say that it’s a Gemini’s nature to need someone around at all times.” His smile is curt. “Later, she said I’m over-the-top in the passion department for my sign. Being close to someone is okay. Just not me-close.” His face breaks in a brief, breathtaking grin. “She’d never approve of me-close.”
“I do,” I breathe for me, not for everyone else, and I’m glad he doesn’t react to what I’m doing. “You’re a guy with a zodiac complex.”
His smile is sweet now. “At my age, having done what I’ve done, there’s no way back. I’ve made who I am: Drake Constantine. I can have anyone for a second. I can have no one for a lifetime.”
He winks at me like it’s funny.
“Where do you look for us?” I whisper.
“For my good half? Everywhere. At work. At clubs. Among my fans. You name it, and I’ve tried it. I’ve even done online dating.”
“And me?” I ask, because god.
As the car disappears into the darkness, to where no streetlights reach us, the dashboard illuminates my ex-boyfriend’s sincerity when he says, “With you, I deviated from everything I’ve ever tried.”
“Where are we?” I can’t raise my voice when it’s this dark. I barely make out the contour of the mountain above us, but Ciro’s hand feels safe around mine. We’re alone out here in coyote country. It’s the middle of the night. What if a pack of them needs food and they smell us?
“We’re almost at Point Tukem, one of the peaks you’ve passed by a thousand times and never thought about.”
“How do you know?”
“Have you?”
I don’t have a lot of cleverness in me right now.
“Cool. Where are we going?” I puff a little as we walk. Ciro stops and turns, eyes gleaming under a mild moon and a sky that never goes fully asleep.
“I’ve got stuff to show you once we get there.”
I’m not used to the way his hand squeezes mine. It tightens, lets go. Tightens and lets go. His stress sifts into my body as if I wasn’t already worried.
“How far?”
“Not very far. It’s right there.”
There are flickers above us on the mountainside. Small, but many, they’re low and reflected by a bright surface. I squint for a better view because it doesn’t fit in with the surroundings. “Do you see what I’m seeing?”
“Yes. Come on, baby girl.” He tugs on my hand and lets out a phew. I think that if his noise was mine, I would have emitted it for courage. “Coming?”
“Uh-huh, coming.”
> The flickering are candles that glow in the darkness. We narrow the distance, and as dozens of flames grow, it hits me how far we are outside civilized territory.
Like splotches of desire, Flamingo lilies and hibiscus carpet the base of a table. Its shape indicates boulder not wood, but it’s covered by a white tablecloth, so it’s hard to say.
“Holy shit.” I drop his hand to cover my mouth, but he takes it again, and his lips are hot on my knuckles. I shiver.
“It’s for you.”
“But how—who?” Because how could it be him?
“Mrs. Brandt.”
“No way.”
“And her husband. He needed to get out of the house.”
My laughter chokes. Whatever he means by this, I can’t support it.
“Sit.”
“Sit where?”
Ciro wants me on a sheepskin. In the wilderness. He senses my hesitation and says, “Go with it, baby girl.”
His nerves diminish at the influx of mine. He finds my temple, pecks it with a mouth that’s so much warmer than the mountain air.
“I’ve told you already. I only came with you to—”
“Sit?”
How seductive he is. Goddamn, and I slump to my butt on the soft white chunk of fur.
I make him out easier in this light, the Malibu moon illuminating his features as if he’s blue. Sharp cheekbones, soft humor lifting plump lips into a smile I’d love to touch. I don’t think he’s blue. With that smile, he can’t be blue.
“Girls love surprises.” He says it like a fact, but he kneads my neck in a way that isn’t as smooth as when he takes me to bed.
“Yes, we love good surprises.”
“I... Yes.” He’s next to me, sunk down, shoulder meeting mine and nudging so muscular ribs touch my thinner ones. He turns his head above me. He might be nervous, but I’m at his mercy in this wilderness where mountain lions pounce and coyotes tear their prey apart.
“Savannah.” He lowers his head. His profile of unruly just-fucked hair quavers in the breeze. “I’m a fool. Okay? I’m— Shit, I’m going to be honest with you.”
I don’t say anything. I wait for his honesty to hit me face-first.
“The internet has a lot of suggestions on what can make a girl like you remember a guy like me.