Sunday, May 25, 2008
I HAD TO TOUCH those lips one more time.
I didn't care if she told me to leave. I didn't really give a f*ck if she slapped me. She was there, in my town, and I had to give it a shot. It might be the only one I ever got.
As I walked down the street toward her hotel, I stopped and looked up at the brick front of the old building. The balconies peppered its fa?ade and I saw her. Her hair blew gently in the light breeze. I watched as she poured a little bottle down her throat and then brought a can to her mouth.
She looked weary. She looked lost. She looked beautiful.
She'd go back home the next day and probably try to forget me. Probably try to forget we met at all.
Well, f*ck that. If I had anything to say about it, she wouldn't ever forget me. If I had anything to say about it, she'd think of me each time someone else touched her perfect skin for weeks. Months. Years. Forever, I prayed. If I had anything to say about it, she'd have to bite her lip from calling my name if the lucky bastard actually did make her come.
There wasn't a winning side in this game. I would likely lose. But not that night. The next day I'd walk home with my tail between my legs and I'd pretend like it never happened. I'd be the one thinking of her when someone touched me. When I pushed toward a climax, with whoever it may be, Blake's name would be the one on my tongue. And when I'd stroke myself off, it would be her I was picturing for months to come.
But that night, I was going to make her mine one more time. One touch. One kiss. One lick at a time.
I watched her for a few more minutes from down the street. I saw her warring with herself, or me, or him, or life in general. When I got to the doors of the hotel, I decided not to run up the stairs like I had before. I rode the elevator and tried to come up with a good reason for her to let me in.
The shit of it was, I didn’t have one. There was no rational reason for any of this. Even I knew that. But I wanted her. That was a fact.
At her door, my hand knocked on it before I told it to.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
I shook my hands out and steadied my nerves. She might have told me to f*ck off and I'd have no choice but to do just that.
I heard her lean on the door and it creaked as she pressed to look out the peep-hole.
“Casey?” she asked. Then I heard the thump of her head against the wood. “What are you doing here?”
“Please, let me in.” I wasn't messing around. I wanted in and I saw no point in f*cking around about it.
She said through the door to me, “It's late.”
“I know what time it is. Let me in.”
“Casey, this is a bad idea.”
“You leave tomorrow. Don't you?”
“See? This isn't right. I have a boyfriend and you clearly still have a girlfriend. Last night was—” Then she stopped.
“I don't still have a girlfriend. I don't know why she showed up. And honestly, right now, I don't give a shit about your boyfriend. Open. The. Door.” I walked a thin line. I never talked to women like that usually. To tell you the truth, I‘d never had a reason to. None of the chicks I'd dated ever had this effect on me.
I lightened the mood and clawed my way toward a miracle, I pulled out what I hoped were the big guns. “Betty, please?”
I heard her laugh a little and hiccup. Her fingers fumbled around with the lock. It rattled the door as she tried to get the mechanisms to unlatch. When she got all the way to the top, she huffed and kicked the door.
She was frustrated. I knew the feeling.
“Almost there, Lou,” she sang. When the last lock slid from that bally thing and met the face of the wooden door, I reached and turned the knob myself.
She swayed, stepping backward at the same time. The back of her knees hit the luggage stand and she stopped, flinging her arms out to her sides and carpet surfed the whole way back to her equilibrium.
“Are you okay?” I shut the door gently, not wanting to startle her when she was already having a difficult time standing.
Her flimsy hand washed past her face, narrowly missing her bright red nose. It was so cute. It had gotten like that when she was flushed from sex, but I didn't notice it when she was drinking. A sane person’s brain would say, “Oh, it probably does that when she's drunk.” But I wasn't sane at the moment. I was looking for any reason that I was doing the right thing. I stood there internally debating why the f*cking perfectly pink nose glowed like Rudolph.
“I'm fine,” she said, pinching her lips together like a duck.
A conniving voice in my head said it was pink for another reason.
“Are you drunk?” I walked around her, straight to the couch. I wanted her to come to me. Sure, my intentions weren't the purest when I’d decided to come back to her hotel. But being there, I wasn't as interested in sex as much as I was about getting information out of that mind of hers.
And maybe some sex, too. Sex with her was dynamite. Who wouldn’t want more of that? But that wasn’t what this was about.
“Yes. I am. We should sleep together. At least I could blame this time on the booze.” She laughed at what she was trying to pass off as a joke, but it went flat.
I didn't think it was funny.
“Is that what last night was? Your drunk mistake?”
Again, she picked at her f*cking nails and I fought the impulse to slap them away from her and make her look at me. “Come sit by me, Blake. I won’t bite.”
She looked at me and then her face flushed, coloring her grin.
Dirty girl, I'm on to you.
She relaxed a little and padded over to the couch, around the coffee table, and sat as far away from me as she could. She was still wearing the skirt from earlier, but since returning to her hotel room and her own personal bar, she'd taken her bra off and changed into a tank top. She folded a porcelain white leg under herself and leaned away from me onto the arm of the couch.
“I don't know why I did that last night,” she said as she stared off into the room, still avoiding me. “I had a little to drink, but I wasn't that drunk. I was a little mad at Grant, but I wasn’t trying to get back at him. You know?”
She finally looked at me, genuinely bothered by her admissions.
She added, “Even before you would talk to me, I knew what I wanted. I waited for you to talk to me. I thought about it,” her face grew serious as she paused to collect her thoughts, putting a stop to her rambling. She sucked in a lungful of air. “I made a decision to try...to try to be with you. I didn't think it would go that far, but I thought about that, too. I wanted last night. I wouldn't change a second of it.”
I smiled wide, I probably looked like a f*cking dope, but I couldn't care less. Those words were the coolest words I'd ever heard. She was totally honest. Her nose returned to its creamy natural state and she continued, “That's the part I regret. You know?”
That's where she lost me. Didn't she just tell me she was into me? Stop there. Please, stop there. She saw the puzzle polluting my face.
“What part?” I pulled her hand to make her face me completely and I turned on the cushion to meet her halfway.
“I regret that I don't regret it at all. That's the part that's kicking my ass.” She blew out a silent whistle of air and it went right in my face. She'd drunk tequila. I think I smelled the worm.
“I don't know what to say,” I told her.
“Just say whatever your thinking. One. Two. Three. Say it.” She roughly pointed into my chest.
“Ouch. I think you're pretty and smart and cool. And I know about that feeling last night. I think I know what that's called.”
Like I’d witnessed her do before when I had her full attention, she leaned forward eager for more information.
“It's a hook and a fish,” I said.
Her laugh bellowed and she quickly shut it off, re-masking her face with rapt interest.
I said, “See a fish doesn't want a hook. They'd probably rather not meet one and they're a bitch to get rid of. You follow?”
She bobbed her head with rapt attention. “And a hook, well it's only a hunk of metal. It doesn't know anything. Right?”
“Yeah.”
“You have to add something special to these two to bring them together. Something that one can't shake and the other can't resist.” I wrapped my hands around her low on her hips so I could pull her to me. I wanted her closer. “It's the bait, Blake. The bait is this outside force that brings these two totally different, foreign, objects together. Neither the hook nor the fish have a choice. We have something like that. We have the bait.”
“The bait,” she repeated, almost in a daze. Her brow furrowed. “So am I the hook or the fish? Or am I the bait? Sorry, I'm a little drunk, remember?”
She was adorably lost and I chuckled at her confused expression. “You're the fish.”
“I'm the fish? I'm the fish.” I saw a little light pop on behind her eyes. “I couldn't resist you because of the bait,” she said slowly.
“Right. And I didn't have a choice in the whole f*cking thing because I'm just scrap metal.” I wasn’t sure where it was coming from, but it was true. I had never felt the lesser in a relationship, but with Blake, I was simply the hook. Not in control, and certainly dependent on the bait, or whatever the f*ck it was, to attract the alluring woman before me.
She laughed and for some reason, I felt better.
“Okay. I'll buy some of that, but the hook doesn't want the fish or the bait.”
“See that's where you’re wrong.” I pulled her even closer, placing them over mine, and she wrapped her arms around my shoulders, like we’d sat that way all the time. “The hook's sole purpose is to get the fish. That's what it was meant to do.”
“Okay. That's a little weak, but I'll let it slide because you're cute.” I liked drunk Blake.
“What were you doing up here all by yourself drinking?” In her honey-brown eyes, I saw the sweetness and playfulness I couldn't get enough of.
“I was just thinking. And drinking.” Her eyes darted away and something magical happened. Her nose flushed again, the tip blushing that same pink as it was when I came in.
“What were you thinking about?” She gave me a stubborn look that said ain't going to happen. “You can tell me. It doesn't matter anyway. You're leaving tomorrow and you'll forget all of this happened. So, spill it. What's got your nose all pink?”
“My nose is pink?” She quickly covered it with a small, cupped hand. “Mo mits mot.”
I couldn't fight the chuckle that came from deep within my gut. “Yeah it is and it looked like that last night, too.”
“Whem?” The palm of her hand muffled her embarrassed denial.
“It was a little rosy when I kissed you in the bar, and it was full on red after we—” I stopped as her eyes widened. I moved her hand away from her face. “Stop. Don’t ever hide yourself, it’s you”
“Oh.” Her eyes still eluded mine, until I swerved my head to meet up with them.
“What were you thinking?” I asked.
Her small, pebbled nipples pulled against her shirt as she drew in a lung full of air and released it.
“I think I was tired.”
Tired? Not quite, honeybee. “So you're tired now?”
She shrugged a weak yes. I moved her small body off mine and stood. “Stay right there.” Quickly, grabbing the trashcan on the way, I went to the balcony. Just as I had expected, mini Tequila, Whiskey, and Vodka bottles lined the rim of the small table. I threw them away and straightened up the seats. I returned the receptacle under the desk and headed for the fridge to get two waters and I brought the blanket from the bed back with me.
I planted my ass down on the end of the couch and pulled her down to rest on my lap, throwing the thick white comforter over her legs and bare feet. She lay on her back and gazed up at me.
“Is this what you came here for, Casey?” she asked in the sweetest voice.
“Yep.” And as I ran my fingers through her hair and watched her heavy eyelids battle to stay open, I realized I didn't have it in me to tell her goodbye.
I couldn't evade it. I didn't fully understand it. But it sucked.
“You wanted to come up to my room and talk to me while I am drunk and make fun of my nose and call me a fish.” She brought her hands back to her face, standing as a barrier between her eyes and mine. “You men are all the same.” She was funnier when she wasn't funny at all. She tried to joke again, pretending like she’d heard this song and dance. But this was a brand new song, and I didn’t think either of us had enough footing yet to dance to it.
“Uh-huh, this must happen to you all of the time,” I said sarcastically.
“It does. It's so unoriginal.” Finally, her smile crept across her face and I took one of her hands so she wouldn't eat it whole. I laced my fingers with hers and she placed our joined hands on her chest, right in between her perfect breasts.
Before I could filter my words, I asked, “Is that how what's-his-face got you?” I heard the bitterness and quickly growing jealousy, over someone who didn't even belong to me, saturate my voice.
“Yep. Well, everything but the pink nose thing. He wouldn't notice that.”
I thought about how I couldn't wait until she dumped that poor bastard. Then I realized that I wouldn't even know.
“So we're going to be friends then, honeybee?” The flame faded fast in her eyes as they took long blinks.
“Mmm. Hmm.”
I watched her fall fast asleep and I wished I had had a drink. I would sip it and savor every second of both the liquor and the view. Her hair was soft and I threaded my fingers through it, over and over. Combing them clean through without a knot to yield me.
After what seemed like minutes, and light years alike, my legs gently slid out from under her head and I moved silently away from her. Crouching down by the couch to get one last look at her, I tasted her lips one more time.
She must have settled into a dream, because heard a soft hum come from her. I pretended it was me she was dreaming about as I kissed her. She hummed again and I considered many things, like moving and kidnapping, but settled on missing.
As I shut the door to a room, where only the night before was full of panting and sweating, I wondered if I'd ever see her again.
And I missed her already.