by Devin Sawyer
I move through the penthouse, looking for a secondary room and gratefully find one. I close the door, locking myself in and angrily begin to unpack my own items, hanging up my clothes for the week and placing the toiletries in my private bathroom. I attempt to distract myself with work when I’ve run out of tasks to do and I only cement in my mind of revolving thoughts that I now essentially refuse to cooperate with Lawson’s request for dinner or any future requests until he corrects the room confusion. It’s so like him to make a decision pertaining to me without asking my consent.
Just when I’m able to focus on my work, I hear the door to the suite open and close. I pause, listening for his steps which find themselves right outside my door. I can see the slight shadow where he stands in the small space under the door. The handle twists slightly but finds resistance with the lock.
“Farah? Are you in there?”
CHAPTER 23 – PRESENT
I stomp like a child over to the door and unsurprisingly, find Lawson, dapper as always in a nicely fitted suit. His body was made for suits, but I don’t let his good looks diminish my anger.
“I know you’re probably a little irritated.”
“Probably? Probably, Lawson? You moved me into a makeshift apartment with you for a week. You didn’t even ask me.” I come full-fledged at him with my anger.
“Would you have said yes?”
“No!” I shout back.
“Precisely. You promised an honest attempt at getting to know each other, to explore any possible remaining feelings and you, Farah, have a tendency to run. That will be much harder if we are staying in the same room.” He’s not wrong, but that doesn’t make it okay. “Dinner’s in an hour. You may want to get changed.”
“I’m not going to dinner with you. I’m pissed at you,” I say as if my emotions need explanation.
“The alternative is I can have it delivered to our room, but you will have dinner with me, and I took into account that you might prefer a public environment to take off some of the pressure. Also, I was gracious enough to book the suite with two separate rooms. I could have arranged for us to share a bed.”
I glare at him. “That would have been a death wish on your part.”
“One hour, Farah. I’m going to change into a fresh shirt,” he says as he leaves the room.
I change into a dress but make minimal effort in fluffing my hair and reapplying some lipstick. I’m not here to impress Lawson. When he knocks on my door again an hour later, I’m sitting on my bed thinking about Reece and how I’ll have to lie during every phone call I make this week. I was never a liar.
Lawson and I take the long elevator ride down to the second floor where the restaurant and bar are in the hotel. I stand silently and Lawson whistles absentmindedly. Actually, I don’t think that Lawson does anything absentmindedly, every move he makes has intent.
While we wait for dinner, Lawson makes small talk, asking further questions about the conference, follow-up questions about my job. I feel like I’m being interviewed but I know part of that is my brief retorts, making his job to maintain conversation difficult. He changes direction and tells me about his campaign, finding it easier to speak about himself than continue to pepper me with questions that go largely unanswered. He’s doing well, but he still has just under a year before the race ends. The work has just begun. He talks about his parents and I have torn feelings toward them. They really were kind to me this last visit and I just haven’t determined if they’ve matured in their opinions, or if Reece is just the preferred son of choice when it comes to me. That thought makes me nauseous, knowing that they might have different standards for them. I decide to ask Lawson a few questions about them, about his and Reece’s childhood. It’s not a topic I talk about with Reece, because until recently we didn’t speak casually about his family.
I can tell my participation pleases Lawson and a smile crosses his face before responding. He lets me question him for the good part of our dinner about both of his parents. He doesn’t even hole up when I begin to ask questions about Reece, which I fully expected him to.
“Doesn’t it bother you?” I ask.
“I don’t understand your relationship with Reece. I think in the beginning, I thought you were just trying to reach out to me, reconnect.”
Narcissist, I think briefly.
“But I reached out to you on Facebook and you never responded.”
“I had you blocked,” I let him know honestly.
“I think that’s when I finally let go. Reece came home and told me bits and pieces, he wanted to clear the air, but I didn’t really want to hear much about the two of you. I was tired of hurting and ready to finally move on.”
“And yet here we are…” I smart off.
“Yeah, here we are,” Lawson says with more meaning and the weight of his implications makes me fidget.
I swirl my wine around in the glass and take a large pull from the glass. It’s an unladylike move that probably is the partial reason that his parents never wanted me to end up with him in the first place. I’m an enigma really. I have my mother’s dark and exotic Turkish look, my father’s southern personality, and my own millennial spin where I lack basic ladylike behavior and inability to complete a sentence without cursing. Yep, I was senator’s wife material alright.
“Your parents would have loved Kayla.”
“I’m sure they would have. Just like the way they loved Veronica, and Jessica, Sarah, Melanie, and Karen. My parents want an image for me, but I do not have to love that image, Farah. I have never loved a single one of those women, the way I was falling in love with you. So you can spend the week telling me who I should love for the sake of my parents or you can remind me that we are both here for a reason.”
I sigh a long exhale. “I’m not trying to be difficult, though I am still annoyed with the room switcheroo you pulled. I only want to appeal to both sides. Part of the reason we did not work out, Lawson, is because of the image you hold. You think you know what you want until it affects the only thing you want more than anything… the job.”
“I don’t love the job more than anything.”
“Then don’t run.”
“What?”
“Don’t run. I’ll move back to Columbia, we can look at a place together, and you can continue your successful practice. Don’t run for office.”
He stills, staring at me and his answer takes too long.
“Should’ve called my bluff, Lawson, but you proved my point. You just can’t let that goal fall from your grip.”
“It’s cruel of you to play with someone’s feelings like that. What if I had agreed?”
“You didn’t though… and you won’t.”
“What about Reece? Would he give up that new restaurant for you?”
“In a heartbeat,” I tell him without a shadow of a doubt.
Our meal goes silent again while we both take in the information we each revealed. The mood isn’t tense, but reflective, contemplative. I can tell that Lawson is reflecting on the very sacrifices his brother would make for me, maybe even comparing what his own sacrifice would have to look like, and I can see the hurt and loss as he imagines it. I would never truly ask Lawson to do that for me. Maybe this trip was a good idea after all. Maybe it’s going to show me exactly what I needed to know.
~
Day one of my nurse management conference was magical. It wasn’t a boring class full of lectures, but an interactive class full of simulation exercises that challenged each of the participants to lead and manage a full department of medical staff. I met different nurses from across the nation, some aspiring nurse managers, like myself, and some who have been leading as a chief nurse for numerous years, honing in on their leadership skills.
Upon returning to the hotel suite, and finding it empty, I head to my room, lock the door and lie on the bed before calling Reece. He’s a few hours behind and is likely still at work so I’m surprised when he answers.
“Miss me already?” he a
sks with genuine charisma.
“You know it.”
“How was your conference? Did you impress everyone with your abundant knowledge?”
“It’s amazing! I feel like I’m learning so much just from the other people attending. I’m nowhere near the top of the class but I think I provided good feedback in the group projects we did today.”
“HEY! No, not there,” Reece shouts at someone who must be at the job site.
“Busy day?”
“As always. Trying to get the building design down and some of the appliances will be arriving soon even though we have no place to store them until they are ready to be installed. Something got messed up in our order and they arrived six weeks early.”
“Well, I guess that’s better than six weeks late?” I try to optimistically spin for him.
He huffs out a small laugh and I miss the way it sounds. “Yeah, you’re probably right. Let me call you later, babe. I’ve got to handle a few things but will call you when I get off.”
“I may be in bed by then,” I remind him of the time change and simultaneously cover for myself, if I don’t feel like I can answer.
“Dang. Well, I’ll text you first. If you’re awake, give me a call.”
“K.” I grin into the phone.
“Love you, beautiful.”
“I love you too, Reece.” I hear the click of the phone and the silent line.
I lay back on the bed, unsure what Lawson possibly had planned for us tonight, but I hope it involves staying in, because after taking everything in at the conference, I’m drained.
~
I wake, feeling groggy, on my hotel room bed, but I am not alone. Lawson’s lean and sinewy body rests on the other side of the bed. He’s flipping through the channels on the television that’s playing quietly enough so it wouldn’t wake me.
“Hey sleepyhead. Long day?” He greets me like it’s normal for us to be lying here together like this.
“It was fine, just took a lot out of me mentally.”
“Want to stay in tonight? We can order something and have it delivered.”
“Yeah, that sounds fine.” I let him know, although this, us, hanging out casually feels anything but fine, it’s strange and I can tell he’s doing his best to make me comfortable and paint me a picture. This could be what it’s like for us, it says.
I push myself up on the bed so I’m sitting, rather than lying, and Lawson finally lands on a movie. It’s one of my favorite comedies that came out a few years ago.
“Ooh, I like this one,” I say impulsively so he doesn’t keep flipping. I see him set down the remote and smile at me as if he enjoys seeing the little idiosyncrasies that reveal themselves without my well-thought permission.
“Thai food okay? There’s a place a few blocks from here that has good reviews and they deliver.”
“Yeah, that’s fine,” I tell him, returning to watching the movie.
He looks at the menu on his phone browsing the different items before placing a call and ordering a smorgasbord of different items. While he’s on the phone, I hear him clarify the order to the woman on the other end of the line, and without hesitation, places his hand on top of mine that is resting on the bed, gripping it lightly. He’s holding my hand, and he literally just pulled like the eighth grade stretch into the arm around shoulder move, except he placed his hand on mine after animatedly ordering our dinner. Like that is just where he planned to place it, and my hand just happens to be in its way of sitting on the bed.
He always was charming and smooth. Reece is charming and forward, it’s different from Lawson and I am annoyed at the way I just compared their flirting tactics. I think for a moment while he wraps up the call if I want to pull away. Five feet, that was the agreement, not that it was a hard and fast rule, but I had intended for it to be a guideline. No touching, it made things fuzzy, and we had already made things unclear. Yet, I didn’t find myself removing my hand from his. I let his warm hold graze mine lightly.
When our food arrives Lawson runs down to the lobby to meet them and returns, setting up a picnic on my bed while we continue to watch the movie.
“Don’t spill any on my bed. I don’t want to be rolling around in fried rice all night.”
“I already stashed some of the Pad Thai under your pillow in case you get hungry later,” he jokes back.
“It’s easy to forget that Lawson Calhoun has a sense of humor.”
“Oh come on. We used to have all kinds of fun back in the day. You were always laughing.”
“Yeah but I was laughing at you, and Grant and Finn’s ridiculous floundering ways. I still can’t figure out how the three of you are so different and still managed to maintain your friendship into adulthood.”
“Literally my whole life has been creating meaningful relationships… well, meaningful enough that they remember me when it’s time to vote. You think I can’t maintain the ones I actually like?”
The fact that he couldn’t single-handedly save our relationship doesn’t fall short on me. Of course Grant and Finn come from reputable lawyer families.
“How is Grant doing? I didn’t get to catch up with him as much as I would have liked while I was down.”
“He’s good. I actually think he might even be in love.”
“No!” I say in disbelief, a surprised grin stretches across my face.
“I know! It’s weird, right?” Lawson reflects my own thoughts. “But he seems totally crazy about this one. Sees her all the time. I haven’t even met her yet, because he spends all his time holed up with her. All I know is she’s a teacher.”
“Wow. Miracles do happen. Next thing we know, even you will be getting married.” I laugh at this but find I’m the only one. His expression grows serious.
“I have wanted to be married. It would be nice to come home to a family but with my schedule and the media watching me it’s hard to meet someone without it ending up in the local news. It’s not like I can just end up on dating websites either. I probably should have listened to my parents and met someone when I was younger because at least then my relationships were not followed so closely.”
His revelation catches me off guard and I hadn’t thought about what his dating life might really look like today. It would be significantly more difficult for us now than it was back then, and I’m brought back to wondering if his parents were always right. It doesn’t feel good to think they might have been. Lawson changes the subject, not letting me overthink his comment.
“Things with Turkey are still… well, the same. They are still our allies, but we can’t always offer them the level of support they need in their country. Do you ever think of going back?”
“I’ve wanted to go back for years. I feel like it’s been so long since I was there. One of my cousins that I haven’t seen since I moved, keeps in touch with me on Facebook and I’d really like to go back and see her. I never really know if that’s a wise idea with our current presidential leadership. Part of me worries that I would struggle to return or just have issues in general. Reece wants to take me, and I’d love to take my mom back.”
“I used to want to take you. I wanted to take you back so you could see your family, your childhood home, but I used to want to see it too, in order to understand you better, know you better.” I’m surprised by this revelation. I had never heard him talk about it much, and after I left, I always assumed he had just been avoiding the topic.
“That’s really kind of you. I hadn’t realized you had any interest back then.”
“We could still go, you know. I could even work for the consulate over there if I don’t get the senator position. You could spend a few years getting to know your family and working as a nurse.” I stopped eating. Was he being serious?
“Are you offering to run away? You always give me a hard time for running.”
“I would be offering to run with you, not from you. I would need to complete my run for senator, but again if I weren’t to be elected, I think I wou
ld consider it and should you decide I’m worth the risk, well we probably would need some space from my family.”
This was big. This could literally be the solution, if I wanted it. And that was a huge if. There was no way I could just go back to Lawson and face his family ever again. If I ever chose him… we would have to leave. I wasn’t sure that’s what I wanted, but it does solve the problem of how we would face his family after a decision like that… we just wouldn’t. We would run, but this time we could do it together.
“Well, I’m sure you’ll be elected,” I tell him, downplaying my own thoughts about his offer.
“Just know it’s an option,” he tells me. “This is not some getaway vacation I’m on. I want this to work if it’s right for both of us.”
I nod my head but just return to the movie, trying to take it all in.
Lawson holds my hand casually through the rest of the movie. He never pulls me closer to him but just keeps us lightly connected. I let him. I’m probably shooting myself in the foot by abandoning the five-foot rule I made prior, but I really am concerned that if we don’t address our issues, they won’t ever go away. I’ve had a therapist tell me that for years and yet one weekend with Lawson, and I was suddenly convinced again. I should probably start seeing that therapist again.
Lawson and I watch two different movies before he finally gets up to leave to go back to his room. It’s almost eleven and I need to be up early for the conference again tomorrow. I stand to walk Lawson out of my room and also plan to change into my pajamas.
“Goodnight, Farah,” he tells me at the door.
“’Night Lawson.”
Before I can register what is happening, Lawson pulls me closer to him and presses his lips into my own. This close I can smell him so vividly, his rich cologne that smells of sandalwood and his vanilla shampoo. Everything about him is invading my senses. His body is hard and rigid and pressing me into the door, demanding more of me. His hand placed behind my neck pulls me deeper into the kiss and when my brain finally stops spinning, I move to pull away.