Flawless

by JD Hawkins

  Just before five, I pack up my stuff to head home so that I can spend some time cuddling with Garfield and eat a quick dinner before I come back to what I anticipate will be a very long night of video editing. As I’m walking out, I feel a hand reach out and pull me into the break room, the smell of coffee and stale donuts wafting around us as Liam locks the door and then leans in for a long, passionate kiss, putting his arms around me.

  “I’ve literally been waiting all day for an opportunity to do that,” he says when he finally pulls away. I reach up and tuck back a lock of his hair that’s gone askew.

  “I kept fantasizing about marching into your office and asking you to take me on the desk,” I reply, kissing him again. “It’s going to be hard working with you. The constant temptation.”

  “Let’s not think about that now,” he replies, his slate gray eyes possessing a soulfulness that I never noticed before. “Because after tomorrow, we’ll have five days in New York together. Just the two of us.”

  I smile up at him. “I can’t wait.”

  14

  Zoe

  Liam waits for me outside the airport terminal, and when he sees me attempting to drag my duffel and garment bag out of the Lyft, white-knuckled and grinding my teeth, he runs over and slings my luggage over his shoulder. Then he envelops me in a deep hug with his other arm. I wear a black pencil skirt with a royal blue blouse and a blazer to match the skirt, with a pair of strappy, low heels that show off a recent pedicure. Liam’s dressed in a snug-fitting silvery-gray suit that matches his eyes and shows off his muscular, tapered figure. I’ve never been so turned on and overwhelmed by anxiety at the same time.

  “What’s wrong? Are you okay?” he says.

  “Well, I have something to admit that may have been helpful to mention before now…I’m actually deathly afraid of flying.” I had hoped I could somehow avoid telling Liam this. I pride myself on being a strong, independent woman, the type of woman who wouldn’t have an irrational fear of flying, and some part of me was hoping I’d show up at the airport and miraculously feel fine.

  But the truth is, even though I know that the chances of anything bad happening while up in the air are miniscule, that I’m far more likely to die in a car accident, I can’t banish my phobia. Whenever I fly, or am about to fly, I feel my heart racing and my insides clenching up and a throbbing headache. I’ve tried meditating and exercise and anti-anxiety medication and beta blockers. Nothing works. Sometimes taking Dramamine at least puts me to sleep, so before getting into the Lyft, I downed double the normal dose. I’m crossing my fingers I just pass out for most of the flight.

  “I’m really embarrassed,” I continue. Liam leans in and gives me a long, soft kiss on the forehead. For a moment I forget the bustle of the travelers marching around me, the honking, the announcements blaring over the speakers.

  “Don’t be. Everyone has their kryptonite. Me? I’m extremely claustrophobic. That’s why you’ll never catch me in an elevator or a crawl space, and it’s the real reason I fly first class. It doesn’t have any bearing on who I am as a human being, though. It’s like allergies or eye color.”

  “Yeah, but the problem is, the fear and the panic and the sick feeling won’t go away until we’ve landed safely in New York. And that’s a long way away from now.”

  Liam hefts all of our stuff, backpack and briefcase and duffel and garment bags. He smiles at me, then gives me a big wet kiss on the lips, intentionally sloppy, in a way that makes me start laughing. “Consider me your official distracter until we have landed safe and sound on the JFK tarmac,” he says. “I offer a variety of services that I think will quite effectively make you forget that you’re 35,000 feet up in the air.”

  I take a deep breath. “Okay. I’m trusting you.”

  Liam takes my hand and leads me through the crowd. When we get in line for security, he does all the talking to the TSA agent, handing her our drivers’ licenses and boarding passes. As we place our things into bins, he gently removes my blazer, and kneels down to take off each of my shoes, as if I were a Disney princess.

  “Want to head to the bar for a quick drink?” he asks, and I nod, eager for a glass of wine to at least tamp down my nerves. As we sit on swivel stools, I sip at my overpriced Malbec, courtesy of Liam, still feeling anxious despite how great he’s being.

  “Do you want to listen to something?”

  “Like what?” I’m not sure what he means.

  “It’s a surprise,” he says, and he pulls out his phone, plugging in his earbuds. “I think you’ll really enjoy it.”

  I slip in one of the earbuds, wait a beat, and then one of the most atrocious songs I’ve ever heard in my life starts playing, noisy and dissonant with out-of-tune instruments, lyrics so angsty it’s like chalkboard teenager’s diary, and two offensively bad male vocalists. I vaguely recognize one of the voices.

  “No way,” I say, pulling out the earbud.

  “Yes way,” he replies. Liam watches my expression and seems to delight in my look of

  horror and disgust.

  “It’s, it’s…”

  “And we considered that to be Trigger Happy’s best song. Post-Isabel, of course.”

  “What were you thinking?” Half the glass of Malbec down, and I’m beginning to feel ever so slightly calmer. “That was an atrocity.”

  He laughs. “We thought we were good! Okay, maybe not good exactly, but decent.” Liam pauses, then clears his throat, as if he’s about to make an official speech. “‘Through our shunning of the conventional melodic norms of an oppressive, authoritarian society, and lyrics that aren’t ashamed to allow for masculine vulnerability, Trigger Happy is poised to become the next leader in LA’s punk scene…’ I actually said that. For an interview with a zine that one of our roommates put together every month using the Xerox machine at the student center, the only zine, in fact, that ever published anything about our band. Now do you believe me? Younger Liam wasn’t such a stud after all.”

  I shake my head, giggling. “Who wrote the line, ‘Your love is a puddle/I wish I could splash in/ My heart is a muddle/ Of anger and passion’? I mean, that is classic.”

  “That was actually Darren, though everything was a collaborative effort.”

  “When I first met you, you seemed superhuman. I imagined you with this perfect family and this perfect childhood and this perfect coming of age. Like you were the one person who could have possibly never taken an awkward school photo. This is nice. To know that you’re secretly one of us.”

  Liam downs the rest of his beer and looks up at me. “Turn around and I’ll give you a back massage.” I swivel around on my chair and feel his powerful thumbs against the knots in my shoulders. “I’m still not used to the way people see me now,” he says, moving his way across my upper back. “Everything you say about how you imagine my life was back when I was younger—those are all the same thoughts I have about you. You’re gorgeous and brilliant and self-assured and witty. It’s like anything you’ve set your mind to, you found a way to achieve. You inspire me to do better, to be better.”

  I swivel back around, and Liam embraces me, his lips against mine, an electricity flowing through me as our tongues mingle and dance together in our mouths.

  He pulls away. “I think that’s us,” he says, gesturing at the loudspeaker announcing that our flight has started boarding. “We get to go in first. Business class.”

  My pulse kicks, and I take a deep breath and down the last of my drink.

  We enter the plane, and while I appreciate the comfy, roomy seats and the immediate beverage service, I find the anxiety returning full force now that we’re onboard, the egg-shaped window looking over the runway, the roar of other planes taking off around us, the fluorescent lights and recycled air and too-friendly flight attendants.

  “I’m starting to freak out again. Distract me. Tell me a funny story.”

  Liam nods. “Funny story. Got it. So the year is 1987. I’m about to graduate from Happyland Presch
ool, named so because the principal had been raised by a commune of free-loving hippies. Anyway, so for the graduation ceremony, as they call out each name, the kid stands and says what they want to be when they grow up before sitting down again.”

  “Cute,” I smile.

  “Now, my parents have been awaiting this day. They think I’m going to knock it out of the park, impress everyone else there. Because as far as they know, I want to be a Supreme Court Justice. They had explained the concept to me the year before, when a conversation about judges led to me asking what the highest judge was and there you go, that’s the job I wanted.

  “But trouble starts brewing. They pick the children’s names at random—it was the kind of progressive school that didn’t want to show favoritism based on alphabetical order—and my friend Aaron gets called before me. He stands, and in a clear, thoughtful voice, says, ‘I want to be a philosopher when I grow up.’ That one’s a curveball. I was the one who was supposed to be adorably precocious. I wasn’t supposed to share the limelight with Aaron. So when they call my name, I stand and freeze.

  “Do I really want to be a Supreme Court Justice? That sounds pretty hard. Plus their robes made me think of my grandma’s black funeral dress. So instead, I announce, ‘I used to think I wanted to be a judge, but now I want to be a candy boy!’ at the top of my lungs. My parents sink down in their seats with embarrassment. I think that’s probably when they gave up on me.”

  I giggle, picturing a tiny Liam shouting this in front of a crowd of bougie parents. “Um, but what is a candy boy?”

  He shakes his head. “I don’t know. I made it up on the spot! I think I just liked candy a lot and wanted a job that would let me eat it all the time? So maybe a combination of a candy factory employee and a taste tester?”

  I let out a giggle. “Not the most worldly or selfless ambition, comparatively speaking.”

  “Tell me about it. And of course, a week later, I wanted to be a Supreme Court Justice again. Well, a Supreme Court Justice slash cowboy.”

  Suddenly I realize the plane is full, and they’re closing the doors and taxiing for takeoff.

  I rest against Liam, clutching him as I feel us starting to move. It’ll be better once we’re up in the air. A straight shot…unless there’s turbulence, that’ll get the adrenaline pumping through my system again. I take a deep breath in, filling the lower reaches of my lungs, then slowly breathe the air out. The funny thing is, our meeting with the investors is this evening, and I haven’t worried at all about that. Maybe I should, but I know we’re going to nail it, and then Liam and I can enjoy a long, languid weekend, just the two of us. I just need to get through this.

  “What did you want to be when you grew up?” Liam asks, breaking the silence. He brushes the hair out of my face, a habit he has, one I find immensely sexy, the slight roughness of his fingertips against my cheek.

  “I wanted to be a princess. Not like a smart, ambitious princess waiting to ascend to the queen’s throne and wield power over all the kingdom. I wanted to be the kind of princess that needed saving and protection from a handsome prince. Pathetic, right? My mother encouraged it, bought me all sorts of frilly dresses that I could never run around in. I love my parents, but they’re pretty old school when it comes to gender roles. Anyway, around second grade I became a tomboy for awhile because I wanted to play soccer and baseball with my older brother and all the neighbor kids.”

  “I like that,” Liam says, kissing my ear. “I bet you were good at sports.”

  “Oh yeah, I kicked their butts. Until they became teenagers and all grew a foot.”

  Liam leans his chin on his hand, listening intently. “Do you have any siblings besides your brother?”

  “No, just him. Erik. We don’t talk much. He leads these long, off-the-grid hiking adventures in Utah so he only has cell service a couple times a month. And then during winter he’ll usually use the money he made to travel abroad to some beautiful, remote location.”

  “That sounds pretty cool.”

  “I know…he’s actually a great guy. Don’t you ever wish you could live your life like that? Nothing tying you down. Being outdoors, making just enough to sustain yourself, never worrying about getting promoted or pleasing clients or whether you’ll ever be able to retire.”

  Liam shrugs. “In theory, yes. In practice, I imagine it would be lonely. And exhausting in a different kind of way. But I can definitely get onboard with more vacations, more R&R.”

  “Me too. I’d love to see—” I feel the plane starting to roll down the runway and I clutch Liam’s arm. I tell myself to breathe. Keep talking. Be distracted. “What about you? Do you have any brothers or sisters?”

  “A younger sister. Jess. We’re ten years apart, though, so I feel almost more like an uncle to her than a brother, but we still went through a lot together. She’s just about to start veterinary school at UC Davis. I’m thrilled for her. Otherwise, I had friends over all the time when I was growing up. Darren and his sister practically lived at my place in high school.”

  The plane shakes suddenly with turbulence as we ascend, jerking us forward and back again. My heart rate skyrockets. “Here,” Liam says, noticing my eyes widen, handing me a mostly unfinished vodka cranberry. “Drink this and then let me try to help you relax.”

  I down the drink in one gulp and within about a minute it’s gone to my head, a little edge off the anxiety, a bit of a floaty feeling. Liam takes me in his arms and kisses me, stroking my hair, rubbing his hands up and down my skin to help get rid of the goosebumps. I feel the Dramamine kicking in, but instead of feeling sleepy, I just feel relaxed…and exceptionally horny. I run my hand along Liam’s thigh, teasing him.

  He pulls away, gives me a conspiratorial look. “Want to do something a little naughty?” he whispers into my ear. I glance around, see that the people surrounding us are either sleeping or completely absorbed in whatever movie or TV show they’re watching.

  “What were you thinking?” I place Liam’s hand on my own thigh.

  He reaches into the seat back pocket and pulls out a plastic bag with the airline’s complementary dark navy blanket folded up inside. Then he tears off the plastic bag and throws the blanket over our laps.

  “Take off your heels. Lean back against the window and drape your legs over me.”

  I follow his directions and soon feel Liam’s hands underneath the blanket, running his fingers up and down my bare inner thighs. I feel myself getting wet with anticipation, thanking the universe that I decided to wear a skirt today. Liam pushes aside my panties, tracing wide circles around my pussy, getting closer and closer, until he’s rubbing my clit. I close my eyes and tilt my head back with satisfaction, feeling myself pulsing with his touch.

  “Look at me,” he commands.

  We lock eyes as he slides his fingers into my pussy. I love him watching me, studying the lust playing across my face as he pushes his fingers in deeper, adjusting his movements based on what makes me twinge with ecstasy. He keeps at it for five, ten minutes, licking his lips like a hungry lion when he can tell I’m getting close.

  “Nobody’s looking. Come as hard as you want,” he murmurs, and as he says this, I shudder, waves of orgasmic pleasure rippling through the entirety of my body. Then I watch as Liam takes his fingers and puts them into his mouth, licking them clean. I sigh with contentment, scooching back against Liam as he cleans off his hands with a hand wipe.

  “You asked me to distract you, right?” he says in that deep voice of his, grinning as I lay my head against his chest.

  “That was…above and beyond.” I place my hand against the hard bulge in his pants.

  “Later,” he says. “I have to stay presentable for the investor meeting. But after that, we can get as dirty as we want.” He nibbles at my earlobe, and at some point, I do drift off to sleep, since it seems like only a matter of minutes before the pilot announces our descent and the towering skyscrapers of Manhattan come into view.

  15

&nb
sp; Liam

  We’re in a bit of a time crunch when we land at JFK but I know that we’ll be able to get to the meeting by 6 p.m. When I booked the flight, we had planned to discuss the proposal at an office building in the Financial District. One of the potential investors, however, a former hedge fund manager turned restaurateur named Felipe, insisted that we hold our gathering at his newest business, a glamorously high-end New American bistro at the very top edge of the Upper East Side. I was happy to defer to the whims of the investors, and besides, I imagined that allowing everyone a glass or two of wine before Zoe’s presentation wouldn’t hurt our chances.

  “Do you have everything you need?” I ask Zoe as we flag down a taxi.

  “Yep, we’re all set. And I’m nice and relaxed now,” she says, giving me a kiss. “I just have to hope there aren’t any technical issues that come up. Have you ever noticed that computers work exactly as planned until the very moment when you really need them to?”

  “Well, maybe that’s a plus one for humans if computers eventually gain sentience and want to conquer us. They’ll freeze up just before enslaving the entirety of humanity…sorry, that seemed funnier to me in my head than I think it actually was.”

  “You’re cute.” Zoe strokes my hair.

  “Are you going to tell me anything more about your presentation? It would probably be useful in introducing you to these Wall Street folks if I knew more about your proposal.”

  Zoe takes my hands. “I know I’m coming across secretive, but you’ll understand once you see what I have in store. Besides, I want to give you the option of plausible deniability in the future, just in case you need it.”

  “Plausible deniability? Okay, now I’m starting to worry. Am I going to have to bail you out of jail after this meeting?”

  She laughs. “Trust me on this one.”