The only time I’ve ever woken up with a female in a bed was on the class trip to DC with Scarlett after we figured out our chaperone was useless. I made Calvin go bunk with the guys across the hall.
But that was intentional. This isn’t. Her chin is tucked over my shoulder. I can’t move without damaging her jaw. She’s lying there, the tail of my shirt in her sleeping fist, all but volunteering for anything I want to do to her.
She shakes her head loose and props herself up on her elbow.
She wakes up looking good. She even smells good in her day-old clothes.
She wakes up looking scared.
Then it strikes me that being this close to her messes with my head. The only problem here is that I made myself vulnerable to her. I passed out in her bed, my wallet in one pocket, my cell phone in the other. Who knows what she found out while I was unconscious, sprawled there with my throat unguarded?
“How long have I been here?”
“Weeks,” she says, smiling a little. “That wedding took a lot out of you.”
“Driving for twenty-four hours took a lot out of me.”
“Didn’t your mother ever tell you about roadside motels?”
I reach back into my pockets to make sure everything’s still there. It is. Then I start wondering what’s in her pockets. A scalpel? Piano wire? Every weapon I think of for her to have stuffed into her bra—which might as well be welded to her skin—I think, I should have that. Then I think, No, I shouldn’t have that.
I’m running my fingers over her eyelids and those stained-dark brows. “I thought girls got warned against roadside motels.”
“Everyone gets warned against driving for thirty-six hours. You’re just being a macho blowhard, right? You didn’t actually—”
“I pulled over and slept. Not enough, obviously.”
“Do you want coffee?”
She starts to climb over me, but I take hold of her arm. I want out of this errand for Don so bad, every muscle in my body is tensed up and ready to spring. Only I want to take her with me: her, me, my money, Costa Rica or Belize or Trinidad or any number of places I researched as a well-prepared little kid, aware that at some point my family might have to leave town. I could take her to an obscure island off Indonesia. Someplace nobody I ever met would take a vacation was the old rule. I could buy a coffee plantation or a rubber plantation or whatever kind of plantation they’ve got.
I say, “Do you ever think about going ‘screw it’ and getting away?”
She says, “Like a week at Disney World or life in Argentina?”
“Argentina.”
Her hand covers my hand. “Was this the plan? Pass out for ten hours, then strike with your lame romantic fantasy?”
“Ten hours?”
“That might be an exaggeration,” she says. “Just slightly.” Then she starts unbuttoning her shirt.
Once it’s off and she’s still kissing me, I reach around her and unhook her bra.
She says, “Nuh-uh,” batting my hands away.
I say, “I’ll do it.” But I’ve never hooked a bra back up, and they’re not as stretchy as you’d think. I’m trying to get her bra closed again without breaking the mood, hoping she’ll say it’s okay to leave it open. She doesn’t, and I feel like a clown. Finally, she does it herself, behind her back, not even seeing where the miniscule hooks are.
Then she touches my hand, still behind her, pulling it onto her skin.
I say, “That was close. Thanks for preserving my virtue.”
“Sarcasm,” she says. “So unromantic.”
Then she takes the hem of my T-shirt and she starts to lift it up over my torso. Reflexively, I pull it back down.
She says, “What? You want to stash me in Paraguay, but you won’t let me kiss your naked shoulders?”
“Gotta keep you in line.”
“Take off your shirt.”
It’s not like everyone who’s ever been to a pool party with me, and dozens of crew teams, haven’t seen me without a shirt. I know the drill. I’ve got my story down if anybody asks. That doesn’t mean I want to be here now, showing her.
“What?” she says, touching my hair. “Do you have a tattoo that says, I love my wife or I love Mommy or I love boys? Do you have a giant birthmark in the shape of a weasel? Do you have a terrifying scar?”
She stops right there.
She says, “I’m sorry.” She sits there, waiting for me to say something. “I swear, I thought it was like you thought I’d hate chest hair or something. I was joking about the scar.”
How transparent am I? One day I’m calculating in minute detail the staging of a murder in the mountains, and now I’ve lowered my guard like a drawbridge for her to cross.
She says, “I really was joking. Sorry, okay? Don’t be mad.”
There’s more silence from me. It’s not that I’m fuming; it’s that I don’t know what to say.
“It’s just kind of weird getting this naked with someone who’s not equally naked,” she says. “That’s all. I keep the bra, you keep the shirt, okay?”
I raise my arms.