Chapter 68 #2
I did not get the chance to ponder what that would be, because the limo driver stopped right then. I looked out the window and laughed.
“This place, huh?”
“I thought we could do a better job of making sure our stay was a bit… cleaner, let’s say,” she said. “I’m not just in the business of under the table favors, you know.”
“Oh, I know,” I said, even though coming back here made me hard every time I saw it, thinking about how good Layla stroking me had felt.
If the previous place had required me to overcome the emotional remains of being scarred, this would require me to overcome the emotion of lust. That almost certainly meant that while Layla was more flirtatious at the theatre and lobby than our first rodeo there, she probably wasn’t going to be flirting as much here as before.
Damn, I thought, snapping my fingers in mock disappointment.
We went down into the speakeasy, where, just like last time, we had the place almost entirely to ourselves.
I saw the booth where all of the erotic release had taken place and immediately grabbed a seat while Layla went to the bar.
Seeing me there, she just rolled her eyes with a grin before turning her attention back.
When she came back to the table with two gin and sodas, she deliberately sat across from me, so far away that her hands could not possibly reach me.
“So I guess it’s going to be a foot job today, huh?” I said with a wink. “We’re gonna try everything here?”
“Chance,” she said, just enough of a tone in her voice that I knew I had to drop the sex talk. “You know how I am. But I brought you here so we could just talk. Nothing more.”
Though no man liked to hear a woman downplay his sexual advances and moves, most especially a woman that he had already spoken to and slept with, I understood this wasn’t rejection so much as it was gently pressing the brakes.
The light was turning yellow, but only so that it could eventually cycle back to green.
“Understood,” I said, holding out my drink. “To new beginnings, eh?”
“To new beginnings,” she said, clinking her glass against mine as we gently pounded the table and took a sip of ours.
Then, almost running counter to what she had just said, she scooted over to me. I began to course with excitement and arousal as I contemplated what might be about to happen. My skin crawled with anticipation, hoping, begging, yearning for her to touch me there as she had before.
And then she touched my thigh, and though I’d never come before in my pants from a mere touch, I’d be lying if I said that the thought didn’t occur to me or that I had seemed to come mightily close to that happening right there.
“Layla,” I said, almost breathlessly.
“Relax,” she said with a smirk. “I’m not doing this to arouse you.”
She then rested her head on my shoulder.
“I’m doing this to show that I care about you.”
She looked up to me and I swear that her eyes had never looked more hopeful and more wanting. But it wasn’t the kind of intense, heated craving that came only in spurts of extreme arousal. Instead, it felt more… like love, if I was to be totally honest and sum it up in a single word.
I did the only thing that seemed right in that moment. I kissed her, and I kissed her with gentle tenderness and love.
Yes, the flame of arousal dissipated somewhat in the moment, in large part because I was no longer focused on getting laid. But though the intensity might not have been as erotic, the feeling was more rewarding. I wanted more of this, I realized.
I just had to make sure nothing would interfere with it.
Layla finally pulled back and rested her body on me, looking up at me with a tender smile.
“Better, huh?” she said.
“It’s the rare moment in which the sequel is better than the original,” I said, drawing a laugh and another kiss from Layla. She scooted back just a hair, but that had nothing to do with creating distance and everything with being able to better see me.
We talked as friends and lovers did then, trading jokes about our past, our future hopes, and what life looked like these days.
There was no real hint of sexual tension, because we knew it was there if we wanted it at any second.
I could have given her a look or vice versa and the two of us would be on each other in a heartbeat, giving each other a lot more than handjobs under the table.
We stayed at that bar for about an hour and a half, and though Layla did touch my thigh a few times, it never ran the risk of being anymore sexual than the act itself. In a word, it felt right.
After Layla closed her tab, she motioned for me to follow her back to the limo, waiting for us outside.
“You really went all out,” I said more admiring her than teasing her. “Thank you.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” she said with a pep in her voice. “We’ve got one final destination left.”
“Oh, snap,” I said. “Let me guess. If this is the story of places we’ve been to before…”
“Oh, don’t worry, you don’t have to continue down that road,” she said. “This is something new. Consider it a personal gift from myself to you. A way to not just create new memories, but to go to new places.”
“Ah.”
“It is something you have seen many times before, though. Just not from the perspective that you likely would think of.”
My mind raced through the many possibilities this could include, but I decided that some surprises were best left as, well, surprises. Layla had done such a marvelous job of making this date so good that I didn’t want to guess it.
For the duration of the ride, though, she simply cuddled against me, leaving me silent and my thoughts wandering to what it could be anyways. One of the bridges? Broadway? Some special diner near Hunt Industries?
Wherever she took me, I didn’t care. It could have been the Mets stadium for all I cared. It could have been Staten Island. Hell, it could have even been somewhere in New Jersey, and that wasn’t an easy thing for a New Yorker to say!
Finally, the limo stopped. I got out first, holding Layla’s hand, and stared up at our destination.
And up.
And up.
And up until I realized that from my vantage point, I wasn’t going to be able to distinguish the top of where we were. But from everything around us, I knew where we were.
“Empire State Building, huh?” I said.
“Best views in the city.”
“Isn’t it closed?”
“Not for us,” Layla said with a wink.
Goddamn. You’ve really raised the bar for future dates, huh? Better get my strategy on to top this!
I was like a school kid riding that elevator to the top, mostly just utterly stunned that Layla had pulled something off like this, especially since she almost certainly didn’t have the connections that she used to with having quit her uncle’s company.
Or, maybe, her uncle’s connections all hate him like so many people hate Edwin Hunt, but they like her like they like me.
At the very top, the doors opened, and we had free reign to go wherever we pleased. Though the gift shop had closed, I already had the perfect gift—time with Layla. We went out to the observation deck, looked out over the city, and leaned into each other.
“Not bad, is it?” I said.
“Not at all,” she said. “Gotta take it in while we can.”
That seemed like a particularly odd thing to say. At first, I tried to ignore it, thinking that it didn’t mean much of anything. But the words “while we can” gnawed at me and I began to fear the worst.
“What do you mean?” I asked, terrified that Layla was about to confess the onset of some terrible disease or something like that.
“You know how I’ve talked about new beginnings all night?”
OK, good news is, she probably wouldn’t say something like that if she had cancer or something.
“Yeah…”
“What if we made a new beginning outside this city? You and I?”
“What?” I said, mostly because I didn’t know what else to say in response to that, those words I had never expected to hear.
“Would you leave New York City with me once everything is done with Edwin?”
I had never, ever considered such a possibility. The most I had ever given thought to was getting a second or third home somewhere if I made enough money off of it, but this was… this was a very different request, a request to upend the entire lifestyle that I had had up to this point.
“Why would you want to do that?” I said, trying my best not to sound accusatory.
“It is a bit extreme, isn’t it,” Layla said, and I hoped that she wasn’t defeated by my question.
I just wanted to know—it wasn’t like I was going to say no, but it was so unexpected that I couldn’t help but be thrown off-kilter just a bit.
“I just think this city has been too much for us. I know you grew up in Connecticut. Your childhood was full of flowers and grass and that kind of thing. I’ve never really had such a life.
I want a life of freedom. Of nature all around me.
Of loved ones all around me. I want blue skies, not gray skyscrapers, when I look up.
I want something calmer, something more relaxed. For both of us.”
It did sound so much nicer, put that way.
And it wasn’t like I had become a connoisseur of the city either; it wasn’t like I frequented Broadway, went to every different restaurant possible, or acquainted myself with every neighborhood possible.
I worked, I interacted with girls, and that was about it.
There wasn’t anything special about New York City in that regard, and the way Layla had described the chance to escape to nature was very hard to ignore.
But… that just felt so drastic, so dramatic, so different.
And I hated to sound like a broken record of “talk to me when Edwin is done,” but…
Fuck. She’s probably going to force my hand at some point too by how serious she looks.
“You know what my answer to that is.”
“Wait and see,” she said.
“Yeah. I’m not opposed to it, but, fuck, this is a great city.
And to give it up… I mean, look, I lo… I like you a lot, Layla, and I think that that sort of figured itself out.
I don’t need Edwin gone to know that I care about you and that this is becoming a thing once again.
But as far as how much of a thing? As far as moving out of the city and, well, being with you forever, as that would be?
I don’t have the time right now to sort it out. ”
Most especially when it seems like every moment of mine on the streets is being watched by Edwin, perhaps even with the intent to kill me.
“Truth of the matter is, Layla, and I can say this now because we’re alone…
I think Edwin has guys watching me. He told me he was going to kill me on the phone.
I just took that as the blabber of a bitter old man on the phone, but the more I see these guys stalking me, the more paranoid I get that he’s actually going to follow through.
It’s not crazy, by the way. Edwin is for real. ”
“Jesus Christ,” Layla said, starting to sound on the verge of panic. “You think he’d actually go through with that? You really think he’d kill you?”
“Honestly…”
The more I thought about it, the more I realized the true answer.
“Yeah.”
“Fuck, Chance,” Layla said. “Then we have to get you out of the city now. We have—”
“No,” I said. “I don’t think he’s going to kill me anytime soon, if he does.
I’m not saying it’s a guarantee, far from it.
I may be paranoid as hell, quite honestly.
But I think my death happening in such short conjunction with his divorce would be a bad look, the kind of thing that would force him to step back and re-evaluate his standing in the company.
So I think it’s a small percentage chance that it happens… but it definitely could. Look—”
I moved in to cut her off before she kept speaking, realizing that what I had said had put a certain level of panic in her that I’d never intended to create.
“For right now, let’s just get home, OK? Forget I said that, I’m sorry.”
“I can’t forget that.”
Much as I was bothered by that, I knew she was right.
“OK,” I said. “Then let’s get home. I’ll help you forget about it. OK?”
Layla squeezed me tight, a few sobs emitting from her. I held her close, kissed her on top of her head, and squeezed her.
“I am not going to let anything happen to you or to me,” I said. “That is my promise. You asked me to promise that I loved you? Well, here’s another promise. I promise nothing will happen to either of us. Do you believe me?”
Layla pulled back, wiped tears from her eyes, and smiled.
“I do.”