Chapter 2 #2
It was some seriously top-notch, grade A sex.
I mean, look, I…get around, okay? I'm not a man-whore.
I don't usually have sex on the first date.
I only hook up with randos and tourists once in a while.
Maybe "once in a while" is a bit of a stretch, sure, but the point is, I don't go around thinking about individual sex sessions this long after the fact.
I might think to myself, “That was hot," the next day.
I might tell Dunc about a particularly good night.
But still going back to that night months later?
Unheard of.
I think I'm trying to figure out what about it was so damn good.
Sex is sex, right? We've all got the same parts.
The act is the same. Details differ, sure.
The particulars of foreplay, the intensity, the duration.
It's changeable, mercurial. It's chemistry, right?
Some people you just click with, some you don't. Some girls I can read easier than others—their responses, their subtleties of expression, things like that.
I dunno. I've turned this over in my head more times than I care to count, also.
Why can I not move on from Lindsey? Is it just the abrupt, jarring shift from the hottest sex of my life to being screamed at? Possibly.
The problem is that I have no answers to any of the questions, and that is driving me absolutely fucking batshit insane.
"Now Boarding Zone One," the gate agent announced over the intercom, jarring me out of my thoughts and Raquel from her nap.
We shuffled through the gate, down the jetway, and found our seats—I took the window, Raquel was in the middle, and Hamish was on the aisle.
The flight was much like the wait—quiet, thoughtful.
Maddening.
I see her eyes again and again—bright, clear, hypnotic, azure, stunning in their intensely electric blueness.
I see her kissing her way down my chest, palms roaming my pecs and shoulders.
I see her swiping her tongue teasingly over my hipbone, along the no-man's-land below my navel and above the tip of my cock, my other hipbone.
I see the way she grins at me, seductive and eager, as she teasingly flits her tongue against my shaft here and there… and then wraps her mouth around me.
And holy fuck, for the ninety or so seconds before she lost her goddamn mind, that was a stellar fucking blow job. All lips and tongue and saliva, soft and hot and wet, with just the right usage of her hands.
And then?
Screaming.
Hyperventilating.
Inconsolable, angry, terrified—traumatized.
Someone hurt her.
Badly.
I don't truck with anyone who hurts women. I was raised to respect women, to protect them, take care of them. Not just my family, not just a woman I happen to be seeing or whatever, but all women. Shit, all people deserve respect and basic decency. No one should be hurt or manipulated or disrespected or used. My family has very strong feelings when it comes to men’s treatment of women.
You hurt a woman in our orbit, we hurt you.
It's very fucking simple.
That's the baseline, the benchmark.
When I think about some faceless shithead doing something horrible enough to Lindsey that she has episodes like that?
I see red.
Fury boils inside me.
I want to punch someone's fucking face in—the shitstain who hurt her, in particular.
It'd be great if I could just focus my memory on the sexy parts, like when she rode me like the penny pony at the grocery store, those big juicy tits bouncing like Jell-O. And to be clear, I fucking love Jell-O.
FUCK.
I have to get some answers. I am fully aware that I may very well hate the answers once I get them, but that's still better than this total ignorance.
We clambered out of the gray Toyota Sienna driven by Arjun H—a small, quiet Sikh man with a red turban, a fucking fantastic beard, and a wizardly ability to weave through traffic.
He thanked us as he handed off our bags, doing that funny little bobble of his head that seemed to mean something I was too ignorant to understand.
Raquel slung her purse over her shoulder and gazed up at the four-story apartment building in a section of West Hollywood inhabited largely by the starry-eyed service industry and gig workers hoping for a shot at glory in the film industry.
She sighed. "Let’s get this over with."
Hamish and I followed her to the main entrance of the building—a freakishly good-looking, jacked Black guy in expensive athletic-wear held the door open for us with his brawny brown shoulder, cell phone to his ear as he uh-huh'ed his way through a conversation.
He gave Raquel a friendly chin-jerk of recognition with an absent-minded smile, and then he was gone in a swirl of cologne and Central Casting charisma.
I recognized the street and the building, but only vaguely; we’d both been pretty tipsy by the time we got back here.
Hamish eyed Raquel as she stabbed the elevator call button. "Y'know him, then?"
Raquel gave him a droll side-eye. "Seen him around a few times, but I don't know him." She arched an eyebrow. "Jealous, baby?"
"Of his perfectly sculpted, hairless, Adonis physique? Nae, love, not hardly."
Raquel snorted and patted his belly. "If that's what I wanted, I would've married that. Guys like him are a dime a dozen in LA, baby. I married you—a burly, hairy, red-haired Scotsman with a heart of gold and just enough padding to be the cuddliest man on the planet."
Hamish grumbled something under his breath, but it was in such a thick Scottish slang-laced brogue that I understood precisely none of it.
Raquel just snickered. "You gonna repeat that for the class, my love?"
Hamish just shook his head and mumbled something about showing her padding, which got her giggling breathily and had me wondering if I needed to wait for another elevator, or maybe just take the stairs.
The elevator opened onto a dark, low-ceilinged hallway with gray industrial carpeting on the floor and builder-grade wall sconces that were likely meant to "elevate the aesthetics” or some shit but which really just screamed "lipstick on a pig."
Raquel led us down the hallway, around the corner, and to the farthest end unit, all by itself in a strange corner-nook at the rear of the building.
There was a sheet of printer paper taped to the door, with “GO AWAY!!” in size 100 font, bolded, italicized, and underlined.
Hamish chuckled. "Well, I think we know she's here. Unless she has this up year-round?"
Raquel shook her head. "No, this is new." She sighed. "Just…let me do the talking, okay?"
She hesitated, lifted her fist to the door, hesitated again, and then rapped three times.
"READ THE SIGN!" came Lindsey's voice.
"Linz, baby girl, it's Raquel. Let me in, please? I just wanna talk."
"NO!" Lindsey shouted. "GO AWAY!"
"Lindsey, c'mon, honey, it's me. I just want to make sure you're okay."
"I'm not! Go away!"
"Lindsey!"
Silence.
And then a ripped half-sheet of lined notebook paper slid under the door. Written on it in black Sharpie:
I'm alive. I'm not suicidal. I don't want your help. I'll be fine eventually. Go away.
Raquel dug in her purse, found a pen, flipped the paper over, and wrote on it:
Just let us in, Linz. Talk to us. Please.
She slipped it back under the door.
Seconds later, it slipped back to us.
She'd scrawled NO across Raquel's note in huge, angry block letters.
"Lindsey Snelling, open this damn door!"
"FUCK OFF!" Lindsey screamed. "GO AWAY!"
Hamish squeezed Raquel's hand. "I think maybe she just needs some time and space, my love. She's being pretty fuckin’ transparent about that."
Raquel sighed. "You may be right, Hammy." To Lindsey, then. "Girl, you know I love you, and you know I'm here for you. When you need to talk, you know how to find me."
No answer.
"Just go away, Raquel. You too, Hamish." Her voice was quiet, just on the other side of the door.
Raquel gave another heavy sigh and nodded. "Alright, alright. At least I know you're alive and not gonna do anything stupid."
"It's not like that, Kell," Lindsey murmured. "Promise."
"Linz—"
"Kell, please. Just leave me alone. And do not bother Rune with this. You know she'll come back early, and I won't have that. Not on my account.”
"As long as you promise you'll call me if you start feeling—"
"I won't feel that way, but if I do, I'll call you. Promise."
"Fine. Then we're going. But girl, you owe me some kinda answers, someday."
"Get in line, Kell."
"There's just one thing you should know before we—"
"RAQUEL!"
Despite a door between them, Raquel held her hands up, palms out, in a gesture of surrender. "Alright, alright. Have it your way."
Hamish patted me on the back. "I'll text you later, laddie," he whispered. "Good luck with that bird. You'll need it."
Raquel squeezed my arm. "Maybe just leave her, Dane. She clearly doesn't want to talk about it." This is whispered as well.
"I can hear you whispering!" Lindsey shouted
"I'm good," I whispered back. "Just go."
Hamish and Raquel took their leave, and I was alone in the corner/hallway.
"Kell?" came Lindsey's voice a solid minute later. "You still there?"
I sat down on the floor, put my back to the door. "Nope. Just me."
"Dane?"
"The one and only."
"Did you miss the part where I said to go away and leave me alone?"
"Nope."
"So, if it applies to one of my best friends, why would it not apply to you?"
“Oh, I'm sure it does," I said. "I'm just choosing to ignore that."
"Dane—"
"Lindsey, I'm not leaving."
"Dammit, Dane. I'm not letting you in. I want to be alone."
"Fine. You can be alone in there, and I'll be alone out here."
"Fuck me," she muttered.
"I did. It was fantastic. Wanna go again?"
"DANE!"
"No? Okay, then."
"Dane."
"Linz?"
"What do you want?"
"A million dollars. A Ferrari. Peace on Earth and Goodwill Toward Men."
"Dane. Please. Just answer the fucking question."
"I did."
"WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME, FUCKNUT?" she shouted.
"To talk."