Epilogue
Dear Reader, he did finally fuck me.
We’d flown from Steamboat in the company’s private jet, over the Rocky Mountains to LAX, in Los Angeles. After waiting in a swank private suite for a little while, we were whisked by private car to the jetway, there to board the huge plane that would take us across the ocean to Japan.
Alex had business to attend to there, and he wanted the company. Check that. He wanted my company. Mine. Me. Just me.
I’d expected the flight to be nice, I guess, but I’d not expected we’d spend fifteen hours in a private suite complete with a queen bed and a huge bathroom that had a shower.
We made love the whole way there, and yeah, that’s when I got fucked, way in the air. We had stuff, so either he’d purchased it without me noticing (maybe when I was in the john in the private suite at LAX?), or maybe the pilot had picked it up before he’d picked us up. Or maybe Alex was magic.
He certainly was amazing. And is amazing.
Japan was amazing, too. Never thought I’d travel overseas at any point. Hell, the Westmores were the ones responsible for me getting me a passport within seventy-two hours after Christmas Morning, when Alex asked me to go with him and they learned I didn’t have one.
I guess the Gov’ment considered me to be enough of an upstanding citizen, they were going to allow me to leave the country and travel the world.
In Japan, I had to wait a bit for Alex to have some meetings and stuff.
He said I could come with him and sit in the lobby, rather than walk around in the cold, late-December air, but that didn’t sound like fun to me.
We settled on me waiting in a coffee shop near Shibuya Crossing, a place called Komeda’s Coffee.
“Will you be okay on your own?” asked Alex.
“You worried I’ll get into trouble?” I asked, pretending to be fierce and troublesome.
“No,” said Alex, gently clasping my arm with his gloved hand. “It’s just that you don’t speak Japanese.”
“Eh,” I shrugged. “I got Google translate on this fancy phone you got for me.”
The shop was warm and snug, had great coffee and fun sandwiches and noodle dishes, and even a sandwich made of strawberries and whipped cream. I had three of those and two powerful coffees, so I was really buzzing by the time Alex came to pick me up.
“Arigato,” I said with a wave as we left.
“You speak Japanese now?” he asked me with a grin.
“Everybody else was saying it,” I said. “I think it means thank you and goodbye and some shit.”
We watched people at the crossing, then Alex spotted a small store that sold only watches and bought me my own Rolex, a slim thing that was heavy on my wrist and made me feel quite conspicuous.
Then I asked him, “What can I get you? I have this credit card that’s going stale from not being used.”
He laughed, and maybe he could have explained to me that’s not how credit worked, but he didn’t. Instead, he said, “I’d really like to go to a ramen place I know. They serve you from behind a bamboo screen.”
I had no idea what he was talking about.
“Sure,” I said, game for anything if Alex was near.
We walked for about five minutes up Koen Dori Street to a little place called Ichiran. The place looked small, and when we walked in (somehow going right past the long line outside), it didn’t look like it would seat very many people.
I quickly realized there were around forty or so seats in four long rows, each one a single seat set up like a mini-booth. Once I sat down, I couldn’t see anyone to the right or left of me, and in front of me was the bamboo screen Alex told me about.
I knew Alex was sitting to my left, and he was awful cute, sticking his head up to check on me. But I figured out those chopsticks pretty fast and got very good at stuffing those noodles in.
I had two helpings (they even encourage it, telling you when to order your second round, so it’d be served to you right when you finished the first round), and by the time we walked out of there, I was as round as a tick and ready to pop.
Alex looked pretty tired, having worked so hard to make more millions for the Westmores, so I pretended I was tired, too. Which allowed me to lead him back to our hotel, a place called the Aoyama Grand, also near Shibuya Crossing.
The rooms there were around a grand a night, but boy, were they worth it.
The staff was as attentive as those at The Anchorage, and the rooms were pretty sleek.
The shower had several shower heads, and even one of those fancy drains at the side of the shower, rather than a drain in the middle where the cockroaches could crawl up.
(Not that any would dare. Not at the Aoyama Grand.
Christ, I’ve never been inside a cleaner hotel.)
I scrubbed Alex up in that shower and rinsed him down, and then poured him into bed. He’d been taking care of me, of everything, so now it was my time to look after him.
Once I had him in bed, I turned down the lights, and eased up the heat (the controls were fancy, so it took me a while), and then sat and looked out the window.
It was afternoon on the second-to-last day of the year, so it was cold outside, and the sky looked a little dreary.
But I’d fallen for Japan in a hard way. The people I’d bumped into (yeah, me, raised in a barn) had been polite about it, acting like it was their fault.
Which made me feel bad about it, and more careful, so by that time, I was bumping into far fewer people.
We’d only been in Tokyo two days, having arrived the day before, but I don’t really remember landing or going through customs. Only that I searched for stars in the Japanese sky as a bit of snow came down and someone took us to a big black car and whisked us away to our hotel.
I looked over at Alex, now, to make sure he was sleeping. Then I called down to the lobby.
“Can I help you, sir?” a woman asked. Her words were a little accented, but hell, I didn’t speak Japanese, and here she was accommodating me by speaking in English. Probably there were notes for the room: Only speaks English. One of them was raised in a barn, but don’t mind him. Or something.
“Could I get something to drink sent up?” I asked.
“Certainly, sir,” she said. “But I can inform you that there’s beer and green tea and orange juice and milk in the fridge, as well as a Keurig set up in your room. However, we can send up any drink you like, as well as sandwiches.”
I lifted my head and spied the coffee maker. “Could you send up some sandwiches?” I asked. “Turkey and stuff and a couple of those strawberry ones?”
“Certainly, sir,” she said. “They’ll be there in about ten minutes.”
We said goodbye, which was when I realized she hadn’t asked which room we were in. But then, I was staying with Mr. Alexander James Westmore, if you please, and was getting quite used to top class service.
I got up, digging in my wallet for some of those crisp, interesting Japanese yen, then checked on my new phone for the exchange rate.
Ten dollars was fifteen hundred yen, so I pulled out two thousand yen, and put it on the table, to be ready.
Then I went and sat down on the chair between the bed where Alex was sleeping, and looked out the window.
I was Bad Boy Beck, and would be, to my dying day, but I was also the luckiest man alive.
It was because of Alex that I maybe hated Christmas a little less, and now I was very, very, very glad I’d stopped when some idiot in an Audi had spun out on a highway leading to a ski resort town that I’d not really wanted to go to.
I’d been Alex’s rebound guy, and he was mine. And I think we made a pretty good couple.
Now, if only that food would get here so I could eat ALL of it before he woke up.
Then I could casually suggest an early dinner, like I was starving or some shit.
Go me. (Of course, after, I’d confess to Alex, and we’d have a good laugh, shower, and go to bed early, like some old couple who’d been in love for years.)
The End