by Lynn Costa
This went on nonstop until 3:30 that afternoon, and then Dave decided to tell them that our firm really didn’t do any new venture investing so the best thing they could do is keep us informed about their progress, and we would certainly like to be the first in line to work with them as they developed their technology, blah blah blah; whatever.
And here comes the best part!
I had assumed that even though we had hung around there until 3:30, since there was no reason to meet again tomorrow morning for a couple more hours as had been originally scheduled we would go back to our hotel, quickly grab our stuff and then head right out to JFK – or LaGuardia or Newark, even – to catch a flight back to L.A. tonight rather than tomorrow. My brain was already playing travel agent: if we left New York at 6:00 I could be back at LAX by 8:30 tonight L.A. time and then maybe meet Zack for drinks or even a late dinner around 9:30. True, I wouldn’t be all freshened up after all day in New York, an hour cab ride, and then five and a half hours of flying, but so what; at least I would be back and maybe Zack and I would get together tonight.
But of course, there was no way that was going to happen.
Dave decided that since 1) we hadn’t checked out by noon which meant that Tuesday night was already paid for at the hotel, and 2) it would probably cost around $800 to change all four of our tickets, and of course 3) “you all deserve a great New York dinner” that there would be no changes at all in our travel plans. We would stay until the morning and grab our scheduled noon flight out of JFK; end of story.
Dinner was terrible. I mean, the food was good – I guess – but given the mood I was in, plus listening to Jack and Steve replay almost every portion of the day’s discussions, all made the evening unbearable. Not to mention we also had to listen to Dickhead Dave (he was back to that name in my mind after today’s fiasco) do his best to cover for this whole wasted trip.
I got through dinner by doing a version of what I had felt like doing earlier in the day: I played the “aspect ratio” game. Every time either Jack or Steve blurted out that particular phrase I took a healthy swig of my expensive Cabernet. Before our salads arrived I was buzzed; by the time dessert and coffee were served, I was drunk. And by the time I made it back to my hotel room my head was spinning and I was doing my best to avoid getting sick.
Even as drunk and as pissed as I was, I was already worried about the monster hangover I would have tomorrow morning. And I was also hoping that by the time our flight landed in L.A. and I would be on my way to my date with Zack, the hangover would have passed along with every single memory of this wasted trip to New York City.
Chapter 7
Wednesday, September 18th
As far as I was concerned, Wednesday didn’t actually start until we touched down at LAX at 2:30. Nothing before that point mattered; it was all just a continuation of my wasted Monday and Tuesday. The only good point was that I got to sleep until 9:15 since there was no morning meeting, and that was plenty of time for us to have breakfast and make it to JFK for our flight. Of course, my body insisted that I was still getting up at 6:15 since I hadn’t been back east long enough to adapt to the time zone change. Still, a little bit of extra sleep when I had my big date tonight... thank heavens for small blessings, especially when everything else was so ridiculous.
I was lucky on this flight that I wasn’t sitting next to Dave, and in fact was nowhere near him or our other two guys on the plane. I was up front in the third row – fortunately with another window seat – and the other three were all together in the same row way in the back. I had already prepared them that I was bolting off the plane as soon as the front door was opened and I wasn’t hanging around LAX to wait for them. We had all driven separately; nobody had checked any luggage; and I wanted to beat traffic back to my apartment since Zack and I were meeting for dinner at 6:00... which meant that I wanted to be home by 4:00 to start getting ready.
And I sure as hell was not going onsite at MetroGen this afternoon. Dave had started to make noises about “getting caught up because we had been in New York for a couple days” and I shot him the kind of evil-eyed glare that a new consultant such as me should never give a senior manager getting ready to be considered for partner. But I figured that given the mess Dave had gotten us in with this wild goose chase, he was in no position to be making trouble for me within the firm for insubordination or just not being nice. So he backed down even before he specifically asked us. No doubt he would be going there, and I figured Jack and Steve would follow, but I couldn’t care less.
Zack had suggested a tapas restaurant on Hollywood Boulevard called Solazarse that he had heard was pretty good and which had opened two or three months earlier, but he hadn’t yet been to. So unlike our first date, we would both be embarking on a new dining adventure. We had our plans all set, and I texted him as soon as I landed to confirm. He just sent back an emoticon smiley face – nothing else – but that single icon said it all for me.
* * *
Zack let out a few sympathetic chuckles and rolled his eyes a couple of times as I told him about my Monday – and my Tuesday, and my Wednesday morning – but he didn’t seem surprised. When I had more or less finished the story he smirked and said,
“Well, now you have some idea of why I only lasted a year at that ad agency before going out on my own. There’s people like that Dave guy all over the place, and I couldn’t stand working for one of them, which is exactly what I did. It’s bad enough working with them as clients but at least they’re less likely to force you to go through stupid wastes of time like you just did without you having any say.”
I shrugged. I was already feeling much better, being here with Zack. He showed up right from work wearing a black silk T-shirt underneath a cream sport coat. He was wearing jeans again and cordovan horsebit loafers that were different from the black ones he had worn Saturday but still Gucci. And after spending much of the past three days in the land where geeky and preppy had formed this weird fashion alliance, I could almost feel a sense of relief being back in close proximity to a good-looking guy who knew how to dress. Of course, my reasons for being in a better mood were much more about the specific person I was with – Zack Buchanan – than just any well-dressed guy sitting at the same table as me.
“Maybe I should just do what you did; you know, go work for myself as a consultant...”
Zack’s abrupt, blunt interruption was a surprise, considering that we were on our second date and you would think he’d be trying to prop me up, ego-wise.
“No, not yet,” he quickly shook his head as he sipped his wine. I could feel the first little percolations of a “Oh really? Well, just why the F not???” type of response as he continued.
“Your side of consulting is different than what I do,” he went on. “In my case I’m a lot more specialized so it was easier for me to be able to approach a studio or distribution company and sell myself. Whereas you’re more of a generalist...”
He went on for a little bit. Not in a preachy way; not condescending; not lecturing. Really, no more than candidly and openly sharing his opinion with me. As he talked my mind insisted on making yet another comparison between him and Dustin. Whereas Dustin and I were professional equals, you might say – both slightly less than a year and a half out of school, and both with exactly the same amount of tenure at our firm – Zack clearly had “seniority” over me out there in the business world.
So I found myself listening to him share his thoughts and opinions with me in a very different way than I would listen to and talk to Dustin about the same subjects. If it were Dustin sitting here across from me right now and I had just finished telling him about what I had gone through with Dickhead Dave and the two geeky computer guys and the wasted trip to New York, he would have commiserated with me but any advice would probably have been predicated with “I think” or “maybe” or something along those lines. In other words, Dustin wasn’t quite in a position to give me advice from his own experience since he had exactly as much
experience as I did. (Actually, a little bit less than me since I had that internship in San Francisco before my senior year, whereas Dustin just partied with his college friends down in Mexico most of that summer.)
Zack, though, was telling me things and giving me advice based on what he had actually seen, experienced, and lived through. There was only about six years of age difference between the two of us but in terms of our professional lives, he had something like seven times as much experience as I did. Okay, I know that’s not really valid math there, but his seven years out there in that real world versus my single year so far did seem like a huge gap between what he knew and what I did.
The bottom line, though, was that he thought if I stuck it out with this firm for another two years – maybe a little bit less, maybe a little bit more – that I would be in the perfect position to join a smaller firm in a more senior position, and have much more control over my life at work and overall. Basically, I liked what I was hearing from him; he was telling me that he was certain I was intelligent and good enough to get what I could get out of a couple years at my firm and then get off of the lengthy, stressful path that Dustin and Josh Chamberlain and maybe even Kensington and Courtney would all probably wind up taking. You know, that quest to become a partner at the firm but for twelve or fifteen years along the way being all but a slave to the whims of people like Dave Evers.
Both Zack and I then looked at our watches at exactly the same moment. When we had sat down at our table – after Zack had kissed me hello this time when we both arrived at Solazarse at literally the same second, from different directions – we had agreed that we would talk about my wasted trip to New York for at most twenty minutes, but that would be all; not a second longer. After that twenty minutes had passed, if either one of us brought up anything about the New York trip again then that person would have to do something – anything – the other person wanted, without objection. My eyes narrowed as Zack explained these rules to me and I was helpless to keep the wicked smile from my lips as I interrupted with an innuendo-laden “Anything?” In response Zack slowly nodded, each bob of his head just as loaded with innuendo as my words and my smile were.
The whole time we were talking, the back part of my mind insisted on fantasizing about what might happen if I would be the one to “slip up” (okay, on purpose!) and bring up New York or Dickhead Dave or aspect ratios or anything that had been part of my past two and a half days. Zack would point his finger at me and go “aha!” or “you said it!” or something like that. I would shrug, look him directly in the eyes and say “well, you got me; I guess I will have to do whatever you tell me you want me to do...” with, of course, a ton of seductive intimation in my voice. We would leave after dinner and in the cab on the way back to his apartment he would lean over and whisper in my ear exactly what it was that I was now obligated to do for – to – him, and I would respond by looking him in the eyes and submissively asking “do you mean right now?” Zack would wordlessly nod and I would know that I had no choice. So I would reach over with my hand and begin to unbuckle his belt and then for the first time ever in the backseat of a cab I would...
OMG, I was getting myself incredibly aroused with my imagination! I willed myself back from fantasyland to reality and realized that tiny beads of sweat were breaking out on my forehead, and I was certain that I was becoming all flushed. I hoped that Zack didn’t notice but truthfully I would be surprised if he didn’t; he already seemed like a pretty perceptive guy to me. But even if he noticed that my face had reddened and I was sweating a little bit, hopefully he wouldn’t make the leap and think it was because I was fantasizing about unzipping him in the back seat of a cab and sliding my hand down inside his pants against his hardness and then...
WTF! Just thinking about what I had been thinking about a couple seconds earlier (follow that?) was getting me even hotter! I swear it felt like a thousand degrees inside this restaurant!
“You okay?” Zack asked, now definitely noticing the beads of sweat, several of which were freely running down my forehead. I reached up to brush away the moisture, frantically thinking of something to say. If we had already had something spicy-hot to eat, maybe some tapas with an extra-tangy sauce, I could have blamed my sweating on the food. But so far, no food at all; just our first glasses of the Pinot Noir Zack had ordered.
“I’m fine,” doing my best to get this sudden libido-driven hot flash under control. “Just a little bit jet-lagged still, I guess, so maybe that’s what’s causing me to... you know...”
I reached for my glass of Pellegrino and though I felt like chugging the entire tumbler and immediately pouring my own refill, I willed myself to apply at least a little bit of restraint. Slowly, over the next minute or two, I could feel the heat dissipating and every time my brain tried to veer back into that wicked fantasy of my first time giving Zack a blow job taking place in the backseat of a cab not that far into the future from this very moment, I was able to silently scream at myself “stop it, Lindsey!” and force my thoughts back into “safer” territory.
* * *
We both knew. There wouldn’t be any negotiating or cajoling or playing our expected roles (mine was, of course: “Well, um, I’m not really sure we should yet...”) or anything like that. Zack ordered Remy Martin for both of us after dinner and for the fifteen additional minutes until the check came, we toyed with our snifters and mostly looked hungrily at each other as our conversation died down significantly. We didn’t even have the “your place or mine?” exchange. I followed Zack out of Solazarse and when he hailed a cab back to his apartment, I wordlessly followed him right into the back seat.
Of course I didn’t act out what my mind had been fantasizing about earlier in dinner, and in fact we didn’t even make out or anything like that in the back of the cab. Zack did give me one brief but passionate kiss as the cab pulled into traffic; you know, sort of a “we’re really going to do this, and I promise it will be alright” kiss. But the rest of the time he just had his right arm around me as I wordlessly snuggled against him, lost in the moment; feeling more than thinking.
I should have been thinking about Dustin; I mean, Dustin and me. At least a little bit. But I could honestly say that I didn’t give Dustin Pearson or my relationship with him a microsecond of thought the entire night. It was as if my brain had set up a giant concrete barrier along with miniature armed guards and there was no way they would let even a miniscule thought of Dustin break through into my conscious mind... at least for tonight.
The cab ride to Zack’s apartment took about ten, maybe fifteen minutes with traffic. I had no thoughts whatsoever of backing out of this; of letting cold feet or guilt about Dustin or any latent “maybe it is still too soon for sex” epiphanies change my mind. I was going back to Zack’s apartment with him and we were going to get naked and have sex with each other for the first time.
He lived on the top floor of a five-story building. The elevator was an older one and a bit on the slow side and we were the only two in the elevator. So as soon as the door closed on the main floor Zack turned me towards him and we began passionately kissing, continuing for what felt like five minutes because the elevator was chugging upwards so slowly. We really only kissed for maybe twenty or thirty seconds, of course, but that was long enough to get me so worked up that it felt like an eternity until the doors opened again and I followed him out into the hallway and then five or six doors down to his apartment.
We were inside standing right by the door that he had just swung closed when we started kissing again, and this time both of our hands started roaming over the other’s body. Definitely no turning back now, I thought to myself; not that I wanted to, of course.
* * *
How is it that my first night of sex with Zack could paradoxically be both a blur but also a vivid, precisely recalled memory? It’s like someone who is nearsighted, like my Mom. Not that I really want to be thinking about my mother at the same time I’m recalling my first night of sex with Zack
, of course; but anyway...
Someone who is nearsighted can see things up close very, very clearly but when that person steps back or looks at things at more of a distance, they become blurry. That’s what my first night with Zack was like. I can think of all the snippets and segments and tidbits from throughout the night, each one so vivid I can remember even the tiniest detail, yet the night at as a whole from the time we got to Zack’s apartment is fuzzy; even jumbled and seemingly out of sequence.
I mean, I know for a fact he was inside me two different times, and each was different than the other. One time was this incredibly intense, frenzied round that only lasted about five minutes but which left us both out of breath and flopped side by side onto his bed afterwards, thankful for the cool air washing down from the ceiling fan. The other time was this prolonged, passionate, very deliberate session that went on for more than half an hour, I think.
But which one came (no pun intended) first? Thinking about the night as a whole it mostly seemed that after we were done kissing by his door we frantically went at each other first and then, after resting and talking for a little bit, the second time was the one that was slow and erotically charged, preceded by plenty of stroking and licking and grinding. But other times I could swear that the order of the two was reversed. Weird, right? I actually had to really concentrate to be certain that my initial recollection was correct: fast and frenzied first (a triple-”f” – that’s how I would remember).
But I can focus in on so very many specific details with near-perfect recall; details like Zack handing the condom to me after he had unwrapped it, and whispering as he licked my right ear: “Put it on me,” which I did. Or how, after the condom was on him, he teased me for something like two minutes before suddenly entering me for the first time. One thing about Zack: whereas Dustin and Josh and Andrew and almost every other guy I had slept with were just about the same age as me, Zack was older and therefore being in bed with him was like being with someone “in charge” for the first time in my sexual lifetime. Actually, I think the guy I met at the baseball game and slept with a couple times after breaking up with Andrew was older than me by about three or four years, but he hadn’t been that good in bed so I hadn’t felt anywhere near the same about being with him as I was feeling about this first night with Zack.
