by Lauren Rowe
“Tell me, baby. I’m listening.”
He shifts internal gears. Clearly, there will be no more talking about his mother. “When I touch you, or fuck you, or taste you—oh fuck, I’m turning myself on again, baby—” He kisses me deeply, his hands firmly on my ass again. “Albóndigas,” he whispers. Meatballs.
I laugh. “Siempre tus albóndigas.” Always your meatballs.
He smiles at me.
“Tell me,” I coax him.
“When I fuck you or taste you or touch you, whatever, it’s like I can feel what you’re feeling—I mean, like, literally feel it, you know? And, holy fuck, it gets me off.” He grunts, obviously imagining whatever sensation he’s talking about.
“I told you—you’re a woman wizard, baby. You’ve got magical, mystical powers.”
He sighs and touches my cheek. “I can’t wait to keep exploring the depths of you, Sarah Cruz. You’re a vast and uncharted ocean, you know that?” He pauses. “You’re my ocean.”
I’m filled with the sudden urge to tell him I love him. He’s better than any dream. He makes me feel safe. He makes me feel loved. He makes me feel good—so, so, so frickin’ good. He makes me feel special. I love him. And, oh my God, I want to tell him, in exactly those words.
But, nope. I can’t. No way. It’s a non-starter.
And that’s okay. I’m his ocean, he says. Not too shabby. It’s enough. It really is.
“Yet again, you’re a poet,” I whisper.
“Only with you.”
He wraps his arms around me and squeezes me. “Sarah . . .,” he whispers, “I . . .” He clears his throat. But he doesn’t say anything more.
I can feel myself drifting off to sleep. Whatever else he’s going to say, it will have to wait until morning.
“Madness,” I whisper. And then I close my eyes and slip into a deep and blissful sleep.
Chapter 7
Jonas
Thinking is just the soul talking with itself, or so Plato says. If that’s true, then for the last few hours, while everyone else in the house has been fast asleep, my soul’s been chatting up a fucking storm with itself. It’s okay, though, because while my soul’s been pontificating its ass off, my body’s been getting shit done.
I washed and ironed Sarah’s clothes from her suitcase (all of which were covered in Belizian mud and mosquito repellant). I worked out like a demon (powered by Rx Bandit’s awesome new album). I went to Whole Foods and picked up breakfast for everyone (organic berries and Greek yogurt and zucchini-quinoa muffins). I went through my emails (and ignored every one of them except those pertaining to my new rock climbing gyms). I registered and loaded the laptops I bought for Sarah and Kat (which, thanks to my assistant, were delivered to my house first thing this morning). Bringing order and clarity to my environment has allowed me to bring order and clarity to my mind, too—and now, I’m pretty confident about my strategy going forward.
When I first opened Sarah’s suitcase and smelled Belize wafting off her clothes, I wanted to charge into my bedroom, scoop up her sleeping body, and whisk her straight back to paradise. Fuck real life. Fuck The Club. Fuck being back in Seattle with Kat and Josh and work and school. But then I thought about what happened in my bedroom late last night (or, technically, early this morning), right here in the paradise of my bedroom, and I quickly forgot all about abducting Sarah back to Belize.
I look out my kitchen window. The sun is rising, illuminating not only my countertops with its soft golden light, but my consciousness, too, suddenly making it impossible for me to ignore a despicable truth: I’m incapable of uttering those three little words to anyone. Even to Sarah.
I sigh.
Before last night, I thought I’d been holding off saying those magic words for twenty-three long years because my soul knew it could only say them in the presence of pure woman-ness. I thought I’d reserved saying those words since the age of seven because my soul innately understood I would one day say them to one woman only, the goddess and the muse, Sarah Cruz—the ideal form of woman. But last night in the dark, lying next to her after making love to her in the most intense and mind blowing and intimate ways possible, I realized I’d been making excuses for my emotional limitations all along and that, in truth, I’m fundamentally incapable of surrendering myself to the extent necessary to say those words out loud. Even to My Magnificent Sarah.
What else can I possibly conclude? If those words didn’t escape my lips when my baby’s body seized and convulsed from nothing but the pleasure of my body filling hers, or when she came in her sleep simply because she’d had a dream about me, or when she climaxed over and over for the first time in her life, finally figuring out how to harness her body’s greatest power, if all of that wasn’t enough to make those three words spring involuntarily from my mouth, then, clearly, I’ll never fucking say them.
It pains me to admit that to myself. I want to say those words to her, I really do. But, obviously, I’m too fucked up to accomplish it. I’ve come a long way thanks to Sarah, but, apparently, there’s only so far I can travel on broken legs. No matter what, it seems there’s always going to be a non-traversable wasteland inside of me, a bastion of fuckeduppedness just beyond my conscious borders that can’t be reached or breached, no matter how beautiful or earnest or amazing the woman who’s trying to guide me there. I just have to accept that there are dark, untouchable places inside of me, and adjust accordingly. If I can’t say the words to her, okay, I can’t. It means I have to work that much harder to show her how I feel about her.
And that starts right now.
I flip open my laptop and create a new document—a spreadsheet entitled, “How I’m Going to Fuck The Club Up the Ass.”
It’s time to show my baby exactly how I feel about her. It’s time to show her I can’t live without her. It’s time to focus on the task at hand and quit fucking around.
Human behavior flows from three sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge. Obviously, when it comes to protecting Sarah, I’ve got the first two elements in spades, but I’m distinctly lacking in the third category. I need to acquire some knowledge. And fast. I type out what I know about The Club onto my spreadsheet, add what I don’t know, and then sit and brainstorm every methodology I can think of—good, bad, and even just plain ridiculous—for obtaining the information I currently lack.
Last night with Josh, I acted like a fucking lunatic, not to mention an asshole. I know that. I just let my emotions get the best of me. I was pissed as hell at what I perceived to be Josh’s lack of loyalty and understanding of the situation, and I let that unfair perception jumble and merge with all the bullshit (real and imagined) years of therapy was supposed to fix (but apparently didn’t). But this morning, after my soul’s lengthy conversation with itself, not to mention some serenity-inducing fuckery with Sarah last night, I’m feeling more receptive to what Josh said.
Plato says, “Better a little that is well done, than a great deal imperfectly.” And, actually, I think that’s all Josh was trying to tell me last night, however inarticulately. I think he was trying to say The Club is a huge beast of a mountain to climb, and that if I approach climbing it haphazardly, I won’t gain any traction and might even cause an avalanche. What I have to do is develop an effective plan of attack and execute it with supreme and careful excellence. There’s too much at stake to do otherwise. What I need to do is frame my mission as “protecting Sarah (and Kat)”—rather than “decimating The Club.”
Those two concepts might be one and the same—you never know—but they might not be. Right now, I don’t have enough information to reach a sound conclusion on the issue one way or another. If destroying The Club turns out to be a component of protecting Sarah, then fuck yeah, that’s what I’ll do, and gladly. But if something short of that turns out to be a more effective option, then I’ll have to be man enough to put my dick away and do whatever’s going to achieve my mission. This is not the time to swing my dick around just for the hell of it. This is the
time to protect my baby with maximum effectiveness.
And it all starts with gathering some knowledge.
“Good morning.” It’s Kat.
I look up from my screen. “Hi.”
“Is Sarah up yet?”
“No, still sleeping like a baby. Same with Josh.” Kat’s dressed for work. She’s got her purse on her shoulder. She’s holding her rolling suitcase. “You’re leaving?”
“Yeah, I’ve got to get to work. It turns out Mondays are considered workdays by my boss. Who knew?”
“You think that’s wise?”
“I don’t have a choice—I’ve got to work.”
I don’t respond.
“And, yeah. I think it’s wise. I was totally freaked out yesterday, kind of in shock, but today I realize I can’t live in fear. I’ve just got to live my life.”
“Have you told Sarah you’re leaving?”
“No. I haven’t seen her this morning. I texted her.”
“How about I put you up in a hotel,” I begin. “Maybe just until we have a better grasp of what’s going on—”
“No, I’m good. That’s nice of you to offer, though. Thanks.”
I’d like to keep close tabs on Kat, at least until I’ve got a better understanding of what I’m up against here. But, hey, she’s an adult. Now, if she were my girlfriend, there’s no fucking way I’d let her walk out that door right now—but she’s not my girlfriend. And, anyway, I’m guessing The Club’s real focus, if they have one at all—who the fuck knows what they’re thinking?—is Sarah.
I give Kat the laptop I bought for her. Her eyes bug out of her head in surprise, but she nonetheless politely says she can’t accept it, blah, blah, fucking blah. I appreciate her politeness, of course, but I don’t have time to play “wow, we’ve both got such great manners” this morning. I’ve got too much to do.
“Kat, take the computer. Please. Help me alleviate my guilty conscience for putting this whole situation in motion. I insist.” In my vast experience with women, “I insist” is the magic phrase that ends all polite pushback regarding gifts and money and who’s paying for dinner. It’s the ultimate trump card a man holds over a woman. It never fails.
She acquiesces, right on cue. “Well, okay. Thank you so much.”
“And I’ve arranged a cleaning service to come to your place. If your apartment looks anything like Sarah’s did, you’re definitely going to need some help.”
Again, she half-heartedly goes through the social nicety of refusing me until I insist and make her shut the fuck up.
I have a sudden thought. “You know what? I’m gonna hire a bodyguard for you for at least a couple days—”
“No, that’s... excessive, isn’t it? You can’t do that.”
“It’s not up for debate. I’ll email you the information—and the guy’s picture—so when he introduces himself, you’ll know he’s exactly who he claims to be. Just for a few days, Kat. Humor me.”
She purses her lips.
“I insist. Just while I figure this out, okay? If you don’t let me do that for you, then I’ll worry about you—and I can’t afford the distraction of worrying about you.”
She smirks at me. “You’re good at that.”
“At what?”
“At getting what you want.”
I shrug. It’s true. So what?
“Thank you, Jonas. For everything. Tell Sarah I’ll call her later.”
“Will do. Hey, take a muffin with you. You gotta eat.”
She grabs a muffin. “Thanks.” She begins rolling her bag toward the door. She stops. “You know . . .”
I look up from my computer.
“You might not realize this, but Sarah doesn’t normally let her guard down like she has with you—and definitely not so quickly.”
I stare at her.
Kat exhales. “I just want to make sure you understand she’s not just ‘having fun’ with you. She thinks this is something serious.”
I don’t speak. Clearly, she thinks I’m a flaming asshole—the asshole she saw with Stacy the Faker, I presume.
“Sarah always says I’ve got a heart of gold—but I don’t. She’s the one who wants to save the world, not me. She’s the one who sees good in everyone—not me.” She squints at me, clearly implying Sarah foolishly sees undeserved goodness in me. “Trust me, I’m not nearly as nice as she is.”
I take this last comment to mean Kat’s going to break my legs if I hurt her best friend. I suddenly like Kat a lot.
“She’s fallen hard for you, Jonas,” Kat says quietly.
This isn’t news to me. I already know Sarah’s fallen hard for me—she’s told me so herself. And, even more importantly, she’s shown me so herself. Regardless, though, it feels supremely awesome to hear her best friend confirm that fact, too.
Kat shifts her weight. “I probably shouldn’t tell you this, but you need to understand the situation.” She takes a deep breath. “She’s in love with you.” She waits a beat, letting that supposedly shocking revelation wash over me. “And she thinks you’re in love with her, too.” She grits her teeth—or is she baring them? It’s hard to say.
Again, I don’t speak.
“Don’t crush her, Jonas.”
Wow, that last line was delivered with some serious menace. Looks like Sarah’s got a best friend who’s as fierce as she is. Kat is now officially golden in my book.
“Got it,” I say.
She stares at me, obviously annoyed. I guess she was expecting me to say something different.
“Thanks for the heads up,” I add lamely.
I like Kat—she’s clearly a fantastic friend to Sarah—but my feelings for Sarah are none of her fucking business. There’s only room for two—for Sarah and me—in our little cocoon built for two. I don’t give a fuck about anyone’s opinion of me but Sarah’s.
When it’s clear I’ve said all I’m going to say, Kat clears her throat. “Well, thanks again for the computer,” she finally says.
“But it doesn’t buy your trust, huh?”
She smirks. “Hell no.”
“Good.”
Her smirk turns into a genuine smile. “Well, okay, then.”
“Okay.”
She grabs the handle of her suitcase again. “Tell Playboy goodbye for me. Maybe he and I can hang out one of these days—whenever he’s done chasing Mickey Mouse roller coasters, if ever.”
I return her smile. “I’ll tell him you said exactly that.”
“Wonderful.”
She starts rolling her suitcase toward the door.
“Kat, I think you’re forgetting one important thing.”
She stops and looks at me, her eyes blazing with pre-emptive defiance. Apparently, she’s expecting some sort of knight-in-shining-armor rebuttal from me—and she’s already decided that, whatever it is, it’s total bullshit.
“Sarah and I picked you up in a limo yesterday, remember? How were you planning to get to work?”
Her face falls. “Oh.”
The defeated look on her face makes me smirk. “Let me call a car for you.”
Chapter 8
Jonas
“Okay, let’s talk action items,” Josh says, taking a bite of a zucchini-quinoa muffin. “What the fuck is this?”
“Zucchini-quinoa.”
Josh rolls his eyes and puts the muffin down. “Why can’t you ever eat anything normal?”
I ignore him and study my spreadsheet. Josh has been helping me brainstorm leads and strategies for the last twenty minutes. Sarah’s still asleep, not surprisingly—we were up ‘til the wee hours together, discovering Sarah’s newfound orgasmic superpowers. Good God, that woman is my crack. Orgasma. I can’t help but smile.
“All right,” I say, looking at my computer screen. “Item one. You and I will forward your hacker guy whatever emails we both still have from The Club.”
“Yup. Though I doubt that will yield anything.”
“Worth a try.”
“One would t
hink they’d be smart enough to use dummies or encrypt their emails or insert fakers, but they might be epically stupid, you never know. And my hacker buddy is really good, so, hey, it’s worth a shot.”
“Who is this hacker, anyway?”
“A buddy of mine from college. He’s solid, trust me—he’s helped out a bunch of my friends on the down low with some pretty big stuff.”
I instantly wonder why Josh’s flashy friends have required the services of a top-notch hacker, but it doesn’t matter—if Josh trusts this guy completely, then so do I.
“Action item two,” I say. “I engage them in some sort of email exchange. Hopefully, I can get something that helps the hacker and leads us to a power player.”
“Good. What are you gonna say to them?”
I consider briefly. “I could thank them for allowing me to partake in their lovely intake agent. I’ll tell them she was a thoroughly enjoyable surprise—but that I’m all done with her now, thank you very much, and looking forward to the rest of my membership experience. I’ll ask for assurances from the top that my intake-agent detour won’t disrupt my membership in any way.”
Josh twists his mouth. “That makes you sound like such an asshole. You’ve had your fun with their intake agent and now you’re just tossing her aside?”
I shrug. “Yeah.”
Josh raises his eyebrows. “After all the effort it took to find her?”
“They don’t know the lengths I went to find her. For all they know, Sarah just picked up the phone and called me after our first emails. Actually, come to think of it, maybe they’re not sure if Sarah and I even connected in person. Maybe they think Sarah and I emailed back and forth, she went to spy on me at my first check-in, saw me with the purple prostitute, and that was that. That would be a reasonable conclusion, wouldn’t it?”
“Maybe under normal circumstances, but... Come on.” He motions to me, as if my mere Jonas-ness somehow makes my hypothetical impossible.
I roll my eyes at him. “Whatever. Either way, they’ve read my application, so me being a gigantic asshole is exactly what they’d expect.”
