by Hawke, Jessa
She raises her huge hazel eyes to his and nods. They stand up, and the whole way down the stairs and into the back of the restaurant, he holds her tighter than he has ever held another human being in his entire life. He settles her down into a chair and brings over the other chair from across the table. He waits. He has done a lot of waiting with Alexandra, but he knows that right now, he must wait because she has to be the first to speak. He’s got a sinking feeling in his stomach, and his mind is already racing ahead.
Alexandra tells him everything. She tells him about how she met her boyfriend—a fact that makes Dave feel as if someone has just pulled a rug out from beneath his legs—three years ago, and for a while they were happy. It was your typical relationship—they got set up by a friend of a friend, and after a year and a half, they were ready to move in with each other. It was right after that that all the problems seemed to start. “You never really know someone until you live with them, I guess,” Alexandra says, and does that hard swallow again. Suddenly, it seemed like there was more stress in his life than there ever had been before. The day after he had to fire someone from work, he came home and started acting petulantly about everything she did; the food was too cold, the beer was too warm. He ended up throwing a dish across the room, inches from her head.
He apologized, of course, blamed it on his day, and she forgave him. Who doesn’t get crazy when stress is an issue, after all? But it didn’t stop; there was a lull, certainly, but all of a sudden, he didn’t like the way she was dressing. Her shorts were too short—didn’t she see how the security guard at work was looking at her? Never mind that the security guard was in his seventies. Her boyfriend was suddenly driving her to work every morning and picking her up. It would have been cute, the jealousy thing, if it wasn’t so profoundly disturbing. She tried to bring it up, of course, and he laughed and said that he knew she was faithful. She had been confused; why would he even put that into question?
The domination had been subtle, but rapid. She found out that he was checking her phone for text messages and phone calls, tracing the numbers down; heaven forfend one of them was a guy of any kind. He would wait for her after work, and sometimes, she wasn’t even certain he had gone to work himself that day. It was ugliness bubbling up inside of the relationship, and after he found out that she was calling her parents to talk to them about it, he took her phone and slammed it against the wall. It shattered, and she started emailing instead. She felt her vivaciousness, everything about herself slowly start to shut down as she became cut off from the rest of the world.
“And what prompted this?” Dave asks, touching her eye gently. She winces and looks away. “Alex, c’mon.”
“He tapped into my Facebook account and found out we were messaging each other.”
Dave almost slams his fist into the wooden table before them, but then thinks about how scared Alexandra is already. Instead, he reigns himself back in a few thousand degrees and says, so quietly and gravely that she almost misses it. “Alexandra, I am sorry. I am so, so sorry he did this to you. But you did nothing wrong.”
She squeezes her eyes tight and the tears start again. “I shouldn’t have met with you. I’m in a relationship.”
“I know. But there’s no law that says you can’t meet with the people you want to meet with. It’s not like we had sex.”
He catches the flush on her neck as he says those words, the way she seems to curl her body in on itself. She cannot look at him. “I know,” she says, her voice barely above a whisper. “But the thing is, Dave, I do like you. He’s not wrong. I didn’t cheat, but emotionally—”
“You did nothing wrong. He is abusing you.”
“It’s just tonight. He didn’t really hit me, he just pushed me and I face first into a coffee table.”
“Do you really believe that? Alex, he has no right to touch you in any way that puts you into danger. Shouldn’t he be protecting you, not throwing you under a bus?”
“Dave, come on—”
“No, you come on. You’re better than this. You’re smarter than this. He’s invading your privacy, not letting you breathe.”
“Dave—”
“Do you love him?”
“I don’t know. I did, once. I don’t know if I do anymore.”
There is a silence after that so heavy that it is palpable on the air. She puts a hand on his chest, and then they both hear it. Her phone beeps. She grabs it, slides her finger across the screen, reads the message, and puts it away. She gets up. Dave is incredulous.
“Alexandra, don’t.”
“I have to.” Her voice is sad and scared at the same time, and she is making her way ‘round the table. “He’s sorry, Dave, he’s really sorry.”
“Come to me instead.”
“I can’t.”
Dave drags in some of the tension-filled air between them. She can’t possibly know it, but he understands how she feels. Doing the right thing when everyone else is doing it wrong. She doesn’t love the other guy, he knows. But there isn’t anything he can do to stop her from making this mistake right now, even though everything inside of him is trying to burst through his skin, grab her, and make her stay. So instead, he takes her hand gently.
“I want you to know something.”
“What?”
“I want you to know that I am always open to you. My apartment is always open to you. And not just because I know what he’s doing is wrong. But because I’m willing to use my fighting skills in a different way. I’m not going to go and punch him out, even though he deserves it. I just want you to know that if there is anything you need, that you always have a place with me.”
“Why?”
“Because you deserve better. Because you matter to me. Because I care.”
“Why?” Her voice is desperate, pleading.
“Because I’ve never cared about anybody like this before. Because for you, I’m willing to put it all on the line. Because I am not the kind of guy who does anything crazy, but you turn me inside out and flip me upside down. Because I want you. And I know you want me.”
Their faces steam underneath the force of the words. Through the absolute stillness that possess both of their bodies, a hard, sharp chirp from her phone alerts them both. Alexandra takes another look at her phone screen, and clicks a large red button. Without knowing what awaits, but also feeling it instinctively, she turns to Dave, and, with one final unkink of her shoulders, she says, “Where do you live?”
With any other woman, he would tumble with her face-first into the bed. He would toss her and ride her, and not open anything up. Alexandra steals into his psyche like a thief, like the world’s most precious, smallest person. He undresses her slowly, as he might a child. Except a child does not have softly rounded hips, or gently sloping shoulders that reach out into arms as elegant as an Egyptian queen’s. He unbraids her hair, standing almost a foot taller than her, and watches the silky strands tumble down her shoulders and back. He lifts them as the faint sound of thunder breaks into the room, and through its rumble, through the waterfall of dark hair on her back, he kisses her. Then he lifts her hair and gently runs a thumb over each bruise. Then he kisses every one of them and he can feel her body start to quiver.
He wants to wrap himself around her, so he does. They walk over to the bed and she stands before him, taller than he is for once. Her small, soft hands reach under his shirt and slip it up over his head, and he marvels at her confidence, so long beaten down. She tilts her head down and kisses his neck and chest. He did not think this through; he did not imagine her in any way except vibrant and alive. He did not think of her as sexy, except now there is no denying that that is what she is. When she closes her mouth around one of his nipples, he groans aloud and then looks away, embarrassed to be undone. She stops, reaches up and holds his face between her hands. Her hazel eyes lock on his green ones, and he finds that he would be happy to stay just like that, looking deep into her, forever.
“If I have nothing to be ashamed o
f,” she says, “then you most certainly do not, either.”
They lay side by side, she in her underwear and he in his jeans. He strokes the silken skin of her arm and lets his fingers drift slowly across her collarbone, across the mounds of her breasts, feels the goose bumps rise on her flesh and he strokes her, over and over, feels her grow more excited underneath his caresses. She makes little noises above him as he bends his head down to kiss her stomach, and then, after he removes her bra, he scoops one of her breasts up in a palm and lavishes it with the attention of his tongue. She sounds soft and feminine, like a cat being stroked just right, and when he slides the elastic of her underpants down her hips and runs a hand through the small forest of hair she’s got between her legs, she gasps aloud and his heart almost stops.
Minutes later, he is poised above her, parting her at her entrance, and he notices that she has her eyes shut. He stops, because that is not right.
“Alexandra.”
She opens her eyes.
“I want you to look at me. I want you to see this with me. I am not going to hurt you, ever. I want you to jump with me, and I want your eyes open for the ride.”
She cracks a smile at the last, and into the full force of that smile, Dave enters her, sliding the length of himself into the warm waiting cavern of her accepting body. And this is when Alexandra surprises him. He knows now that he will never cease being surprised by her, by the way she throws her legs around his hips and urges him to go deeper, the way she wraps her arms around his neck as he pulls in and out of her, the way that her voice licks at his ear as he drives her to the height of passion, over and over again.
When it is over, it is still not over. Their pleasure still wracking their bodies, they lay curled in each other with the full brunt of the thunderstorm audible above their sighs. As she lays with her back against his chest, he reaches over and strokes one pink-tipped breast gently with his finger. He wants to hold all of her, now and forever, from her ten perfect toes to the dimples in her buttocks, to the freckles on her chest. He pinches the nipple softly and she laughs aloud and turns to face him, her bruised face peaceful and lovely.
“What are we going to do now?” she asks him, sounding as if she does not want to break the spell, but cannot help it.
“We’re going to do this again, that’s for sure.”
She laughs out loud, but he can tell she is still concerned. Hours later, after they have made love over and over again, exploring the newness of each other’s bodies, after she has stroked his tattoos and scars, after he has put his mouth on her in places she has never had it before and has smelled her secret woman’s scent and had it seared across his senses for the rest of his life, they drink coffee by the weak light of the sun breaking in through the clouds.
For a while, they say nothing, but before the cups are empty, Dave and Alexandra form a plan.
* * *
First it drops its wheels, then the rest of the body comes down on the tarmac; who knew that steel birds could be as majestic as the real thing? Dave has been watching them for hours now, and he thinks that as the time has worn on, he’s either gone crazy or achieved a new state of enlightenment that he now has to share with the world. Too bad he’s fairly antisocial.
She left the morning after. He did not know how she was going to explain her all-night absence to the guy at first, but she assured him that she was not going back to him; she’d stay by her mother and send someone to take her things from the apartment. He begged her to leave her things behind; he didn’t trust the guy, but she told him not to worry. He touched the place on her back that he now knew like the back of his hand and that was riddled with bruises, and the two of them fell silent.
The plan formulated quickly, gelling in the early light of the morning, after the hormones had some time to settle down. They would be moving to London in exactly two weeks. Dave would call his buddy there who owned a car repair shop, the only other friend he trusted; it wasn’t a bike place, but his friend had assured him many times that the differences would be negligible enough that they’d be able to go into business together. Alexandra was hesitant—yes, they needed to get to a place where the boyfriend would never be able to find them again, but leaving behind her parents? Her friends? Her natural vivaciousness had left her with many contacts, and Dave was so new in her life. He took her hand when she said this, held it up to his mouth, and told her that the decision was entirely hers, it was just up to him to offer options. He would follow her anywhere.
She said yes.
Two weeks later, it is four hours before the plane is set to leave. Dave has not heard from her in two weeks; it was too risky for her to call or message now that the boyfriend had access to her phone and Facebook. They didn’t want him to catch wind of their plans, but the thing was was that Dave hadn’t been able to shake off his doubts about Alexandra. He wanted to be with her in a way that he had never wanted to be with any woman before, but he knows a thing or two about emotionally and physically abusive relationships. He knows how guilt can overtake someone for leaving a person who used to mean a lot to them, how it can come crashing down in waves because you know that the other person is not in control of themselves; if he understands anything about Alexandra, is that she’s extremely loyal.
It’s those damn dates, though, that they had, that leave him in a state of perpetual wondering. What if she changes her mind at the last minute? What if something happens and she realizes that this is all impulsive and crazy and her practical nature keeps her from coming? Dave doesn’t think he can bear it, this exposed part of his soul being rejected. He has simply not slept for a week straight; Alexandra’s silence has eaten away into his very being, and he just wants to go someplace where he doesn’t have to deal with that anymore. He arrived at the airport too many hours too early. Sitting there with the pair of tickets in his hand, Dave came to his final decision. He was leaving with or without Alexandra, because he didn’t think he could face his city again knowing that she was in it, close but endlessly far away, never his to have or hold. The decision weighs so heavily on his heart that he knows without the thought firming fully that he will sit and wait for her until the last possible second; if need be, he will block the gate from closing. He hopes it will not come to that because he never wants to be that guy.
Dave’s thoughts are heavy, and his eyelids follow suit soon after; if you were to look at him from the side, you would understand that this man, with the lined face and shock of dark hair across his forehead was exhausted, that something had tuckered him out to his core. An hour goes by, two, and Dave sleeps, blissfully oblivious to the world for the first time in weeks. For the first time, he is not troubled by dreams of lonely London; he dreams instead of Alexandra bringing him beer in a home of their own, of gardens, of images for which he has no name or place—he knows only that they make him happy. Around him, the world spins on; passengers stand in long weary lines to board planes, international businessmen power-walk, swinging their briefcases in everyone’s faces. The world spins and Dave sleeps.
When he wakes up, it is twenty minutes before boarding. With a nasty jolt, he glances at his watch and realizes that he is as alone as he was when he fell asleep. He realizes that he will be catching the redeye to London alone. Crestfallen, he crumples his face into his hand and groans aloud. The man next to him gives him an odd look and gets up to switch his seat; Dave’s eyes follow him, glance over Alexandra, and land on the seat.
Alexandra.
Feeling quite as if his breath has left his body fully, Dave looks at Alexandra, sitting across from him in the airport terminal, a cheeky grin on her face, a duffel bag at her feet. And quite suddenly, just like that, they have all the time in the world.
THE END
Falling for the Billionaire
The young girl sat there for what seemed like forever and stared up at the huge building. It was one of the skyscrapers that she had always dreamed of working at. She finally graduated this past year and was off to her first
interview as an educated young woman. Although it was not her dream job after studying for four long years to get her bachelor’s degree in criminal justice, becoming a paralegal at the firm Paterson & Dunbar would definitely bring in a lot more income and freedom than waiting tables at the pizza joint down the street. Paterson & Dunbar was an outstanding firm that was renowned for the cases they took. They didn’t take your run-of-the-mill, slap-them-on-the-wrist cases. The firm only took the ones that nobody else could handle, the really big crimes. One thing that she did find out though, was that they were very selective in what cases they chose to represent. They almost never did serial killers and only took the case if they believed the person to be innocent. In the newspaper she had read how James Paterson had once said they were in it to prove the innocence of victims, not for the money brought in from the case.
Jason Paterson and Matthew Dunbar didn’t need the money that they brought in from the cases. They were both born with silver spoons in their mouth. They had apparently grown up together in Ivy League and went on to law school together. Their paths had been set out way before they entered into high school. They both had known what they wanted to do when they joined the debate club in sixth grade. That is where they met and began a friendship that would stand through time. They didn’t know what it was like to struggle and work for rent or to buy groceries. They were the kind of people that Melissa Jones generally stayed away from. They were the frat boys in college who teased her about her big boobs. They were the football players from high school who put frogs in her locker. They were the type of men she couldn’t stand. They were the reason she had stayed away from dating for the most part. She had a few dates and she was definitely no virgin, but she would rather stay home with her Haagen Dazs and watch Grey’s Anatomy reruns on her couch any day.
Melissa wasn’t exactly fat by any means, but she didn’t have what today’s society would call a perfect figure either. Her stomach was a little rounded and she didn’t wear a single digit size in jeans. She hated shopping, which she knew was unlike most women today. When she had to go into the plus-size section for shirts, she often hid between the racks. Her breasts were well above average size and she was often teased in school about getting a black eye. She never wore anything low cut because she knew she would just fall right out of the shirt.
