by JD Hawkins
“There it is!” she cries out gleefully. “Wow! Look at you! Father Nate isn’t so pious after all!”
“How…” I start, but further words fail to emerge. All I can do is stare at her in confusion, as much as I hate it, giving her exactly what she wants.
Nicole turns away from me, casually strolling away now that she knows my attention is finally fixed upon her.
“You know,” she says, talking slowly, enjoying herself, “when I first saw her I thought: ‘strange choice for a fuck buddy.’ Some weird little hippie girl…dyed hair—ugh. Good tan, though. Nice body and cute face, if you’re into that sort of wholesome, girl-next-door thing…” She pauses to glance back at me over her shoulder, smiling when she sees I’m still stunned, still fixed staring at her. “But then I realized: even a fuck buddy would dress better than that. Even a hooker would wash her hair…”
“Where did you see her?”
“No,” she continues, ignoring my question. “For a girl to get that casual, that comfortable, that familiar with someone…” She turns around to stare at me, face no longer gleeful, but confrontational and withering. “I’ll bet you’ve been shacking up with her since the second I left.”
“Where did you see her?” I demand, stepping closer to Nicole.
“Aw,” Nicole coos, tilting her head in a patronizing manner. “I’m sorry, babe—I had to send her away.” A change comes over Nicole’s face, eyes going sultry, hands lifting to touch my chest. “But that’s okay…I’ll help you with your spreadsheets tonight.”
“She was here?” I say, too shocked to even stop Nicole from touching my chest, from stepping closer with her pouted lips and feline sway.
“Not anymore…but I am…”
I spin around and dash for the bedroom.
“Nate!” Nicole shouts as she hurries behind me. “Nate!”
I whip off the towel without caring that Nicole will get a look—not because she’s seen it before, but because she’s irrelevant to me now.
“Don’t be stupid, Nate. She’s probably already with another one of her sugar daddies,” Nicole sneers from the doorway as I throw clothes on, but I can barely hear her over my racing thoughts and rushing blood.
She was here—and now she’s gone.
I have to get her back.
21
Hazel
The return trip on the ticket Mia bought me was for three days from now—which seems stupidly optimistic after my run-in with Nicole.
No refunds, but I didn’t care about the exorbitant price of the first ticket back to L.A. that the airline could offer me. The long cab ride back to the airport wasn’t enough to calm me, to fix the mess I’m in. Months of licking my wounds at home probably won’t be, either.
Focused intently on the departure screen, my gate is finally listed and I move through the terminal toward it, finding some tiny, stupid solace in the orderly numbers and signs of the airport, instructing me where to go, what to do, so that I can go back.
If only life was always that simple.
I go through security feeling detached and removed, only nodding when the female agent asks me if I’m all right.
I don’t care about my red eyes or flushed face now, let alone my bare legs and messy hair. I just want to be back home. This whole airport and everyone in it can go to hell. Chicago and certain people in it can go to hell even quicker.
What an idiot! I tell myself over and over again. Tired, wet eyes and thoughts racing drunkenly can’t stop me from seeing everything so clearly now. Randomly, a superhot financial big shot walks into my life in the most spontaneous, peculiar way—and I bought into it completely, like the biggest sucker.
I believed him when he indirectly blamed his distant attitude on his “dark, painful past,” instead of just seeing it for the secretive, manipulative act that it was.
I believed him when he said he was “done with women,” even as he was all over me.
I believed him when he said he cared for me, even when he left without a second thought.
Now, I wince with every memory as I stare out the plate glass window at the planes. Raindrops emerging on the windows from the gate. The sky blackening into a rain-soaked night.
I’m naïve—that’s all there is to it. I’m really, really naïve.
I wanted to believe, and so I just did, even though everything about this guy was clearly a lie. Just like I did with Theo, hoping he would become good, that he really would work hard and eventually show that he cared as much about me as I did about him.
And just like with Theo, I took it all upon myself to try to make it work. Why? Why do I always make myself the doormat? Why am I the one crying in a Chicago airport? Why didn’t I realize that if Nate cared half as much as he acted like he did, he would be the one making this kind of big, dumb gesture?
Over and over again I play each memory back in my mind, each time finding new ways in which my own naivety and Nate’s manipulation are obvious. Like a movie where you already know the twist, the simplest, most inconsequential things becoming kick-yourself obvious.
And Nicole…from what Nate told me I thought she’d be a monster, but she was incredible. Of course Nate would be with a woman like that. Of course he would forget whatever “vacation romance” he had with me for someone like her. And of course he’d go right back to her just days after we were last together…
I’m so locked in my downward mental spiral that I almost miss the line forming at the gate, only noticing that boarding has begun when the passengers start to move into the jet bridge that connects to the plane. I get up and scan my ticket and join the line, a couple of excited vacationers making me feel even more out of place.
Once I’m in the jet bridge, shuffling along with the others to the plane, I feel a strange sense of relief. A sad, self-pitying satisfaction.
In just a few hours I’ll be back in Los Angeles. Back to my simple, hard, but rewarding job as a nurse. Back to playing the third wheel at Mia’s get-togethers. Back to my crappy apartment. Moving backwards isn’t quite moving on, but it’s better than whatever this whole thing was. The life I’ve always known probably always will be. Maybe I’ll finally just accept it. Maybe I should wise up and consider myself done with relationships. Get that cat, finally. Hell, maybe I should get five cats.
The crowd slows as they’re bundling onto the plane, and I find myself standing just outside the airplane door, a chill breeze sneaking into the jet bridge from outside, whipping my hair around my face. Far behind me there are some loud, violent shouts coming from the gate, but I don’t turn around like everyone else to look and wonder what’s happening. I only want to look forward now.
The shouts continue, getting louder and closer. I roll my eyes as more people in front of me crane their necks to look back, hoping that whatever it is doesn’t hold up the plane.
“Hazel! Hazel?! Hazel!”
I must be cracking. Genuinely starting to lose my mind, hearing his voice even here.
Suddenly I’m spun around as if I’ve been punched, my back whipping forward, my head thrown back and then…kissed. Eyes closed from the unexpected impact, but I still know that it’s him. The tender strength in those lips unmistakable, the gentleness in their touch, his hand on the small of my back as distinctive as a fingerprint.
I’m swept away for a second, floating and ethereal, passion swirling in hot streaks through my chest, everything else forgotten. And then I remember, finding the strength in my hands to push him away and step backwards.
“Nate,” I say, glaring at him almost angrily, gritting my teeth.
“Sir,” one of the security guards following him says as he catches up. “Don’t go any further.”
“Hazel,” Nate pleads, shrugging the guard’s hand from his shoulder as another two catch up. “Don’t go. Please.”
“You lied to me,” I say flatly.
“No. I didn’t. I swear, Hazel,” Nate says, as he struggles against the three guards grabbing at his arms and shoulders
. “I swear on my life. Please stay. Let me explain.”
I continue to stare at him as he puts up a fight against the grabbing guard—four of them now—even tougher because he refuses to take his eyes from me. The bridge has gone silent now, the passengers pressing themselves up against the side to give space to the brawl happening.
And there’s an even more violent fight inside of me now. Between everything I know now, everything I spent the past hour finally comprehending, finally coming to terms with. The ugly truths that have crushed me so hard. Giant, unmanageable revelations—and that one tiny part of myself that’s been there as long as I can remember. The part that wants to believe. The part that forgives everything.
The part that refuses to lose faith in people.
The guards finally have a grip on him now, pulling him backwards, keeping him off-balance.
“Hazel!” he shouts as he’s dragged back through the tunnel. “I love you! I love you!”
The words so simple and common smash me to pieces. Cut me right through to the heart.
Maybe it’s just how he says them. Maybe it’s that he says them at all. Maybe it’s that he’s shouting them as if he wants every single person to hear, as if he’s already lost me and is simply screaming them for the joy of speaking some inner truth.
“Wait!” I call out, weaving through the passengers toward where Nate is struggling with the guards. “Wait. It’s okay. You can leave him alone. I’m coming back out.”
The guards keep a hold and swap looks as Nate softens in their arms, stopping his struggle. As I draw closer they loosen their grip and Nate turns to nod at them before following me back out to the gate.
I stop among the now-empty seats and turn to face him. The security guards still watching us suspiciously, but just out of earshot. For seconds we just look at each other, my expression a challenge, his a face of overwhelmed struggle.
“I meant it,” he says after a long time.
I don’t ask for an explanation, knowing that he’s referring to what he yelled in the jet bridge, as if the sound is still echoing in his own mind as it does in mine.
I shake my head slowly. “Then why is Nicole living with you still? You never told me that.”
“She’s not,” Nate answers with almost ferocious quickness. “I didn’t even know she was there. She let herself in—I didn’t even know she still had the key.”
I stare deep into him, watching for some kind of tell, some indication that he’s lying, but give up. I wouldn’t even be able to find it if it was there.
“I can’t believe you came all the way to Chicago,” he says. “But I’m glad you did. Come back with me. Please. I want to talk with you—be with you. Not here.”
I look away, at the gate—now closed—at the guards, as if they might provide an answer. Then I let out a sigh and shrug.
Carefully, as if worried it might hurt him, Nate takes my hand and leads me away.
All the way to his car, then through the long drive, we don’t talk. Only acknowledging each other via the occasional glance. As if both of us are still reeling from the sudden impact of everything. I remind myself of everything I thought in the airport, of how trusting I was before, and promise myself not to be swayed again.
Nate parks outside of his building and I don’t wait for him to open the car door for me. I follow him to those large glass doors, now associated with negative thoughts in my mind. He stops in front of the doorman.
“Jones,” he says.
“Good evening, Mr. Keaton,” the doorman says, touching his cap and then nodding an acknowledgment at me.
“Is Nicole still up there?”
“She left about a minute or two after you did, sir.”
“Listen: Nicole’s not my fiancée anymore—and no longer a resident of the penthouse. It’s my name on the lease, as you know. If she comes back, I’d prefer it if you didn’t let her through.”
He nods. “Of course, sir.”
“You can do that, right?”
“Part of my job, sir.”
“Thank you, Jones. And by the way, this is Hazel. I’m hoping you’ll be seeing a lot more of her around here.”
The doorman touches his cap at both of us, then Nate glances back at me and takes my hand again.
The elevator, the small corridor, the big door—it all fills me with an instinctive dread now, a ghostly feeling of something wrong, but Nate gently pulls me through, until I’m stepping into his vast apartment.
It’s spectacular. Big and full of beautiful things meticulously arranged, the far wall almost nothing but glass that looks out onto the sparkling lights of the city. But even this place can’t shake me out of my trepidation and sense of wrongness.
Nate drops his keys on a table and then turns to me. I look at him patiently, waiting, half hoping he’ll make that grievance go away, half planning to just turn back around and go back to the airport.
“Hazel…” he says slowly, looking around as he searches for words. “I should have been the one to do something like this.”
I frown at him slightly, not quite understanding. “Do what?”
He gestures at me standing there. “Coming here. Spontaneously. Going out on a limb…I should have told you I loved you last Saturday. I already knew I did.”
“But you didn’t, Nate,” I say, hating that I’m being cruel, but hating the idea of hiding my feelings even more. “You just left. I begged you to stay, and you just…walked away.”
“I know.” He winces, unable to look at me, and I can see the naked regret in his typically stoic face. “I’m still too locked in my own head. Still stuck in my way of doing things…” He looks at me as if with new eyes. “But I’m done. I want to be the person I am with you.”
I let out a sigh and look away, but he reaches out and turns my face back toward him.
“I know,” he says. “I’m not asking you to believe me though. Stay the night and I’ll show you how much you mean to me. I promise.”
I cave the second he says it. My emotions raw and damaged, my body tired and beaten, my mind done with trying to put everything together.
But it’s not weakness that makes me cave—it’s that he’s too much for me to resist, too much for me to be cautious about, too much for me to turn down one more night with. Even if he is lying. Even if it does all turn out to be just another stupid delusion.
I’ll take one more day with him and feel the hurt tomorrow if it is, as silly as that is.
“Okay,” I say—only now understanding that I’m in love with him, too.
22
Nate
A man can do anything when he’s got an incredible woman in his bed—even if she’s not going to stay much longer.
It’s still raining as I hurry back to my apartment, the sun only just threatening to rise. So cold that I can see my breath, the coffee and bagels in my hands steaming. I make my way up to my floor and then open and close the door carefully, so as not to make any noise and wake Hazel up. She’s still sleeping.
Four hours ago we were making love in my bed, clinging to each other so tight it’s like we wanted to imprint ourselves on the other, doing it so slowly it felt like time stopped. Five hours ago she was taking a bath, me rubbing suds across her glistening body as if it were some sacred ritual. Six hours ago I was holding her back against me on the couch, watching the rain fall against the vast glass windows and trying to figure out how I could make sure it wouldn’t be the last time.
I figured it out. Part of it, anyway.
As quietly as I can, I put the coffee down, slide off my rain-soaked coat, take off my shoes. Before I left the house, I’d spent a good ten minutes just watching her sleep, and it was too beautiful. To wake her would feel like an act of vandalism. Something precious about it, about her. The fact that she’s here still feeling like some kind of blessing, and like a man who’s been given a last chance, I don’t want to do anything that could even remotely ruin it. Her sleeping here like some kind of spell that could br
eak if she awoke.
But I can’t resist returning to the room still, just to look at her once again. She’s just where I left her, on her side, her back curved where my chest was just forty minutes ago. The rumpled white sheets swirling up to her waist.
I notice that I didn’t close the blinds last night. Soon the sunrise will wake her—too soon. I step slowly to the controls and set them to close, the expensive mechanism smooth and quiet, but still humming a little.
Hazel groans gently and reaches behind her, then turns slowly in the bed as if to touch something there, stretching her arm but finding nothing, and this—more than the noise—seems to waken her a little.
“Nate?” she mumbles through her half sleep.
“I’m here,” I say gently from the window.
She turns her face to me but her eyes are still closed.
“It’s early,” I say. “Not even seven o’clock. Go back to sleep, I’m coming.”
She rubs her eyes and twists her body to the side like a bow. I smile at how even her stretching fascinates me. Then she opens her eyes slightly and sees me at the window.
“Did you go out?” she asks, probably noticing my clothes, my wet hair.
“Yeah,” I say, moving to sit on the side of the bed and gently stroke her hair as she relaxes back into the pillows. “I had to meet with Eddy and Sam before work.”
“Is something wrong?”
I look down at her, not wanting to tell her so soon, but at the same time unable to wait. I take my hand from her and tense on the edge of the bed, staring at the half-closed shutters.
“No…not anymore.”
She lets out a sleepy laugh and rolls toward me, a hand running down my back before playfully tugging at the belt of my pants.
“Nate…I know I just woke up…but you’re not making any sense.”
I laugh myself now, soft and low, mirroring hers.
“I told them everything,” I say, and glancing back I see that her eyes open fully at this, their surprise fixed upon me. “Turns out their evaluation of me was going to play the biggest part in Warren’s decision. They’re going to meet with him today about it and finally decide.”
