Hell, no!
Twenty minutes later found her sitting on the toilet, awkwardly holding the pee-stick in the toilet bowl. Thankfully, this was not an occasion in her life when it was difficult to pee. She peed on all four sticks, and then laid them on the carpet. With nothing to do while they decided her fate, she paced up and down the bathroom. Two months ago I was a virgin, she thought numbly. And now I might be pregnant. She realized she was gripping her hand hard, and stopped it.
She thought the required time had passed, and looked at the tests. The face was smiling, the thumb was sticking up, there was a big, arrogant circle, and the sheep looked very happy indeed. She was pregnant with Clint’s child.
She left the bathroom and walked on unsteady legs to her cellphone. She knew if she didn’t do it now, she might never do it. It had to be done; she had to let him know. She had to tell the father of her child that she was pregnant. It was doubly important because she knew for sure that she would keep this child. She knew for an absolute certainty that she would under no circumstances get rid of her baby. So Clint would have to step up to the plate, or she would have to sever all contact with him. What about Dad?
She sighed. One thing at a time!
The phone seemed to ring forever.
Finally: “Hello.”
“It’s me,” she said. “Can you come over?”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m not sure. But come over, now, please. I have something to tell you.”
“I’ll be right there.”
She paced some more, wrung her hands, opened and closed the curtains, moved dishes to the sink, and then her intercom buzzed. “Clint?” she said, and then realized her mistake. In her mind, she heard her dad’s voice, demanding to know why she thought it was Clint.
But it was Clint. “It’s me,” he said. “I’m here.”
I’m here . . . does he know how good it is to hear those words?
Rebecca had gone from stepping into the woods with her dad’s boss to sitting opposite him, readying herself to drop the mother-load of revelations on his head. She rubbed her hands together, as if that would make it any easier. He leaned forward, across the coffee table, and found her knee with his hand. “What is it?” he said. “You can tell me.”
The cockiness of his voice was gone. That was what made it possible. He wasn’t talking to her as her master; he was talking to her as her partner.
“I’m pregnant!” she blurted. It felt like lifting a ton of cinderblocks of her chest. She had only found out half an hour, but it had already weighed her down so much.
“That’s amazing,” Clint muttered, more to himself than to her. “I mean . . . that’s incredible.”
“Incredible?” Even to herself, her laugh sounded mad. “What’s incredible about it? Scary, unbelievable, jarring, yes. But incredible?”
“Yes, incredible,” Clint said. “The timing, I mean.” He gave her knee a little squeeze. “You don’t need to worry. I was going to come here, anyway, today. Probably at the same time.”
“Please, explain what you’re talking about!” Rebecca snapped.
“I was just with your dad,” Clint said. He grabbed her hand, as though she might recoil. But she was too stunned to recoil. “I told him everything, Rebecca. I told him about Lake Sapphire. I told him about us. I told him how I feel about you.”
“But . . .” She paused. Words didn’t seem to want to form. She forced them out. “But why?”
“I had to,” he said. His eyes moved from her hand to her face. She realized he was rubbing her ring finger with his forefinger and thumb. “I couldn’t ask for your hand in marriage without first telling him the truth.”
“And he said yes?” Rebecca exclaimed.
“He understands,” Clint said. “He is an understanding man. So, don’t you see? This pregnancy is a good thing. Everything works out for the best. Please, marry me. I want you to have my child.”
Marry the hunky, rich, older man?
“Of course, I’ll marry you!” she cried, throwing herself into his arms.
She didn’t know she was crying until he kissed away the tears.
Taboo in Thailand
Rachel Spencer wasn’t the hysterical type. She prided herself on that. Even in school, when her friends were gushing and screaming over the latest pop-band star – the latest styled hair boy with a winning smile and a ready wink – she had remained calm. She had tried to reason with them, tried to explain to them that he was just a person like they were people. They, of course, had had none of it. He was a god; they would hear no different. He was something extra-human. How could she be so blind? They’d made fun of her, laughed at her, called her a lesbian and other things kids called other kids they don’t like. But Rachel had stuck to her guns. He was a person; they were people. That was all.
As she stared wide-eyed into her bathroom mirror, no longer an anxious teenager but an anxious twenty-one-year-old writer, she wished she could reclaim that nonchalance. He’s just a person, she thought, wondering when the bags under her eyes had become so pronounced, wondering when the thundering elephant-stomp of her heartbeat had become so furious. Her palms sweated. She was no longer a moderately successful freelance writer. She was an eighteen-year-old college student, back in the gym, back with him. Her nipples hardened. Her traitor body awakened. Her clit pulsed and her lips ached.
He’s just a man, she thought. Just as those boys were just boys, Max Cohen is just a man. You know that, Rachel. You know it.
But her body wasn’t so easily lied to. Her head might’ve known any number of things. But she couldn’t trick her body. Her body didn’t believe it for a second.
Her mind flew back, through three years of college and apartment-buying and nighttime fantasies and moderate success, to that chance meeting which had fuelled her lust for three years—
She’d always liked to workout. She considered herself a well-rounded person, but that was only because whenever anything too stressful threatened to tip her over the edge she had the one solid solace: running. Sometimes she would run through the city, or to the suburbs of the city and back again, but if it was winter and ice-cold rain showered down as though some malicious god was angry, she went to the gym. This was one of those days. Rain smashed against the windows of her car, against her face and hair as she walked to the gym, and against the roof of the gym as she walked through to the changing room.
Forty minutes later found Rachel Spencer sweatier, panting, and relieved. She made her way from the gym room back through the hallway and toward the changing room. The hallways were almost empty. It was late. She found herself thinking of a horror movie, of empty hallways and windy deserted manor houses. Her mind often drifted. She did, for all intents and purposes, wander lonely as a cloud. Once, when she was very young, she had walked straight into a streetlamp because she had been so absorbed in reading and walking. She had fallen to the ground, cried briefly, and then stood up again and continued with her reading.
Today she did not walk into a streetlamp. She walked slap-bang into the hottest older man she had ever seen.
She had seen pictures of Max Cohen all through her childhood. He had been her dad’s boss as long as she could remember. But she had just thought of him as her dad’s boss. It had never occurred to her that he was a man with muscles and bright eyes. She walked into the men’s locker room, her mind absorbed with a short story and a book and a dozen other things.
She did not immediately realize she had walked into the wrong locker room. It was almost empty apart from humming at the back. She walked deeper into the locker room. And then he turned.
He was well over six foot tall, probably around six-two. His body was a map of bulging muscle. His biceps bulged. His pectorals bulged. His abdominal muscles were tight and ridged into a six-pack. His shoulders bulged. Rachel was surprised when she looked from the body to the man’s face to see that he had gray hair. He had the body of a twenty-five-year-old. His hair was a gray which was almost silve
r, tired back in a casual ponytail. His face was covered in a thick, manly gray beard.
“I’m sorry,” Rachel muttered, but she didn’t turn and run. She didn’t instantly flee, as perhaps she should have. Instead, she stayed where she was, suddenly aware of her skin-tight running shorts and her sports bra: suddenly aware that she much of her flesh was on display, too. “Wait a second . . .” She squinted, as though looking at him through a fog. “You’re Max Cohen!” she exclaimed.
“Yes,” he said. All he wore was a towel. He held it casually, as though at any moment he would gladly let it go. “And you’re Rachel Spencer, aren’t you?”
Rachel swallowed. “I am.”
His eyes were bright blue. They made Rachel think of pure untouched summer skies. “You’re looking at me like you want to fuck me,” he commented. There was none of the cockiness in his voice which would have made this comment ridiculous had it come from another man. It was a plain, matter-of-fact statement.
“Am I?” she asked, knowing it was true.
Her eyes roamed over his body, over his arms, his belly, his chest. Images of sinking her fingers into the muscle filled her mind.
He took a step forward. A casual smile lifted his lips. “You are,” he replied. “You’re fucking sexy, too.”
“Hmm,” Rachel said.
“Do you want to . . .?”
Rachel would never know what she would’ve said. Her mouth was opening – still no answer formed – when the door behind her opened and a father and his young son walked in. Rachel spun on her heels, muttering “Sorry, sorry,” and fled from the locker room. She grabbed her things and retreated from the gym.
Now, in her apartment, the day before her father-daughter trip to Thailand, she splashed water in her eyes.
Dad had just called.
Max Cohen had decided that he wanted to join them.
For the first time in three years, Rachel was going to see him again.
*****
Their hotel was only a fifteen-minute drive to the Phimai historical park, which (a smiling hotel receptionist told them) was a site of the most important Khmer temples of Thailand in the NakhonRatchasima province. The ruins were beautiful. They had driven past them on the way to the hotel. They were old and grand and magnificent, and they spoke of times long gone in which cultures utterly alien lived in utterly alien ways. It was a shame then that Rachel’s mind was occupied with other things.
“Are you okay?” Dad asked her, as they rode the elevator up to their hotel room.
Dad stood to her left; Max stood to her right. The elevator was small and every so often her fingertips brushed his. She couldn’t tell if he was doing it on purpose. For that matter, she couldn’t tell if she was doing it on purpose. “I’m fine,” she said. “It’s just hot, isn’t it?”
“Thailand in July.” Dad shrugged. “It’s going to be hot.”
The three of them were coated in a thin layer of sweat. Beads of sweat covered their skin. Their clothes were damp with it. Rachel sneaked a look at Max. He hadn’t said much to her on the flight over, nor the car ride to their hotel. And when he did speak, it was in that vague way that strangers speak to each other. Rachel knew that that was right. They weren’t close. They didn’t know each other. And yet she still felt rejected. She felt, perhaps unrealistically, that he should have shown her more attention. She thought about talking to him: something harmless, something casual. But then the elevator doors opened and they left the elevator and walked down the hallway to their rooms.
Dad handed her a keycard and then handed one to Max. Their rooms were at the end of the hallway in a small cluster. Rachel’s was at the far end of the hallway. Dad’s was opposite. And Max’s, she saw with a mixture of panic and elation, was next door to Rachel’s. “I bet we’re all tired,” Dad said. “I know we only have two days here – not counting today – but what do you say we shower, grab some food, and then get an early night? Tomorrow, we have the elephant ride.”
The elephant ride!
“Sounds good to me,” Max said. He turned to Rachel and raised an eyebrow. “Rachel?”
Rachel was so surprised that he had decided to talk to her that she couldn’t form any distinct words. Something like “hmmfluffhmm” left her lips. She cleared her throat. A blush rose to her cheeks. She cleared her throat again. “Sounds good,” she managed.
“Okay.” Dad smiled.
Rachel found it difficult to believe that Dad and Max were both in their fifties. Dad looked about sixty, with his bald head and his tired skin and his saggy body. Max could have easily passed for late thirties if it were not for the color of his hair. But they were the same age. Rachel knew that; she just couldn’t believe it.
She swiped the keycard and entered her room. The first thing she noticed was the view. It stretched into the distance, and she could clearly see the ruins. She was facing toward the setting sun, and waning orange light filled the room. The second thing she noticed – and this was far more important to her – was the door that connected her room with the next room. With Max’s room.She knew the purpose of the door; it was for families that wanted adjoining rooms.
She knew it was wrong. She knew it was weird. But she couldn’t help herself. She walked across the room and put her ear against the door to Max’s room. She heard his footsteps, and then more footsteps, and then the shhhh of the shower. She closed her eyes and imagined what must be happening in that shower. She had told herself time and time again over the past three years even since she started, that she would stop fantasizing about Max Cohen. She had told herself that, no, tonight, she would think of somebody else when she touched herself.
But when she laid back and closed her eyes, when her clit ached and her lips begged to be touched, when her nipples hardened, it was always Max Cohen that filled her mind. For three years, all through college, Max had fuelled her nighttime fantasies. She had done everything a woman can do with a man in her mind with Max. She rested her hand on the doorknob, sticky with her sweat. How easy it would be to unlock the door, walk through, find him in the shower . . . “I want to fuck you now,” she would say. “I want to feel your huge cock in me.”
She forced her hand away from the doorknob, afraid that she might actually open it. She paced across the room and threw herself onto her bed. Her breath came quickly; her hand moved down her body, under her shorts, and onto her clit. She rubbed it softly, and then harder, and harder. Max filled her head; his mountain-like muscles. She imagined his beard tickling her clit. She imagined her hands on his arms. She imagined being thrown to the ground and taken by him.
“Fuck!” she whispered, as the orgasm took her.
Afterwards, she stripped naked and ran to the shower. Despite having just seen to it, as her college roommate had used to say, she still wished that Max would walk through, and that it was him rubbing soap over her breasts, instead of her own hands.
*****
Khaona pet, Khanom chin kaengkiao wan kai, Kuaitiaonam and baminam—these were the names of the dishes which the three of them ate. Noodles, soup, meat . . . spicy, exotic-tasting.Rachel knew she should really be paying more attention to the culture, to the people around them, to the strange tastes on her tongue. But she found herself more occupied with glancing up when neither Dad nor Max was looking and tracing the arch of Max’s shoulder muscles. He wore a tight-fitting t-shirt and shorts, and Rachel kept imagining what it would be like to trail her fingers down his muscles. She was going mad. She was genuinely scared that if she kept up like this, sooner or later she would pounce on him.
Then Dad suddenly rose to his feet. “Sorry, guys,” he said.
“Sorry?” Rachel asked, trying to keep the emotion from her voice. Casual, cool, she thought. Just a casual, cool girl on a casual, cool holiday.Nothing strange or intense about it at all.Forget the fact that I’m sitting across from a muscular, older billionaire who once asked me if I wanted to fuck him. Yes, let’s just forget that for now!
“I’ve got to go upstairs
and take some business calls,” Dad explained.
“The Mortimer account?” Max said, not looking up from his food.
“The Mortimer account,” Dad confirmed. “I probably won’t be down again tonight. So please, don’t wait for me.” He gestured to a waitress. “Can you pack this up for me?” he asked, gesturing at his half-finished food.
The waitress could pack it up. She did. And then Dad was gone.
Rachel felt her heart beating in her tongue, at the ends of her fingers, at the tips of her toes. Her mouth was dry, the food not exactly helping. She was half-tempted to screw manners and just neck the water straight from the jug. But she resisted, and poured herself a glass. She drank it greedily, and then poured another.
When she’d finished the second glass and looked up, she saw that Max watched her with a sardonic grin on his face. “So,” he said, “are you we going to pretend that we don’t remember that evening in the gym?”
Rachel laughed. It was the most hollow-sounding fake laugh she had ever heard. She shrugged. She spread her arms. She realized she didn’t have any clue what she was trying to convey. She shrugged again. “I don’t know what you mean,” she said, but her voice plainly told that she did know what he meant. She knew very well indeed.
“Oh, really?” Max nodded. “Okay, if that’s how you want to play it.”
“Play it? I’m not playing anything.”
Rachel was aware that the restaurant was almost empty. The sun had set. The only remaining people apart from them was an old couple that sat at the far end of the restaurant, their backs to Max and Rachel, and the staff which had gathered on a table even further away, and only occasionally glanced back to check the state of their restaurant.
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