Chapter Twenty-Two Getaway
“Craig?”
What the sound of his voice did to me.
“Bedroom,” I said.
I folded laundry as fast as I could, because once I finished, I could relax.
“You got your hair cut.” He was standing in the bedroom doorway looking at me. He hadn’t taken off his jacket.
“Yeah,” I said.
“Stop folding for a sec.”
“It’s gonna wrinkle if I let it sit.”
He pulled the T-shirt I was holding out of my hand and dropped it on the bed, then he slipped his arms around my neck and kissed me.
I put my hands around his waist and kissed him back.
I’d almost forgotten why I was doing all this, why I was stressing myself out.
Why everything had to be perfect. Now that I was holding him, everything was.
The oven timer buzzed.
“Brownies,” I said.
“Fuck ’em,” he said and kissed me harder.
I eased him away. “They’ll burn.”
He followed me to the kitchen, walking right up behind me. I pulled the pan out of the oven. The brownies were perfect, all crackled on top and caramelized around the edges. I set the pan on the rack to cool.
“How was work?” I said, turning around, and he was right there, right up against me.
“I wanna fuck you so bad right now,” he said.
I threw the oven mitt over my shoulder and pulled him in for another kiss. I pushed the kitchen door shut behind him and pressed him against it.
Then I went down on my knees, just to see the look on his face.
“Fuck,” he said as I unzipped his jeans.
He was loaded for bear. He was so hard I had to undo the button of his jeans to take him out.
He usually played it so cool that actually seeing and feeling how much he wanted me blew my mind.
He filled my mouth so perfectly, and he sighed when I took him in, and he braced himself against my shoulders.
I took my time, because when you’ve wanted something for so long and finally get it, you want to enjoy it for as long as you can.
His jacket zipper clacked against the kitchen door, and I felt him getting close, so I took him all the way in.
He yelled when he shot, then he relaxed against the door and slid into my arms. His head fell on my shoulder. I tucked him away and zipped him up.
“Okay, honey kid?” I said, and I kissed his forehead slowly and softly as he held onto me, and the kitchen smelled of brownies and sex and him.
“You want to head out for dinner?” I said. “After I finish folding the laundry?”
“Let’s do that.”
We folded the laundry together, and I made a pile to pack for the cottage. “How was work?”
“Over,” he said curtly. “I am never working with Jack again.”
“I don’t want to work with him again either.”
“He said he was sorry for what he did to you,” he said.
“Big fucking deal.”
“Then he told me he loved me.”
“I knew it!” I spiked a roll of socks onto the bed. “I can’t believe he actually said it. What did you say?”
“That I wasn’t interested.” He looked upset. I’d seen him angry but not distraught like this. “I just got out of there. The way he confronted me... We were alone.”
“You think he might not let it lie?”
“He’s had months to let it lie, and he hasn’t. And I’m not done with the film. When it comes out, I’ll have to do publicity, go to the premiere with him because it’s his film. I’m gonna have to see him again.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“I’m not putting you through that.”
“I’ll do it if it’ll help. You think he might try something?”
“Craig, nothing’s gonna happen with him. I love you.”
“I know. I mean, would he try something without your consent?”
“If you’d asked me that yesterday, I would have said no way. But after today... I tried to leave when he confronted me, and he blocked me. Then he grabbed my arm.”
“Shit. Did he hurt you?”
“No. He just held onto me, and when I pulled away, he put his hand on my arm again and told me he loved me. He could have stopped me if he wanted to, but he didn’t.”
“No, he used his size to intimidate you instead. He’s just like my uncle. He never left marks on me, but he made it damned clear he could have if I didn’t do what he said. Fuck that asshole.”
I wanted to punch Jack. I knew exactly how Eddie felt. “I’ll go with you to the premiere. I’ll go with you to every interview you have to do. If he puts a hand on you again, I’ll rip his nutsack off.”
He burst out laughing. “Thanks. I’ll take you up on that—the going with me to stuff, not the nut ripping. I don’t want to spend the next ten years visiting you in prison.”
I laughed, and the tension immediately diffused. “Okay, but if he tries anything, I’ll fuck him up. I don’t care how big he is.” I hugged him tight.
He hugged me, patted my back, and let me go. “Let’s get dinner. I’m starving.”
In the elevator, when I pressed B, he said, “Why’d you do that?”
“Because we’ve got a rental car now. We can drive to the restaurant.”
“Oh, yeah,” he said.
“We should buy a car.” We should buy a car. Together. I heard myself say that. And I freaked out that he might freak out that I’d said that.
What he actually said was, “It’ll cost.”
So he didn’t have an issue with us buying something together, only with how much it cost.
“I’ve been checking prices,” I said. “I’m not talking a new car, but they pay me decently at work, and since you’ve been paying half the rent, I’ve been saving more than usual.
This trip will be nice, but afterward, it’d be nice to be able to go for a drive together or out to a show or a club and not have to catch a bus or the subway home or wait for an Uber.
We could go on real dates.” I’d been thinking about it for a while, but I hadn’t said it out loud because it sounded...
cheesy? Presumptive? But it was all part of this, us, together.
“I’d like that,” he said.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. We could go to a drive-in and make out in the car.”
“Or we could go to the beach and fuck in the car.”
“If we get a car, we’ll pretty much have to fuck in it.”
I smiled at him, and then he smiled at me, and suddenly we were making out in the elevator, which was super hot, until the elevator doors opened, and we had to cut it out, but we held hands all the way to the car because I didn’t want to let go of him.
We hadn’t both been awake and able to touch each other in so long that I wanted to savor every second.
I drove us to the restaurant, and we shared a giant platter of appetizers and pretended to watch hockey on the TV over the bar. It felt like a real date, but I didn’t enjoy it as much as I should have, because I was running through the to-do list in my head.
After we’d eaten as much as we could, and the server went away to box our leftovers, he looked at me and pressed his knee against my thigh.
“You didn’t get off earlier,” he said. “I owe you one.”
“Get me at home.”
He winked at me with that half smile that made me want to kiss him right there in the restaurant.
We paid our bill, collected our box of food and went out to the car.
“Hey, should I drive?” he said.
“I don’t know—should you?” I tossed him the key and got in the passenger seat. “Are you one of those scary drivers?”
“Depends on what you call scary.” He adjusted the seat.
See, I wasn’t used to being driven places, except in an Uber.
My parents bought me a car when I turned seventeen, and I used it until second year university when I realized having a car in Toronto when you were a student was a nuisance.
All my friends wanted me to be the designated driver, so I couldn’t drink.
I was not used to other people driving me, and I was really not used to him driving me.
He drove with one hand on the wheel, and he rode the accelerator hard, like the sum total of his driving experience was playing Grand Theft Auto.
I tried not to say anything, because I didn’t want to sound like my mom or like I was freaking out. But, shit.
“That light was yellow, Eddie.”
“As long as it wasn’t red.”
When we got to our building, he parked in the visitor’s spot, turned to me, and gave me a long kiss, which almost made up for nearly giving me a heart attack.
“Got you here in one piece, didn’t I?” he said.
“Uh.”
“What did I do wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“You didn’t let go of the holy shit handle the whole way home.”
I realized what I was doing and let go. “I just don’t like not being in control.”
“I must have scared the hell out of you when we got together.”
“At first, yeah, but then you made it clear you were gonna let me decide what we were gonna do and when, because you’re so amazing. Then I wasn’t scared anymore.” I smiled at him and kissed him. “Thanks.”
I didn’t entirely relax because there was still too much to do.
We went upstairs, finished packing, carried our bags down to the car, and locked them in the trunk.
I had to put my tap board in the back of the car because it wouldn’t fit in the trunk.
I didn’t want to take three days off practicing and lose my edge.
Not after I’d worked so hard to get it back.
We went back to the apartment, and I frosted the brownies, since they’d cooled by then. He watched me the whole time.
“You want some?” I said.
“I’m stuffed.”
“Guess we’ll have them at the cottage.”
I cut them up and put them in a cookie tin for the trip. Once I was done, I felt like I could relax again.
“Want to watch a movie?” he said.
“Sure. You pick.”
He went into the living room, turned on the TV, and flipped through my DVD collection. I sat on the couch. He put in a documentary on Ireland that I’d told him was so relaxing it put me to sleep.
I didn’t know why he put that on. Until he came back to the couch.
“You don’t want to do more laundry, do you?” he said.
“No.”
He grinned, knelt on the floor in front of me and moved my legs apart. “You want to cash that rain check?”
I’d been feeling tired until he’d said that. “Yeah.”
How many days had I spent fantasizing about him doing that, and now it was about to happen, I was choking like I did before competitions.