“Do you want to get that?” His hands were on my breasts, over my bra, his thumbs rubbing my nipples through the sheer material. Black, silk, ridiculously overpriced, purchased expressly for this trip.Getting thatwas the last thing I wanted to do.
Eight twenty-five a.m., I registered. Eleven twenty-five Eastern. “No.”
“You sure?”
“I’m sure.”
“Okay.” He smiled and slowly lifted off my blouse. “Hiiii.” That face.
“Hi, yourself.”
His finger hooked beneath the shoulder strap of my bra, before running down over my breastbone and dipping inside the demi cup. Teasing. He looked up, as if to check in with me, before pushing the material to the side and lowering his head. My breath caught, his tongue on my nipple. Fuck fuck fuck. What was it about being with him that made me feel as if everything were happening for the first time?
My fingers entwined in his hair as he unhooked the clasp and cupped my breasts in his hands.
“God, everything about you is perfect,” he said. It was precisely what an almost forty-year-old woman wanted to hear about her breasts.
I was reveling in the smell of his hair and the feel of his mouth when I heard it again, my phone. Dammit.
I waited for two more text alerts before I attempted to stop him. “Hayes… Hayes.”
He lifted his head, slow.
“I should probably make sure that’s not an emergency.”
He nodded, his eyes holding mine as he completed removing the bra and placed it beside him on the bed. “Go,” he said, coy. “But come back to me.”
There were three missed calls and voicemails from Isabelle. Followed by five texts:
Where are you?
Please call me!!
It’s urgent!!!
Mom!!!!!!!
Mommy!!!!!
Shit.
“I’m sorry. I have to take this. It’s Isabelle.”
He was reclining on the daybed, arms clasped behind his lovely head, long legs hanging off the edge. “Do what you have to do. I’ll wait.”
She answered in a tizzy. Frenetic, which was not typical of her behavior.
“Heeey. What’s happening?”
“Why aren’t you here?”
“Because, honey, I had to come for Basel. You know that. Is everything okay? What’s going on?” I had this feeling in the pit of my stomach that it had happened, that Daniel had proposed. And that I was going to have to be strong for her, six thousand miles away and topless. And that I was going to have to lie and tell her that it wasn’t going to change anything, even though deep down I knew it would. And that Hayes was going to be witness to it all.
I folded my arm across my “everything about you is perfect” breasts and prepared for the worst.
“You should be here.” She’d begun to cry. “Ineedyou.”
“Izz … what happened?”
