His stare generates a heat in my stomach that’s so hard to bear.
“So this Paul,” he says, stretching an arm over the back of the lounge seat, his hand dangerously close to my nape. “What does he do?”
“I don’t know. But I hope he’s eating shit and busy dying.”
He chuckles—the sound low but resonant enough that it reaches deep inside me—and the corners of his lips hike up. “You don’t keep tabs on him?”
“No, I’m not interested in the daily life of cow dung.”
He laughs, and I grin, and he shifts a little and I shiver.
He starts to remove his jacket.
I open my mouth to protest but when I’m engulfed in it, I can’t talk. I duck my head when I feel myself go red and I don’t want him to see it.
“Thanks,” I mumble, tugging it closer.
I burrow deeper into the warmth and stare out at the city. “He sent me a letter, a few months ago. I tucked it into my underwear drawer and decided not to open it. The guy didn’t get that when I said I didn’t want to hear from him ever again, it included the written word.”
“Let’s go open it.”
“Excuse me? I don’t want to open it.”
“Yeah you do.” He pokes my tummy with a finger, and I hold it.
“Really.” I squeeze his finger.
He extracts his finger and this time touches his fingertip to my nose. “Liar.”
I open my mouth and bite his finger before he can pull it away.
“Whoa. Hungry little cat, are we?”
I let go, laughing.
“What are you doing with this guy Trent, Regina?”
“What?”
“What are you doing with him?”
I stare. “I feel like getting laid very hard.”
“No, you don’t.” He smiles at me. “You feel like being made love to. There’s a difference.” He looks at me, eyes sparkling. “Candlelight, soft sheets beneath you…”
“No! Where’s your sense of adventure? Against a wall is fine.”
“Your hair spread over the pillow, every stitch of you naked…”
“No, I just want hard sex, partially clothed. I don’t like being naked when I’m having sex, it makes me wonder if I look okay, and I don’t like wondering.”
He lifts his brow. “Really.”
“Fact. You can ask the members of my club.”
He looks pissed off. “The members of your club don’t seem to do a very good job of making you forget yourself.”
“Well, not all of them get to have as much experience as you.”
He doesn’t laugh, only eyes me.
“Not even with putting on a condom?”
I laugh. “God, don’t remind me.” I shrug. “Maybe I do want to be made love to. I deserve it.”
He pulls one curl of hair from behind my ear, smirking. “That very much makes me want to be him tonight.”
“GINA?”
Startled, I look up and struggle to my feet when I see Trent stepping off the elevator with my drink in his hand. “Someone saw you two come up here.”
I glance apologetically at Trent, then at Tahoe. “I’ve got to go.”
Tahoe purses his lips and clamps his jaw, shoving his hands into his pockets as he stands and watches me leave. I’m smiling as I board, as he stands and just looks at me with a slow smile that flashes just for me, and when I tell Trent we may need a rain check for a make-out after all, I’m still smiling when I get home. Did he really mean what he said?
Do I want him to mean it?
Do I want to do anything about it?
I hit the bed and pull out my iPod, play some music with headphones, wondering if I have the courage to do anything about it or if keeping the status quo would be best. Hours later I stand up and go to my drawers, opening the top right one and peering under the clothes to the bottom, where I set Paul’s letter months ago. I didn’t even tell Rachel about it because, luckily, I was the one who retrieved the mail every day while she was busy falling for ex-manwhore Saint.
Yeah, it’s still there.
I slam the drawer shut. Because I won’t give the asshole the satisfaction of reading it.
NOVEMBER
The first weekend of November I get a call from Rachel. She sounds so happy and so far away. As we say how much we miss each other and I ask her about her honeymoon and she tells me all about the places they’ve gone, I wonder if I’ll ever even leave Chicago. Or better yet, leave Chicago with a guy, just because we’re each other’s best person to spend time with on Earth.
She asks me if I’ll be going to Wynn’s gallery exhibition this weekend.
I tell her I can’t go, that I’m working overtime, which is partly true. She drills me for more information, so I say I’m making house calls now, and that I spent all Halloween doing monster faces, which was fun.
“Have you seen Tahoe and Callan? What are those two up to now that my guy is gone?”
“Mischief,” I say. “Tahoe keeps asking me to one of his lacrosse games.”
“Yeah, he told Saint he can’t wear you down. He really wants you to go!” She laughs.
We talk a bit more, and I hang up the phone, increasingly unhappy about not going to his games, not feeling the relief I thought I’d feel by avoiding him. Instead I’m dissatisfied and curious, wondering what he’d say or do if I showed up.
*