Because once I step back into the bedroom and I do see him, I can’t imagine looking away. Only now do I realize I hadn’t taken the time to appreciate how ridiculously hot he looked last night. The deep blue button-down shirt—slim-cut to fit the wide stretch of his chest, the narrow dip of his waist—is unbuttoned just beneath the hollow of his throat, and my tongue feels thick with the need to bend down, suck on those favorite transitions of mine: neck to chest, chest to shoulder. His jeans are worn and perfect, faded over time in all the best, familiar places. At the thigh, over the button fly. He didn’t even take off his favorite brown belt before falling asleep—it’s just hanging open, his pants unbuttoned and slung low on his hips—and suddenly my fingers itch to pull the leather free of the loops, to see and touch and taste his skin just one more time.
I probably can’t, but it feels like I can see the trip of his pulse in his throat, imagine the warm taste of his neck on my tongue. I know how his sleepy hands would weave into my hair as I worked his boxers down his hips. I even know the desperate relief I would see in his eyes if I woke him up right now—not to tell him goodbye, but to make love one last time. To forgive him with words. No doubt true makeup sex with Ansel would be so good I’d forget, while he was touching me, that there was ever any distance between us at all.
And now that I’m here, struggling to be quiet and leave without waking him, it fully registers that I can’t touch him again before I go. I swallow back a tight, heavy lump in my throat, a sob I think would escape in a sharp gasp, like steam under pressure, pushed from a teapot. The pain is like a fist to my stomach, punching me over and over until I want to punch it back.
I’m an idiot.
But damn. So is he.
It takes so many long, painful seconds for me to pull my eyes away from where he lies and down to the pen and paper in my hands.
What the hell am I supposed to write here? It’s not goodbye, most likely. If I know him at all—and I do, no matter how small a drop that knowledge felt last night—he won’t leave the rest of this to phone calls and emails. I’ll see him again. But I’m leaving while he sleeps, and given the reality of his job, I may not see him for months. This isn’t exactly the right moment for a see-you-soon note, anyway.
So I opt for the easiest, and the most honest, even if my heart seems to twist into a knot in my chest as I write it.
This isn’t never. It’s just not now.
All my like,
Mia
I really need to figure out my own messes before I blame him for shoving his in the proverbial box, and keeping them under his proverbial bed.
But fuck, did I want this to be now, yes, forever.
Chapter TWENTY
IT’S STILL DARK when I step out onto the sidewalk, and the lobby door swings closed behind me. A taxi waits, headlamps extinguished while it idles at the curb, its shape swathed in a circle of artificial yellow light from the streetlamp above. The driver glances at me from over the top of his magazine, expression sour, face lined in what appears to be a permanent look of distaste.
I’m suddenly aware of how I must look—hair a mess and last night’s makeup still smudged around my eyes, dark jeans, dark sweater—like some sort of criminal slinking off into the shadows. The phrase “fleeing the scene of the crime” rings through my head and I sort of hate how accurate it feels.
He steps from the cab and meets me at the back of the car, trunk already open and smoldering cigarette suspended from his frowning mouth.
“American?” he asks, his accent as thick as the puffs of smoke that escape with every syllable.
Irritation grates at my nerves but I only nod, not bothering to ask how he knew or why because I already know: I stick out like a sore thumb.
Either he doesn’t notice my lack of response or he doesn’t care because he takes my suitcase, lifts it without effort, and deposits it in the trunk of the car.
It’s the same bag I arrived with, the same one I hid after only a few days because it looked too new and out of place in the middle of Ansel’s warm and comfortable flat. At least that’s what I’d told myself at the time, tucking it away inside the closet near his bedroom door where it wouldn’t serve as a daily reminder of my impermanence here, or that my place in his life would end as soon as the summer did.
I open my own door and climb inside; closing it with the least amount of sound I can manage. I know how well noises travel through the open windows and I absolutely don’t let myself look up or imagine him lying there in bed, waking to an empty flat or hearing the closing of a taxi door on the street below.
The driver drops into the seat in front of me and meets my eyes in the rearview mirror expectantly. “Airport,” I tell him, before looking quickly away.
I’m not even sure what I’m feeling as he puts the car into gear and slips into the street. Is it sadness? Yes. Worry, anger, panic, betrayal, guilt? All of those. Have I made a mistake? Has this entire thing been one colossal bad choice after another? I had to leave anyway, I tell myself; this was just a little ahead of schedule. And even if I didn’t, it was right to get some space, some perspective, some clarity . . . right?
I almost laugh. I feel anything but clarity.