The Flirtation

by Kayley Loring

  “Ingrid and I have both spent a lot of time sleeping on boats, so we can sleep through almost anything.”

  “Even lawyers?” I whispered.

  “That was entertaining.”

  “Is she still here?”

  “She left early. Thanks for your notes on the prenup. We’re still waiting to hear back from Ingrid’s attorney. Or solicitor, I guess they’re called over there. I don’t expect it’ll be a big deal. I just didn’t want to have to think about this kind of thing when I’m so happy.”

  “I totally understand. Ingrid seems wonderful. It’s really good to see you so happy. Really.”

  He smiled. “I am happy. Really happy. It’d be good to see you this happy too, chief.”

  “I am happy! I was thinking we should start the day off by going through the progress report for HR and then get into quality control. Honestly, the entire integration has been going so smoothly compared to other mergers I’ve studied or been witness too—it’s a match made in heaven.”

  “I attribute most of that to the work you and Luke have been doing together.”

  I could feel myself blushing. I could think of nothing to say or do other than stuff my face with more pineapple and nod my head.

  “Listen, I’d love to hear about all of the above. I’ve got a little meeting room set up for us, so why don’t you wait for me and Luke over there—you see that pavilion over there?” He pointed towards one of the smaller pavilions, the one nearest to the Jacuzzi. “Meet us there when you’re finished with your breakfast. I’ve gotta take care of a couple of things, say goodbye to Ingrid before she heads into town for a little shopping, and I’ll let Luke know what’s up. ‘Kay?”

  “I’ll bring my laptop. Are there electrical outlets?”

  He patted me on the shoulder as he stood up. “Yes, dear, there are electrical outlets. See you later. Enjoy.”

  He strode off in the direction of the big luxury safari tent that was his love nest, and I looked around for Luke. He was nowhere in sight, but I did see a sweet-looking middle-aged lady in a grey and white maid’s outfit, who was sweeping the patio near the main living area. I waved at her, she nodded and waved. Through the patio doors, I could see Samson in the foyer, talking on his mobile phone. I was, for now, alone with the pineapple chunks and the palm trees and the tropical plants, and my mental list of merger integration topics to focus on so I wouldn’t obsess about the fact that I commanded Luke to spoon with me while under the influence of a mild sedative last night.

  I entered the pavilion with my laptop and cell phone and looked around. New age-y music played softly from unseen speakers, aromatherapy assaulted my nostrils, and a smiling Southeast Asian woman stood in front of a massage table, her arms outstretched towards me.

  “Um. Sorry, I must have the wrong pavilion.”

  “You Avery, yes? Come in please, relax. My name Dao. Mister Buck say give full ninety minute relaxation massage, please take off clothes, get on table face-down under sheet. I come back one minute.”

  “Um. No thank you!” I turned to run out the door, but Bucket was suddenly standing there, blocking me.

  “Hold yer horses there, chief! You need to de-stress, like bad.”

  “But I—”

  “Luke and I are going to talk business over a game of golf for a couple of hours, you hang out here and we’ll circle back later, ‘kay?”

  “No, I can’t—”

  “Seriously, no offense, but your vibe is all wrong for this place. I love working with you, but this is a big week for me. I need everyone to be chill, alright? Consider it your job to be more relaxed while you’re here, okay?”

  This is bullshit. I cleared my throat. “All you had to do was ask, dude. Have fun, see you later.” I turned back to face the smiling masseuse. “Let’s do this.” If one more person tells me to relax today I will probably punch them in the face.

  “Cool. See ya later. Bye Dao, don’t let her leave!” He vanished, and I placed my laptop on a chair, sadly. We’ll get to work later, buddy.

  “You can take all clothes off or leave underwear on, okay?”

  “Yeah. Okay.” Okay Dao, I will let you place your oiled hands on me, but I will not like it and I definitely will not relax.

  I left the bikini on, as well as multiple protective layers of tension and discomfort as I lay on the massage table with my face smushed into the face holder thing, my arms stretched out alongside my body under the sheet. Dao returned. “Ooookaaaayy!” she said in her deep sing-song voice. “This your first massage?”

  “Well. Technically, yes.”

  “No—really?”

  “Yes. Really.”

  “Ohhh you gonna love it! I take care of you, baby girl. You like almond or coconut oil today?”

  “Either one is fine.”

  “Okay. Coconut oil for you. You like lavender or neroli smell?”

  “Yeah, I don’t know what neroli is.”

  “Oh, you like neroli, we do neroli today for you.”

  “Okay.”

  “You got any pain in body?”

  “Um. No?”

  “You got tension anywhere?”

  “I don’t think so. I’m fine.”

  “Okay let’s see here.” She ran her hands over my body, over the sheet, squeezing my muscles lightly, here and there. “Ooooh, tense!” She laughed. I heard her rub her hands together and then she placed them on my shoulders and began to massage them. “Ooooh. Too tight! Too tight! This pressure okay, too much?”

  “It’s fine.” I was clenching my entire body.

  “Lots of knots! Okay, baby girl, I gonna fix you.” She pressed down hard on a spot on my shoulder, near my neck, and I screamed. “Oh, too hard?!”

  “Ow! That really hurt!”

  “You got knot here size of fist! Gotta work it out.”

  “You can just leave the knots.”

  “Can’t leave knots, baby girl. Knots full of tension and toxin. Gotta release. Stop holding breath. Take deep breaths, one two three, okay? Now.”

  I tried to inhale but the thought of ninety minutes of this torture made my lungs constrict. I felt my phone vibrate and lowered my hand down so I could see the phone in front of my downturned face. “Hang on, I have to read this email.”

  “You got phone?! You not allowed phone!”

  “It’s a work day, these are business hours, I have to be available for my bosses and clients and colleagues. Just hang on, I have to check this and then I’ll put the phone away I promise. You can keep doing your thing.” The email was a Wharton Business School Alumni newsletter. I scrolled through the other emails in my inbox. I had already read all of them. I didn’t understand. Was there something wrong with the Wi-Fi here? On any given weekday I usually received at least twenty emails every half an hour. I checked the signal. Full strength for carrier and Wi-Fi. What was going on?

  Dao pressed into another tension knot and I screamed. “SHIIIIT! OWWWWW!”

  “I gotta work it out!”

  “Okay, time out! I gotta make one phone call and then we can start over, okay?” I propped myself up on my elbows and called my office number to make sure Manhattan had not exploded.

  Natalie picked up on the second ring. “Good morning, Avery Davis’s office this is Natalie speaking.”

  “Natalie, what is going on over there? Is the server down? I’m not getting any emails.”

  I could hear her stifling a laugh. “Hey how’s it going! Um. So, Howard called me yesterday evening and told me to forward all calls to Sylvia while you’re there, and to let your clients know you’re on vacation. But if there’s anything that you absolutely should handle I will forward it to you, at my discretion.”

  “Okay that’s ridiculous, I’m still on this planet, the whole point of this was that I would be able to work while I was here.”

  “Well, that’s not the whole point…”

  “What have you forwarded to Sylvia?”

  “Just a couple of questions from clients, it’s
slow this time of year, you know that. That’s why it’s the perfect time for you to take this trip!”

  I looked over my tense shoulder at Dao, who was oiling up her hands and giggling to herself.

  A paranoid person would have to wonder if this would lead to Sylvia taking over my job, however, I have covered for Sylvia numerous times over the past year when she was on vacation, and I was well aware that this was how things were done at Kaplan & Keene. Ever since Keene’s wife read some article about work productivity and employee satisfaction rising in relation to an increase in vacation and work-from-home days, we’ve been inundated with emails from our firm’s go-to travel agency featuring special deals and encouraged by HR to use our vacation and sick days. It was awful.

  “I’m getting a call on the other line, Avery, is there anything I can do for you?”

  “Okay yeah,” I said into the phone, with a sense of urgency, “Yes, definitely call me, that sounds important, I’ll be here and I can take care of it, any time. Bye.” I hung up. “I should keep my phone nearby, just in case.”

  “Ooookaaay, whatever you need, baby girl. You lie back down please now.”

  I held onto my phone. “Okay.”

  “Take deep breaths.”

  “Yeah. Sure.” I took a deep breath and held it.

  “You gotta breathe out too.”

  I blew air out of my mouth and made a whooshing sound. “There. Happy?”

  “You the one need to be happy, girl.” She rubbed deep into my neck and I shrieked. “You gotta breathe into pain! Breathe into neck right now!”

  “I DON’T KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS! HOW DO I BREATHE INTO MY NECK THAT IS PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE!!!”

  She squeezed my shoulders. “Listen listen! Keep eyes close. Focus on breath. Just breathe. Let go. Got it? Just breathe. In, hold. Out, hold. Like that.”

  I tried that. I breathed in and held and then I breathed out and held. I did it over and over. And eventually, I got the hang of this breathing thing. And then, after a while, after Dao had me turn over onto my back, I must have fallen asleep.

  I awoke to Dao’s voice in my ear. “Okay, baby girl. How you feel now?”

  I stretched my arms up in the air. They didn’t look like my arms. They were silky and supple. I was no longer holding my phone. I was no longer holding tension. “Oh my God.” I wriggled around on the table. “I feel great.”

  “You did it. You relax. Your muscle feel good now, right?”

  “They feel so good!” I kept writhing around on my back. “I feel so good.” I didn’t even recognize my own voice. It was husky.

  “You take time getting up. I bring you water. Important to drink lots of water now. You detox, right?”

  “Right. I detox. Thank you.”

  Dao disappeared and I sat up slowly and looked down at my body. Surely this was the body of some twenty year-old dancer. My skin was smooth, my muscles defined, my body fat—gone! In the dim light of the pavilion I even looked tanned. Now I understood why people did this.

  I gave Dao a big long hug, chugged the water she’d brought me, returned from my room with a forty dollar tip and the flowers that were in a vase, which she accepted graciously, and then went to the patio to see if there was any fruit salad left from breakfast. I was surprised and pleased to find Bucket and Luke at the beachside table, drinking coffee and having a bite to eat. I wasn’t even nervous about seeing Luke. “Well hello there, fellas,” came the sultry foreign voice from my own mouth. “Back from golf-work so soon?”

  Bucket laughed. “Not so soon. It’s been three hours since I last saw you. You had a good massage, I take it?”

  “Three hours?!” How was that even possible? Three hours had passed, and I didn’t even think to check my phone for messages. I sat down at the table and reached for a slice of cantaloupe, noticing that Luke was barely even looking at me. “Wow.” I took a bite of cantaloupe. “Wow. This is delicious. This is the best cantaloupe I’ve ever tasted. You guys need to try this.” I finished the cantaloupe and started popping grapes into my mouth, and savoring strawberries, while Luke and Bucket continued their conversation about Brexit. Boring! But this is literally the best papaya I’ve ever had. I did a little happy food dance in my chair and looked around the estate, and the beach and the ocean. It was so beautiful. I saw Ingrid floating down towards us, and raised my arm up to wave at her. I saw Luke catch a glimpse of my bikini through the long open sleeve of the gauzy cover-up Ingrid had loaned me.

  Ingrid smiled her gorgeous smile and joined us. “Looks like somebody’s met Dao.”

  “Oh my God she’s amazing! Isn’t she amazing?!”

  “She’s a miracle worker. I hope it isn’t rude to say so, Avery, but you look so different without all that tension in your face. You’re literally glowing. Isn’t she?”

  “She certainly is,” said Bucket, as he ran his fingers up his bride-to-be’s arm.

  Luke managed a nod and a “yes.” He seemed so uncomfortable.

  “Luke, you should get a massage. You’d love it!”

  He blushed. “We’ll see.”

  “You should,” said Bucket. “You’ve done your work for the day, you’ve earned it.”

  “Oh—Ingrid, Bucket! Where are you registered?!”

  “We aren’t registered anywhere yet. We’re just asking people to find a shell on the beach and write a note to put inside it. Write down your favorite relationship advice for us, or your favorite quotation about love or marriage!”

  What kind of hippie-dippie surf-culture weirdness is this?

  Ingrid and Bucket smiled at our confused faces. “It can be a poem, or a saying,” Bucket said.

  “It can be a line from a song!”

  “That’s a lovely idea,” said Luke, although I could tell he was thinking the same thing I was thinking.

  Who the hell am I to give these two lovebirds relationship advice?

  I excused myself and went back to my pavilion suite. I let the cover-up and bikini fall to the floor and stared at my naked self in the mirror. My face had more color in it than usual. I was so toned, all over. There was an indentation around my face where I had been pressing it against the face rest. I rubbed my face vigorously, but the imprint remained. I didn’t even care. It was a badge of honor. I went to the Bahamas and got a three hour massage and all I brought back was this lousy face imprint.

  I took a shower. I hadn’t felt so curious about my own body since I was a teenager. I ran my fingers along my abdomen, along my hips and outer thighs. This is how I’d feel to Luke right now… That brought a tension between my legs. Ironically, I could have used Mr. Potter now, more than ever. There were only a few dozen feet and a few walls between Luke and myself right then. What was stopping me from wrapping myself in a bathrobe, going back outside and putting my mouth on his mouth?

  What, indeed.

  Chapter 11

  Luke

  As soon as Avery left the table, I excused myself to go for a long walk—alone—on the beach. Ostensibly it was to look for seashells, but really I needed to get as far away as possible from Avery, who was probably taking a shower. I walked and walked, and didn’t see anything except the image in my head of Avery showering and looking up at me while licking her lips.

  When she had emerged from that massage pavilion she was luminous. She walked like a panther, her skin was taut and flushed. She appeared to be ravenous. The way she moaned while savoring each bite of mango and grapes and strawberries. She didn’t seem to be doing it deliberately—behaving so sensuously and seductively. She was just really enjoying the fruit. I wanted to dash out of there before she started going to town on a banana. But then Ingrid turned up and told us about the seashell gifts.

  Who on earth was I to give them advice on love and marriage? I couldn’t even tell the woman that I was deliriously attracted to that I wanted her. All I had to do was ask her if she was happy in her relationship and let her know that I was there for her if she wanted me too, while we had the chance. I mean we wer
e in the Bahamas, for heaven’s sake. What was I so afraid of? I could sleep with her, enjoy her company while we were together and then go back to my life and keep living it the way I’d always lived it—that’s what I did with other women.

  I decided to Google “best quotes about love and marriage” on my phone, when I turned back towards the villa and saw Avery walking in my direction, about fifteen meters away. I could see that she was holding a shell in one hand and a pad of paper and pen in the other. I had forgotten to bring pen and paper and I hadn’t even looked for a shell yet.

  “I’m not stalking you, I swear,” she called out.

  “I hardly believe you.”

  “You were about to Google a quote to put in the note, weren’t you?”

  I laughed. “You don’t know me.”

  She stopped walking and sat down in the sand, facing the ocean. The sun was about to set. I had gone hours without seeing her all morning, managed to stay away from her for a few more hours this afternoon, and now here we were on a beach at sunset and I was so happy to hear her voice and look at her, it was idiotic. I sat down, about two feet away from her, and stared ahead. I looked around and picked up the first shell I found. It was perfect.

  “Can you believe they’re getting married tomorrow?”

  “They seem to have their feet solidly on the ground. And they seem very much in love.”

  “Yeah.” She sounded sad. “It’s so easy for some people,” she whispered, more to herself than to me.

  “Looks that way,” I said. “You come up with something juicy to stick in your shell yet?”

  She guffawed. “It sounds so dirty when you put it that way, sailor.”

  “Everything sounds dirty when you have a dirty mind, darling.”

  After a moment, she said: “Did you have a good talk with Bucket? Get him up to date on everything?”

  “Yes I did. It was not the first time I’d talked business on a golf course, but it was the most fun I’ve ever had losing. That man is quite an athlete. It’s humbling.”