That was two weeks right out of the gate. Two weeks outside LA. Outside her sphere. I didn’t want to go away. I was so close with her. So close to getting her commitment, her heart, her promise, then some shit across an ocean threatened to explode into a f**kstorm of red lacquer shrapnel. I dropped my laptop and phone on the table. My jacket went over the chair. My tie got yanked off as if it had offended me personally. Shoes, kicked. Cufflinks, tossed.
I hadn’t intended to tell her about the suicide attempt. I didn’t like talking about it, and I didn’t like her knowing, but, the minutes in the bathroom between deciding to tell her and actually doing it were more intimate than anything we’d experienced. She’d peeled off my skin and seen the isolation inside. She couldn’t turn away from me now. Couldn’t.
The door between our suites opened with a keycard, and I had it. It was mine, after all. The wood was warm to the touch, and smooth. Dry. The moldings were curved by the most perfectly even paint job money could buy. Running my finger along the seam, I imagined the little bit of air seeping through was shared between us. We were conjoined by the molecules, the scents they carried, the temperature, from her lungs to mine and back again.
I peeled off my shirt in the dining room. I didn’t want to look at an empty bed, and I wanted to be close to the door for reasons that didn’t have words my mind could define. I didn’t want to waste the air, or something equally absurd and impossible to accept.
Wearing nothing but my briefs in a hotel dining room, next to an empty china cabinet, I put both my hands flat on the door, stroking it downward. I didn’t know what was coming over me, but that door became her body, and I wanted to touch it. Needed to.
Then, through the door, I heard it. Her voice. Singing.
CHAPTER 21.
MONICA
My forearm had been covered in sex fluid, and I stank of the flight and fast food. After collapsing on the hotel floor, ashamed, exhilarated, and sexually satisfied until Jonathan worked his way into my sphere again, I needed a shower.
The bathroom was black with white fixtures, and I was alone. The four showerheads were powerful, and the water was scalding hot. The frosted, glass-walled shower stall was as big as a walk-in closet. I scrubbed with over-perfumed hotel soap, and as I rinsed, I started singing a song I’d started the day before in a pencil-dulling heat. I’d memorized the words even as I wrote them. As I leaned against the glass tiles, I worked out the bridge, over and over. I felt like I had it, and it had been sticking in my craw since yesterday.
I’m scared all the time
And I need all the time
I’m scared all the time
And I need all the time
I heard a click behind me, and a chemical infusion of fear made every vein in my body pulse. A man. In my shower. Uninvited. I screamed, or tried to, but because I’d forgotten to breathe, it came out a croak.
“Shhh,” Jonathan said. He wore nothing but boxer briefs that showed the glory of his erection.
“You f**king f**k.”
“Please.” He put his hands up in a gesture meant to show me he wasn’t going to touch me.
“What on earth would compel you?”
“You.” He leaned forward, and I stepped against the wall. His forearms pressed against the wall on either side of my head, and he got inches from my face. Water fell on his dry hair, running dark paths to his face. It dropped off his nose, his brow, his chin. “You. Goddess.”
Suddenly, the sexual satisfaction I’d achieved on my knees with the whole length of my arm was inadequate. “Take me.”
“Commit yourself to me. Be mine for all the world.”
“I already told you yes.”
“Make me believe it.” His eyes closed, slowly, as if he didn’t want to see my face. He was wet, his body a waterfall. The rushes of water accentuated every curve and angle of him.
“How?”
“What was that song? I couldn’t hear all of it.”
“I wrote it yesterday.”
He opened his eyes. “Would you sing it for me?”
His body still didn’t touch mine. I felt his breath on my shoulder and the presence of his erection, and I wanted it as much as I’d ever wanted anything. He wasn’t going to touch me. Not a finger. He was going to breathe on me and whisper in my ear, naked in the shower, until I burst.
“Please,” he said.
A part of me wanted to tell him to f**k off, but another part wanted to be close to him so badly that a song seemed as, if not more, intimate than sex. “Are you ready?” I whispered.
“Yes.”
I took a deep breath and sang for him, my voice low, much the way I sang him my song of fears in his backyard. This time, I sang without shame or contrition.
Craven runs
Crave stays
Craven runs
Crave stays
A cold, dark stain on a hot sidewalk
From a water balloon thrown
Craven freezes
Crave ducks
And writes the sound of nothing in crimson chalk
Craven stays
Crave runs
Craven stays
Crave runs
Puzzle pieces in an open box
Find perfect fit, alone then
Crave touches
Craven sees
Pieces shifted, while five little lenses watch
I sang the bridge a little louder looking in his jade eyes. I wanted to connect with him, to put my feelings into him so he’d understand.
I’m scared all the time
And I need all the time
I’m scared all the time
And I need all the time
I stopped. We said nothing, our voices shushed, and the only sounds in the room were the droplets of water falling on our bodies and the whoosh of the showerheads. His eyes flicked over mine, his expression a mask. I didn’t want to hear his thoughts. I didn’t want to talk. I wouldn’t like what I heard; I knew it.
“That one’s not so revealing, I guess.” I knocked the handle down to shut the water.
“More revealing, actually.” His lips were at my cheek, but I didn’t have the courage to turn and kiss him. “Puzzle pieces. A box full, and only one fits. And you leave me standing on my porch because you’re scared.”
“I was either going to stay with you because I was scared or leave you for the same reason. At least this way I’m not dragging you into my shit.”
He leaned away. The tile pattern was pressed into the flesh of his arms.
“Don’t,” I whispered, putting my hand on his waist.
He didn’t twist away, but he didn’t want me to touch him. I sensed it in the way he stiffened, his sharp intake of breath, the way his eyes closed halfway. “The cameras in your house. I know who put them there.”