Chapter Seventeen
It should’ve been easy, slipping back into work mode without Kai at my side.
For all I’d griped about the early session, the topic itself was actually pretty interesting.
Better still, they’d had row upon row of coffee urns lined up outside.
Only mini-pastries rather than waffles, sadly, but I was trying not to be too disappointed.
My brain, though, was snagged on the idea of the guy waiting in our room. Still sleeping when I left, quietly pulling the door closed behind me. I’d considered leaving a note, but it seemed a little ridiculous given he knew exactly where I’d be.
What I had no desire to do was spend the morning churning through all the same material I’d become preoccupied with the night before.
Thoughts that had kept me from sleeping in anything bar fits and starts until the early hours.
The part of me which called itself rational was pleading caution and restraint.
I knew, though, that was as much fueled by fear after what had happened with my ex, as it was a level-headed perspective on the current situation.
Emotionally, the idea of opening up and giving in to... well, whatever was going to happen if I opened up and gave in, was also sounding both appealing and reasonable. Hamstrung, mainly, by the fact that I wasn’t entirely sure what was on offer to give in to.
Even just the logistics of it all were a dark cloud looming above us.
Kai was home for the summer, but at some point his classes would start up again and he’d have to go back to school.
The convenience of being next-door to each other would suddenly be off the table.
It wasn’t exactly long distance - a couple of hours drive rather than half the world away - but it was a hurdle nonetheless.
A hurdle that would be moot, too, if all this was really a summer fling - spicy, and fun, and with a ticking clock that enabled that very thrill - and not destined for anything more.
Part of me wanted to just ask that outright, and get at least one known quantity marked in the ground.
The answer might be difficult to hear, but it would make each decision that came after it a lot easier.
Problem was, I wasn’t sure if Kai had that answer yet, or if he’d think I was ready - or even wanted - to hear it, if he did.
Or, alternatively, that he’d have assumed all along that I’d felt the same way: that this was always meant to be fun with a deadline inked upon it.
I sighed, and then grimaced apologetically at the woman in front of me who half-turned in reproach at the noise. Clearly someone needed more coffee in their morning.
Not something which could be said about me, I realized, as three large cups suddenly made their presence known. As quietly as I could, I set down the tablet I’d been making notes on and slid to the end of the row.
The hall’s door was mercifully well-oiled and didn’t creak embarrassingly as I left; better still, there was a restroom just across the corridor.
As I hurried over, I noticed the coffee station was still set up - albeit down to just a couple of urns now - and made a mental-note for when I was done.
Something told me this would be a four-cup morning, at the very least.
There were two other guys in the bathroom; I recognized one from Chuck’s group of hangers-on at the gala, though I couldn’t remember his name. Nodded at him in wordless greeting, as I took the far urinal down from him. God, it felt good to pee.
“Looks like you’ve got yourself pretty well set up there, buddy.”
Hearing him speak made me jolt in surprise. “Sorry?” I asked, confused. Talking with random guys in the restroom doesn’t usually happen, something I was totally fine with being the case.
He chuckled. “That hot piece of ass you brought along last night. I’m not gay, but jeez, even I can see you scored well with that one.”
I turned back to the wall. “Oh, right.” The topic of conversation was about as uncomfortable as the location.
I heard him zip up, and then the sink running. “I mean, fuck. What is he, 23? 24 at most? I bet it’s the same as the girls, they’re just horny little bunnies at that age, right? Yeah, you’ve got yourself a sweet thing set up, that’s for sure.”
I’d finished, but I was standing there still in the hope that he’d dry his hands and leave. No such luck. Inwardly sighing, I zipped my fly and crossed over to the sink.
“Man, I’m surprised you even bothered coming down this morning,” he continued. “Not sure why you’d leave some hot twenty-something ass all alone.”
He winked at me in the mirror; I grit my teeth.
“So it was you, with that kid?” The other man, the one I didn’t recognize, was slowly drying his hands. Looking at me over the rim of his glasses, with an expression that wasn’t quite curiosity.
I felt my face flush. “Yes. I mean, no. He’s not a kid.”
The way his eyes tracked over me, assessing, left my skin prickling.
“Still.” He made a face, a flavor of disapproval I could remember from childhood. “It feels a little... cheap. Bringing someone like that along for a work event.”
I wanted to ask what ‘someone like that’ meant, but I didn’t get a chance. Distracted by an arm flung around my shoulders, as the first guy leaned in.
“Come on, man, you’re telling me you’ve not thought about trading in the wife for a younger model?”
If he noticed the temperature in the room dropping by handfuls of degrees, he didn’t seem to think it worth remarking on.
“My wife and I have been married almost thirty-five years,” the older man said, voice clipped. He cast a sidelong glance at me. “We have children who must be the same age as your... friend.”
A laugh, from my other side. “Sure, and I bet your kids wouldn’t argue with some sugar daddy action to pass the time, yeah?” He nudged me in the ribs.
“It’s not just sex,” I protested. Hated myself at the same time, for even bothering to engage with him.
“Right, right. But no strings, nothing serious. Nobody complaining about the fact you’ve got nothing in common, and nobody saying you’ve got to put a ring on it if you want some goddamn head in the morning, yeah?
His crude smirk on my left, and radiating disapproval on the right. Any response I could make felt like threading an impossible needle. “I should... get back.”
A big belly-laugh at that; I realized, a split-second too late, that he probably thought I meant to Tate, not to the presentation. Before he could settle down and respond, I dumped my handful of paper towels in the trash and slipped out of the door.
Part of me wanted to just leave, to skulk off somewhere quiet where I could simply avoid anybody.
I’d left my bag in the conference hall, though, and my tablet, and that meant I needed to pick them up and - if I was really going to escape - make a second, all the more conspicuous exit. Something that seemed needlessly rude.
Instead I crept back to my seat, but my heart wasn’t in the rest of the presentation. My brain replaying the conversation; the clear suggestion that nothing between someone like Kai and someone like me could ever amount to more than a convenient fuck.
I gave up trying to force myself to take notes, and pulled out my phone instead.
“How were the pancakes?” I sent. A minute or so of nothing, and then the blinking dots of Kai typing.
“Waffles. And they were good. If anyone asks, the syrup stains were already on the bedspread.”
I shook my head, fighting the urge to laugh. With the way the morning was going, there was every chance it could end up in hysteria.
“I’m sure housekeeping can handle it,” I sent back. “Are you going to leave the room at some point so they can come in?”
A picture in reply this time; I quickly shaded the screen with my hand, just in case someone around me might be glancing over at the conversation.
Probably wise, too: Kai had responded with a photo of himself in his swim trunks, taken full-length in the mirror.
Shimmering red fabric, hugging his hips. I realized I was chewing my lip.
“I hope that means you’re going to the pool, because otherwise housekeeping is going to be really confused.”
“Heh, yeah, that was the plan,” he confirmed. “You’re welcome to join me?”
I glanced down the list of sessions I’d decided would be politically-inexpedient, at work, were I to come all this way and not attend them. It wasn’t a long list, but it was a fairly spread-out one. Certainly, I couldn’t just escape for the whole afternoon.
“I could come have lunch with you?” I suggested. The row of happy emojis Kai sent back showed me he approved.