by JD Hawkins
“Was?” I say, matching her roguish tone. I bring my other hand to her cheek and draw a nail slowly down her neck, toward her breast. “We’re both still here, aren’t we?”
“We are,” she murmurs, voice more sultry as she takes my cock in her palm and rolls her chin onto my chest to look up at me with shining eyes. “And you’re still tense…”
9
Hazel
I don’t so much wake up as crawl slowly out of comforting dreams into the even more comforting reality of the gigantic bed and luxurious hotel room.
In the dreams, I’m entangled with a tall, dark, handsome stranger who looks at me with absolute, untainted desire in his eyes. As I groggily awaken, however, I roll over, stretch out, and slowly come to terms with the fact that it was all just a dream.
Until I realize that the rhythmic grunting I’m hearing is actually real, and when I roll to the other side of the bed I see that there is, in fact, a tall, dark, handsome stranger here—he’s just doing push-ups with his feet on the desk chair.
Reality, recollections, and the whole situation rush into my mind almost overwhelmingly, waking me up fully and forcing me to double-check my memory that everything that happened last night actually happened.
I watch Nate do push-ups for so long it exhausts even me, then sit up against the headboard and ask, “How long have you been up?”
Nate continues to do several more then stands upright, catching his breath. He’s wearing nothing but his boxers, and even though I’m staring right at him, his body is the hardest thing for me to believe is actually real. Maybe it’s the pump from the workout, or the clear white morning light from the window, but he looks like some purpose-built machine. I can’t stop myself from recalling the purpose I used him for last night…
“About an hour,” he says, then glances at the clock by the bed. “I didn’t wake you, did I?”
I smile and sigh. “No. Which is surprising. I’m a light sleeper…usually.”
He looks at me for a while. It’s not the look of lust he gave me last night—not totally, anyway. There’s something strangely intimate about it. For him, at least. Perhaps knowing that soon he won’t see me again. It seems like he’s trying to memorize my face. Maybe he just feels like he can look at me properly since there won’t be a future for us, there won’t be consequences. Either way, I don’t say anything, or even acknowledge it. I just let him look.
“I…uh…” he starts, and then snaps out of it, gesturing at the covered trays on the desk. “I ordered us both breakfast. They dropped it off about twenty minutes ago. Hope it’s still hot.”
“Great,” I say, grabbing another pillow to sit more upright in bed. “Bring it over. What did you get me?”
He brings a tray and sets it over my lap on the bed, then pulls off the metal dome.
“Oh, the sausages!” I say, laughing at the idea he remembered me going crazy about them yesterday.
He sits on the edge of the bed and shrugs. “I figured you’d be hungry.”
“You figured correct,” I say, already grabbing the cutlery.
He watches me eat awhile, and once again I say nothing about it.
Eventually he says, “Okay, okay. Gimme a piece,” so I fork a piece of sausage and hold it out for him. He smiles broadly at me, like I just did something amazing.
“What?” I say, lowering the fork a little, wondering if I’ve got something on my face.
He says nothing, just takes my wrist and lifts it again so he can take the sausage and chew it in his big smile. I let out a laugh and return to my plate as Nate goes over to the tray he left on the table and grabs his plate and a fork, carrying it back to the bed so he can sit on the edge and occasionally look at me.
Still, he eats quickly. As if it’s only a function rather than something to enjoy. Finished with his eggs while I’m still making gooey faces at how good my own dish is. Once he’s done, he moves back to the desk, wipes his mouth, and tosses a napkin on the tray.
“I’d better get ready to go,” he says.
My mouth full, I nod my reply.
“How much longer are you staying at the hotel for?” he asks.
I quickly chew and swallow so I can answer. “Today is my last day. I’m driving back to L.A. tomorrow.”
Nate thinks a moment and then says, “Well, you can have this room then—we have it booked for a few more nights.”
I nod again. Something about the sudden formality of the conversation making me feel like protesting would be rude.
Nate looks at me again, but the strangeness is gone now, and I can tell something has changed in him, in the way he’s thinking of me, of everything. He takes a step toward the bathroom but then stops and looks at me again.
“You shouldn’t bump into anyone. They’ll all chase Warren back to Chicago. But if you do, then—”
“Don’t worry,” I say, waving my fork casually. “If I do meet someone you know, I’ll just play it off. I’ll say something like…you headed back to Chicago, but I stayed so I could visit some relatives in San Diego.”
“San Diego…yeah. Good,” Nate says. He hesitates a few seconds more, then finally makes it all the way to the bathroom, shutting the door behind him.
I finish eating and then get out of bed. After throwing on my panties and T-shirt from last night—smiling a little to myself when I find them carefully folded on the chair—I check my phone and see that Mia texted me, begging for me to call her back like I promised while I was on the boat. I call her as I go to my bags and get together my outfit for the day.
“Well, hello!” she answers, quickly and excitedly.
“Hey there,” I say, as I sift through the clothes I brought. “You got a minute?”
“Sure. Maybe even two…I’m just filling in some patient reports.”
“Sorry I hung up on you yesterday.”
“Why are you whispering?” Mia says, and I hear the pen scratching stop, hear the slow realization in her voice. “Is he there? With you right now?”
I glance at the bathroom door and smile, trying not to so I don’t sound stupid when I reply. “He’s in the bathroom, but he’s leaving right now.”
Mia makes a sound somewhere between a squeal of excitement, a laugh of surprise, and a sigh of disbelief.
“He’s leaving now?” Mia says once she’s regained some composure. “Are you sad?”
“I…” I start speaking before I’ve even thought about it, and end up struggling to find words, to realize whether I even feel anything at all. “No. I knew he was going to leave soon… Anyway,” I suddenly announce, making it clear I’m in too much of a hurry to give details, “I just called to ask how things are at the hospital.”
“Insanely busy. Everyone keeps asking when you’ll be back—nothing proves your worth like an absence.”
“Maybe I should ask for a raise.”
“No better time,” Mia says, over the sound of her frantic scribbling. “Toby was also asking about you.”
“You didn’t—”
“I didn’t tell anybody about your nautical adventures with a hot stranger,” Mia chuckles gently. “Don’t worry. I want to be the first to hear all the details anyway.”
I hear the shower water stop and feel a sudden urgency.
“I’ll be back soon, so you will. I promise. I should go.”
“Of course. Go, go,” Mia says, as I hear her whip paper around and stand up in a hurry. “Enjoy him while you can.”
I let out a laugh and say goodbye, then hang up and hurriedly get dressed.
Eventually, Nate emerges from the bathroom and sees me waiting there. We look at each other for a few seconds, and I suddenly realize how disappointed I am that this is it, that it’s finally over. I smile at him, hoping it will unlock something, but though he smiles back, it’s formal. As if he’s already come to terms with it being done—and why wouldn’t he? Why can’t I? I step toward the bathroom after him, and the odd formality of stepping out of each other’s way a polar oppos
ite to the desperate intimacy of our bodies last night.
It takes me only a few minutes to shower, brush my teeth, and get dressed in a white and red floral summer dress, but when I get out of the bathroom Nate is already fully packed and ready to go. He’s wearing a dark gray suit and gleaming leather shoes. His hair side-parted and his face noticeably clean shaven. His hand is resting on an expensive-looking suitcase.
He looks formidable and impenetrable now, like a completely different guy. The suit’s well fitted enough to hide his ridiculous muscles but accentuate his stiff posture. The only hint at personality or humanity the undone top button of his shirt.
For the first time around him I feel a little daunted, a little silly. His nakedness, and his casual loose linen made him look hot, eye-catching and impressive, but the way he wears this suit now only reminds me of what a different world he comes from. His life in Chicago of hard work and prestigious jobs no longer just words, stories he told me, but vividly represented in front of me now. I suddenly get it, deeper than words.
The Nate I spent the past few days with was the exception, the anomaly. And it hits me almost physically just how over our little “vacation romance” is now that I see him like this, ready to return, in his “true” form. In a way, it feels like he’s gone already.
“You packed quickly,” I remark, if only for something to say.
He looks up from his phone at me, and this time when his eyes move down my body, taking in my outfit, I can’t quite tell what he’s thinking.
He slides his phone into his inside pocket and even this gesture is so smooth and practiced that I recognize him as a different person now.
“The valet just brought my rental around.” For a second I consider laughing and joking that he should stay a couple more days, that I still never finished my massage, that I could do with some company. But with him dressed like this, acting formal like this, it seems absurd now. Even speaking with Mia only reminded me of the hospital, of my life back in L.A., of the fact what Nate and I did was improbable—and only the fact that he’s leaving is real life.
“I guess you’re off then?” I say casually, despite my heart sinking inside me.
He takes a second before answering.
“Yeah,” he says, nodding slowly. “But listen: I still owe you. And I still mean what I said. Name your price.”
I laugh and look away, hating myself for acting so bashful, hoping I don’t come across that way. “I told you, Nate, I don’t want—”
“No,” he interrupts firmly enough to pull my eyes back to him. “You just helped me secure a job that’s going to change my life. Don’t be polite or shy about it. Money. A car. Whatever. For my own conscience, at least. I won’t feel right until I’ve returned the favor at least a little.”
If there was any doubt that our “vacation romance” was over, any hope that I might keep the fun going a little longer, this kills it. Nate’s insistence on “repaying” me confirming that this was nothing more than a favor, a business transaction, nothing more than practical. And the way he says it, I struggle to believe that even the things we did when nobody was watching even matter.
“Okay…I’ll think about it.”
Nate nods, then says, “You have my card.”
“I do.”
He smiles and steps toward the door, pulling his suitcase behind him on its wheels. A sudden awkwardness passes over me. A fear of the final words we’ll say. Unsure of whether he’ll kiss me, hug me, maybe even just shake my hand. The uncertainty unbearable, so I decide to try to delay, even just a few moments longer.
“Let me walk you down to your car,” I suggest.
Nate looks at me and smiles, maybe with a kind of relief, or maybe it’s just in my head. “Sure.”
“You know,” I reply, grabbing my bag and throwing a few things in, relaxing a little now that the awkwardness won’t happen right away, “just in case anybody sees us. I’ll probably just read by the pool now anyway.”
“Yeah. Good idea,” Nate says, opening the door for me to slip through.
We barely say a word to each other during the walk down the corridor, in the elevator, Nate getting his keys from the front desk, and then out to the curb. But I don’t mind. I use the time to move on, to adjust to the idea of him leaving.
It’s just an instinct, anyway. I just hate goodbyes. It’s not like I could have feelings for a guy I’d met two days ago and who knows nothing about me. He’s hot, and intriguingly brooding, and good in bed…but I know more than anyone how quickly a guy’s flaws can come out. One week of us dating and his obsessive early-morning workouts would drive me crazy. His “strong, silent, intense” thing would become a problem. And as for his cynical worldview…
“This is the one,” Nate says, moving toward a gray BMW and slipping a few folded bills to the valet attendant there.
I stand back a little as he lifts the trunk and dumps his luggage inside, then moves around to the driver’s side and opens the door. Stopping, he turns back to me.
This time I find the goodbye much easier. This time I manage to match his formality. To mirror his logical, rational realism about this whole situation. I hold my hand out and smile.
“Well…” I say. “Good luck, Nate.”
Nate looks down at my hand like it’s a foreign object for a second, then up into my eyes—so deep that I can see the thought shift behind them. A glimpse of something beyond the suit and the neat hair and the pragmatic attitude—a glimpse of the Nate from last night…
He grabs me with something like urgency, pulling me into his suit, bringing me into his muscular embrace, and suddenly his lips latch onto mine.
My knees weaken as his hand finds the small of my back, and my hand reaches up to caress his clean jaw. But the kiss is bittersweet. I can’t fully let go, can’t forget everything we’re about to lose. The way our bodies fit so well together, our gestures synced like dancers, our kiss like a foreign language only we know.
And then it’s over. Too soon. And Nate is pulling back from me wordlessly, slowly breathing away his lust.
He gets into the car and I stand there like I’ve just been struck by lightning as he guns the car and drives off.
10
Nate
I never work in airports, or on planes. Not if I can help it. And even without everything that’s happened over the last few days, I still would have chosen to fly back to Chicago alone. I guess I like the feeling of being nobody, nowhere, too much.
I’ve always been this way.
I don’t sleep much. Don’t watch many movies. Don’t even drink a lot, unless social niceties require me to keep up. But airports are where I turn my mind off for a while. Where I feel like I can “escape.” I try not to take backpacks or suitcases, even. Just whatever I can carry on me. It kinda reminds me of when I was a kid, roaming my neighborhood without needing anything but my senses. Being “present,” I’m sure some hack guru would call it.
I told Nicole that once, and she looked at me like I had a bug on my face. That disgusted expression she used often. Like I was a weirdo. What would Hazel say? No—it’s not worth thinking about. She’s gone.
I check my luggage, turn my phone off, and stroll about the terminal. Eventually I stop to buy a coffee, sitting at one of the small tables from which I can people-watch a little. Every other guy in a suit looking like he’s in a hurry, on his phone, or setting up a mini-office around one of the phone chargers.
“This seat taken?”
The voice snaps me from my trance and I look up to see a tall brunette I could swear I’ve seen on the cover of a magazine. She’s smiling at me like she thinks I have as well.
“No,” I say, standing up and grabbing my coffee, “I was just leaving anyway.”
I’m gone before she can say anything else to me. I’m not in the mood for talking to anyone, let alone flirting. I just want to enjoy being here, in between places, with nothing but my thoughts.
I’ve never needed this halfway place
more than right now. A place where I can exist and reflect on two worlds. The hard severity of Chicago and the life I’m pushing my body to start there, in stark opposition to whatever kind of magic happened in Cali. I’m not even trying to understand it, not even trying to prepare myself for what’s coming. I just want to feel like I haven’t left just yet, and that I don’t need to step back into normality for a while.
I finish the coffee and toss it while I walk slowly past the shops, stopping a second to check out some watches, some whiskeys, not really interested in any of them. The experience only reminding me how much I hate shopping. I decide to leave the shops and go watch the planes for a while, but as I’m turning a perfume place catches my eye. The dumb idea popping into my head as soon as I see the hundreds of bottles available to try on the shelves.
I enter the store and head straight for the women’s section.
“Can I help you, sir?” a perky girl barely out of her teens asks after she sees me glaring at bottles for a good five minutes.
“You got anything that smells like jasmine?” I ask.
“Of course,” she says, and immediately starts searching out bottles, grabbing one and spraying it on a strip then handing it to me.
I sniff it and shake my head. “No. That’s not it. I need something without that sandalwood smell added.”
“Okay…” she says, repeating the process with a different bottle. “This one is a jasmine bomb. It has two kinds of jasmine, tuberose, and vanilla.”
I take it and sniff again. “Hmm. Maybe…no. Too strong.”
She sets about with another bottle now, and I start to feel guilty for wasting her time like this. I don’t even know why I’m doing this. It’s not like I’m buying the bottle. I’m just…
“Here. How about this one? It’s got some fresh green notes and a dash of really subtle orange blossom.”
I take the strip and this time don’t even have to inhale deeply. The merest hint of that smell slamming me back in time. Our oiled bodies on the bed, her breasts on my back, her mouth on my cock, next to me on the boat, her teal dress, her wet hair…