6. Flora
— ? —
Flora
The livestream is absolute torture that I can’t make myself stop watching.
I’m curled up on our couch with a glass of wine and my laptop balanced on my knees, watching my husband walk a red carpet three thousand miles away on day nine of a fourteen-day tour.
The shelter closed early today and I came home to an empty house and made the mistake of checking social media, and now I can’t look away from it.
He looks gorgeous. Of course he does. A tailored suit that fits him like a second skin, dark blonde hair artfully tousled, that smile he does with his whole face, the one I’ve never in four years managed to stay angry at for longer than about a minute.
The camera loves him and he loves it back, turning this way and that, giving the photographers exactly what they came for.
My husband, the star, doing the one thing on earth he was built to do.
And right beside him, close enough to touch, is Cecilia fucking Winsley.
She’s not near him. She’s attached to him, her arm looped through his like they’re a couple, her body pressed so close a piece of paper couldn’t fit between them. She’s laughing at something with her head thrown back so her blonde hair cascades over her shoulders, and the camera eats it up.
The interviewers are practically salivating.
“Aster! Cecilia! Over here! Can we get a shot of you two together?”
They pose. His hand lands on her lower back and her hand rests on his chest, right over his heart, and I want to reach through the screen and take her arm off at the shoulder.
“You two have such obvious chemistry,” one interviewer gushes. “Is that something you had to work on, or did it just happen naturally?”
Cecilia giggles. She actually giggles, like she’s a teenager instead of a grown woman with an agenda. “Oh, Aster is just so easy to work with. He makes everyone feel comfortable.”
“She’s being modest,” Aster says, and his voice is warm in that professional way he has. “Cecilia’s incredibly talented. It’s been a pleasure getting to know her.”
I sit on my own couch and turn that sentence over a few times.
The comments are scrolling faster than I can read them.
ASTER AND CECILIA ARE SO CUTE TOGETHER
they should just date already the sexual tension is OFF THE CHARTS
where’s his wife???
Flora who? lol
his wife is sweet but let’s be real she doesn’t belong in his world
I slam the laptop shut so hard the wine glass wobbles.
My phone rings almost immediately, like it could sense my distress, and Aster’s name flashes across the screen. I stare at it for three rings, trying to get my voice under control, before I answer.
“Hey, baby.” His voice is warm and a little out of breath, like he just came off the carpet. “Sorry I couldn’t call earlier, the press schedule has been absolutely insane.”
“I saw.” I keep my voice even through sheer force of will. “The livestream.”
“Oh yeah, the carpet thing. It went pretty well, I think. Good questions, good energy.”
“Cecilia seemed very attached.”
There’s a pause, just a beat too long. “What do you mean?”
“I mean she was hanging off your arm like a barnacle for the entire event. Every photo, every interview, she found a way to be right next to you.”
“She’s just like that.” I can almost hear him shrugging it off. “Some actors are really hands-on. No sense of personal space.”
“With everyone? Or just with you?”
Another pause. “What are you asking me, Flora?”
“I’m asking if you’ve noticed that this woman is all over you constantly. That every gossip account is posting about your chemistry. That the comments on literally everything are about how you two should be together.”
“That’s just internet bullshit. You know how people are.”
“I know how she is.” I set the wine glass down before I throw it at something. “I watched her at the studio. I watched her at the launch party. She’s not friendly with everyone, Aster. She’s friendly with you specifically.”
He sighs, and I can picture him running a hand through his hair the way he does when he’s frustrated with me. “She’s probably just networking. Trying to boost her profile by being seen with me.”
“And that doesn’t bother you at all?”
“Not really? I mean, it’s annoying, but I’ve dealt with worse. And it’ll all be over in five days anyway.”
I want to scream. I want to reach through the phone and shake him until he sees what I see.
“I think she has her eyes on you,” I say bluntly. “Not for networking. For you.”
He actually laughs. The bastard actually laughs. “Flora, baby, are you jealous?”
“Don’t do that.”
“I’m not doing anything. It’s cute, honestly. I like having a jealous wife.”
“I’m not jealous, Aster. I’m concerned. There’s a difference.”
“Okay, okay.” He’s still half-laughing and clearly not taking a word of this seriously.
“Look, there are five days left on this tour. I’ll come home and we’ll have that talk you wanted and all this Cecilia stuff will be completely irrelevant, because I’ll be in bed with my wife instead of on some carpet with an actress who can’t keep her hands to herself. ”
“So you admit she’s been handsy.”
“I mean.” He hesitates. “She’s been a little forward, maybe. But I haven’t encouraged it. I shut it down when she gets too close.”
“Do you? Because from what I saw on that livestream, you were letting her use you as furniture.”
“What do you want me to do, Flora? Shove her away on camera and cause a huge scene? She’s attached to this project. I have to be professional.”
“Professional doesn’t mean letting her drape herself all over you like a cheap coat.”
Silence stretches out between us. I can hear the sounds of a hotel through his phone, a door closing down the hall, somebody’s television, a whole building full of people who get to be near him while I’m sitting here alone.
“Five days,” he says finally. “Just five more days and then I’m all yours. I swear.”
I want to believe him. I really do.
“I don’t trust her,” I say. “Please. Something about that woman is wrong.”
“Noted.” His voice softens. “I miss you, you know. This hotel bed is way too big without you in it.”
“Then come home.”
“Soon. I promise.” He pauses, and when he speaks again his voice has dropped lower. “What are you wearing right now?”
The question catches me completely off guard. “What?”
“Describe it to me.”
I look down at myself. His old Stanford t-shirt, cotton shorts, nothing remotely sexy about any of it.
“Your Stanford shirt,” I say. “The gray one with the hole in the collar.”
“The one you stole from me the second week we were dating?”
“You gave it to me.”
“I let you borrow it. There’s a difference.”
“There really isn’t.”
He laughs, low and warm, and despite everything my stomach flutters. This is us. This is who we are underneath all the distance and the frustration.
“Take it off,” he says.
“Excuse me?”
“The shirt. Take it off.”
“Aster.”
“I’m stuck in a hotel room three thousand miles away and I miss my wife and I can’t stop thinking about the way you felt the night before I left.” His voice drops even further. “Take off the shirt, Flora.”
Heat blooms in my stomach despite my anger. “We’re in the middle of a fight.”
“We’re in the middle of a discussion. And I’d rather be in the middle of you.”
“That’s terrible.”
“Made you smile though.”
He did, damn him.
I pull the shirt over my head, feeling ridiculous and turned on and annoyed at myself for being either one. “It’s off.”
“The shorts too.”
I shimmy out of them. “Done.”
“Now tell me what you want me to do to you when I get home.”
“Aster.”
“Tell me.” His voice is rough now. “Because I’ve been thinking about it every single night. The way you taste. The sounds you make when I get my mouth on you. The way you pull my hair when you’re close.”
My breath catches. “You’re impossible.”
“And you’re naked. Tell me, Flora. Tell me what you want.”
I let my hand drift between my thighs and find myself wet and aching already, my fingers sliding through the slick and spreading it around my clit.
“I want you to start by kissing me like you mean it. Slow and deep, your tongue in my mouth while your hands grab my ass and pull me against you. Then I want you to kiss down my neck and suck on my tits until my nipples are hard and sore.”
“Fuck,” he groans, and I know he’s touching himself too. “Keep going, baby. I need to hear your voice.”
I circle my clit slowly, drawing it out. “Then I want you on your knees. I want your mouth on my pussy. I want you to lick my clit and push your tongue inside me while you finger me at the same time. I want you to suck on my clit until I come on your face.”
“Yeah?” His breathing is ragged. “How does it feel right now?”
“Not as good as you.” I slide two fingers inside myself and pump them in and out. “Nothing feels as good as your cock stretching me open.”
“When I get home,” he says, his voice strained, “I’m not letting you out of the bedroom for a week.”
“Promises, promises.”
“That one I’m keeping.” He groans again. “Are you close?”
“Getting there.” I speed up my fingers and let my eyes fall closed, imagining it’s his hand instead of mine. “Talk to me. Tell me what you’d do if you were here.”
“I’d have my face between your thighs right now.
I’d be eating your pussy until you forgot your own name.
I’d lick your clit in circles and then suck it hard while I shove three fingers inside you and fuck you with them.
I’d make you come on my tongue, then I’d flip you over, pull your hips up, and slam my cock into you from behind.
I’d fuck you so deep you’d feel it in your throat. ”
“We don’t have neighbors close enough to hear anything.”
“Then I’d fuck you hard enough that they’d hear it anyway. I’d reach around and rub your clit while I pound into you, and when you come I’d keep going until you come again. Then I’d pull out and come all over your ass.”
I laugh, breathless, and the sound turns into a moan as my fingers find exactly the right rhythm. “I’m close.”
“Good. Come for me, Flora. Let me hear it.”
I do. I bite my lip and arch against my own hand and let the pleasure crest, gasping his name into the phone while my whole body shudders through it, my fingers still moving through the aftershocks, slick and messy.
His release follows a few seconds later, a muffled curse and then my name over and over.
We lie there in separate time zones, breathing together, connected by nothing except sound.
“I love you,” he says.
“I love you too.”
“Just stay away from her, mister,” I add, because I can’t quite let it go. “I mean it.”
“She’s nothing to me,” he promises. “You’re everything.” There’s a pause, and I can hear him deciding whether to say the next thing. “One more thing. The director wants a week in New York after the tour wraps. Late shows, the awards push. I haven’t said yes.”
I’m suddenly very awake.
“The week after the tour is Baja.”
“I know it is.”
“You said yes to Baja. Out loud. In our bed.”
“I know. I said I haven’t agreed to anything.”
“Then say no.”
“I’ll handle it, Flora.”
I’ll handle it. I lie there naked on our couch with the phone against my ear and listen to my husband tell me he’ll handle a vacation I booked, like it’s a scheduling conflict and not the first thing I’ve asked for in a year that had a date attached to it.
“Handle it by saying no,” I say, and I hang up before he can answer.
I don’t fall asleep smiling. I lie awake and tell myself he’ll call back, and he doesn’t, and eventually I drag myself to bed and sleep anyway.
I wake up at three in the morning with my phone buzzing beside me, and there’s a text from my friend Mara that says she just saw the photos from the tour and asks if I’m okay.
My stomach drops.
I open Instagram with shaking hands and it takes me less than ten seconds to find what she’s talking about.
There’s Cecilia, walking into what is clearly a hotel lobby.
The timestamp says 1:47 AM. The caption says late night with the cast, and Aster is visible in the background, heading toward the elevators.
It could be nothing. The whole cast is probably staying in the same hotel, and they probably had an event that ran late, and there are a hundred perfectly boring explanations for two people using the same door.
But I lie awake until dawn anyway, unable to shake the feeling that something is very wrong.