Cherry Blossoms

by KT Morrison

  She lay now, fully dressed and showered, on top of Geoff. He had his loving and soft hands on her back, still in his pyjamas in bed. She was up early and ready for travel. Flight to Montréal left in two hours, she and Rocco would check in, they’d spend the afternoon at the Expo. They’d return to the hotel…and then…

  She pressed her face to Geoff’s chest, her ear a flat seal against his warm T-shirt. She listened to the squish-squish of his gentle heart, listened to him breathe.

  “I want you dying for me to get back. Promise me…you won’t touch it while I’m gone.”

  “Not at all?”

  “Just to pee.”

  “Oh, Nia. I’m going to explode.”

  “Promise me, Geoff.”

  She heard his loud sigh rushing under his ribs, felt her head heave with his breath. He hugged her tight.

  “Okay.”

  “I want to see it explode. But this weekend, right now, is about me. I’m going to get the fucking of a lifetime. Can you picture me?”

  “I can, Nia. Are you excited?”

  She closed her eyes and nodded. “What are you going to do when I get home?”

  “I’m going to take care of you, rub your back, clean you up...then I’m going to make love to you…”

  “I want that, Geoff, I can’t wait…”

  “You’re going to tell me everything that happened…”

  She sighed now, the slightest smile touched the corner of her tense and anxious mouth. “You’re not going to like it…”

  “I’m not?”

  She whispered, “It’s going to be so bad...so dirty…”

  “Are you going to think of me?”

  “Not even a little. Not til I’m done,” her nails lightly scratched his chest.

  “That’s so hot, Nia.”

  “I know. It is...isn’t it?”

  GEOFF

  “Odie…come on, go say…go hug your mom.”

  Nia was squatting in the kitchen. Down with her forearms draped over her knees, waiting for a good-bye hug from her daughter. Her thick black hair was styled, brushed, thrown over one shoulder. She was dressed all in black—lightweight black short-sleeve top, black pencil skirt, bare legs and black heels. So out of place in this quiet hazy morning pyjamas and OJ family kitchen.

  Odie was clinging to him and he ran his fingers through her sleepy hair. She had both arms wrapped around his thigh and she was red-faced and crying. And she was not talking to mom.

  No, Nia had betrayed her. Told her, promised her, she’d be coming to the Book Expo with them. But, alas, plans had changed and Odie was trying to make a point here. Punishing poor Nia. Nia was no pushover though and she didn’t succumb to her little-girl woes, not like he would. So they had a stubborn Mediterranean Standoff in the kitchen. Geoff cooked bacon, sizzling in the pan behind him, the sound of a kettle boiling underneath that.

  Nia’s face was firm, unimpressed. She didn’t coo and bubble and encourage her daughter to come to her. She held her gaze sternly. Odie hugged Geoff and she would never go to Nia. Not this morning.

  Nia said, “Hey…this is life, Odelle. Get used to it. It’s not all things, all your way, all the time…get it? I know I said what I said, but life sucks sometimes. So give me a break…” she shrugged, shook her head, frowning.

  Odie turned her head away, hugged Geoff tighter.

  “O, baby…” he ruffled her hair again, “Mom’s going on a plane, be nice…”

  She barged off, not crying but tears streaming. Her feet stomped on the floor, pumped up the stairs and she ran to her room.

  Geoff raised his eyebrows as Nia stood. She hugged him and couldn’t look him in the eye, let her head fall in the crook of his neck. He soothed her back, let his hands go in big circles over her.

  He sighed, “She just wants us to be together as a family. She wants the three of us to spend the day together.”

  “We do that, Geoff.”

  “Yeah,” he agreed.

  “She’s punishing me.”

  “I’ll talk to her.”

  “Make sure you tell her about life and responsibilities, Geoff.”

  “She’s seven, but yes, Nia, I will.”

  Her hands slipped in the waistband of his PJ pants and she grabbed his bare butt and squeezed it. He lightly pulled her hair so her face turned to him. He kissed her and she closed her eyes.

  This was it. Her suitcase was packed, zipped right around on three sides, five feet behind her at the door leading out of the house. Sitting on its wheels, the travel handle extended. She was leaving. She was going to be hundreds of miles away. All this fantasy and dirty talk had reached the pinch point. When she left through that door it was done. This Nia in his arms, in a weird way, would not be the same Nia who returned to him. She was already changing. Had been for a while. His house-Nia, the one he had before she started working had been gradually oh-so-slightly becoming a kind of a ghostly memory. It was being replaced by this tangible self-realized woman he was holding now. When she came back who would she be? A woman who fucked another man. It was sexy…oh, so sexy. But was she going to continue to be herself or would this change transform her to someone he didn’t even recognize? That was the thrill though, wasn’t it? That’s what tickled his belly. There was something else under that sexual sizzle that came from her being with another man—it was that strange challenge to their relationship too. That was just as exciting. He couldn’t wait to clamour for her affection again.

  This game seemed safe. But maybe it was dangerous. He loved her completely and she loved him just the same. They’d survive it. She was going to fuck Rocco. That was going to happen. Come Sunday night they could hug and kiss and be sweet husband and wife again and he would tell her and she would listen—they’d know how much more the game would go and they’d decide together.

  He breathed her Nia smell in, her Chanel, her shampoo, her skin. Breathed it til he almost burst. They held their kiss for a long time. When they broke he said nothing. What would he say? Have fun? There was nothing to say. Even good-bye felt wrong. So he walked her to the door and he took her bag and carried it down the steps. Walked with her to the alley and out to Garden Street where there was a taxi waiting for her.

  As the driver took her bag and put it in the trunk, he stood toe-to-toe with her. He looked deep in her eyes and told her a million things and her eyes said, I fuckin love you, Geoff. He kissed her again and then they both smiled. They never said a word. She got in the cab and her fingers gave a slight nervous wave as it drove off. He stood on the edge of the road until he couldn’t see the taxi any more, stood as long as he could, watching his wife go away from him, off to meet Rocco, get on a plane and get far, far away.

  NIA

  She and Rocco flew out of Pearson on a WestJet and they were in Montréal in an hour and forty minutes. They flew Premium Economy together, buying the expensive seats entirely because Rocco needed the extra leg room. She was squashed next to him the whole flight, used to sitting side by side five days a week but not so close. Their elbows pressed and his bulk spread to her side.

  The flight had been uncomfortably quiet. Some idle talk, small talk—they’d developed a bond spending so much time in the truck together, a sort of shorthand way of communicating, not finishing sentences, a lot of nodding and smirking, a shared unspoken amusement in the misfortune of others. There wasn’t much they talked about on the flight. And there was something obviously missing—to her—from their conversations when they did talk. Something neither of them often mentioned at all any more since Canada Day. Maria, Geoff, Rocco Jr., Odie, Paolo, Peter, and Marco were never mentioned. It was obvious. They used to talk quite a bit about them.

  They went to their hotel first before going to the Expo. Once they landed Rocco was all business again and she wondered if he was nervous about flying. He didn’t seem like the type. As soon as they were in the taxi together though he was old Rocco, telling her what to do and encouraging her to move fast and think fast. She had the l
aptop open and he would have an idea and need her to generate a report. He wanted to be prepared for the show. Aimed to be there by 2 P.M.

  Their hotel was in the Quartier des Spectacles, a short walking distance to the Palais des congrès de Montréal where the Expo was being held. The cab dropped them off on the street out front. The Hotel Sanguinet was a monolithic grey-block boutique hotel, a faceless but grand four-storey historic building with a raised doorway set on the corner facing a busy intersection. The lobby was small but very modern, with a highly polished maple floor, low ceiling, stone fireplace and one whole wall in the exposed grey stone of the structure—HOTEL SANGUINET spelled out against it in narrow backlit aluminum letters behind the reception desk.

  The manicured concierge checked them in, gave them their keycards, and they rode in silence up the brassy comically small ancient elevator to the top floor. At the ending of the hall, heading left out of the elevator cab, there were two black-painted doors with key-card access brushed aluminum levers. Two rooms, adjoining, doors between them to turn it into a suite if they wished.

  GEOFF

  She would be in Montréal now, he thought, looking at the floating clock idly drifting across the big screen of one of his sleeping iMacs. She’d told him nothing of her plans. She kept her cards very close to her pretty chest. She could be doing it right now. Right this very second. Five hundred kilometres to the east the woman he loved might, just might, have her pretty mouth on another man’s cock. Or he could be fucking her. Rough like she likes it. Like her sweet husband wasn’t able to do it. That three-hundred-pound gorilla with a big dick could have his slender wife’s legs over his shoulders, giving her an absolute pounding, her wild screams bringing the management. Beating their fists on the door in vain as Nia’s nails raked Rocco’s muscular back.

  He stacked another box of rolled Cheeky Monkey prints on his leather couch next to a box with various unsold extras Odie had managed to find around the studio. Winslow was coming first thing in the morning tomorrow; they had a big and busy day ahead and he had no idea how he was going to manage with all this sexual tension squeezing and wringing his heart, turning it to Silly Putty.

  Was this a big mistake? Could he really trust her? That was crazy—of course he could. If there was anyone he could trust it would be his best friend, the woman he married.

  But what about her job? What about being with Rocco five days a week once this escapade was over? Could he stand it? And what if Nia couldn’t? She could lose this job and she loved it—loved the money, the independence, the prospect of a cottage…

  Fuck, why couldn’t she just have fucked that stripper? That would have been so much cleaner.

  NIA

  They’d only walked half the convention this afternoon and evening, just a few hours, but her feet were dying in her heels. She stood now at the tall narrow window in her hotel room, deeply set into the old grey stone, and she clenched her toes on the hard cool maple floor. She rolled her heels against it, flattened her arches out, felt her damp bare soles stick on its varnish.

  The hotel looked out over Rue St. Laurent and she absently watched the hazy grey-blue city wind down. It was that quieter moment when the shifts change, day time activities retire for the night and the fun-loving Friday night crowd is just drying their hair. She rolled her ankles, heard them click, pressed the top of a foot now painfully against the floor, forced her toes to curl up.

  Rocco had bought her dinner at a restaurant in La Ville Souterraine, the Underground City. An Italian place that served too much bread. The pasta was good but she barely touched it. She had a few glasses of wine and Rocco did too. Rocco kept her topped up and she liked that he was trying to get her drunk. That’s what she wanted from him. She didn’t eat—didn’t want to feel full at all if what she wanted to have happen, happened tonight. They walked back to the hotel in silence.

  Rocco was in his room and she was in hers. She had her skirt on and her black top, her lingerie was still in the suitcase.

  Something was happening out in the city, out beyond the equally old block of buildings across the street. Past them were the tips of angled sheets of colourful acrylic, like some sort of futuristic sailboats. Light pulsed gently through them. Beyond, a wavering digital swath—a video projected across the façade of a hundred-year-old building. A woman’s face, turning, knowing, beautiful…

  She ran her hands through her hair, shaped them like claws and she pulled life into her mane. She crossed the room to the dresser that was opposite the foot of the bed, knocked four stacked plastic cups off its walnut surface and into a waste basket. There was a wood-framed mirror there and she checked her makeup, bared her teeth. She opened the mini bar and found a small bottle of red wine. She went to the partition door and she turned the handle, opened her side, then paused, hand on his. She turned it and it opened. It wasn’t locked.

  He wasn’t startled but she could see he was glad to see her. He smiled wide and confident, holding his iPhone and checking messages. He was sitting between two of the tall deep windows in a chair that he dwarfed. A steam-bent maple plank chair with a leather cushion. Rocco’s room was the same as hers, in reverse, a stone wall down one side where the bed was, the other, the wall between the two rooms, was painted a glossy blood red.

  “I need a glass of wine,” she said, holding the bottle in one hand and wagging it, tempting him. “Join me? I couldn’t find any glasses in my room.” She was at the dresser, taking the clear acrylic stemmed glasses out of their plastic wrap.

  “Yeah, sure,” he grunted, deep and low. She poured two for them, brought his and handed it to him, turned back to bring her glass and the rest of the bottle so they could finish it. She stopped short of the dresser and leaned out, lifted one leg up lightly, her legs coming apart, her skirt sliding up ever so slightly. Knew he’d see her inner thigh, see her legs flex as she balanced on her toes to reach the bottle. She went to him, put the bottle down between them and pulled a matching chair to face him.

  “What a day,” she sighed and she sat down, put her bare feet up so the toes curled over the lip of his chair, one of her ankles touching his massive high. She watched his eyes go down, look at that bare part of her. She had his attention. “My poor feet,” she complained. He drained his wine.

  He was looking very good in just a black T-shirt, plain. This one had sleeves but they clung to his thick arms and peeled back at the hem. He had track pants, dark grey, no socks. His thick fingers played with his tiny plastic glass and he watched her over top of his hands, his eyes narrowed. His forearms flexed, the black line dragons rippling with his muscles.

  He leaned and reached down, his eyes still on her, and picked up the wine bottle between two fingers. He brought it up to his lips and took a swig, put the bottle back on the table next to him, nestling it in the overflowing bouquet of fresh flowers set in a vase there.

  “You have to do it all over again tomorrow,” he grumbled, smirking. He took both her ankles up in one hand and he set them down on the top of his thigh. She felt a tightness come across her middle, a heat flashed across the back of her neck. She finished her wine in one pull.

  Then those huge rough strong hands were on her, kneading her sensitive soles. Her eyelids sank with pleasure but she tilted her head back, watched how small her feet were in his enormous hands. She moaned softly for him, let him hear her gentle woman sounds. “Mm, that feels so good,” she sighed.

  “You have perfect fuckin feet,” he said.

  “I know,” she said. She leaned towards him, watched his eyes, reached out and snagged the bottle of wine. She took a drink from it, gripped the neck and sank into her chair with the bottle clutched to her chest.

  “I’m so beat,” she said. “Thanks again for dinner.” She arched her feet and spread her toes while he kept rubbing. It was so wrong and it was turning her on. This big rough man, touching that private part of her…alone with him in a hotel room, so far from home. He was her boss and this was way too intimate.

 
He nodded, his face pinched, brow furrowed and low. She took another big sip of wine from the bottle, then leaned and passed it to him.

  He took it, swigged from where she’d just had her lips. She brought her feet down and smiled for him sleepily. Then she stood and stretched, her arms up over her head, straight to the ceiling, her hands in light fists. She stretched a leg out behind her and he watched it, saw her grace, her muscle.

  “I think I’m going to hit the hay,” she said softly. “Thanks for the wine.”

  “That’s it?” he said. “We didn’t even talk.”

  “I’m bushed, Rocco. We have a busy day tomorrow, don’t we?” She went to the passageway between their two rooms, paused and rested on the jamb, leaned against it, crossed her legs and scrunched her toes. “Why? What did you want to do?”

  “Me?” he stood, tilted the wine bottle up and finished it. She could see a stiff pendulous movement behind the grey cotton pants. He set the bottle down, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, said, “I’m getting in the shower. Hot shower.” He approached her.

  She didn’t budge, said, “That sounds nice. Have fun.”

  He passed her, eyes shifting to the right, devilish smirk. Passed her and went into his bathroom and left the door open. She stayed and watched him. He reached into the tiled stall, one big hand supporting himself on its clear glass edge. He pulled the lever, put his hand under the hissing stream of hot water. “Big shower,” he said, to himself, his deep voice a rumbling echo from the shower stall. His back was to her and he pulled his shirt off, showed her that impossibly built powerful muscle. So wide she wouldn’t be able to hug him. So big she would suffer under him.