The Plan (19 page)

“Very well. Shall I order dinner, sir?” I leave the bathroom as I speak. Flee, actually.

“What I meant was that you really don’t have to keep using ‘sir.’ And I feel like Mexican food,” he says, still in the bathroom for some unknown reason.

Not good. I have already read it over, and there is nothing like that on the hotel restaurant menu. “I can run out and pick something up.”

His tie appears on the doorknob. “Get changed.”

“Sir?” It’s a habit at this point. He flinches a bit at the word but says nothing.

“We will go out. There is bound to be a decent place around here. A chain or something.”

He disappears into the bedroom. I sit on the sofa, fingers drumming my skirt.

Changing as fast as men tend to, he’s out in jeans and surely a garment of some other kind. I’m fixated on the jeans.

Denim in long expanses. Barely contours to his thighs. Thighs I have leaned against but not touched. Bare feet.

Barefoot! Put some shoes on, already! How am I supposed to look unaffected and asexual with all this unfair fuckery happening?

He sees me sitting. He stops short, looks back toward the bedroom.

“Um, it is all yours.” He pulls his shirt down and steps to the side. A gray, long sleeve, V-neck tee. I pass silently and close the door.

I really want to lean my back against the door and breathe deeply for a few moments. A few hours. Fill my lungs. Decompress. Instead, I grab out my jeans and a white pullover. If I were home, I would wear my favorite electric blue sweater.

As I slide on my clothes, it occurs to me I’ve missed the opportunity to search for restaurants.

It’s getting to me. I’m slipping.

A quick search on my phone finds one within walking distance and several others nearby. Shoving my phone back in my pocket, I vow to keep my head in the game.

Grab door. Yank open. March.

“Ready, Mr. Canon?” My words are followed by a clatter in the open bathroom.

Canon walks out, nodding.

I check the mirror and think I might smell my perfume in the air.

6:10 p.m.

*
Location
: On the Border.

*
Chips
: Basket #3.

*
Salsa
: Abandoned for queso.

*
Margarita
: Want one.

*
Had
: None.

“I
T
I
S
O
FTEN
T
HIS
W
AY
. You get on site and the whole proposal needs reinventing.” He practically shouts over the music.

“Good to know.” I’m smiling for some reason. I feel happy. It must be the cilantro talking.

He goes on a bit about contracts and even more about supplements and the new skin care line. I’m surprised; I would have figured he didn’t involve himself in products, just deals.

“This was the best idea,” he says and points his fork at his plate. I think we are both weary of stuffy dinners and room service.

Careful there, Canon, you’ll dislocate your shoulder patting yourself on your back.
I nod and take a bite of my black beans. Then stop mid-chew. Do black beans cause gas? I can’t be playing a tune in my sleep. Not with him a few feet away.

“Yes,” I say, cutting off a bite of chimichanga. “It is delicious.” Without thinking, I offer him the forkful.

It’s just suspended there. Hovering. He looks at it and me and then leans over and wraps those lips around my fork and pulls and takes what I have offered him.

And now I’m just supposed act like it is no big deal to put that fork that has been behind his lips, inside his mouth, touched his tongue, back into my mouth.

“What do you think of Lawrence Peters?” he finally asks.

What to say in a situation like this? Be professional or go for blunt honesty? “He is an ignorant bore.”

Guess we’re rolling with honest.

Canon looks like he might have horked a jalapeño into his sinuses.

“And your opinion on the owner, Samuel Dowry?”

“Well,” I say, charging ahead, “I spent very little time with him. He seems shrewd but has…eclectic taste in personnel.”

“Eclectic…” Canon repeats, smiling. “Lance Rowe?”

“Delusional, manwhore sycophant.”

He laughs. “Diana Fralin?”

“You would know better than me,” I say and stuff a stringy, cheesy bite into my mouth.

“But I asked you.” His brows knit together.

Not sidestepping that landmine. Honesty. “Duplicitous skank.”

“Wow. Not pulling any punches.” He sits back and sprawls his arm across the back of the booth.

I shrug.

“What did she do to you?”

I would like to ask you the same thing
…Scratch that. I don’t really want to know.

“Got you to call her Diana,” I mutter into my chimichanga.

“What was that?”

“Nothing.”

“It didn’t sound like nothing.”

“You mean to tell me you haven’t noticed how condescending she is toward me?”

“Yes, actually I have.”

“So why would you ask?”

He studies me for a moment. “Why do you let her get away with it?”

“I’m not supposed to embarrass my boss.”

He blinks. Repeatedly.

Yeah, put that in your picky pipe and smoke it
.

He watches his fork swirl the rice around the upper corner of his plate. “I think we need to talk.”

“If you say so.” I try to look nonchalant.

“Don’t you think so?”

“If you think so, sir, then I think so.”

“Don’t do that.”

“Do what, sir?”

His fork clinks on the Fiestaware. “That. Don’t you think we have moved past the mister/sir thing in our off-hours now?”

Oh, this is more to the point than I was expecting. Pointy. Thorny.

This is different.

I swallow…which is different too.

He appears to chew on the word he’s about to say. “Emma.” Piercing stare. “You do remember, don’t you? Because I really hope to hell you remember, otherwise I need to take a whole different tack here.”

Our perky waitress appears. “Did you two save room for desert? Our fried ice cream is amazing.”
With a pineapple garnish?

Canon looks at me as if to say he is game. I think he is a puzzle.

“Does it have a honey-based sauce?” I asked her.

“Oh, yes. Cinnamon and honey. It’s delicious.”

“No, thank you, then,” I say.

“Ugh. Bee vomit.” Canon looks nauseated. I’m probably catching flies. Too weird…the same phrase I use.

“How about some margaritas? They’re on special.”

“No,” we say in unison quickly. I shiver. Drinks. A reminder of last night.

“Just the check,” he adds.

8:05 p.m.

C
ANON
I
S
I
N
T
HE
S
HOWER.

No other status report possible.

…

…

…

…

8:17 p.m.

I
’M
I
N
T
HE
S
HOWER.

The same shower in which Alaric Canon was naked and touching himself mere minutes ago.

The water on the walls may well have splashed off his skin.

Showerhead: Does not detach.

Universe: Hates me.

Water beats down on me. Our conversation plays back in my mind.

Not the best of decisions…for either of us.

Not my finest hour.

Mine either.

You regret it?

Yes…no…

Me, too.

Friends?

With you?

He scoffs lightly. Friendly then…

For the best…

I do not feel better. Not even in the realm of better.

8:35 p.m.

*
Awkwardness
: Tens all around. Off the chart.

I
T
T
OOK
A G
REAT
D
EAL
of insisting that Canon keep the bedroom. I am not in the camp of people who think genitalia determines many things, one of which being who gets the sofa and who gets the bed.

I’m happier out here with the television to keep me company. Hopefully the ambient noise will scare Lincoln away.

I don my PJs while still in the bathroom. My skin is damp, and the fabric clings.

I step out into the quiet main area. Canon is in his room.

A sofa bed is not as easy to set up as one might wish.

I am determined not to ask for help. It’s not the weight that is the problem. It’s stuck.

It pulls free. Of course, a spring hook also digs into my ’67 Impala pajamas and rips a huge hole as it scrapes down my thigh.

“Aaahhhhh!”

The bed legs smack the floor. I press my hands to my leg and will the pain away. It’s probably not that bad, just shocking.

“What happened?”

I open eyes I hadn’t realized I’d squeezed shut. Canon is down in front of me. He moves my hands to check.

I hiss.

At the sound he looks up at me. His fingers press through the tear in my pants.

“I’ll be okay.”

He shakes his head and tries to check for damage. Unsuccessfully.

Without looking up, he pulls what’s left of my pants off and out of the way. Why the concern? I can surely still brew coffee and type even if my leg needs amputation.

“I said I’m okay.”

All thoughts cease when his thumb traces a foot long red mark up my inner thigh.

“Enjoying yourself down there, Mr. Canon?”

The words are out of my mouth before I realize I’ve thought them.

He freezes.

It’s like a switch flips.

My hands run through his hair. I don’t know when I put them there. They move down his neck. To his shoulders. I fist his shirt and pull. Never looking up, he grabs the bottom of his shirt with his free hand. It goes over his head in one motion. It hangs in a circle around the arm he is still using to apply pressure to my leg.

“Move your arm and let the shirt fall.”

His breath hitches. I’m shaking. I hope he can’t tell. His shirt lands next to my pants, and he returns to my thigh.

“Surely you are familiar with the saying…kiss and make it better?”

Slowly—oh, God, so slowly—he leans in more and presses his lips to the bottom of the scrape near my knee.

Oh, yeah. I’m feeling no pain.
Then his warm lips move up and press again.

Then again.

And up again.

If my knees don’t buckle out from under me, it’s going to be an unqualified miracle.

Near the top, after a dozen plus ongoing kisses, I touch his arm and bring it to my hip. To steady myself. I hope it seems like a reward.

His arm wraps completely around me. My hip at his shoulder, his palm pressing along the small of my back, stopping when his fingers encircle the other side of my waist.

I indulge myself. I run my fingers through his hair. Silk. Slide them over his shoulders. Satin. Trace the indents and sinews. Stone. The planes of his shoulder blades. Oak.

He hums.

I drag my fingers up his back, lightly scratching with my nails. Very lightly.

He moans.

It drowns out mine.

Here is a crossroads. A bridge. A defining moment. Run or succumb. Lead or be led. Live or be dead.

I want a lot.

I want to be more like the women he dates. The polished women. The ones on his arm.

I want him to not just be a fuck hot pretentious wanker who should drink pineapple juice so I can blow his beautiful cock more often.