They finally made it to the Four Seasons.
Dawn gasped when he pulled up in front of the D.C. version of the hotel. And kept giggling all the way from dropping the keys off with the valet to checking in at the front desk.
She ooohed and awwed over the view of historic Georgetown in their capital suite. And she dropped several “oh my God” s when he presented her with the trip outfits he’d had a Boston-based personal shopper pick out for her that morning.
“Why are you doing all of this for me?” she asked, her face softening when she saw the yellow cocktail dress she’d be wearing down to dinner.
He knew what she meant. And inside his head, he answered, Because I only have a few weeks left with you. And I want us—you especially—to enjoy them.
But outside of his head, he merely signed, “You needed something other than jeans to wear to dinner.”
After freshening up in their room, they both changed into nicer clothes. He’d forgotten her toiletries bag, which had all of her makeup. But she still looked stunning in the yellow dress. It complemented her tawny brown skin and hugged her curves in a way that made his mouth water for something more than the meal they would enjoy downstairs.
This was why a couple of their anniversaries hadn’t included food.
Luckily for Dawn, he managed to keep his hands off of her, and they were able to make it downstairs for their reservation.
“Thank you!” Dawn said, signing in CSL over their late dinner at The Bourbon Steak, The Four Season D.C.’s signature restaurant. “Thank you for bringing me here. Thank you for this amazing night.”
He was more pleased than he should’ve been that she was once again attempting his native sign language. “You’re welcome,” he signed back, also in CSL.
“You should wear that dress for your thesis presentation,” he suggested after they gave the waiter their dessert orders.
She looked down at herself then back up at him. “You think so? I was planning to wear my Aggretsuko tee shirt with a denim skirt or something. This is a little fancy for a presentation, but I suppose I could dress it down with my pink cardigan.”
She peeped across the table at him with a sheepish grin. “Maybe it’s time for me to start dressing like a grown-up. And I kind of like the idea of wearing something just for you.”
Her confession caused him to miss a few breaths. She was pretending, just pretending. They were both playing a role until May 25th. But when she said that, it made him want things. Things he couldn’t have.
May 25th was still a few weeks away, but it felt like tomorrow.
Usually, he ensured he was on top when they made love. This was his way of dominating her even in missionary. But that night, after stripping her naked in their well-appointed hotel suite, he invited her to climb on top.
He drank in the sight of her curvy body as she sank down onto him, the lips of her cunt parting around his raging cock.
But she’d been a little too quick to take him up on his invitation. She let out a little cry of pain, clawing at his chest as she squirmed to adjust to the size of him in her tight but not quite wet enough yet heat.
She was so tight and hot. Victor had to grit his teeth to keep from unleashing inside of her as she made her adjustments. He cupped one hand around her cheek and one hand around her waist, guiding her until she moistened around his cock and began moving effortlessly on top of him.
Then he caressed her breasts as she rode him with a sensual confidence she did not possess fifteen years ago. She looked nothing like she did in Japan. Yet, tonight, she was everything she’d been back then. But even better.
She liked taking control. Until she didn’t. She lost the thread when he tweaked her nipples, adding more pressure until they were extended pebbles between his fingers and thumbs.
“Victor,” she panted, her strokes getting sloppy. “Oh, God, Victor. I can’t…please…”
She’d become incoherent. But that was okay. Victor knew what she wanted, what she needed. It was the same thing as him.
He relinquished her breasts and grabbed onto her hips. Then he tilted her at an angle so that her clit could grind against his shaft as they moved faster and faster together.
It didn’t take long after that. A painful ache rose inside of him, letting him know he was close. But he held on…held on until she shattered above him, calling out his name as the powerful orgasm swept over her.
He watched her come with a warm feeling in his chest, wishing he could do this with her forever. But her tight pussy mercilessly milked him as it spasmed, and soon, he could no longer hold back.
His hands instinctively found her ass, and he threw back his head. Yelling out with his release as he pulled her hips tight against his spurting cock.
Not for the first time since they’d made their new agreement, he wondered how he’d managed to pull out all those years. Whatever exceptional pride had allowed him to do that was long gone now.
They let out sighs disguised as laughs as they came down together, looking at each other helplessly. And Dawn seemed to be speaking for the both of them when she wondered out loud, “Ten years…how is that still so intense?”
He had no idea.
And the painful ache…
It had only been slightly mollified when they shattered together. Temporarily muted, but not completely gone.
Maybe not for her either. She didn’t seem one bit surprised when he turned her to face him and drew her into his arms the next morning. This wasn’t like the night before. Her cunt was warm and ready when he wrapped her top leg around his waist. And after he slipped inside, there was no adjustment needed whatsoever. He cupped the back of her head and hugged her close, jerking both of their bodies up in the bed as he drove himself into her.
That morning as the sun came up over the Potomac River, the only sounds in the room were her soft gasps and his animalistic grunts as he took her again. But the painful ache still did not diminish. It became worse and worse.
Eventually, they managed to get showered and eat a little something. Then he drove them to the National Mall for a private tour of the National Museum of African American History and Culture—or as Dawn called it, The Black History Museum as if it were the only one in the world.
She was even more excited about this surprise than the cherry blossoms. “I’ve been trying to get down here since 2016 when it opened—you know, for Love Origins. This is amazing. I can’t thank you enough!”
Yet another pang of guilt pierced his chest. She was thanking him for his generosity, but they both knew the reason she hadn’t been able to make it down here. Because she hadn’t been allowed.
By now, he’d learned all about her thesis project. And after the tour was done and they were left to wander on their own, he confessed, “I can see how it would have been helpful to visit this place during the creation of your thesis. I am…sorry I didn’t allow you to come here earlier.”
The signs stuttered as they left his hands. Victor still wasn’t one to apologize. Ever. But she had never really known that about him. So she didn’t realize the significance of him doing so more than once. With her. Only with her.
And she surprised him by answering, “Don’t worry about it. I haven’t been able to look at a historical black anything for years without trying to incorporate it into my thesis or some other project I was working on in school. It’s kind of nice to be able to enjoy history for history’s sake for once.
History for history’s sake.
Beautiful words. But his heart chilled inside his chest.
He knew about the job in Pittsburgh. According to Phantom, who had looked into the offer for him, she had been specifically hired to work on an opening sequence revolving around the time of slavery in the U.S.
But she hadn’t said one word about this career opportunity to him. Not even to connect it to this museum visit that she could obviously still find useful.
Her omission left a bitter taste in his mouth as they walked back to the car and began the long trip back to Rhode Island.
Their silence wasn’t nearly as companionable as it had been the day before. And about halfway through the ride, Dawn pressed a finger into the console’s touch screen to turn the radio on again.
This time the radio station she chose was doing a “You Aught To Know” weekend, featuring a playlist of songs from the “the first decade of the millennium.”
Stiff and quiet in the front seat, they listened to songs from their youth. Neither of them enjoyed the “throwback” experience as much as the DJ seemed to think they would.
But then, a heavily synthesized clapping drum beat filled up the car. One Victor vaguely recognized, even though he rarely listened to American rap.
Was that…yes, it was. It was the same song that was playing overhead the first time he saw Dawn. At the Red Diamond nightclub in Roppongi.
And just in case, he thought he might be mistaken about that, Dawn yelled, “J-KWOOOOOONNNNNN!!!! I used to love this song. Yessssss! ‘Tipsy!’”
They had no alcohol. Nor were they in “the club.” But somehow, they both ended up seat-dancing to “Tipsy” for the next four minutes.
They fell out laughing when the song finally let them go. And Dawn clapped her hands excitedly when the DJ promised to play “Feels Good Inc.” by the Gorillaz when he returned from the commercial break.
“I loved that song too,” Dawn said with a fond laugh.
She leaned her head back against her seat and rolled it over to regard Victor, the look in her eyes as fond as the sound of her laughter. “I know you can’t answer because you’re driving, but this is exactly what I needed. I don’t think I’ve ever felt this happy and relaxed before a presentation. So, thank you. Seriously, thank you.”
No, he couldn’t answer her. But a little bit of the ice that had encased Victor’s heart at the National African-American History Museum melted.
When the station came back from commercial break, he bopped his head to the Brit-pop classic as Dawn rapped and sang along with the lyrics, which unlike the ones to “Tipsy,” were much more appropriate to say out loud.
After that, another song started playing, and this one lit up Dawn’s face even more than the other two. “Oh, my God, it’s ‘Happy Ending’ by Mika! Byron used to love this guy!”
She tapped the touch screen, turning up the music.
Victor had never heard of the artist before but listened with an open mind…to what turned out to be an epically bittersweet song about a couple not getting a “happy ending.”
Despite the track’s gospel-like feel, his lightened mood immediately began to fade. And as it went on, the song drilled into a pool of wild melancholy Victor didn’t know he’d sealed up inside of his chest.
He looked sideways at Dawn. Was this affecting her in the same way?
Apparently, it was. Tears shone in her eyes as the Freddie Mercury-like singer mourned a breakup, singing with a deep emotional fervor that they would live the rest of their lives…just not together.
She wiped at her eyes. And when the singer started wailing his sorrow in the song’s dramatic rise, she abruptly punched her finger into the touchscreen’s power button and ended the song.
“Byron liked that guy way more than me,” she mumbled.
Victor didn’t respond. His heart was too heavy in his chest. She may have turned off the radio, but the song continued to resonate in the car as they drove. Getting closer to their destination, but also closer to the end. Of them.
Eventually, the sign for their Rhode Island exit appeared like a ray of light above the highway.
However, just as they merged into traffic on the busy street that would take them to their tony neighborhood in East Providence, she said, “I…I wish things had turned out differently. I can’t tell you how many times I wished that. Back in college—Mount Holyoke, not RhIDS—I used to do this silly thing where I imagined what it would’ve been like if we had gotten married, like you said. If my dad hadn’t raided your apartment and we’d been able to live out that dream. I mean, maybe we would’ve broken up like everybody else I knew who got married too young. But maybe we wouldn’t have.”
She let out a breath, audible and sad. “That what-if haunts me, you know. And I think it always will.”
Normally, Victor didn’t mind not being able to speak without his hands. But in this case, he abruptly cut through three lanes of traffic so that he could pull up to the closest curb, put the car in park, then lifted his hands to remind her, “You were always going to betray me. Don’t you act as if you and your father had anything else planned. I read the reports. Every single one.”
She visibly swallowed, her eyes widening a little bit. Then she said, “Okay,” and turned forward in her seat to close her eyes. As if she were trying to block him out.
Okay…
Feeling more “shook” than he wanted to, Victor turned to put the car in Drive.
But then she said in a rush, “What if I told you the police reports lied. That my dad lied. That I had no idea that he planted that camera in my school jacket, and I was just as surprised by the raid as you.”
She let out a shuddering breath, her eyes still closed. “What if I told you my dad said all the things that he said in his report to protect me because he didn’t want me to go down with you. And I went along with it because I was only eighteen. And you were gone, and my dad was telling me all these horrible things, and…”
She finally opened her eyes and turned to look at him again. “And I didn’t know what to do. So I went along with it. I’m sorry, Victor. I didn’t want to hurt you. I never wanted to hurt you. I loved you so much, and I’m sorry. I’m sorry I did that. And I’m sorry your father died.”
She twisted her hands in her lap. “These last few weeks, they’ve been so… I don’t know, like everything I dreamed of when we were young, stupid kids. And I probably should let this go. We’re done on May 25th anyway. But I had to try. I had to try to tell you the truth.”
He stared at her. The woman who used to be the girl who broke his heart. He stared at her as all the planes crashed inside his head. He froze on the outside, but everything inside of him was crashing and burning.
Silence once again filled up the car. But this utter silence was much noisier than any of the other ones that came before it. Her words echoed, even louder than the bittersweet breakup song she’d blasted earlier in the ride.
Victor sat there for a very long time, not trusting himself. Especially to drive.
But he was Victor Zhang. The dragonhead his father had groomed. A man who knew not to show weakness, even when planes were blowing up in his sky.
Eventually, he calmed and put the car back in gear. A few minutes later, he pulled up to the outside of the house and signed, “Don’t forget your tote bag.”
She sniffled, even though her eyes were no longer filled with tears. “You’re not coming in?”
“Don’t forget your tote bag,” he repeated.
Another hesitation, but in the end, she climbed out. He heard the click of the back door opening, then closing again. And that was it. He was free to leave.
He watched her watch him go through the rearview mirror. She stood there with her cutesy tote as he drove away. Getting smaller and smaller until it was time for him to turn a corner.
He kept on driving, her words somehow becoming louder the further away he drove. And as soon as he got to the first stoplight, he pulled out his phone to text Phantom one command: Set up a meeting with Kuang.