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I fall asleep, bleary eyed, around five.
In the morning, he calls me and tells me he’ll come with me into work. Turns out he’d woken up with what he thought was a heart attack. The men in his family have a history of it. He tried calling his ex, but no response. And I was the first person he thought of after that. He didn’t want to disturb me, he said, or he probably would have called me first. But it wasn’t a heart attack.Perhaps the stress is finally getting to him. He’s been carrying all of us by himself.
“Thanks for sending me a message,” he says. “That meant a lot to me.”
I realize just how much he means to me.What if I lost him?
* * *
October 6 , 2:00pm
It’slate afternoon on a Saturday afternoon in Chicago. It’s lovely and sunny and breezy. Literally perfect weather— and I’m still in bed. I just cannot seem to make myself move. He asks if he can come over. To check my apartment’s heating system before winter gets to town in earnest. He doesn’t like to leave explicit messages.
Well, that was a stroke of luck. Now I have an excuse to not get dressed. I am obsessed with these visits. And I have no plans today, since I was too lazy to make any. I’m still in the same old apartment - my original roomie decided not to move out, and our French-Canadian guest is out for the weekend. I take a deep breath and summon up the will to jump out of bed, unlock the door, and jump back in. I wait in my bed in the proper position. He enters, and the sound of the door quickens a Pavlovian response in my body.
I feel the covers taken off leaving me naked, exposed, and playing with myself. I feel his weight behind me. I pick up the pace. I can hear how ready I am. And so can he. I feel his hands grab me from behind. “Are you ready?” I hear him ask.
“I… I… I don’t know,” I answer.
“Well, good thing it’s not your decision on when, where, or how,” I hear him say and feel him pull me backward and slam into me. He uses me, makes me climax until I pass out, and leaves me on the bed, sleeping peacefully. Usually, he’s gone by the time I rouse myself.
But this time, he must have stayed to use the bathroom. Because when I lift my head up, I hear him washing his hands. I blink my eyes a few times and wake up just as he’s walking past my bedroom door. He doesn’t know I’m awake. I bring my mind back down to the real world, away from orgasmic bliss, and quickly squeeze out,
“Wait.”
Footsteps stop, turn around. Then he’s standing in the bedroom doorway.
“I’ll miss you,” I blurt the words without thinking.Shit. Well, you already started this, you might as well finish it.“I’ll miss you when you’re gone. And I know I make you happy. Don’t you deserve some happiness? Don’t we?”Did that come out the way I intended?
I’m not sure I’m supposed to miss him. We had this talk once about “little strings.” How there’s no such thing as no strings attached relationships, but some people are only connected by “little strings.” I liked the visual. But what if I’ve somehow overstepped and made those strings a little longer than our arrangement allowed?
The travel hasn’t lessened since the disaster. If anything, he’s traveling more to secure new clients and make sure existing clients are successful. He’s in full sales mode and not stopping. Which is great. I love that he’s not allowing himself to get deterred. But it means he’s gone more and more. It also means he can’t come see me when I’m in Vegas. Because he’s confident about our site’s performance, so he’s traveling elsewhere every moment that he is not home with his kids.Did not expect competence to be so expensive.
He walks into my bedroom and comes towards me. He sits down on the edge of the bed.Okay, this looks like a good sign.I continue.
“I don’t want to be away from you two weeks or three weeks. I don’t want to have good morning texts and good night texts. I want you.”
He tosses me backwards on the bed and just kisses me for fifteen minutes straight. When we stop for breath, he pulls me close to me.
“Funny story,” he says, “Last business trip I took, I met this girl in the hotel lobby. Invited her to my room. She comes up, she undresses. And right as I lower my face to meet hers, she bursts into tears, grabs her clothes, and dashes out of the room. I think she might have had a boyfriend and it was a dare of some sort. I think I’m done with stupid drama and unreliable women.”
I go back under the covers. They’re crazy comfy. And it’s cool enough- at least with the window opened which it is now- that I can wrap myself up in them.
He pauses.
“You know,” he says, “There’s a solution to this.”
I perk up. By which I mean, I sort of shift my head around from under the covers.
“You’re reliable. And I like you. You could travelwithme. Not just these once in a while opportunities. Like every time.”
And then we don’t do much talking for the next three hours. Until I finally just crash in exhaustion. I fall asleep thinking I ought to get more professional massages where they use those smooth heated black rocks on your skin. Seriously, it feels other-worldly.
* * *
December 5, 6:00pm
From then on,we travel together. I am his unofficial travel companion. I’m a little nervous at hiding this from the team, but I also have no idea how to explain it. And I don’t want to have to give this up, it’s too good. We are not apart for more than a week. He travels to Vegas, or I travel to Chicago. Sometimes, I come over when the kids are there, but sometimes I do not. The kids are always pleasantly surprised to see me.
