Unzipped

by Lauren Blakely

  I spin around, looking for the source. On the stone path cutting across the hotel grounds is the man in the blue polo shirt.

  Break-dancing.

  Harry is freaking break-dancing, holding his iPhone, blasting LL Cool J.

  He tips his imaginary hat to us and moonwalks away.

  Under the morning sun, I raise my pink shades and regard the man in front of me holding open the trunk of the car.

  “Next thing I know, there will be an airport chase scene,” I say, a little amazed.

  “Wouldn’t that be something?” he asks, like a man who has all the tricks up his sleeve.

  “Did you plan that?” I ask, though I’m pretty sure I know the answer.

  “If I said it was random, would you believe me?”

  I shake my head, my smile taking over all the real estate on my face. “You did plan that.”

  He wiggles his eyebrows, ridiculously pleased. “I thought you would get a kick out of the Kind Old Couple Remarks What a Cute Couple They Make, followed by Kind Old Guy Break-Dances.”

  “How? How did you do that?” I ask, amazed that he pulled this off for me.

  “I wandered around the hotel, found this couple, told them there was a girl I was trying to impress . . . and there you go.”

  I throw my arms around him, and give him a long, slow, wet, deep kiss that Crash Davis would approve of.

  That’s the moment when I fall completely in love with Tom.

  Hopelessly. Helplessly. In a way that makes me feel both sick to my stomach and on top of the world.

  22

  Finley

  As we slide into the rental, and the final destination on his GPS blinks San Diego, I’m reminded that a few days ago, Tom was planning on seeing Cassie to declare his love for her, rather than to apologize for hurting her.

  Heck, a week ago he was singing to her outside my window.

  Can the heart truly do a 180-degree turn in a week? Can he possibly feel for me the way I feel for him? What if his feelings for me are misplaced? What if they’re conflated with this newfound freedom from being on the road? We could simply be on a honeymoon. A wonderful, delicious, rebound honeymoon for him, and then the bubble will burst when real life sets back in.

  When we’re living our regular lives, him in San Francisco, me more than an hour away up the coast.

  This bubble of time with him feels so real and so unreal at the same damn time.

  So much of my life is up in the air—my show, this man—I don’t know what’s solid and what’s lasting.

  I think about Christine’s parting words. Be careful.

  I try valiantly to do that by focusing on enjoying today for what it is—a day.

  As we wind down the coast, the ocean waves framing us on the right, showing off their vastness, I try to shove all the questions from my mind. We stop at a roadside fruit stand and buy blueberries, eating them as we drive on, listening to ’80s tunes, then turning off the music to talk about why some big gestures in movies were overrated.

  “The thing about the boom box is this,” I say, popping a blueberry into my mouth. “She never even came to the window.”

  He nods thoughtfully. “True.”

  “But I think we all forget that part. Lloyd Dobler just stood there in her driveway, lifting it higher and higher and playing the song, and Diane didn’t even get out of bed.”

  “So it was the wrong big gesture?”

  I shake my head, reaching for my iced tea and uncapping it to take a swig. “In the end, she was the one who had to go to him, remember?”

  His brow pinches, and he must be thinking of the movie. “At his kickboxing studio?”

  I offer him the bottle, and he takes a gulp then hands it back to me. “Yes, exactly. She had to win him back because she’d already broken his heart.”

  “Maybe that’s why it didn’t work for me. It wasn’t supposed to work.”

  I nod. “Maybe.”

  “Or maybe it was the wrong girl,” he says, offering a hopeful smile before he returns his gaze to the road.

  My stomach squeezes again. “But what if she was there?”

  He shrugs. “I don’t know, Finley. That’s not what happened.”

  “I know,” I whisper, and what happened is so much better, but also so much more terrifying.

  We reach the amusement park that’s an hour outside Los Angeles.

  “This one has the Spinning Devil,” he says. “And it’s one hundred percent mine.”

  I smile. “I can’t wait to ride your ride.”

  He enters the park like a civilian, and I tease him. He waits in line like an everyman too, even though I keep telling him that all he has to do is swagger his way to the front and break out the “hey man, that’s my ride.”

  He won’t.

  Instead, when we’re in line, he tugs me close, slides a hand through my hair, and kisses me.

  It blots out my fears. It erases my worries, and it takes my breath away.

  When we make it onto the Spinning Devil, his work takes my breath away.

  And taxes my lungs.

  Because holy speed.

  This ride is a whirling dervish, zipping and careening and flipping us upside down again and again.

  By the time it ends, two and a half minutes later, my hair is a wild mess, my heart is beating outside my chest, and I’m in awe of this man.

  Once we’re off the ride, I grab his face and kiss him hard. A little dirty, a lot sexy. Because I’m turned on by what we did. By his mind and his talents and his abilities.

  And it’s killing me that I fell for him at the wrong time.

  In comedy, timing isn’t just everything.

  It’s the only thing.

  It’s the same in love. You need the right person, true. But you also need the right person at the right time for it to work. He might feel like the right person, but he seems to have arrived at the wrong time in his romantic life.

  When I let go, he tugs me right back to him. “Would you like to ride another ride?”

  “I would,” I say, excited, as I scan the park. “Which one?”

  “That’s not what I mean, Finley.”

  I feel the press of his erection, and my thoughts go hazy and straight to the bedroom. “Oh.”

  “One room or two?”

  Inside the motel lobby, I wait for him to answer the question from the clerk, even though I know his answer. I know he wants me tonight. I want him too.

  “One.”

  We stumble into the room, dropping our bags in a flurry, grabbing at each other like we haven’t seen each other in days. Years. It’s only been minutes since we had our hands on each other, but this is the way of new lovers. We scramble and scurry and we need.

  My pulse rockets to the moon as he ropes his hands through my hair and pulls my head back, kissing my lips, my jaw, then my neck.

  Dear God, my neck is on fire. He travels down the column of my throat, mapping me with kisses.

  Then he guides my head back up and stares at me. “The best thing that’s ever happened to me was you being at that window.”

  My heart tries to leap into his arms. I want to blurt out my truth too—that I’m in love with him. But that fear is still lodged in my chest, so rather than say the L-word, I echo him, and it’s completely true. “Same here.”

  He kisses my neck, then grabs my face like he has to make sure I see him. But I do. I do see him.

  “This is crazy and so out of the blue,” he says, and my doubts start to crumble. But I’d be a fool to sweep them away completely. I’m not ready to play that part yet. I need him to lead.

  So I agree, because I do. “I know.”

  “I didn’t think this would happen,” he murmurs, and nips on my ear, and I want to float away to the stars because that’s where he takes me. “I didn’t know you a week ago. And now I’m crazy for you. It almost doesn’t feel real.”

  “Is it real?” My pitch rises.

  “Yes.”

  “It’s
so real for me.”

  Then words scatter to dust as we claw feverishly at clothes, stripping off shorts and shirts, and soon, he has me down to my bra and panties.

  I stop, needing a second to catch my breath.

  “Are you okay?” he asks.

  “I’ve seen you naked, but you haven’t seen me.”

  He smiles. “You do know that can be remedied in seconds, right?”

  I love his sense of humor. I love how he disarms my fears. “Can you please remedy that, then?”

  “Consider it done.” He loops his hands behind my back and unhooks my bra, then whistles in appreciation, his hands darting out to cup my breasts. I’m not a busty woman. I’m average, a standard B, but he doesn’t seem to care that I’m not posing for Cleavage “R” Us ads.

  He fondles me like it’s all he wants to do, before sliding one hand between my legs.

  He groans. “You’re not stopping me from going down on you tonight, are you?”

  His fingers are sliding across the wet panel of my panties, sending me into a frenzy, so I doubt I’m capable of making him stop.

  “Don’t stop.”

  We make it to the bed, and he tugs down my panties, then kisses the inside of my thighs, and my vulnerability shoots up ten thousand times. I haven’t been touched like this, in a way that makes me feel cherished, in ages. He kisses me that way, with affection and adoration, and it’s such an elixir to the heart.

  He touches me like I’m not second best.

  He kisses me like I’m not a rebound girl. As he spreads me apart and curls his arms around my hips and brings me to his mouth, I don’t feel like I could be anything less than first.

  For now, I let that sensation wash over me as he drenches me in wild, hot kisses, as his tongue strokes me and his lips devour me.

  Soon, I’m moaning and panting and letting go, grabbing his hair, sliding my fingers through it, and he’s not just licking me—I’m fucking his mouth.

  He moans and sighs and urges me on, and it’s hardly necessary because I’m there. I’m already there with him, as I reach the edge and fall over.

  It’s more exhilarating than skydiving.

  When I come down from the intensity, I think I might be glowing. “You were right,” I say, my breath still coming fast and hard. “You really do need a lesson in that.”

  He grins and plants a kiss on my belly. Then higher. Moving up to my breasts. “Yes, I was thinking I should spend a lot of time down there, eating you.”

  I laugh. “You need so much practice.”

  “God, I really do. I’m so bad at it. Teach me, please,” he says when he reaches my face.

  I stop laughing when I meet his eyes. They’re so earnest and so entertained, and I want to ask how I got so lucky. But I know the answer. The answer’s in San Diego.

  And I’m so tired of thinking of her.

  So tired of thinking of anyone but us.

  I vow to believe in us for the rest of the night. “What comes next?” I ask.

  “You’re the writer. You tell me.”

  I pull him close and whisper in his ear.

  23

  Tom

  Few words are better than I’m on the pill.

  There are probably only two that can best that.

  After she tells me we can go bare, she nips on my ear and murmurs, “Fuck me.”

  That’s all I need to hear.

  She scoots up higher on the bed, her hair falling across the pillows, and I position myself between her legs, notching my cock against her wetness.

  “How do you like it? Hard, deep, slow?”

  She nibbles on the corner of her lips. “I’m open to all of the above.”

  “Let’s start with deep.” I sink inside her, and my head falls back as I savor the intensity of that first moment when she clenches around me. When her heat hugs my dick. When she releases a shuddery moan of pleasure.

  This woman has thrown my world upside down. She’s sent me into a beautiful kind of chaos, a whole new starting over.

  And I couldn’t be happier, or luckier.

  Or honestly more turned on right now.

  I shove off those other thoughts as my breath comes faster and desire blares through me.

  Admittedly, I’ve thought about fucking Finley since the night I met her. At first, it was an offhand thought, then it became more persistent.

  But I didn’t know what she’d be like. If she’d give in to the pleasure, if she’d let go to the sensations. She’s in her head so much of the time, but right now I’m seeing she has no problem letting her body lead. The sounds she makes—moans of pleasure, sighs of desire—are like a wild drug, and that drug has quite an effect on both of us.

  I’m in another world of erotic bliss as she parts her legs wider, digs her nails into my back, and moves her hips at a frenzied pace. I match her, fucking her deeper, harder, my hand anchored at her waist, the other one hiking up her leg, opening her farther.

  She lets her head fall, exposing her neck, and I kiss her roughly, nipping at the flesh.

  “Oh God, that feels so good,” she moans.

  Naturally, I do it again. Heat blasts through me in waves as we chase pleasure. The sounds I make are hoarse, animalistic, as white-hot lust runs roughshod in my body, over my skin, and through my mind.

  It’s never been like this.

  I brace myself on my hands, swiveling my hips as I watch her face. Her expression twists with exquisite torture.

  “God, you’re so fucking pretty like this. You’re so fucking pretty when you’re about to come.”

  She trembles, and her lips part, and she grabs my shoulders, jerking me close. “I’m coming,” she whispers, husky and sexy and so full of abandon.

  Then she screams.

  Holy fuck, does she ever scream, just like she said she would.

  Louder than on the roller coaster, like she’s soaring higher, flying farther, speeding into blissful oblivion.

  “So good, so good, so good,” she chants, and it doesn’t stop. She keeps going, and it sends fiery sparks down my spine as my own climax barrels through me, and I chase her over the hill, around the tracks, and into a wild high that only this kind of sex can bring.

  Sex with love.

  I fucking love this woman, and now I need to convince her, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that it’s the real thing.

  But I don’t have to yet, since Finley has a bigger appetite than I expected, and sex is keeping us both busy. My brain and my body are completely occupied with her pleasure.

  She’s ready to go again a little later, and since I’m a generous guy, I let her ride me. I know, it’s totally altruistic, and not at all because I can get my hands on her tits, her ass, her belly, her crazy hair. It’s not at all because she looks spectacular riding me like a bucking bronco.

  She comes hard and, somehow, even more loudly.

  Which triggers a primal urge in me to flip her to her hands and knees and take her that way.

  After, we’re lying in bed, and I run a hand down her side, figuring maybe now is a good time to talk. I decide to ease her in, asking if she’s going to be writing tonight or early in the morning. Maybe that’ll lead us to where she’s at in her storyline. If she lets on, I can figure out where we might be, and what to do next.

  Art imitated life, but now life may be imitating art too. In it, I could find the clues I need about her state of mind and heart.

  “Do you need to write again tonight?”

  She yanks a pillow over her head, groaning. “Don’t remind me.”

  “Does that mean you’re done for now?”

  She mumbles from under the pillow. “I sent them three scripts in about a week. I’m dead from writing. I usually work with other writers on the show, but since this was on spec, it was all me, so I’m extra dead.”

  I hum. “Hate to break it to you, but you were pretty alive when I fucked you.”

  She flips over and tosses the pillow at me, then unleashes a magnificent yawn. “
And if you do it to me one more time, I will be literally dead. Do you want that on your conscience?”’

  I shudder, aghast. “God, no.” I take a beat. “Is there anything I can do to help? Read another scene? Bounce ideas off you? Practice fake kisses, real kisses, or any combination thereof?”

  She grabs my cheeks and kisses me hard, our tongues skating together. Her fingers twist in my hair, and my dick springs to life again. Holy fuck, is she ready for another round? I believe I am.

  But when she yawns in the middle of a kiss, I have my answer. “Go to sleep, Finley.”

  She smiles at me, her eyes fluttering closed as she snuggles into the pillow. “If anyone calls with free candy or money, take a message for me.”

  In record time, her breathing is even and steady.

  I stay next to her, wide awake, my hands parked behind my head. I need to do things differently this time around. I need to say the right things at the right time.

  And do the right things.

  Finley said big gestures don’t work like the movies make us believe.

  Finley also loved the staged tropes earlier today.

  Somehow, I need to combine these two ideas.

  Before I can figure out how to make two plus two equal four, her phone rings.

  I glance at her, but she’s sound asleep, conked out on her belly, her hair falling across her face. Peering at the screen on the nightstand, I see “Spam Likely” is calling her, so I hit ignore, as she would do herself.

  A little later, I slide into slumber, and I don’t rise till the sun is up on Thursday morning.

  I rub my eyes, grab my glasses, and sit up in bed. The patter of the shower fills the room. For a brief moment, I consider joining her.

  But I don’t know if she’d want that. Maybe she’s in Business Finley mode. When she’s done, I toss off the covers, mumble a good morning when she exits, and head under the stream of hot water.

  By the time I’m out, Finley is pacing, her hair yanked back in a tight bun. She wears a pair of slacks and a silky tank top.