by Sherie Keys
That was enough to help Minnie get her embarrassment under control. “You shouldn’t be the one to sleep in the chair,” she insisted. “You’re the one paying for the room.”
He didn’t say anything to that, and so she continued, eyes wandering over the bed, “Besides, it’s only for a night or two. I think I can handle it.”
And if not, she could always slide out in the middle of the night and nest in the chair herself.
James grinned. “Okay, I won’t argue with that. Let me know if you change your mind, though.”
With that, he went back into the bathroom. Minnie figured there wasn’t much point in unpacking everything, so she left her big bag up against the room’s desk and only pulled out the things she absolutely needed for a single night. Even the extra pillow she’d packed stayed in the suitcase. While she put her toothbrush and things in the bathroom, James dug into the room’s closet and pulled down the extra blanket, so they at least wouldn’t be fighting over the single large comforter.
And then there really wasn’t anything to do but stick her phone on the charger and crawl into the bed. Before she did, Minnie debated sending a text to Avery, just to vent about the situation, but decided against it, instead just leaving her phone on the charger on the bedside table.
Even though they’d lived together for a few months, just sharing the hotel room was closer quarters than she’d shared with James so far. Having him in the same bed was nerve-wracking; after they turned off the lights, Minnie swore she could feel every time he breathed on the other side of the mattress, never mind when he shifted around trying to get comfortable.
As she calmed down, however, Minnie started to find that it wasn’t so bad. James wasn’t really a fitful sleeper, and she didn’t feel like she would have to worry about waking up to find him clutching at her in her sleep. She risked a glance at him, and found that he had politely turned his back towards her, curled up on his side and taking up relatively little of the bed, given his height and broader shoulders.
He was such a gentleman about it; really, he was always a gentleman about anything that made her uncomfortable. She’d dated other guys, in high school and her first couple years of college, who weren’t nearly as relaxed about it. They tended to want what they wanted, and if she couldn’t deliver, they would leave her to find someone who would.
Contracted relationship aside, even though James was known as a playboy, Minnie had never gotten that impression from him. She’d talked to a couple of the girls he’d been with before, at the first party they went to together, and they’d been in general agreement that he took care of them first, that sex with him was more enjoyable because of it.
Minnie hadn’t wanted to think about it at the time, but she’d considered it once or twice since, and right now, sharing a bed, made it hard not to consider it. He hadn’t put any pressure on her to have sex, ever, but she figured that he probably wouldn’t say no to her, either.
The thought gave her a strangely warm feeling inside, one that lasted until she had drifted off to sleep.
Chapter8
As the woman at the desk had expected, the leaky pipe was fixed the next day, and Minnie and James were able to move into the room with separate beds that afternoon, before going down to the harbor to the first of several lobster places Minnie had picked out for dinner. “You have to try a variety of places,” she’d said to James (who was shaking his head at her list). “That way, we’ll know which one is the best choice to have dinner on our last night here.”
So they had lobster dinners and went shopping in the city and spent two days camping out of the rental SUV down at the beach, where Minnie gathered up a whole bottle of little orange and yellow seashells to gently pack and bring home with them. And the whole time, she didn’t really get an answer one way or the other as to whether or not James had feelings for her, because they laughed and joked the same way as always, but didn’t do anything more romantic than candlelit lobster dinners and sharing a pitched tent out on the sand (which, in the end, made Minnie glad they’d had to share the bed that first night, even if it made things more awkward at the time).
The last full day of their vacation, they went to the aquarium, a fairly popular tourist destination but thankfully barely crowded at all on a week day. Minnie grinned as they came through the doors, looking at the huge column of water that formed the centerpiece tank of the aquarium. The exhibits, rather than being spread out, rose along the winding path around the tank, allowing you to see every level of the four-story column of water.
Around the bottom of the tank were penguins of several different kinds, which Minnie darted towards excitedly, joining a couple of children right up against the edge. James trailed after her. “If I didn’t know better,” he said at her shoulder, easily able to see over her head, especially as she bent over the railing to get a closer look, “I’d think the salt on the beach infected your brain while you were napping that day.”
“Oh, hush,” she said with a huff. “I’ve always loved penguins. I could stay and watch them all day.” Even as she spoke, one of the rock hoppers in the exhibit below tried to live up to its name, failed, and slid down into the water with a splash. The children watching a little further down the way laughed, and Minnie couldn’t resist giggling, either.
They wandered around the bottom floor of the aquarium for a while; most of the larger tanks and exhibits were down there, such as the seals and the jellyfish tank. Minnie was a little disappointed that the aquarium didn’t seem to have a large shark tank, but there was a tank full of rays and smaller sharks where you could actually reach in and touch them. Minnie spent probably half an hour stroking their skin, and even managed to convince James to stick a hand in the water. (Privately, she was starting to get the idea that he was afraid of sharks, from how he pulled his hand back from anything but the rays.)
Then they started working their way up, around the dimly lit central tank on the wide ramp. On the third floor, Minnie spent some time watching the octopus, which was actually swimming around fairly actively, compared to most of the octopuses she had seen in other aquariums in the past that were content to kind of hide in a corner of their tanks. When she put her hand up against the glass, the octopus put a sucker-lined tentacle against the other side, watching her with weird-looking horizontal pupils.
The top floor was a coral reef exhibit, along with a platform overlooking the tall central tank that let you look straight down into it. Minnie only looked down it briefly before going back to footing that made her feel a bit less unsteady. She dropped back from the edge and decided that she preferred to watch the sea turtles swimming lazily around the massive tank from the side.
The exhibits on this floor were mostly empty, and like the rest of the aquarium, were somewhat dim, putting the tanks in better light without bothering the animals inside. It wasn’t exactly romantic lighting, but Minnie felt a little inspired by it anyway. She went off towards a corner tank, feigning interest in the eels inside of it that looked more like sea grass than they did animals.
(Okay, so the eels were interesting, they just weren’t that interesting.)
James, as usual, followed her over; he’d let her lead most of the way around the aquarium, although he’d been quite happy to tell her about how the electric eel wasn’t actually an eel at all, and how its electricity worked, in more detail than the little sign attached to the tank had. When she turned to face him, instead of looking into the tank as she had been doing, he just looked back at her, a little confused.
“Can I talk to you about something?” she asked hesitantly, immediately kicking herself for the phrasing. That question was one of the one that had always made her practically vibrate with nerves, because she knew that very few discussions of good things started with that question.
If it made James nervous, though, he was very good at hiding it. With all the business meetings he had been going to that might make or break his company’s future, Minnie figured that he probably had to be. She
couldn’t imagine a job where she had to go up and speak in front of people regularly like that, with basically her entire job hanging in the balance. “What is it?”
She hesitated, not quite sure how to begin. Best to start at the beginning, right? “You remember that pool party we went to over spring break?”
“At Liz’s? Yeah, of course.” She could tell from the look on his face that he did remember, and was wondering where she was going with this. His eyes were showing just a bit of worry.
“I accidentally overheard you and Liz – I didn’t intend to, I swear – talking about sex. About how you turned her down, because you were willing to try waiting for me.” He didn’t respond, so she continued, the words she’d been thinking about too much but never really planning to say just spilling out. “I didn’t think too much of it at the time – I figured it was just a stunt for the rumors, you know? Because there were rumors after that, the kind that could only make this whole relationship thing seem more real, and so I figured that’s what you were doing.”
“But lately…” She hesitated. “I woke up on the plane, and you were holding my hand, even though there was no reason for you to be acting the part of a good boyfriend there. And I do think of you as a friend – a really good friend! – and I don’t want to lose that. But it’s been bothering me, and I have to know – is there anything deeper going on there? Something I’m missing?”
Things were silent between them for a long moment after that, a too-long moment where Minnie kept nervously glancing between James and the eel tank, just to seem like she wasn’t staring at him and expecting an answer.
Finally, he said, “What I said to Liz…it wasn’t just a ploy to boost my reputation. At the time, that was what I was thinking, but I’ve looked over those words in my head just as many times as I’m sure you have. And I keep coming back to the fact that I’d been planning to say that I thought you were worth waiting for, but what I said was that it was worth waiting to find out if you were the one at all.”
Minnie had almost forgotten that subtle difference over the last few months; that James had chosen to wait and find out, rather than making any declarations then.
“It was more honest than I really planned,” he said, rubbing a thumb along the edge of his pocket nervously – and Minnie noticed because it seemed so rare that he was ever nervous at all. “And so these last few months, I have been waiting, trying to figure it out… and I think that the words I meant to say, that it’s worth waiting for you – those words are true now.”
It wasn’t exactly a declaration of undying love, but it felt close enough. James had decided she was worth waiting for – and so the decision was, ultimately, hers, as to whether or not the paid relationship would turn into something real. It was a responsibility she didn’t know what to do with.
So instead she said, as gracefully as she could manage with her heart banging hammers on her ribs, “Thank you. For being honest.”
He smiled so warmly at her that she couldn’t help herself – it took practically a jump to close the gap of their heights, but she leaned up to kiss him on the lips, chaste as on the beach, but lingering a little longer. Stepping back a bit, she said, “I don’t know if I can return those feelings yet. But I’ll try to not make you wait too long before I decide.” It was all she could promise.
It seemed to be enough. James took her hand and gently squeezed it. “That’s more than enough.”
She squeezed back. “And no matter what, we’re still friends. I’m so glad of that.”
*
Three days after they returned, she was having lunch with Avery, telling him the story, and before she even got to the part about kissing James, Avery looked at her and bluntly interrupted, “You’re an idiot. You’ve got it bad.”
Minnie sputtered a moment, staring at him. “What do you mean?” she practically shrieked, voice only quiet due to the first few students returning for the next semester sharing the cafeteria with them.
Avery shook his head. “Look, I know you’re not that big into physical things, so it’s not surprising you’re not gushing about his looks. But you keep going back to how he gave you the choice, and how he’s the first guy to do that, even though we did date at one point as you might recall, and how glad you are that he isn’t like you expected him to be… Minnie, quit talking like you have a decision to make. You already decided – “ And here he reached out, flicking his fingers against her forehead the way he had done numerous times in high school. “Your brain just hasn’t caught up with it yet.”
Minnie frowned and didn’t say anything for a while. It wasn’t as though her heart beat any faster than her usual nervous speed when she was around James, and she didn’t spend long minutes dreaming off into space thinking about him.
“Look at it this way,” Avery interrupted her thoughts. “If you had asked and he had said it was all just a ploy, wouldn’t it have hurt?”
It would have. Maybe not to the point of devastation, but it would have hurt. Minnie didn’t say so out loud, though, and so Avery kept pressing his point.
“If the contract ended tomorrow, and he asked you to stay, would you?”
That got a long sigh, as Minnie looked away, unable to meet Avery’s eyes when she knew he had caught her. “I think I would,” she said grudgingly.
She didn’t have to look over to know the kind of smirk Avery was wearing. “And it’s not just because the place is nice as hell, is it?”
“Well, I don’t know how I’m ever going to get used to sleeping in a normal sized bed again,” Minnie said with a laugh, glad for the excuse to change the subject a little. “It’s so nice to sprawl out across a big one.”
But Avery wasn’t to be deterred. “Even nicer than sharing one?”
Minnie nearly threw her coffee at him.
Chapter9
That night was one of their usual “stay in” style dates – a movie and hot chocolate, with Minnie in old, slightly-too-small PJs and James in a too-plush monogram robe. She wound up leaning against him as the movie neared its climax, the motion not in itself unusual, but it was the first time she’d really made physical contact since their return from Boston. James didn’t really react, though, and part of Minnie was glad that it seemed that that part of their relationship hadn’t changed.
Another part of her was a little disappointed for the same reason.
They sat and talked through the credits, as usual, but at the end, as the screen went black, Minnie felt and gave into the urge to give him a brief kiss on the cheek. It was at least easier to reach his face with hers while they were sitting. James looked a little surprised, but Minnie didn’t explain her action, instead just smiling and wishing him goodnight.
Her heart was racing after that, at least.
Minnie lay in bed that night, thinking about it, thinking about how comfortable she had been with James’ weight beside her in the hotel, wishing that she had the courage and self-knowledge to roll a little closer to him then. She had to remind herself – she hadn’t even known his feelings at the time. As far as she had known, that would have been just as likely to come to nothing as to produce any other result.
She reminded herself, you barely know your own feelings. He said he would wait. There’s still more than two years.
For their next going-out date, about a week later, Minnie dressed a little fancier and showed a little more skin than she might have usually. She wore heels that bumped her up a little higher, did her make-up a little differently –
It didn’t give her all the confidence she needed, but it helped, a little, though the heels took a few practice laps around her room to get used to.
“I’m ready,” she tried telling the mirror in a confident tone, then sighed and slumped her shoulders. Maybe she wasn’t ready. But the only way to get there was to act on it.
The Italian restaurant wasn’t a super fancy place, by the standards of James’ budget, but it was well above Minnie’s previous cheap Chinese food dates. Those times
seemed half a world away as they sat down, Minnie nervously smoothing out the tablecloth and noting the one or two faded spaghetti stains.
Nothing for it but to do it, right? She already knew he wouldn’t reject her; wasn’t that always supposed to be your biggest worry, during a confession like this? And yet here she was, hesitating as always, “two more years” being a mantra of procrastination that she had to overcome.
So when James set down the menu well before their waitress returned – she was surprised he’d even looked at it, when he almost always had the basil pesto just like she almost always had the lobster Alfredo – Minnie said, “It’s a good thing we never get spaghetti here, or we might have to do that movie thing where the couple kisses because of one really long noodle.”
As confessions went, not off to a great start. But James laughed a little and seemed to catch her meaning, replying, “So are you saying you wouldn’t just bite the end off?”