“You can’t be serious,” I said, crossing my arms and tapping my foot on the floor. “That’s not true…is it?”
“Totally true. The pot is up to 300 bucks.”
“Look, the first rule of making contemptible wagers about your friends is that you never mention it to them. Learn the etiquette, Cal,” I said, playfully rolling eyes at him. “I mean, now that I know, I could screw him on purpose, just to throw the game, right?”
“Well, if you do screw him, I hope it’s on purpose,” he said.
“Enough of this talk!” Santino scolded. “This is a gourmet kitchen, not a sleazy nightclub.”
Cal laughed. “Sorry, Boss,” he said.
I hurried up and got my check, then talked to a few co-workers.
“Well, it was good seeing you all,” I said.
“Don’t leave me here,” Cal joked. “Talk about
Kitchen Nightmares
!”
“Precisely seventeen on each focaccia round, Cal!” I said.
He smiled as I grinned.
***
The next week rolled by in a flurry. I spent my days visiting my dad, hanging out with Kate, calling Zack to check on him every now and then, and selecting linens and flowers for the event.
I texted Luke, but he was out of town on business, in Jakarta for ten days. When he returned, he showed up at my apartment at one in the morning, just off the plane. I opened the door, rubbing my eyes and trying to flatten my rumpled hair. He caught me in his arms and held me. Bewildered, I rested my head on his shoulder and just held on.
“Hey,” he said quietly.
I looked up at him as my eyes cleared, and I was a bit taken aback. His normally impeccable clothes were wrinkled, and he looked like he was in dire need of a haircut and about twenty hours of sleep. “Welcome home,” I said. “No offense, but you look like you just stepped off an episode of
Locked Up Abroad
. What the hell happened to you in Indonesia?”
“Just jetlag. I can never sleep when I travel, and I’ve got aches and pains from sitting so long. I hurt in places I didn’t even know I had places,” he said, rubbing his firm shoulder. “What about you? How are you holding up? I know your dad had to have a transfusion. He acted like it was nothing when I spoke to him briefly on the phone, but I know it’s not nothing.”
“I’m trying not to be a baby about it. I took him some spring rolls yesterday, and he only ate one, probably just to be nice. That’s not like him. He loves to eat, and I’ve seen him devour a half-dozen of those in one sitting. He keeps losing weight. My aunt said they had to reorder his rental tux in a different size because the one he had was too big. He’s turning into a bag of bones, Luke. My dad is just…wasting away.”
Luke continued holding on to me, and I stood awkwardly in the circle of his arms.
“Did you come straight here? How was Jakarta?”
“Lonely as hell.”
“Lonely? It always looks really crowded when I see it on TV,” I hedged.
“A person can be lonely in the middle of millions, JJ. You know that. Even with all those people around, there was no one I wanted to talk to, no one who knew me or cared to. Not only that, but the time difference between there and New York made it impossible to call you. I only talked to your dad briefly on the way home, and even then the call dropped.”
“It’s eleven hours ahead. I looked it up.”
“I know. It’s almost completely opposite.”
“Yep. You were literally on the other side of the world. Weird, huh?”
“Yeah,” he said quietly.
“I stopped by Carbon.”
“What for? I know you hated that job.”
“Yeah, but I made some friends there. Business is crazy at the restaurant. We’ve got all these fans now, and people have been flocking there just because it got leaked that I used to work there. Have you read the gossip sites?”
“No. I don’t read that crap.”
“Liar. You so read them.”
He blushed a bit and offered me a tired half-smile. “You know me too well. I have read them, some of them more than once. It was boring in Indonesia, and the food sucked. I had to entertain myself somehow.”
“Which one was your favorite?”
“Clearly the one that said we had to be banging before
The Today Show
interview because you looked, uh…”
“I believe they wrote, ‘freshly fucked.’ Yeah. That was really classy.”
“It should be some sort of ad campaign for makeup. They could have huge billboards that say, ‘Get that freshly fucked look.’”
“That’s horrible, Luke.”
“Yeah, I know, but you gotta admit that it’s funny.”
“You’re always funny.”
“Not always. I was pretty freaking depressed in Indonesia.”
“Work can be depressing sometimes.”
“It wasn’t the work. It was just…well, I missed you,” he said.
“Really? With all of Indonesia at your feet, you wanted to talk to a humble former olive counter?”
“What?”
“That was my main job at Carbon. I made salads and counted olive slices on the focaccia. Poor Cal has to do it now.”
“You had to actually count them?”
“Yep. Santino was really anal about it.”
“That is insane.”
“So much of life is,” I said, drawing him inside and shutting the door. “Are you all ready for our main event?”
“Not quite. I don’t have my four things for good luck,” he said.
“That’s for the bride, Luke. All the groom has to do is show up with his tux and his libido.”
“Well, I’ve got the tux and the libido.”
“You won’t need the latter for a fake reception.”
“Right. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to have a little bridal luck too. I have something blue, these sapphire cufflinks I got a few years ago, but I need something old and something new…like us.”
“What do you mean by that?”
A serious expression crossed his face. “I left Jakarta early, Jay. I came straight here, right off the plane. I even deserted my luggage at the airport.”
“Are you crazy!? What about your clothes?”
“I’ll put it on my expense report. Trump can handle it. Or I’ll just pay my assistant to go grab my luggage. I was just in such a hurry to get here. For days, for weeks, you’ve been all I’ve been able to think about. Let me make love to you, Jay, if only tonight.”
I felt the blood rush to my face, felt a throb of want between my legs and a strong tremor of desire in my hands. I knew I could fall apart at any minute, but I had to stick by my guns. “Have you been talking to Cal?” I asked, trying to inject some humor into the awkward moment.
“Uh…no. I don’t even know him. Why?”
“I just figured you were trying to fix the bet.”
“What bet?” he asked.
“Never mind,” I said. “Look, Luke, it’s not a good idea. It damn near killed me trying to get over you the first time. This is just…an artificial closeness. I’m going through a rough time, and I’m really needy, and all this familiarity is a bit intoxicating for us both. It would be so easy to believe that there’s something substantial here, but we both know it’s all a charade.”
“Don’t tell me it’s not real, Julia. You can’t tell me you feel like this thing is as fake. You can’t tell me you don’t feel something genuine between us,” he said. He held his hand on my face and looked deeply into my eyes. His gaze was dark and possessive, full of manly lust and not just the hopeful advances of the fumbling boy he had been.
“I don’t think—”
“Neither do I. This isn’t something we need to think about. Just say yes.”
For his answer, I took his face in my hands and kissed him. “Yes,” I breathed into his mouth, over and over again.
Immediately, his hands were all over me, marking me as his. He peeled off my old nightshirt and danced his fingertips over my ribcage, the curve of my stomach, and down my back, igniting my passion with every graze of his skin against mine. In a feverish hurry to carry out our passionate, long-overdue encounter, Luke backed me into my bedroom and switched on the light. I tried to protest, simply out of some unspoken obligation, but he shook his head.
“I’ve had enough of you in dark cars and hallways, Jay. I want you out in the open, in the light. I want to see how you’ve changed.”
Unable to stave off his advances any longer, overcome with desire myself, I made quick work of unhooking my bra. I let it drop to the floor, and my panties puddled next to it in the next moment, leaving me standing before him, entirely naked.
He looked me up and down, taking his time as he strolled his gorgeous eyes over my body. “What happened here?” he asked, taking me by the hips and running his thumb along a pale scar.
“I had my appendix out a few years ago,” I said carelessly.
Luke stroked the scar with his thumb, as if trying to wipe it away. “I’m sorry I wasn’t there.”
“To do what? Stop me from having appendicitis?” I joked. “You’re overdressed. I demand that you take off your clothes, or do you need me to do a PowerPoint presentation to explain this whole process?”
“Very funny, Julia. I’ve waited too long for this, and I’m not going to rush it. I prefer to…prolong our pleasure.”
“I’ve spent the last five years sleeping with men who suffered from varying degrees of cluelessness in bed. They should have subscribed to
Cosmo
,” I said with a coy smile.
“Well, in that case, I have a lot to make up for,” he said, his gaze darkening as he leaned his head down to gently but hungrily kiss my shoulder.
I tugged at his shirt, stripped it off of him, and laid my palms on his chest. I walked around to look at his back and noticed that he, too, had changed. “You naughty boy, you,” I teased. “When did Mr. Trump’s protégé get inked?”
“A while back, in Thailand.”
“Are you insane? Were you trying to catch hepatitis from a contaminated needle?”
“It was a perfectly clean place. The needle was prepackaged. I saw it.”
“Hmm. I have never thought of you as the tattoo type.”
“So you don’t know me as well as you think,” he said, smirking. “What’s the matter? You don’t like bad boys in business suits?”
“On the contrary,” I said, tracing the lines that decorated his back and part of his shoulder. “A compass, huh? Is this so you can always find your way home?”
“Maybe I just wanted to find my way back to you,” he said, shivering under my touch, especially when I pressed my warm mouth against the north marker. “Come back to me, Jay,” he pleaded, turning to face me, his expression stark.
I was moved by his voice, by the familiarity of his touch and the masculine improvements in what was already a great body. As attractive as he was in high school and college, he’d clearly outdone himself. No longer did he have the skinny strength of a wiry boy; now, he was equipped with the bulk and substance of a real man, broader and more secure, more able. I took his hands in mine, laced our fingers together and held his palm against mine, then shut his eyes. Even if that was all I had, it would have been enough. I adored his hands and the way they fit perfectly into mine, like some sort of jigsaw puzzle. He gently tugged, pulling me to him, and I raised my hand to his mouth to let him kiss the inside of my wrist.
My arms went around him, and he kissed me, breaking away only to strip off the rest of his clothes. I stopped him and took time to look at him in the full light, noticing every muscle in his legs, the dip of his spine at his lower back, the swell of his jutting erection. I pulled him to me and held him close just for a moment, breathing in his return, relishing the sensation of every inch of his bare, manly flesh pressed against me. He kissed my chin, my jaw, and my throat. Rather than the breathless anticipation I’d felt just moments before, I was overcome with a new sensation, the thrum and heat of wanting and the demanding hunger of absolute desire for the one I knew could make me feel better than any man ever had.
Luke backed up to my bed and sat down, then pulled me a bit roughly into his lap. Somewhat ferocious, in a wild way that I appreciated, he caught my nipple in his mouth and nipped at it, licking my hard bud with his tongue. His hand slipped between my thighs, and I was wet for him, wriggling against his light, most teasing touch.
“Yes, Luke. Yes!” I breathed into his mouth again, wanting more and more of him, wanting him to go deeper.
He raised his head to kiss me. Then, with one stroke of his long fingers and then another, he pushed into me, rubbing and reaching deeper. I clenched my muscles, grasping at him, spasming and unable to hold back. I let out a hoarse cry as the coldness of ecstasy took me. I dropped my head onto his shoulder, shaken by the quickness, the intensity of the orgasm he’d given me.
“No one else,” I said against his neck, my breath ragged against his sweating skin. “No one has ever done that, Luke. No one could ever bring me to the edge that fast.”
He moaned, his fingers still within me, his tongue pushing into my mouth.
I wound my arms around him and pulled him down on the bed with me. We kissed deeply, more passionately than ever before, practically devouring one another. We roamed our hands over every curve and crevice of one another’s bodies, as if we were trying to find a handhold, trying to keep ourselves from falling. It was as if every touch was a desperate reach for purchase in a landslide.