14

We crossed the county line at 12:08 A.M.

“It’s like something out of The Blair Witch Project out here.” I stared at the inky silhouettes of pine trees against the sky.

“That’s what I remember about you,” Flynn said. “Always the soul of romance.” Ten minutes later, white city lights glinted among the sprinkling of summer stars, and soon we were weaving our way through Saturday night uptown traffic.

Flynn turned the truck down a quiet street and pulled over in front of a long, low brick house. The sidewalk was lined with family homes, small apartment buildings, and tall shade trees rustling in the breeze. The very heart of white picket fence territory. He cut the engine and turned to me.

There was no doubt about it: falling into bed with this man was just insane. We had been apart so long, we had no idea what was going on, we had no idea what was going to go on—

“Follow me.” He opened the driver’s side door. Bathed in the moonlight, his face, his eyes, and his body were an intriguing blend of the familiar and the unfamiliar. He didn’t only look like the guy I’d left—he looked like the one I wanted to find.

So I followed him. I made a conscious decision to put the white picket panic attack on hold, open the car door, and get my ass in gear. Surely all this apprehension would serve a purpose. It would help us to slow down, set a pace. We could have a nice rational discussion over dinner and a few glasses of wine, and then we’d just see where the night might take us.

As if.

He strode purposefully up the steps to the brick building, then ushered me through the massive front door (solid oak complete with ye olde brass letter slot) and down a dark hallway. He didn’t turn on the lights. When we arrived at the foot of a wide, shadowed staircase, he placed my hand on the massive carved banister and led me up to apartment 2B.

He unlocked the door and I brushed past him into the pitch-black, groping blindly on the wall for the light switch.

The door slammed behind me and he wrapped his arms around my waist, pulling me back against him. My body woke up in the dark, replacing hesitation with heat. I kissed the side of his face and felt his smile against mine.

“Hi,” I whispered.

“Hi,” he whispered back, nibbling my ear.

This felt good to the point of paralysis. I wanted to turn around and wage a full frontal assault, but I also wanted to stay anchored against him while his hands roamed all over the front of me.

In the space of a heartbeat, he had me facing him and backed up against the wall. We were tangled up, completely cornered. An abrupt rush of chilled air swept in between us as we yanked at each other’s shirts.

In the distant recesses of my brain, my rational mind was tapping its foot and warning that this was probably not so smart. Like it had such a spotless track record. So I ignored it and concentrated on some of my other body parts.

We stumbled through the blackness together, finally collapsing on a soft down comforter. I felt crushed by the weight of his body but somehow this was not as claustrophobic as I’d thought it might be.

His technique had improved considerably over the past ten years. And my senses were heightened by the heady mix of discovery and déjà vu. Turns out, the body has its own memory.

 

“God,” was his only comment in the first few moments of afterglow.

“I know.” I gave him a kiss and smiled against his lips. “I thought the male sex drive decreased after eighteen?”

He yawned. “Yeah, but the difference is about as noticeable as an ice cube melting in hell.”

Later that night, I tripped through the semi-darkness to Flynn’s bathroom, which was exactly what I expected. Clean and empty, with threadbare gray towels and no frills. The shelf above the gleaming white sink held a razor, a toothbrush, and a roll of athletic tape. A single bottle of shampoo stood next to a bar of soap on the edge of the bathtub. At least he was using shampoo these days. As a teenager, he used to claim that a bar of Irish Spring was all a real man needed for daily ablutions. “It’s shampoo and conditioner in one. Just add water. What could be easier?”

Before I flipped the bathroom light off, I peered down the hall and saw the telltale glint of a wide-screen TV. Over which, if I wasn’t very much mistaken, hung a poster featuring a hockey player. Just imagine the treasure-trove I could unearth while he slumbered away in the next room. The possibilities were staggering. What did he read now? What did he eat?

No need to get carried away and ransack his home immediately. There’d be plenty of time for that kind of psychosis later. Like tomorrow.

Back in the air-conditioned bedroom, I curled my toes against the varnished hardwood floor and groped around for something to wear. My hands closed on his T-shirt and I pulled it over my head.

He had lapsed into one of his deep, comalike sleeps, and I knew from experience that he was down for the count. This was the time of night when my insomnia usually kicked up, but tonight I felt utterly exhausted. I edged onto the mattress, shivering at the friction of the crisp, chilled sheets against my bare legs. His body heat kept the air conditioning at bay as I reached out and touched his wrist so I could feel his pulse in the dark—a strong, steady Morse code assuring me that everything would work out between us.

He was such a peaceful sleeper. I had forgotten that about him. The ebb and flow of his inhalation pulled mine into the same rhythm, and I snuggled against the contours of his body, falling into a sleep so deep that I would not have thought it possible without a prescription.

Everything was perfect. For about eight hours.