Chapter 3 #2
Yeah. Sure. Why not? Super pretty but in a girl next door kind of way, not threatening in the least. I close my eyes and try to picture her as Cher from Clueless. Then I remember her character’s a high schooler in that movie andddd never mind, that’s ruined, goodbye.
God dammit. Jacking off has never been this hard.
I stare at it in frustration. My cock, I mean. There’s just no reason for this. It’s unreasonable.
I take it in my soapy hand once more and…so, okay. What if I let myself think about that dream? It’s just a dream. Or a fantasy. It’s not like it means anything, thinking about it. Thought-crimes aren’t real crimes.
I try not to think about the fact that it’s Ash, but the feeling, being between his legs.
How sliding inside him feels like warm oil.
And the way his thighs feel when they press along my flanks, or the way his face looks—in the dream—thrown back in ecstasy, lower lip between his teeth, hair spread across the pillow.
He does have an attractive face. A really good face. Not too anything at all. Those lips nice to kiss, if I did kiss them. Neither feminine nor masculine, really.
And his body—I mean, I saw that last night.
In real life. Not in the most attractive way, he was covered in blood and puke, but I can put that aside.
Because dream-him reflected real-him without all that—slender but not too skinny, corded with that lean kind of muscle not from working out, but just from living kinda hard.
A nice body, though. One that I imagine would feel good wrapped around me.
It’s enough. I suck in my breath and I come in my hand, my stomach jerking. I watch it all spill out of me and circle the drain along with the suds, and then the post-nut clarity hits like a freaking freight train.
I shut off the water. “Me cago en diez2,” I mumble.
Ash is ready to go by nine-thirty sharp.
His meager belongings are packed away and he’s dressed in his freshly laundered clothes, delivered to our door earlier that morning.
He’s a brand new man in the light of day, dark gold hair tumbling around his face and his blue-gold eyes bright.
Not even the bullet wound beneath his shirt seems to diminish his spirit.
He looks so good.
And it gives me a strange fluttering feeling in my stomach, compounded by the memory of my dream and whatever the fuck it was I just did in the shower. I try to ball it up and toss it away like I did with my cum-stained boxers, toss them right in the fucking trash.
He nags me to hurry up as I jam a toothbrush in my mouth. “What’s the rush?” I ask him. “We’ve got an hour before check out.” The words come out barely comprehensible through the foam.
He understands nevertheless. “I’m starving,” he replies.
“Makes two of us.” I quickly finish and spit into the sink. “We’ll stop somewhere for breakfast. Any preferences?”
He shrugs. “A place with food.”
“Oh. Well. That narrows things down.”
I throw my toothbrush in with the rest of my toiletries, shoulder my bag and open the door out into the hallway. Ash ambles after me dutifully.
“Say,” I remark, “you’re not one of those guys who like, pisses in bottles during long car rides, are you? Because if you are, we might have a problem.”
“Fuck, there goes my whole trip. I was trying to beat my last record.”
I smile. He has a sense of humor, after all. “How’s your side, by the way?”
He lifts his shirt just enough to let me look as we walk. It’s bled through the gauze, but the blood looks brown and old. Did the bandage need to be changed? Will that disturb the clotting, or whatever? I just don’t know.
“It feels fine,” he tells me.
He said as much last night when it looked the opposite of fine, so I’m not sure I trust his assessment. I don’t nag him, though. He’s gotten this far with it and he wasn’t dead or dying. Yet. Anyway.
“I guess I should warn you,” he adds. “Car rides can trigger my seizures.”
Here I’d already fucking forgot about that. This whole hitchhiking thing is turning out to be way more complicated than I originally thought it would be. Too late for regrets, though. I’m not going to turn him out for that. Seems unethical.
Not that I think he’s playing with a fully ethical deck himself, considering he was shot with a goddamn gun and won’t actually tell me why. Don’t trust the whole trespassing excuse. I am not that dumb.
And then I stop dead when the elevator opens up to the lobby.
None other than Adriana herself is waiting for us, or me, more specifically, not like she fucking knows who Ash is.
Sitting on one of the plush armchairs in a lacy sundress, holding a large hat in her lap with her dark hair tumbling about her suntanned shoulders.
“Wait here,” I say to Ash before striding across the open expanse of the lobby, dodging a valet wheeling a cartful of baggage. “Adriana,” I call out. “Hey. What are you doing here?”
She turns, her round lips making a little o of surprise at the sight of me.
As if there is anyone else she should possibly be meeting here—and hah, what if there was, some other long distance idiot boyfriend she’s got dangling on the hook?
—but I doubt it. I told her my hotel, after all. In case she changed her mind.
The airy notes of the Estée Lauder perfume I bought her last Christmas waft over me as she rises to her feet and is it right?
To be wearing the perfume your ex-boyfriend bought you?
For a moment I think that maybe that’s why she’s here: to reconcile, to tell me she made a mistake and of course we’re still together, what was she thinking?
And that would be perfect. That means I don’t have to question myself anymore.
The look on her face tells me otherwise, though. A small smile, a mix of pity and regret as her perfect narrow eyebrows draw together to make a singular line in the smooth skin between them. She is the picture of contrition, hands grasping the brim of her hat.
“Sam,” she says, and my name itself is an apology. “I thought I’d come give you a nicer send off than I did yesterday. I didn’t really like how we left things.”
Is that all she wants? Ash appears at my shoulder and I ignore him. “Really?” I say, failing to keep my flaring irritation in check. “Which part struck you as being off? Was it when you made me look like a complete asshole in front of your friends? Or when you fucking humiliated—”
“Yes. All of it. I’m sorry, I was kind of a bitch to you.
” She glances down at her painted toes in their sandals before looking back up at me.
Unfortunately she is very pretty, and that makes it harder to stay mad at her.
“It was just…a bad surprise, I guess. You showing up here. I was really overwhelmed.”
“Uh-huh. I figured that out really quick.”
“We should’ve talked about it more. Us, I mean. I guess I just thought…you know, we were on the same page. That this was just gonna kinda fizzle out between us?”
“Here’s another surprise for you. I’m stupid.”
She sighs. “Sam, please. Don’t be like that.”
“I don’t know what you want me to say.”
She steps closer and once again I catch a whiff of that damn perfume.
I wish, suddenly and viciously, that I’d never gotten it for her, even though she clearly loves it.
It’s just so fucked to be wearing something your ex bought you as you bid him farewell forever.
For like, what, our second breakup in as many days?
Even if I’m not all that busted up about this, it’s still messed up.
It’s still sad. Two years down the drain.
She slides her arms around me and gives me a perfunctory kiss on the cheek. “Sam,” she says against my ear, “cut the shit. Let’s not pretend you were giving it your all there at the end. We both know that much.”
And before I can so much as to even think to return the gesture—which I don’t want to—she’s already stepped away.
“Drive safely,” she says, placing her hat atop her hair. “And I meant it when I said I want you to write to me once in a while. It’d be nice if we could stay friends.”
“Sure,” I say, “whatever,” even though I don’t have any intention of doing that. None whatsoever at all. I turn to Ash and say, “Come on,” and he follows me, wordlessly, back to the check out desk.
Which isn’t as good or final of a walk off as I’d like. Instead Adriana gets to be the one to walk off and out of the lobby. One-upping me a final fuckin’ time.
1 You’re a man now
2 lit. “I shit in ten”. Used like “holy shit”