give me five minutes.
Me:
Three.
I put the phone face down on the nightstand.
Stand up.
Walk to the door of the suite.
Unlock it.
Walk back.
She knocks at four.
Not three. Not five. Four.
I open the door and she’s in the same jeans she had on at the arena and a different shirt and her hair down. Her eyes on mine and we look at each other for half a second and then she’s insideand the door is closing and her bag is on the floor and her hands are on my face.
“Hi.”
“Hi.”
She kisses me.
I get one hand under her jaw and the other in her hair and kiss her back and we are not doing the slow version — not tonight — she has her hand in the back of my hair and I have her against the suite door and her hip is up and I’m pulling her shirt out of her jeans and the kiss is going somewhere it usually takes us forty-five minutes to get to.
She breaks it.
Breathing hard.
Looks past me into the suite.
Sees the living room. The Strip through the windows. The doorway to the bedroom. The doorway pastthatto the bathroom.
“Jesus.”
“I know.”
“Vegas went all out.”
“They did.”
“Jax.”
“Yeah.”
“Show me the bathroom.”
I take her hand.
Walk her through the living room. Through the bedroom. Stop in the bathroom doorway and let her look.
She looks for a long time.
The marble. The dual rainheads. The bench. The tub. The whole excessive Vegas-ness of it, lit gold by the under-cabinet lighting somebody installed because somebody decided that was a feature.
