Chapter 16 #2
But before the moment escalates, the first inmate arrives. Amelie’s focus snaps to the escort, and she is back to her baseline, professional, and efficient.
We are occupied the entire afternoon, reaching into the evening. When we’re back at the hotel, after an hour drive without a single word passing between us, I tell her I’ll go to bed early and close the door behind me. I fall onto the bed. I am exhausted.
I don’t even order room service. I just fall asleep right where I am.
The next morning, I feel more like myself again, and we rinse and repeat the previous day.
When we reach the hotel that evening, the receptionist tells us there is a hurricane warning, but the NOAA can’t say for sure whether it will hit the island or just the coast.
Wonderful. Of all the things that could happen, it had to be a hurricane. I am scared ot it. I don’t do well with unpredictable events.
“What are your experiences with hurricanes like that one? Is it likely it’ll hit?” I ask the man.
“It usually calms over land,” he says. “I wouldn’t be too worried. We’re used to them here. As long as there are no sirens, everything will be fine.”
So we get to the prison the next day, complete the final rounds of scans, and then spend the last day on the questionnaires. I ask the prison director about the storm, and he says it’s unlikely to get as far in, which calms my fear a bit.
The questionnaires are not only illuminating but also the most interesting gaze into the criminal mind I have ever gotten. Some of the inmates speak openly about their desires to inflict pain, their conflicts, and convictions.
Amelie is as excited about them as I am, and that evening we talk the entire way back in the car.
When I turn off the car in the parking lot, there is a moment of silence.
“Can I ask you something?” I ask.
“You did already ask me something by asking,” she says with a chuckle.
I groan.
“Ask,” she says and laughs.
“What made you so interested in behavioral neuroscience?”
She stares at me for a moment.
“Knowledge gives the illusion of protection,” she says, averts her eyes, and gets out of the car. I sit in it for another moment, once again rendered speechless by her words.
The next day, our flight leaves at noon. We check out of the hotel and get to the airport.
But what happens then is something none of us has anticipated.
Sirens.
Coldness surges with fear through me.
We look at each other.
Amelie grasps her phone.
“All planes are grounded, and the hurricane is hitting the land, too. Increased to a stage 5.”
“Stage 5?” I ask, horrified, and my mind goes blank. I am not good in a crisis.
She, however, seems to be.
She calls the hotel we came from, but they have no more rooms available. She searches for some things on her phone. I just stand there, useless, on the verge of panicking.
“Okay, we could drive up north, as it is expected to stay south of Jacksonville. Meaning we could either fly from there or drive to Georgia.
“What—?” I stammer out.
“Just come, we only have six hours,” she says, grabbing my stuff.
Half an hour later, I’m back in a car, she is driving, and I am sitting with my legs drawn up on the passenger seat. I am so far out of my comfort zone.
“You would’ve sucked in neurosurgery,” she says at some point. “Seriously, crisis management is not yours.”
“Gallows humor, hm?” I ask her coldly back.
“We all have our qualities,” she says.
The wind blows our car here and there, and I wonder if driving has been the right decision, especially when we are stuck in traffic, because apparently, leaving is what people here do. After four hours, we’re finally out of traffic on a lonelier road leading nowhere.
The wind surges.
And by surges, I mean I have to push open the door with all my force when I get out of the car at a gas station.
“You’re not from here?” asks the woman behind the counter.
“Manhattan,” I say.
“You should find shelter, that storm’s gonna hit,”
“But in the news they said—“
“Been living here my entire life, those storms are hitting. Here, get there,” she says and hands me a card. “They’re German immigrants, built their motel chains stone by stone, we all sit them out there.”
“Amelie!” I shout as panic surges through my chest, staring at the card. I can’t, I just can’t deal with any of it anymore.
She comes with lemonade, chips and a stuffed turtle in her hand.
“What’s wrong?” she asks, as unconcerned as someone can be.
“You two had better get shelter there,” says the cashier to Amelie. “We all go there. That storm is gonna hit.”
“Thanks,” says Amelie, pays for the stuff and the gas with her black Amex, and pushes me out of the station.
Black Amex. Metal black Amex.
Something that I can focus on.
She must be rich, rich. It took my father a decade for Amex to offer him the black metal. And she has one before she even turns twenty.
Ten minutes later, we arrive at a grey, brick motel. The parking lot is filled with trucks.
“Wait here,” Amelie tells me as she gets out of the car. Her hair blows up, and she fights to even get into the reception. Meanwhile, I sit in the rattling car.
She comes back five minutes later.
Five minutes where I am alone with me an my fear.
I want to get home.
Lie on my floor with Black Matter and not entertain the idea of people for an entire week.
“Okay, good news and bad news,” she says when she hops back into the car, dripping wet from just five yards.
“They have a room, but it’s only one.”
I don’t know what to say. I can’t be with her in a room. I need to un-people. Un-her. Un-everything.
“I took it,” she continues, because look at this. She holds up her phone, showing the hurricane map.
“That’s us,” and she points right above the outskirts of the hurricane. “It grew stronger. We are staying here. It’s safe. So get out of the car and come.”
“I—“
“Out of the car, now!” she says. I just do as told. I don’t function right now. I feel like a four-year-old toddler.
Rain is pelting down on us as she walks me to the room. It’s not even nightfall, but the light outside is so dark from the nearing storm, it looks like dooming dusk. She opens the door.
“Get in,” she says harshly, “I’m getting our stuff.”
She closes the door, leaving me dripping on the carpet in the room and the wind howling outside. I stand there in the half-dark until she gets back.
When she opens the door, it flies from her hand and hits the wall with a loud bang. A bang that finally gets me back to my senses.
I move, take my stuff from her.
She closes the door with force and locks it from inside.
We both look at each other, wet as we are, and then she laughs.
“That was fun,” she says.
“I hate getting wet,” I answer robotically.
“I can see that,” she says, and removes her wet clothing, and avert my eyes.
“I’m gonna shower,” she says, closes the curtains, grabs her duffle, and walks past me in her underwear to the bathroom. Leaving me standing in complete darkness.
I risk one glance after her, driven by uncontrolled curiosity. I have never seen another woman undressed outside of images that a woman in need can find online.
She leaves the bathroom with a crack open. Why would she leave it open?
I just gaze at the door, the light from it falling in a triangular shape toward where I stand.
Lavender-scented steam finds its way into the main room, a scent I feel drawn to. The scent I have smelled on her when she kissed me.
Desire builds in me.
A desire to fully open the door.
I want to see her. Her naked form.
My core flutters as I take one step closer.
She could’ve closed the door if she wanted privacy, couldn’t she?
Just one more step—
The water stops, and I realize what I am doing here.
I take several steps back, my heart pounding fast.
She steps in front of the steamed mirror, a towel wrapped around her, and wipes it clean.
Suddenly, her eyes meet mine through the mirror.
Shit.
I want to avert my eyes. But I can’t.
She takes a towel and dries her hair with it. It falls to one side, and her eyes meet mine again.
One infinite moment where she stares at me.
And then, her towel rushes to the floor.
Her naked back.
I gasp in.
She is muscular.
A round ass.
Perfectly presenting itself to me as she leans forward to grab something.
I don’t register anything else anymore.
She pours some lotion onto her palm and then glides with her hands over her body. Her neck, her shoulders, her hips, her ass, her legs—she does it so sensually, that I arousal spreads through me.
When she is done, and my eyes snap back up, I see that she watches me through the mirror.
She turns.
My heart skips a beat.
I can see everything.
Her private parts—
She leans onto the sink.
Her head tilted.
The corner of her mouth tugs into a mischievous smirk.
She pushes the bathroom door open with the toes of her outstretched leg.
And then she just stands there, one leg crossed over the other, leaning slightly back with her immaculate skin.
I don’t know how much time passes while I watch her.
And then, she pushes herself off the sink.
She walks over to me, naked as she is.
The amount of confidence she must have.
She stops in front of me. She is close, so close I can feel the heat radiating from her body. But she doesn’t touch me.
“Do I have the permission to touch you?” she asks.
It was one question. One question that pushes me over the edge.
“Yes,” I breathe out in my amazement.
Her hand brushes through my wet hair, trails down my neck, to my wet blouse, where she opens the buttons. Slowly, deliberately, carefully adapting to my needs.
Her palms on my chest.
A tingling sensation surges through me.
My breath fastens.
Her hands slide up to my shoulders underneath the fabric as she pushes the wet blouse down. The feeling is horrible, but I don’t register it. My focus is with her. And the desire I feel for her.
It rushes silently to the floor.
She trails ever so softly with her fingers over my arms.
A shudder of epic proportions causes me to close my eyes and let my head fall back.
Her body is so close to mine, as her lips brush with the least possible contact from my collarbone up to my ear.