Clint, where are you?
Ken kept texting, but Clint didn’t respond. Where had he gone? He’d hastily dressed and left the room, saying he’d be back in a bit, but a bit had come and gone. Then an hour. Then two.
Ken nudged his phone into the back pocket of his jeans.
Olivia knelt in front of her suitcase. She was carefully rolling garments and tucking accessories into pockets and corners.
Watching her work hypnotized him. She was so efficient. She’d probably packed that same bag hundreds, maybe thousands of times.
That seemed sad to him, the idea of living out of a suitcase. Having a home in the air instead of on the ground, where people belonged.
He’d walked her down to her room. It was a small and plain and meant for one or two. He’d hoped to squeeze a few more minutes out of their visit before she had to leave. She had to catch a flight to D.C. where she’d step onto the plane she was due to serve on for the evening. He could see the uniform parts in her bag: nude tights, smart navy pumps, a cream blouse, and a dark-blue suit.
“What would you do if you weren’t a flight attendant?” he asked.
She stopped rolling that sundress he’d nearly torn off her a day ago. “Wow, no one’s ever asked me that. Why do you ask?”
Why? Because her job was inconvenient for him. If this thing between them blossomed into something more permanent, and he hoped it would, he’d want to see her more than her schedule would allow. She said she worked three days on and three days off, but that wasn’t a guaranteed thing. Sometimes she got moved around in a pinch. He didn’t like the idea of missing someone for half the week, but he was getting ahead of himself. Maybe she wouldn’t want to see them again once she departed here. Maybe she’d satisfied her curiosity. He’d answered all her questions and volunteered even more information about him and Clint, but she didn’t have much to share in exchange.
She said she was just boring.
He didn’t believe that. Unfulfilled? Maybe.
“I’m just curious what you’d do if you had the chance to wake up in the same bed every day.”
“Oh.” She pulled the suitcase lid closed and reached for the zipper. “Freelance genealogy.”
“That’s a thing?”
“Oh, yeah. It’s probably a research geek’s dream job. You could do it from anywhere with an Internet connection, but sometimes, you’ve got to put your nose in the real deal—dusty leather-bound volumes. Old archives and vaults.” She giggled, and shook her head. “I’d have to go back to school. I’d like to finish my degree, anyway. I dropped out when I saw I could get a job with the airline and earn the exact same thing I would my first year out of college with a crisp new diploma.”
“What were you studying?”
“History. Helps to know what major events happened in the past, so you know why families moved around the way they did and why their names changed and stuff like that.”
“Would you really do it if you could?”
Her brow furrowed, and she pursed her lips, seeming to really consider it for the first time. She stood, and righted the suitcase. Then she clapped her hands clean on her dark jeans and nodded.
“Yes, I would. I don’t know how it’d be possible now, though. I’d have to save the money for tuition and apply somewhere, get my credits transferred. I’d need to find someplace long-term to live.” She scoffed. “It’d be the longest I’ve stayed anywhere for years.”
“Think you could hack it?” He wrested his phone out of his back pocket and checked the display. No Clint. He sighed. Goddamn it.
She sank onto the bed beside him and shrugged. “The schooling? Yeah. It’d be just what I need to douse my wanderlust. I think I’ve gotten the bug out of my system.”
Good to know. His phone buzzed in his hand, and he turned it over.
Be up in about half an hour. Henri pulled me into a business meeting about sponsoring a farm league baseball team. Looking at numbers.
Ken had to stop himself from grinding his teeth. Couldn’t that wait? Beaudelaire should have known better than anyone that the magic of these Den of Sin encounters was fleeting.
“Thanks for hanging out with me,” Olivia said and nudged his arm with her elbow. “Walking downstairs with the bellhop on my own would have been mildly depressing.”
“Why wouldn’t I want to hang out?”
“People don’t generally walk their one-night stands home the next morning. Maybe they’ll walk them as far as the bedroom door to make sure they don’t steal them blind before they get their shoes on, but that’s it.”
Her voice cracked and broke with strain, and her cheeks bloomed with red. Had she had many of those encounters? And which end of them was she on? The one carrying her shoes to the door, or the one watching a disposable lover leave? Was she tired of relationships like that?
He would have been. That was part of the reason he’d gone home with Clint. He’d wanted to possess Ken in his own way, and that’s what Ken had wanted. He liked belonging to someone, and he wanted her to have that, too.
He pulled her close and rested his chin atop her head. She relaxed into his embrace and sighed.
They said nothing.
He didn’t know what she wanted from him and Clint, and they had to clear the air. He needed Clint for that. He couldn’t just proposition her on his own. They all needed to be there to lay out their wants and expectations.
A sharp rap sounded on the door, and Olivia groaned. “Yes?” she called out.
“I’m here for your baggage, ma’am. Your shuttle’s downstairs.”
She bolted upright and strode toward the door. “Already? It wasn’t supposed to be here for another hour.”
Fuck. Ken punched out a message to Clint, barely able to spell the words well enough for basic readability.
Clint, she’s leaving. Her shuttle’s here.
Olivia opened the door, and the bellman stepped in, holding a stapled sheath of paper.
“Ms. Patterson? I’ve got you down for a shuttle, one p.m. central time.”
“I thought I booked it for two.”
“Hotel policy. We have to allow at least an hour to get you to the airport, and you were cutting it close.”
“I’m a flight attendant. I think I know how to schedule a shuttle.”
The young man gulped and reached for her bag handle. “I’m sorry, ma’am. I just follow the rules.”
She sighed and pushed her arms into the lightweight sweater she’d had hanging on the doorknob. “I don’t mean to make your job more difficult, but I thought I had some more time. I won’t bother trying to get a taxi.”
The young man nodded sagely and looked at Ken.
Ken got the drift: time to go.
He grabbed the keycard from the dresser and followed the bellman and Olivia out to the hallway. He put his hand at the small of her back and didn’t let go of her until she’d climbed up into the van, still looking somewhat perplexed by the schedule change.
His phone buzzed and buzzed in his pocket, but he ignored it to steal one last kiss. He didn’t care that he was blocking the door for that people were waiting to get in. He pressed his hands to her cheeks and kissed her hard, desperately, until she grabbed his collar and whispered against his lips, “Tell Clint I said goodbye, too, okay?”
He didn’t want to say goodbye, but he nodded all the same. “I’ll tell him, Liv. Be safe.”
She gave him one last peck on the lips and slid over to the window. “I will.”
He backed out of the van and out of the way of the departing guests. Then he stood there on the path, watching until he could no longer see the van that had set out down the oak-lined lane. He pulled his phone out of his pocket.
All done. Where are you? Where’s O?
“Gone,” Ken said to no one. “She’s gone.”