Layover Rules

Chapter Five



I made it through the entire workday without hearing from Sam. I took that as confirmation that I had made the right decision in not writing him back. He was divorced, a somewhat recognizable figure if you followed baseball, good looking, and charming, so I’m sure there was no shortage of women who were more than willing to give him some attention. Why would he care so much about me not returning his messages? Obviously he didn’t.

Later that evening, on the flight home, Trevor had dinner waiting for us on his plane.

“What is this?” I asked.

“Coq au vin and pommes duchesse,” he said, affecting a heavy French accent.

Say what?

I looked up at him, then back down at the plate. “Looks like chicken and potatoes to me.”

He shook his head. “It’s rooster with Burgundy, and the potatoes are piped from a bag with a little egg mixed in. That’s how they get that shape.”

Yep, I thought, chicken and potatoes.

Rather than say that and start a debate about the food, I just ate.

Trevor poured himself some more wine. “Tell me about your day.”

My day had been routine, nothing special to report, and actually went very well, so I kept it short and sweet, and turned the conversation to his day. “What company were you looking at?”

As he answered, my mind wandered. My thoughts started with the chicken and potatoes, but that episode was purely emblematic of a larger issue.

I’m sure I seem ungrateful for the nice stuff Trevor did for me, but that’s not what it’s about. I didn’t take any of it for granted. I appreciated it, and it was all very nice. For a while, anyway.

And then I began to see it as pretentious.

I get it. People like what they like, and, as the saying goes, there’s no accounting for taste. But Trevor’s lifestyle wasn’t my taste. It wasn’t me.

I probably should have taken that more seriously from the beginning….



. . . . .



I had met Trevor at an art show about a year ago. He was there with a very glamorous looking woman who, in heels, was almost as tall as he was. Later, when I learned of Trevor’s need for dominance and control, I found it odd that he would deign to even stand beside a woman who nearly matched his six-foot frame.

I guess maybe that was part of the reason that he was working the room so much, glad-handing and back-slapping the other invited guests, a social side of Trevor I saw only that once in the entire time I knew him.

I wasn’t an invited guest. I was working. Alicia owned a catering business and one of her servers called in sick at the last minute. She called me, just to vent, and was worried about being understaffed. It was her first job with this client and she was understandably concerned about making the right impression. It was a Saturday night and I had nothing else planned, so I volunteered to help her out.

Trevor caught my attention immediately. He’s a striking sight, and it starts with his eyes, a deep sea green with hints of blue. The color is so vivid you’d almost think he wears colored contacts, and that’s actually what I thought most of the night, but found out later that they’re all natural. They’re mesmerizing.

His dark hair is always cropped close around the sides and back, but the top is a little longer, thicker, parted to the left and styled forward somewhat. In the coming months, I would discover that he spent a great deal of time working on his hair each morning. Sometimes more than I did.

“I’m going to need two of those.” His first ever words to me, as he stopped to get wine off the tray I was holding. Trying to be funny, and I guess the effort was cute, even if the line wasn’t all that original.

I toyed with him: “One for you, one for your date?”

“Both for me.” But he only took one glass. He stood there, sipped, and then said, “You noticed me.” His gaze locked with mine and I don’t think I could have looked away if I had wanted to. Which I didn’t. “I’ve had my eye on you, as well,” he continued. “And she’s not really a date.”

“Not really a date?”

He took a drink of wine and shook his head. “She works for me, and I don’t do that sort of thing. I do what I can to avoid lawsuits, especially embarrassing ones.”

“That’s quite a bold stance, being against sexual harassment.” The sarcasm in my tone caused him to look at me and squint his eyes.

“I don’t have the same policy toward the help.”

The help! This guy was as blunt as they come.

Someone stopped next to me and took the last two glasses of wine from my tray.

“Looks like you missed out on your second one,” I said. “If you’d like, the help can go get more in the kitchen.”

I wasn’t angry with him. It was entertaining, I was enjoying the repartee, and by that time of the evening I’d become a little bored, so I thought I’d take advantage of the situation and amuse myself.

“More wine would be great,” he said, giving me an up-close look at his smile.

Making my way to the kitchen, I turned my head to look back at him and caught him staring at my ass.

I stopped.

His gaze moved up to make eye contact with me. There was something in the way he looked at me. Something that made me think of the ways the fictional alpha male characters I’d read about looked at the women they were pursuing. It wasn’t the first time I’d caught a guy looking me over, but it was the first time in my life a guy had looked at me that intently, almost possessively, as if he were claiming me with his stare.

I wasn’t sure how to react to it at first, but I liked the rush I felt as I watched him watching me. It was almost as though his gaze was touching me, literally, physically making contact with my body.

Trevor introduced himself, and told me he wasn’t part of the art world, but the girl he’d brought had previously been an interior designer and they’d been checking out galleries and art openings for pieces to put in his newly renovated penthouse.

“So if you’re not part of the ‘art world’ what world are you a part of?” I asked.

“Money.”

That’s when he explained what he did, and I found myself impressed by the ease with which he talked about his complicated business. I simply nodded along, even when he used jargon I’d never heard before.

He asked if I was a fulltime waitress. I said no, told him what I did for a living, and how I had ended up serving hors d’oeuvres that night.

“So,” I said, “I’m only temporarily the help.”

Trevor looked me in the eye for a moment—again, that aggressive stare—and said, “That really got under your skin, didn’t it?”

“It just seemed kind of…”—I shrugged—“…unnecessary, a little condescending. I mean, if it weren’t for me and the others here, you’d be pouring your own drinks, smearing salmon spread on your crackers, cleaning up. You know. Helping yourself.”

Alicia signaled that she needed me in the kitchen, so I walked away before he had a chance to respond. This time I didn’t turn around to see if he was looking at me.

“That guy is totally ignoring his date, talking to you,” she said when I got in the kitchen.

“That’s not his date.” I explained it to her.

“Oh, well that’s a whole different story then.” She opened the refrigerator and retrieved a tray of something. “If he asks you out, say yes.”

“He’s not going to ask me out.”

“What makes you say that? Here, take this around, see if anyone wants some.”

I took the tray she put on the counter in front of me. “I’m pretty sure he’s a player.”

“Players can be fun.”

“Not this one,” I said.

I was wrong. By the end of the night, I had become intrigued with Trevor. On the surface, he was attractive and wealthy. That part was his fault. I’ll take the blame for projecting onto him the excitement and lure of those fictional dreamboats I had come to love reading about. Here, in real life, in a chance meeting, I thought I’d found my opportunity with one of those guys.

Our relationship moved quickly, both in the bedroom and out. There were trips to places I never thought I’d be able to visit, and to places I hadn’t even known existed.

Trevor was faithful. There was never the slightest hint of cheating. He worked a lot, but when he wasn’t working, he was with me. In fact, he practically demanded that I be available when he was, and ready for whatever he had in mind. I managed to juggle my work schedule around his, although when I began traveling more, that got more complicated.

That’s also when the sex was starting to become a little boring. Not for lack of acts I’d never experienced; Trevor often had something new for us to try. But I became bored because it was like the sex was choreographed. And that led to the realization that my dissatisfaction wasn’t really about the sex—it was an emotional issue. And, as I mentioned, Trevor never opened up about anything, especially when it came to personal feelings.

Three months into our relationship, Trevor asked me to move in with him. He paid off the remaining months on my apartment lease, took me out for lunch and shopping one afternoon, and by the time we got back to his place, all my stuff had been moved into his house by some of his employees.

My parents did not approve. I was taking it too fast with Trevor, they said, and they repeatedly impressed upon me the fact that Trevor’s lifestyle was much more lavish than my own, that I came from hard-working roots and they feared that I would forget where I came from.

They also didn’t like the fact that they’d never met him. Trevor always had an excuse for why he couldn’t accept the numerous invitations my parents extended in the beginning, and I always believed him, and defended him when my parents voiced their concerns.

These conversations with my mother and father took place over the course of a couple of weeks after I moved in with Trevor, the civility and reasonableness deteriorating with each subsequent conversation.

That was three months ago, and I hadn’t talked to my parents since then.



. . . . .



I was exhausted by the time our flight from Atlanta landed in New York. It wasn’t too late in the evening, but I was always tired after a trip. That’s also why I didn’t eat much, despite Trevor’s encouragement. I took a few bites of the potatoes, but that was all I could manage.

Later, after taking a shower and getting ready for bed, I didn’t see Trevor anywhere so I walked out of the bedroom, looking for him in the den, the kitchen, and finally finding him in his home office.

I never went in there much. It was the smallest room in the penthouse, but still larger than some apartments in New York City. Like the rest of the place, it contained modern furnishings, Trevor’s favored style. It was always as clean as the rest of the house, but Trevor forbade the cleaning lady from going in there, opting instead to clean it himself.

The door was open just a sliver, which was more than it usually was.

Trevor’s desk faced the window so he would have a view of the city skyline—I guess so he could sit there and dream of one day owning the entire city. Looking in from the doorway, I could only see the chair and the back of his head. He would almost always turn around, either having heard me or caught my reflection in the window.

But that didn’t happen this time. I stopped before my hand could even touch the door.

I could hear Trevor’s voice. He sounded angry, frustrated, and anxious.

“Let these f*ckers roll the dice and try it. I’ve got enough money to fight it.”

There was silence as Trevor listened to the person on the other end of the line talking.

“F*ck.”

More silence.

“How long before this gets out?”

What the hell could he be talking about? I wished he had the other person on speaker. My curiosity piqued, I was holding my breath to stay as quiet as I could so I could hear everything.

“How did…you know what? Let’s not talk about this on the phone. I’ll come and see you in the morning…Right…Okay, see you then…I will.”

I heard the beep as he ended the call.

I stood there for a moment, debating whether to go into his office or back to the bedroom.

“F*ck,” he said, again, and I looked into the room. He had his head in his hands, looking down at the desk.

I didn’t want him to know that I had overheard anything. I’d caught snippets of many stressful conversations coming from that office before, but there was something different in Trevor’s voice this time. This wasn’t just anger. It was fear.

I softly walked across the hardwood floors back to the bedroom, got into bed, and waited. And waited. And waited. The last time I looked at the clock, it was just after 1 a.m. I’m not sure what time I fell asleep.

When I woke up in the morning, Trevor wasn’t in our bed. He was still in his office, in the same position, but sleeping. Having had my own troubled sleep, I figured Trevor had had an even later night, and certainly more stressful from what I’d heard, so I didn’t wake him.

I went through my morning routine, getting ready for work. I rushed through my shower, dried my hair, put on my make-up, and dressed in the clothes I’d picked out the night before.

Before I left, I looked in the office and he was still in the same position—sitting in the chair, slumped over, head resting on his arms on the desk.

Fear struck me. Had something terrible happened? So awful that he would commit suicide?

As quietly as I could, I crept into the office, got about five feet away from him, and finally saw him breathing. He stirred, repositioned his head on his folded arms, and resumed shallow breaths.

I decided not to wake him, and left.