Sophia
It doesn’t take me long to start enjoying myself at James’s lake cabin. Or should I call it a mansion? I’ll go with lake cabin mansion.
The aesthetic isn’t exactly rustic enough to call it a lake cabin, even if there is a pair of moose antlers in the living room.
The place has a speaker system in every room, and it only took me ninety minutes to find the fancy stereo and connect it to my phone’s Bluetooth. I’ve been blasting music, drinking wine, and looking at life with glass-half-full eyes.
James will be back, I tell myself. Soon enough.
I’m distracted anyway. Something strange started happening this morning. My Instagram has gotten hundreds of DMs, but the bizarre part is that some of them have been job offers. A few art galleries want me to be their brand ambassador . All with no requests for a resume. In this new social media world, the fact that I already worked in the art world and an action shot of me in a heist went viral were credentials enough.
Most of the job offers are crap that I wouldn’t be much interested in. Some seem like scams. But one catches my attention.
A woman named Melissa, who works for Claude Bernard, a seventy-something-year-old eccentric billionaire, messaged me asking if I’d like to run the social media during his next treasure hunt.
Claude Bernard is famous in artifact circles. After he got his family inheritance, he bought a research vessel and an island in the Bahamas.
For thirty years, he’s been searching for sunken Spanish galleons in the Caribbean that are loaded with jewels and silver. I don’t think he’s turned a profit, but that job, literal treasure hunting, is a dream come true.
It would involve going to sea with his crew of twenty and posting social media content about the daily operations. So it’s a no go. Because I don’t want to be away from James.
I still start doing my due diligence. I look at their current Instagram to see that Bernard does have some serious people onboard. PhDs who can make a whole lot more money working for an eccentric billionaire than a university.
His crew is mostly young. It does look like fun, but of course this is the curated online images. Two dozen people at sea probably makes for a lot of petty squabbles.
Treasure hunting on the high seas, but I only play with the idea for a moment. What if James and I start to date?
It seems… likely. Maybe not a sure thing with how hot and cold he can be, but still. After our sex this morning… After how he saved me last night… I can’t picture being without him.
He left his dress shirt here, and I, like a psychopath, have been stopping by his hamper to smell it every so often.
Yes, it’s a little shameful.
But the shirt doesn’t smell like armpits. I don’t have a dirty laundry fetish. If that’s a thing.
It still smells of his cologne. A refined scent of fresh lumber and black pepper. It reminds me of him. It reminds me of safety, and when I take a long-enough whiff, my heart drums and my vision blurs. But that might also be from the lack of oxygen because I’m inhaling an alcohol-based cologne for so long.
Worth it.
Three hours later, I still haven’t heard from James. The NYPD detectives video conferenced me for forty-five minutes. I thought there was hardly anything I could tell them, but boy that didn’t stop them from having questions.
I’m worn out and isolated by the time it’s dusk. Hailee loves the idea of living isolated in the woods. I’m too busy picturing what’s in the dark forest and what all these thousands of square feet will feel like when it’s nighttime. I shake the thoughts and pull my phone out to call her and Alana.
Contact between the three of us has been sporadic lately and, dare I say, dying ever since Hailee moved out west for a new job. Alana has to rain check the call because of a concert, and when I call Hailee, the call ends up dropping.
She’s working in the mountains, and I don’t fault her. She manages to text me, asking if she flew back tomorrow whether she’d be able to see me.
I figure James wouldn’t mind if Hailee came out to visit here. He’s close enough friends with her boyfriend, Alex, to trust her.
I tell her yes. Whether that means I’ll be back in New York City, or she’ll visit me here, I’m not sure yet. But I’d rather have her close by than all the way on the other side of the country.
Of all things, it’s this new fame that I find unsettling. It’s not the messages from old friends and strangers. I spent too much reading about it on the internet, where people are digging into what digital past I have. It feels wrong.
A thief kicking me in the stomach is at least socially recognized as being messed up. Everyone agrees—I’m a victim. He’s a scumbag.
But when a hundred internet sleuths gossip about my past and call me a boss-banging whore, it’s fine. There’s an entire conspiracy that I was in on the heist. That I’m being paid off. Based on…absolutely nothing. As far as I can find. Just good old keyboard speculation.
Okay, I really need to get off my phone. They’re just jealous James Callaway isn’t carrying them in his perfect, tailored-suited arms.
It’s hard to stay away from my phone, because while I didn’t ask him to, I’m expecting James to text me an update. Eight hours after he left, there’s still nothing.
I have a feeling I’m not going to hear from him until at least tomorrow. It’s not a good sign. If he cared about me the way I think he does, why can’t he take the time to send me a sentence or two?
It gets dark a little after 5:30. I watch the snow-filled woods glow blue and fade to black. The music does little to make me feel less lonely and afraid. I turn it off for a moment, but the silence is thick and complete enough that I can hear my ears ring a little. I switch it back on right away.
I guess James has probably gotten updates through his security team. He knows I’m alright. He doesn’t need to text me to find that out.
I message him under the pretense of wondering if Hailee and Alex can come at some point for a visit. An hour later, there’s still no response.
I wish I could pretend that I’m afraid he was in danger. But I doubt it. This is something else.
Cold feet.
How na?ve could I have been to think it was something else when a few minutes after sex, James couldn’t get his pants back on fast enough?
I open a second bottle of wine. I’ve got a strong buzz, but I’ve been drinking for so long throughout the day that I’m not drunk. I’ve only gotten drunk alone like this once or twice. It can be fun. Sort of like you’re hanging out with yourself.
But that’s only fun if you like yourself.
Now there’s an element of self-loathing to this second bottle of wine. The bubbly girl, twelve years James’s junior, really thought he was more than just a smooth talker.
But suddenly, I’m taken from my thoughts. My heart jumps as I hear the front door open. My wine-thick blood starts to course faster through my veins, giving me something like a headrush without even standing.
“Hello?” I shout and stand up. “Brock?” I’m backing up towards the kitchen as my forehead begins to sweat in fear.
I swear I locked it. And wouldn’t the security be monitoring it? Unless something happened to the security.
I start towards the knife block, but pause and whip my head over my shoulder as I hear a voice.
“Did I scare you?”
James is standing near where I got up off the couch. He’s in a deep-navy overcoat. His hair is set in a perfect wave. His stubble has been trimmed.
He looks back to his normal self, like he stepped out of a magazine.
“You scared the shit out of me,” I say, wilting over the knife holder.
“Are you alright?” he asks with genuine concern, and I realize he’s afraid this is a trauma episode induced from the robbery.
“I’m fine. I’m just a scaredy cat. I like being alone. And nighttime. And the forest. But throw those three together, and I can piss myself at a pin drop.”
“You watch too many movies. Nobody gets ax murdered anymore. Or satanically sacrificed,” he teases as he wraps me in a hug.
“You could’ve texted.”
“I thought I did. I was on the plane. It didn’t deliver. Think of this as a surprise.”
His smile evaporates the rest of the fear from my blood.
James swoops me up, and I shriek until he levels me so we’re face-to-face. “I missed you,” he says.
“And here I thought you might be gone for a day or two.”
“I couldn’t stay away,” James says, and we kiss. “I have something for you, by the way.”
“What?
“Here.” He walks me over to the kitchen island, picks me up, and sets me on the countertop. I just shake my head at how easily he moves me around. He digs in his coat’s big pockets and pulls out a black velvet box.
Jewelry.
“James.” I hold a hand out like it’s too much, but when he smiles and opens the box, my mouth slackens.
It’s a pendant.
The necklace is white gold and glitters like fresh snow. But that’s not what shocks me. An aquamarine sapphire sits in its center. It shines brilliantly. Sparkling like the sunlit sea.
It’s the kind of jewelry I’ve only seen in display cases in the fanciest stores of the city.
The kind of necklace I’ll see in passing but not even care to ogle, because whatever life it would be where I wear it is so far, so unimaginable, from my own.
“James, it’s…”
“Before I can give it to you, I feel like I need to make one thing clear,” he says.
I gulp, worried at what he’s about to say.
“I’m not saying it comes first, but my business can’t take a back seat because of this relationship. I need to keep managing. Growing. I can’t just go into the woods.”
Relationship. We’re going to date.
“James, I would never expect you to give everything up for me. Or have to. We can make it work.”
“It’s a lot to keep this company at full speed. It takes… a lot of my time.”
“I’m a flexible girl,” I say, partly in reference to him making a pretzel out of me.
He grins and walks closer. He puts both hands on the sides of my shirt just above my ribs. “Arms up.”
I listen to him as he pulls off my black tee and balls it up. My breath quickens. He tosses the shirt and picks up the pendant. It’s warm in the house, but the gold is cold from being in his coat, and it raises goose bumps on my bare skin as he puts it around my neck.
He hooks the clasp and takes a few steps back. His eyes shine with so much joy, I almost think the gift was for him.
“You look incredible.”
I look down at the stone. I’ve never had somebody get me something this nice. With Jake, his gifts were always in the realm of scarves or candles. I’m truly speechless.
I know one language he’d appreciate.
I pull my underwear off and plant a slow kiss on his lips. “You know what today is?” I whisper.
“What?” asks James.
“It’s the very first day we’ve ever dated.”
“Is that so?”
“Yeah. And there’s only two hours of it left,” I whisper, and I watch the skin on his cheek lift as he grins.
“Better make good use of it, then.”
“Better,” I say, my eyes narrowed.
He glides his fingers between my legs and puts his lips on my neck. And between the blurring waves of pleasure, I’m trying to wonder what the odds are that I’m going to wake up, bleeding out in an alley in Egypt or on the floor of the gallery.
Surely, this isn’t real life.
“Pinch me,” I say.
James pauses and then moves his hand down to my breast. He takes my nipple between his fingers and squeezes. Hard.
I throw my head back and moan at the ceiling. And then I manage to let out just a little laugh. Giddy at the fact that I am most definitely alive.