My brain wanted my heart to be angry, but much like in the early stages of our relationship, she completely disagreed.
I love him.
Six, as in six o’fucking clock, came way too early the next morning, and I groaned my disapproval as the alarm blared its annoying reminder that I couldn’t let the ungodly hour pass peacefully during REM sleep. Still, old habits die hard.
After I hit snooze for the third time, and blind avoidance was no longer an option, I was lifted out of bed and carried into the bathroom.
“What the hell?” I muttered when the blinding lights of the bathroom had me covering my eyes with both hands.
“Sorry, honey, but you have to get moving if you want to make your flight.” Thatch set me down on the bathroom counter and left his warm hands at my hips.
I groaned again. “I’ll catch the next flight.”
He laughed and reached up slowly, moving my hands away from my eyes with a gentleness I never personally possessed. “Here,” he said as he placed a hot mug into my hands. “It’s half-caf so you can drink another cup of coffee on the plane.”
I lifted the cup to my nose and inhaled my favorite morning aroma while Thatch turned on the shower.
“It’s a long way to San Diego. Can I drink two more cups on the plane?”
He turned to me with narrowed eyes. That was his way of saying no without actually saying no. Apparently, I responded better to indirect orders.
I scrunched my nose, but otherwise, put up no more fight. I knew I didn’t need to have more than one more cup, and he knew I knew it. I couldn’t even throw it in his face that he got to eat and drink whatever he wanted because it wasn’t true. Sure, he could have, but he didn’t. When I couldn’t have something, he didn’t have it either. Sometimes I wondered if he was real.
Steam wisped and weaved above the glass doors, signaling the water was nice and warm. He made his way back to the counter and took the mug from my hands, setting it down and lifting me to my feet. His hands made quick work of my sleep shirt and panties, and before I knew it, he was helping me into the shower.
But when I turned back to put my lips to his, he wasn’t there.
“What do you want for breakfast, honey? Eggs and bacon sound good?” he asked, moving toward the bathroom closet.
I just stared at him through the glass and watched him set a towel out for me.
His head tilted to the side. “You okay?”
I opened the shower door and gripped him by the boxer briefs, yanking him off-balance and into the shower with me.
“What the—?”
I wrapped both arms around him and held him tight. “I love you.”
His hands found their way into my wet hair, gripping the strands and gently tilting my head back to meet his eyes. He searched my gaze with warmth and love. “I love you too, honey.”
Tears pricked my eyes as I buried my face into his chest. “Thank you for being so goddamn sweet.”
He chuckled softly. “I’d do anything for you.”
I lifted my head. He showed me every fucking day that the words he spoke were true, but I asked anyway. “Anything?”
He nodded, and the little flecks of gold in the center of his chocolate brown eyes bounced and glittered under the bathroom lights. “Anything.”
“Fuck me in the shower?”
“I don’t want to make you late for your flight, honey, and the things I’m picturing take a whole lot of time.” His words said no, but his cock was definitely saying hell yes against my belly.
“I guess you better speed them up, then,” I responded as I pushed his wet boxer briefs down his legs and started stroking him with my hand.
He smirked, but he didn’t resist, lifting me up by my ass and wrapping my legs around his waist. My back was pressed against the tile, and his cock was inside of me between one breath and the next.
The memory of this would stay with me, almost as clear as if he were with me himself, all the way to San Diego and back.
“Where are you?” Kline asked, without prompting or greeting, as I put the phone to my ear.
“Your mom’s house.”
The answer came on instinct and without any planning. Jokes and jabs were where I really excelled, and amiable insults sometimes felt easier than breathing. But my mind wasn’t really there, on the unexpected phone call with one of my best friends.
In reality, I could feel the cheap Berber of hotel carpet under my feet, and the sun reflected just slightly off the building across the street. The tinted floor-to-ceiling windows of my room kept it from piercing my eyes like it would have if I’d been outside in it directly, though, and my beard was longer than I’d ever let it get. It was like I was one of those Special Forces guys, highly trained to blend into my surroundings even if it meant acclimating to a completely different culture and becoming a longhair. Except, it was actually nothing like that, and the fact that my brain even came up with that analogy just proved how motherfucking insane I was becoming.
“Maureen would be nothing less than disgusted with you right now.”
I shook off my self-loathing and focused on the voice in my ear.
“Hey, I didn’t mean Maur any disrespect, and I think she knows me well enough to understand that.”
He laughed a little, but it was more than an auditory display of mirth. Sort of, Ha-ha, that Thatch, what a ridiculous fuck. And really, right now, I agreed with him.
“Trust me, she doesn’t.”
“Well, fuck. Do I need to worry about Bob hunting me down?” I asked, trying to keep my tone light.
Kline breathed the sigh of the beleaguered. “I was calling to see if you wanted to have lunch. But now I don’t think I want to have lunch with you.”
“Well, then,” I said through a laugh. “I guess it’s a good thing I’m not in town then, huh?”
“You’re not in town?” I could practically see his eyebrows snapping together in my head. No statement was simple where he was concerned, and frankly, he was right. There was always deeper meaning. He was just better at mining for it than anyone else I knew. “Where the hell are you?”
“Business,” I answered as I lifted the binoculars to my eyes and trained them on the building across the street. Then I shook my eyes to clear them when I realized I was too close to need binoculars and set them back on the table to my right.
“Business?” Kline asked, skeptical. “How incredibly fucking vague. I was actually after a location. You know, a state, a country, maybe even a city on Planet Earth.”
“I’m busy, okay?” I told him honestly. I didn’t plan to tell him much else since I’d pretty much lost my goddamn mind, but I liked Kline. He deserved at least a little tiny crumb of truth.
“Busy doing what?” he pushed, and then I sighed.
My impatience was about to peak in an all-out musical crescendo.
She was supposed to have been there by now. I’d wanted to follow her the whole way. From her hotel to the supply pickup to the actual shoot, but I’d managed to talk myself out of going full-on paparazzi. That’s what made celebrities get into car accidents all the time, and well, that would completely defeat the entire point of everything I’d sunk so low to do.
“I have to go,” I told him, and I did. I didn’t particularly feel like weeping while I was on the phone with him, and the longer it took Cassie to arrive, the more scenarios of death and carnage and blood passed through my not-well mind. Seriously, this was probably the early stages of a psychotic break, and not at all in keeping with everything I hoped I’d be as a father.