Extreme

by Lark O'Neal

  “Not like mine, in other words.”

  “You fell asleep on it ok.”

  “Only because I hadn’t slept in 70 hours.”

  “Right. I want a place of my own, I guess. I’m kind of ready for that. Even if it’s just some tiny apartment I get to visit between events.”

  “Maybe you should make that happen.”

  “I was working on it, actually, and then—never mind. I don’t want to get into that again.”

  “Understood. So, let’s think about things you can’t buy, but you would if you could. Like, a painting or a sculpture or something.”

  “Okay, I love that idea.” She raises her arms in the air, spreading her fingers. “I’d buy a bunch of Pre-Raphaelites and hang them in every room.”

  “Those are the fairy tale paintings, am I right? The princesses and dead girls?”

  She laughs. “I think of them more as medieval, but dead girls is accurate. I love The Lady of Shallot, especially.”

  “Show me.” I pick up her phone and hand it to her.

  “Oh my God, Gabriel. It’s three in the morning.” She laughs. “We have to sleep eventually!”

  Gabriel. Like her own name for me. “Do you have anything you have to do tomorrow?”

  “No, actually. But don’t you have to work?”

  “Hey, I stayed up three days for a volcano. Doing it to spend time with you is much better.”

  Her shoulder is washed with blue light from the phone, and I trace the curve, the collarbone, the muscle.

  “Okay. This is The Lady of Shallot,” she says and shows me a painting of a woman in a boat. “I love the fabric, the drape of her hair. This model is one of several of them used—you can pick her out over and over.” She touches the screen thoughtfully. “My mom and I love to look at paintings. It’s our thing.” She makes a face. “If I’d been a painter, I bet she’d still be financing me.”

  I laugh, poking her in the side. “Poor little rich girl.”

  She gives me an exaggerated pout. “I know. Sorry.”

  I take the phone and examine the painting more closely. “Beautiful.” And something about it does move me. Grace, shape, color. The next one is also richly textured, the fabric so detailed, the fall of her hair.

  “Now you,” Kaitlin says. “What would you buy that’s never going to be for sale?”

  “Rodin’s Thinker. But—I might need a palace to put it in.”

  “That’s my dad’s favorite. He always says if people would think more, there would be less sorrow in the world.”

  “Maybe less thinking, more compassion.”

  “That, too.”

  Her stomach growls, and she claps a hand over it. “Sorry. I really do eat a lot.”

  “Let’s feed you, then, hungry one.”

  Chapter FIFTEEN

  Kaitlin

  When Gabe’s phone alarm goes off, we are curled together after making love one more time, very gently because both of us are kind of sore. We’ve eaten everything in his kitchen—cheese, the rest of the turkey, more hot chocolate, breads and then the last of the eggs. We’ve made love three times and slept maybe three hours.

  And how many hours did we talk? Hours and hours.

  He stirs against me, one leg sliding over mine, and with one arm, he pulls me close against his belly. The soft weight of his cock smushes into my bottom and his hand embraces my breast. “Mmm,” he murmurs in that deep, deep voice. “I don’t want to get out of this bed.”

  I suddenly realize that this might be it. That we might not get any more than this one long, beautiful night. “I don’t want to go. I want to stay right in this magic bubble of time forever.”

  He kisses my shoulder, my neck. “Me, too. Promise you won’t leave without telling me.”

  “I promise.”

  “Turn over.”

  I shift to look up at him, my heart aching in a deep, thrumming way I am afraid might make me cry. He kisses me with vast gentleness. “This has been the best night of all time.”

  A tear slips sideways down my temple into my hair. “I love talking to you.”

  “Not making love?”

  “I think that might have just been sex.”

  “Was it?” he shifts, bending over me to kiss my mouth deeply, thoroughly. “Then I think we need to make up for that.”

  Impossibly, I feel my body responding to his touch, to his hands on my shoulders, my breasts, to his knee nudging my legs apart. He takes a condom, “last one,” from the side table and then he’s moving in me, easy easy. “Is that okay?”

  “Yes,” I whisper.

  “Look at me, Kaitlin,” he rasps. “Let’s take this with us.”

  So as he moves in me, I look into his eyes, and we are joined so deeply that I can’t look away. Slowly, slowly, the sensation grows until we are panting, and he kisses me, holding my hands, and then we are coming again, again together, again coming apart, rearranging ourselves. In that shuffling of atoms, some of him flies into me and some of me is embedded in him, and that’s the way it should be, I think, because this was not ordinary.

  It was rare.

  It was beautiful.

  I am going to miss him so much.

  * * *

  It’s still dark when he drops me off at the hotel, of course, but when I enter the lobby, there are plenty of people about. I feel disoriented, as if I’ve been away for much longer than twelve hours. There’s a lot of activity in the lobby and I stand there blinking for long moment before I realize that people are checking out.

  “What’s going on?” I ask a woman waiting in line.

  “They’re going to open the airports later today.”

  A wild mix of emotions rockets through me. I was already feeling so disoriented that I feel like I need to go to my room and remember how to arrange my face, and now this news slams me, sends my gut right through the floor.

  But we aren’t done!

  On feet that feel frozen, I trundle toward the breakfast room, which is also packed with people getting in a meal before they leave. The group is in a different spot, but Algernon raises a hand and waves me over. “You’ve heard the news?” he asks.

  I nod, blinking stupidly. Not enough sleep makes the world echoey, and to be honest, most of me is back in Gabe’s apartment, with his hands on me, his mouth—

  “You’d best get some food before it’s all devoured,” Niraj says, nudging my arm. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes, sorry.” I make my way to the food area and make a tray, the usual things—banana, yogurt, bread and peanut butter. I make a cup of tea with extra sugar to help wake me up, and carry it all back to the table. “So is everyone going to the airport this morning? Do you know if you have a flight?”

  “I have a family wedding in two days and will be killed completely dead if I do not arrive on time,” Niraj says.

  “I think we’re all getting kicked out of the hotel,” Olivia says. “You should check on your room.”

  “But you need to leave, don’t you?” Madeline asks. “You have an event or something.”

  All I can think is that I can’t leave, not this morning. Not without checking in with Gabe. Not without seeing him one more time, if only to say good-bye. The thought makes my throat hurt and I stare at my food like it’s made of plastic.

  “You must have had some night,” Madeline says with a grin, leaning into me. “You’re in a daze.”

  I look at her. “I don’t want to leave yet!”

  “Then don’t go.” A shrug as she peels a strip of bread from a pastry. “Believe me, there are lots of people willing to take your place.”

  Chelsea stands. I hadn’t really noticed her there, but now she carries her tray over to the bus station and comes back, heading for my end of the table. She hands me a piece of paper. “He goes there every morning to sketch. I don’t know if he’s going to try to get out of here today or not, but if I were you, I’d go soon.”

  I pick up the paper. Nod. Over the course of the past few day
s, I’ve become annoyed with Tyler. “Why has he been ducking me?”

  She lifts one side of her mouth in wry expression. Shadows lie under her eyes, pale violet beneath the enormous blue irises. “I doubt he even knows,” she says. “See you around.”

  “Are you leaving?”

  “I’ve been ready to leave for a week.”

  I nod and wonder faintly what she’s carrying to make her shoulders slump like that. “What’s next?”

  “Venice. A few of us are going.” She points around the table, but I’m not sure who she means. “You’re welcome to join us.”

  “It would be fun,” I say, and mean it. “But I have to get back to work.”

  She smiles fully at that, and tucks her hair behind her ear. “I ride, but never got that good. You were fantastic in Sochi.”

  “Thanks.”

  It livens my mood, reminds me that Gabe is not the only thing in my world. I have a passion I love and things to get on with. He’s a fling, that’s all. A very hot, very amazing fling.

  Chapter SIXTEEN

  Tyler

  In my cafe, I order black coffee and a pastry and stare out at the paling sky over the water of the bay. I’m carting a hangover the size of Montana, with sharp edges that poke my eyes and neck and chest. The coffee helps, marginally, enough that I pull out the Moleskine, the diary I found at the airport. Flipping it open to a random page, I start reading.

  September 9, 20—

  Dingle, Ireland.

  It has been raining all day, off and on, in great gales, buckets of rain sweeping across the hills and town and water for minutes or an hour, then pausing for the sun to come out and show off the green of those hills, illuminate a rainbow arching over the bay, dance in stars on the peaks of the waves sloshing to shore.

  It’s one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever seen, and one of the loneliest for me so far. This is a place Hugo wanted to visit more than any other. His father came here when he was a young man, and he fell in love with it, stayed three months and carried on a big romance with a local girl, then moved on.

  I miss him. He’s a big jerk and I don’t want to actually be with him anymore, but it’s hard to give up the patterns and habits we created together, the rituals that were our own, the way we made coffees for each other. He brought me Danishes in the morning because he was such an early riser and I’m not.

  We were together a long time. It’s bound to ache sometimes.

  Meanwhile, I am in one of the most amazing places I’ve ever been and I intend to enjoy the rainbows and the rains. My pack is loaded with new books and the hostel is cozy and I’ve met some girls I might travel with for awhile, so life is good.

  Enough.

  * * *

  Her handwriting is slanted and fast, not quite cursive, but a style of elegant printing that’s almost cursive. I wonder where she learned handwriting like that.

  Around me in the cafe, the mood is lively. Everyone is relieved that the volcano is calming down. Drinking some of the coffee, my finger in the page of the journal, I look out to the pinkening water and sky and snow and wonder if it’s time for me to move on. Maybe Venice, like Chelsea. The news of Jess’s new movie won’t be plastered all over the media in a non-English speaking country, at least not yet.

  It’s another big budget romance and the posters show her touching foreheads with her co-star, a hot young actor who is on the cover of all the teen sites. I stopped following her on Instagram and everywhere else, but I still get Mercedes’s feed, and she posts photos with her and Jess sometimes. She’s writing a new part for her.

  Some whispering along my neck alerts me, and I look up to see Kaitlin standing just inside the doorway to the cafe. Her hair shines like a copper kettle in the overhead lights, and her coat is open, showing her lean body, her long legs. There’s something different about her. Sophistication, partly, a function of age and becoming the face of female snowboarding.

  It strikes me that she’s beautiful, something I’ve never really noticed before. And she’s hot, in that strong, proud, loose-limbed way athletes sometimes have. Confidence surrounds her like a cape, and as she looks at me, she shakes her head, crossing the room with her hands in her pockets.

  “Kaitlin,” I say, rising to give her a hug. I’m unexpectedly glad to see her. Someone I know. Someone who knows me. I bend my face into her neck.

  She hugs me hard in return, her arms strong and fierce.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask.

  “When you call, I will answer, Rabbit.”

  A choked laugh comes from my throat. “That was crazy. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have—”

  “I’m here.”

  I hold her tight, eyes closed, finding an unexpected nourishment in her hug, and I remember how it was to touch her, teach her when she was in Italy with me. How hot her skin was from the sun, how eagerly she kissed me.

  She breaks the embrace and looks hard into my face. “You need to go home.”

  “I don’t want to.” I pick up the notebook and tuck it deep into my backpack where it won’t be lost.

  “I know.” She sheds her coat and flings it on the stool and sits on it, pushing her hair out of her eyes. No makeup at all, but it doesn’t matter. Her skin is as clear and smooth as a fresh bar of soap, her lashes thick around those giant hazel eyes. For the first time ever, I pick up my pencil, flip open my notebook, and start to sketch her.

  She slaps a hand over the drawing. “Why did you hide from me for three days, Tyler?”

  Not Rabbit, her pet name for me. Tyler, like a mom calling you by your middle name.

  I look at her. “Because I was embarrassed that I texted you. That I put you to all that trouble. That I’m such a fuck up.”

  “I’ll agree with the last part. You’re one of the smartest, most talented, most beautiful men I’ve ever met, and you’re throwing it all away. That makes your parents right.”

  The javelin goes clear through my heart, exactly on mark. Involuntarily, I put a hand to my chest. “Don’t mince words, kid.”

  “I don’t have time to mince words. I’m tired of watching you lurch from one drama to the next, drinking too much, playing the artiste, the crazy man.”

  Her words are painful. True. Grabbing my notebook and pencil, I shove them into the pack. “I gotta get outta here,” I say, but she sticks out a foot and I nearly kill myself tripping on her.

  “Oh no, you don’t. At the very least, you have to spend a couple of hours with me for taking the time and trouble to fly out here and try to rescue your poor stupid self again.”

  From this angle, I can see a mark on her neck. Not as blatant as a hickey, but unmistakably the kind of bruise you get during sex. Now that I see it, I see more. Her tousled hair, her sleepy, glossy eyes, her swollen mouth.

  It pisses me off. “Judging by that hickey, you’ve found something to do to pass the time.”

  Her eyes widen. “Tyler! Are you jealous?”

  My pack is over my shoulder. I look at the mouth, think about her tight waist, her unusual, sexy breasts. “Maybe. Irrational, but true.”

  She smiles. “Come on, let’s find some breakfast. You look hung-over as hell.”

  And what else am I going to do? Chase Chelsea to Venice? Find some other girl to fuck to get my mind off Jess? I suddenly feel as pathetic as I must look in her eyes. “All right. I’ll buy.”

  “You bet you will.”

  Chapter SEVENTEEN

  Kaitlin

  Usually, there’s a thin current of sexual tension between Tyler and me. Even at his worst—and he’s pretty close right now, face too thin, hair too long and falling around his face like Thor—he’s painfully handsome.

  But as we wander the streets of Reykjavik, looking for breakfast, I don’t feel a sense of longing at all. I’m here as his friend, and for the first time, that’s what he feels like. My friend, my long, long time friend.

  Over plates of ham and cheese and soft boiled eggs, he asks about my training and the
season and other riders we know. I don’t ask if he misses it.

  I bitch about my parents and he says he might be able to hook me up with some possible revenue streams. I ask about his sisters. He asks about my family.

  Finally, I say, “Rabbit, you can’t just wander forever. Do you have a plan?”

  His face goes blank. “Maybe Venice next.”

  “That’s not what I mean.”

  “Didn’t you just complain about people trying to get you to do something you don’t want to do?”

  I sit back in the chair. Measure him. “I’m focused on something that’s positive. I’m really good at it. I might be able to bring home another medal. It gives my life meaning and shape.” I fall forward and lean on my elbows. “I don’t actually see how what you’re doing now is positive. I mean, maybe it is, but you seem so lost still that I wonder.”

  He lowers his eyes. On the table, his long-fingered hands touch, palm to palm. “I’m trying to find—” he pauses. “Myself, I guess. Maybe that sounds like bullshit, but when Jess left the apartment that day, I felt like maybe if I’d just done the work, figured my shit out, maybe I would have been the guy she deserved.”

  My heart squeezes so hard that it feels for a second like it might burst. “That might be the saddest and truest thing I’ve ever heard you say.”

  He meets my gaze. “I know everyone thinks I’m exaggerating my pain, but I really fell in love, Kaitlin, like with everything I am, everything I have. I felt like I leapt off a cliff, and for a little while, I flew so high.” He’s illustrating the flying with one hand, which he slams into the table, just hard enough to make the silverware chime. “When I lost her, I couldn’t breathe for awhile. It was like my heart was shattered and all the shards are still stuck in my lungs, hurting when I breathe.”

  I keep my hand on his wrist. Nod.

  “Seeing her face on every fucking surface in the country was just too hard. I had to get away.”

  He means her movie posters. “That makes sense.” I hadn’t considered how excruciating that layer would be.