Chapter 8 Bahrain
BAHRAIN
SAME NIGHT
ALEXANDER
Sage claims she’s tired, but I see no evidence of that.
On the way up to our floor, she bounces on her feet in the lift, hopscotch-leaps along the patterned hall carpeting on our floor, and does a martial-arts kick over the top of a rubbish bin, concluding in a spin and some thrown air punches.
She’s a bright little electron, and being in her atomic field is exhilarating.
Of course, I keep myself to a mild stroll, hands in my pockets, as if unaffected.
We pass my room and turn down the next hall, headed for the VIP suites so Sage can retrieve the video props.
She’s doing an alternating sideways gallop, singing to herself, moved by her own internal music.
She arrives at her door while I’m still half a hallway behind, and swiping her key card, holds up a finger to let me know she’ll be right back.
I catch up and lean against the opposite wall, waiting. Seconds later, I hear her headed for the door again, in raised-voice conversation. The door is flung open and Sage bounds out, plastic sack slung over one shoulder like a burglar, with Priya trailing behind.
Priya glares at me, then at Sage. “You’ve got to be kidding. Surely you have better taste.” The emphasis implies a callback to some previous conversation between the two.
Shoving the bag at me to carry, Sage pivots toward her friend and leans against my side. “Aww, you’re gonna hurt his feelings.”
“He doesn’t have any,” Priya snaps. “Aside from ‘horny’ and ‘superior.’”
I offer a bland smile. “Don’t mind me—I’m just holding the wall up.”
She ignores this, and her expression goes from annoyed to plaintive as she stares at Sage. “You said on the plane that we’re gonna talk about stuff rather than you throwing tantrums. You’re obviously pissed off, but I can’t fix it if you’re fake with me.”
Sage gives a dismissive snort. “Nothing to discuss, babes. If you need someone to keep you company that bad, I’m sure you can call Julian.”
The name seems to hit Priya like a slap, and there’s a moment of tense silence between the two; I feel like quite the gooseberry. Are they in competition over some man? An ex of Sage’s, whom Priya is now dating? The bitterness is palpable.
“Is that what this is about?” Priya asks.
Grabbing my shirtsleeve at the bicep, Sage pulls me into motion. “I’ll be back in a few hours!” she throws over her shoulder.
“Sage, this is stupid,” Priya calls after us. “Tomorrow’s the GP. You need to go to bed.”
Spinning to walk backward, arm linked through mine, Sage replies, “Who says that’s not where I’m going?” As I’m dragged around the corner, I hear the suite door click shut. Once we’re out of sight, Sage lets me go.
We proceed to the door of my room and I usher her through. Inside, she chews at her cheek with a faraway look. Brow knitted, she plants her hands on her hips and does a circuit of the modest room, dominated by one king-size bed.
“Salvi,” I say, dropping the bag on a chair and following her to the window, “why are you winding up your friend? You seemed to imply to her that we’re here for… other reasons.”
She wrinkles her nose at me. “Just a li’l mischief, honeybee.”
She looks back out the window, and the way the city lights below cast a glow on her face reminds me of childhood, holding a buttercup under someone’s chin for its golden reflection.
This woman affects me so oddly, I scarcely know what to make of it.
From afar, it was just lust and curiosity.
Now that I’m near her, it’s stitched through with a bright thread of something that tugs at the heart of me.
I’m both restless and relaxed, like the feeling of seeing London draw nearer out the window of a plane when I’m arriving home.
The words escape me before I can evaluate the emotion that spurs them. “I won’t have sex with you as a practical joke, or because you’re rebounding or feeling spiteful.”
Her stunned laugh is almost a hiccup. “Well, that’s mighty presumptuous! You’re in no danger. I was just messing with Pri.” After a pause in which mortification curdles in me, she asks, “But seriously, you wouldn’t? Like, if I asked nice? I assumed you’re kind of a slut.”
I perch on the arm of a chair, keenly feeling the danger in our proximity. “Not for the reasons I stated, no. Though possibly for others. I can’t claim I don’t fancy you.”
“What kind of other reasons? Love?” She adds this last word with a disdainful sarcasm.
“Honest attraction would suffice. I’m far from impoverished sexually, where I’d leap at any offer, and no one likes the feeling of being a pawn in a war in which they have no stake.”
“Huh.” She folds her arms. “That’s fair.
But for realsies, I wasn’t angling for the D.
” Her smile spreads wickedly. “Though I’ll admit, the look on Pri’s face was hilarious when I told her I was going to your room.
” She crosses to the props bag and peers inside, withdrawing the fairy lights. “What could we do with these?”
I take the box from her, opening it and unslotting the string from its confines. “Hmm. Let’s light it up and think a bit.” I find an outlet and plug the lights in. They’re multicolored, the bulbs in the shape of stars, and flash in a steady rhythm.
“Ooh, disco lights,” Sage says.
“Perfect. Let’s get you dancing, then.”
She cackles. “I’m not cramming my feet into those tap shoes again!”
“No, just… however you like.” I hold the string out for Sage to take. “I’ll put on music.”
“Not your crappy jazz, though.” She takes her mobile from a pocket. “Lemme pick.”
She connects to my speaker and scrolls around, then finds the song she wants and kicks her shoes off before making a gazelle-like leap onto my bed.
While jumping up and down, she ties the bottom of her T-shirt into a knot at her rib cage, showing off an arresting expanse of chiseled stomach.
“Hand me the Christmas lights!” she calls out, breathless.
I pass the long string to her and she drapes it across her shoulders and arms, one forearm across her face like a vampire with a cape. I pluck up my mobile to record her performance.
She sings along, shimmying and twirling on the bed, her bare feet twisting eddies into the duvet.
A hundred things crowd and push through my mind like commuters on a tube platform.
I don’t speak any of it aloud, not wanting to ruin the video (or look like a mug), but inside, I’m saying, You’re dazzling.
I’ve never met anyone like you. I could watch you forever and not get bored.
I want to unwrap you like a perpetual Christmas…
As the song hits its finale, she belly flops onto the mattress and rolls herself into the fairy lights like spaghetti around a fork and wails out the final words along with the singer.
The music ends and I can hear her heavy breathing.
Tangled and giddy and glittering, she catches her breath, and her expression as she meets my eyes is almost shy.
I stop recording and place my mobile on the table before going to the bed and reclining so we’re parallel.
She tips her head sideways. “How was that?”
“Honestly lovely. You’re… more like a weather event than a person sometimes. It’s invigorating.”
“Yeah? Thanks. I think.” She wriggles out of the grip of the lights and shoves the string to the floor in a clatter of plastic. “That was fun.”
“Agreed.” We watch each other, our faces a foot apart.
She sits up, cross-legged. “Hey, make me some origami. You can do more than triangles, right? Like animals and stuff?”
“It’s been years, pet. Triangles are easy.” She looks disappointed, so I add, “I might remember how to make a frog that jumps, but no guarantees.”
“Great!” She clambers off the bed and goes to the desk, withdrawing a notepad with the hotel’s logo across the top and tearing off a sheet.
I scoot back and we end up diagonal on the huge bed, facing each other.
My stockinged feet rest on the night table and her legs swing behind her, ankles twining.
I take the paper from her and first have to remove part of the rectangle to make a square.
She watches as I run the folded bit across my tongue to make it tear easier.
The usual crass comment I’d make under the circumstances retreats like a wallflower at a cotillion.
I fuss with the paper, finding my way, making errors and unfolding, starting again, gradually progressing.
She edges closer on her elbows. “Wait, shouldn’t that bit fold the other way?” She takes the paper. “Like this. So it’ll pop up.” She hands it back.
“Perfect. Sharp eye.” I continue defining a concertinaed frog limb. “We make a good team,” I say lightly, not looking at her.
“Both talented with our hands.”
Her tone is sly, and I slant a look up at her. “You’re flirting.”
“Little bit, sure.”
No more is said until I complete the frog. Laying it on my flattened palm, I press down on the business end and it gives a feeble hop, falling to the duvet, on its back like a dead insect.
“Don’t quit your day job,” Sage teases.
“Tragically, I’ve no future as a world-renowned paper-folding artist.”
Sage turns the frog over and prods it some more, her chin resting on one hand.
I inspect her pixyish face, the curve of her lips, the naked fringe of eyelashes, and can viscerally imagine kissing her.
My hand in her pastel-blue tresses, cupping the warmth of her tattooed neck, leaning in.
A pause in which the intimacy of eye contact from an inch away stops you with a playful push like magnets of the same pole, and you know that beyond this point, everything changes.
Her eyes, golden as the bourbon we shared an hour ago, lock with mine, and I see a flicker of invitation there. The unmistakable sign—her glance at my lips, then back up to see if I do the same—announces that a kiss is imminent.