Commitment (5 page)

“Getting dressed.” She lowered her feet to the floor and stood, looking through the sheets for her top. “Have you seen my shirt?”

“What’s the rush?”

“I have to go,” she insisted. “It’s almost
morning
.”

“So all of a sudden you’re sorry you came up here
.
”

She stopped her search and sat on the edge of the bed for a moment, looking right at him
, smiling
. 

“No. I’m not sorry I came up,” she said realizing as she did
that it was
true. “Not at all.
It’s just that I have work.”

“So be a little late for work. Get back in here.”

He threw back the sheets and patted the space next to him on the bed. Riley averted her gaze, shaking her head.

“I really have to go, Shawn.”

“I’ll holla at you later then.”

“Maybe,” she said, “we should just leave it at this.”

He narrowed his eyes, looking as confused as though she’d suddenly spoken to him in an entirely different language.

She loo
ked at him.
“The thing of it is
,
I’m with somebody.”

He leaned back into the pillows. “You’re with somebody,” he repeated. 

Riley pulled her pants on and c
rouched to look for her shoes.
“I know how that sounds, especially after . . . everything. But . . .” She gave up trying to explain – how could she when she didn’t even understand it herself?

Shawn watched as she stood in front of the mirror, running her fingers through her hair and was still watching her when she finally turned around, ready to go.

“You in love or something?”
he asked finally.
There was a mocking note in his voice that she didn’t too much appreciate.

“I didn’t say that. Just that I’m with somebody.”

He leaned back against the headboard but said nothing more. He still seemed to be processing this new information when Riley turned toward the door pausing to look back at him one last time.

“Have a good show in Baltimore.
And . . .
you
take care.”

He didn’t answer and so she left, shutting the door quietly behind her. 

g

“So how was it?”

Riley froze at the question and reached down to glance through the menu, hoping it covered for her inordinately long hesitation.

“Your interview,” Brian prompted. “How’d it go?”

“
Oh.
It was fine
,”
she
looked up and gave him a quick smile then turned away to get the attention of their waiter. “You ready to order?”

“I always get the same thing,” Brian said. “So
tell me
what
it
was like being around rap royalty
.
Was Russell Simmons there?”

Riley laughed, in spite of herself. “No,
Russell Simmons was not there.
It was a crowded, noisy nightclub full of nineteen year olds.
Ahm, I’m
thinking maybe I’ll get the duck curry to change things up a bit.
”

“But you went someplace
else for the interview, right?
Where was it? Like Nobu or . . .”

“No, we went to Pepper Island. He didn’t strike me as the Nobu type to be honest.”

Then the waiter arrived and Riley was relieved to be talking about Vietnamese summer rolls instead. Once he was gone, however, Brian seemed to want to resume grilling her for information.

“So what type was he?”

“You sound like you w
ant
me to fix you up with him
,” Riley
teased.
“
It’s not like you even listen to rap. All I’ve ever heard you listen to is neo-soul.”

“I’m just curious
, that’s a
ll
. He’s one of the few who stays out of trouble. Seems like he might be smarter than most of them.”

“Well, I can confirm that he does seem pretty smart. But in most other respects, he was completely what you would expect.”

The lie tasted bitter on her tongue and she regretted it immediately.
From what she’s seen he was nothing at all like you would expect.
But it wasn’t like she knew Shawn at all – it
might
be true; it was likely to be true
that he was the same as the rest
.
Certainly one-night stands with random women had to be a staple in his profession and it wasn’t as though she’d broken new ground with him or anything.

And besides, she’d
been
seeing
Brian
for
two months
.
He had at least learned some measure of loyalty. More than she had displayed the previous night.
Between them there
had been none of those awkward conversations about exclusivity, just a seamless blending of lives in an extremely short period of time. He liked the same movies she did, and got the same jokes. They talked about politics, books and music and found to their surprise that in those areas as well,
they were more alike than not.
He had left a job in finance to go to law school and was busy most evenings studying with other 2Ls but that was fine too.

Riley liked that he was fully occupied with his own ambitions, didn’t expect her to act like a “girlfriend” and was curious about her work instead of threatened by
how demanding it was
. On this occasion though, she would have preferred to be spared his curiosity. Each question only raised the possibility that she would have to tell another untruth.

“The important thing is that you got enough out of it to write a good story,” Brian said now.

“I think I did,” Riley mumbled.

For the rest of their meal, they talked only about neutral topics and Riley
pretended
to
herself that
she wasn’t having trouble looking
Brian
in the eye.

g

“So let me get this straight – you
slept
with
him
after what, just three hours of conversation?” 

After dinner, when Brian had to run back to the law library, Riley called
Tracy over and they’d opened a bottle of wine. 

“It was a little more time than that.”

“Okay. Four hours,” Tracy laughe
d.
“So much for journalistic integrity.”

“You’re supposed to be making me feel better about this, remember?” Riley stepped over her friend’s legs, propped on the coffee table.

Tracy shook her head.
“And then you ran out like a scared little girl afterward? That is just classic.”

“I didn’t know what to do! I woke up and all I could think about was how crazy it was that I was even there, and how crazy it was that I wanted to stay.”

“So in spite of your high-minded feminist ideals, you became just another casualty of thug-appeal.” Tracy said. “How
hot
was he?”

“Pretty damn
hot
,” Riley said. “And he wasn’t a thug. Not at all.
He was actually kind of interesting.”

“A rapper who’s
interesting
?”
Tracy said. “Then he must be the best kept secret in hip
hop. And if he was so
interesting
why’d you high
-
tail it out of there like that?”

“Brian.”

Tracy nodded.
“I forgot about him for a second.”

“I
forgot about him for
the whole night
,
” Riley said. “That was what was so terrible. I was vibing with this man and when he touched me it was like . . . I don’t even know how to explain it.”

Tracy was suddenly serious.
“And you stayed the
whole
night?” 

“Yeah.
At one point
we just kind of sat around and talked.”

“What do you talk about with a rapper?” Tracy asked dryly.

“Will you
stop
it with the ‘rapper’ stuff?
We talked about . . .” Riley broke off and laughed. “We talked about the Baltimore Orioles. And scuba diving
.
And music. He liked talking about his music. And I talked about the story I’m working on
and
. . .”

She stopped and smiled.

They
had
talked a lot
, she now remembered
. The sex was
amazing
and
at first
had
overshadowed just about every other
memory she had
of the evening but now she
recalled
how their conversation had continued once the first rush of hormones had been dealt with.

For at least two hours, they talke
d about everything and nothing.
And then while
he was explaining
something – she couldn’t remember now what – she wanted him again so she reached for him and he came to her like they’d been doing
this
for years.

“Hello?
You there?” Tracy was waving a hand in front of her face.

“Y’know what’s awful? Brian literally did not enter my mind the entire evening. Until I woke up naked. I mean, who
does
that?”

“Well, it’s not like you’ll
see him again, right?
So no harm, no foul,” Tracy shrugged.

“That’s right,” Riley agreed.
“No harm, no foul.”

g

Shawn watched Riley navigate the tables, her hips swaying to avoid the backs of diners’ chairs as she made her way through the dining room. This time they were meeting in
the
L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon in the Four Seasons where he had
booked
a suite. She’d called just as he was checking in to tell him she was late leaving work and was starving, so they agreed to meet in the restaurant for a change.

As usual, she was dressed like a teenage boy, in army-green cargo pants and
a white tee
-shirt
, with a lightweight pea coat.
Looped around her neck was a multi-colored
scarf that hung well below her knees. On her feet were those black boots; the ones that laced halfway up her shins, were seriously scuffed at the toes and had clear
ly seen better days.
But she was still the sexiest woman in the joint as far as he was concerned. 

Shawn stood so she would see him and her face brightened when he came into view. This was not a woman who played it cool. She had no game, and she didn’t care if he knew it. She hugged him, pressing her face to his chest for a moment and inhaling him, then pulled back to run her hand over the stubble on his jaw.
It
had been a
full
month since the last time and Shawn wanted to kiss her right then, but instead pulled out a chair into which she collapsed, shedding her coat and that ridiculous messenger sack she called a bag. 

“Nice place,” she said without greeting.
“What’re we eating?”

“I got the t
asting menu.”

He didn’t care what they ate.
The meal was just an unwelcome pit-stop so the tasting menu was his best bet to cover all possible bases.

“How was Paris?” she unfurled her napkin and spread it across her lap. “Beautiful, I bet.”

“If you really want to know, I’ll take you.”

She smiled, which was about all he’d expected in reply, because they had exc
hanges like this all the time.
He offered her things and she refused them or more often, didn’t acknowledge the offer at all.

“You have to go to Pittsburgh,” she reminded him, gently chiding.

“Pittsburgh. Yeah,” he said dryly.

She was probably busy anyway. Because hell, she had a
boyfriend
. Over the last few months, the “someone” she was “kind of with”
h
ad become
much more than that. Brian sometimes came up in casual conversation but no matter how closely Shawn studied her tone for clues, it was impossible to tell how she really felt about dude. He never asked her things like that, because it broke their unspoken rule. Since the second time they’d gotten together there was no talk of other people they might see.