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“Yeah, like it wasn’t just our bodies that joined.” She lay her head on his shoulder. “I’m not making sense.”
He’d felt it too. He pushed her damp hair back from her face. “I think it might be what they call good old-fashioned making love.”
“Didn’t hook-up culture kill that off? I thin
k you slipped me something in the champagne cocktail.”
“That you didn’t drink.”
“Rats. There goes that excuse.” She licked up his neck. “We’d better not do that again. I’m not sure your reputation could take it.”
He nudged the top of her head with his chin. “Image is everything. We’ll return to regular programming. Less feeling, more rooting.”
She chuckled, and it flipped into a sob. He got an arm around her and wrapped her closer. Ah Teela, what have I done to you? Made her fall a little in love. That had to be it, because he had scars on both his knees and wounds on both his hands from falling for her.
That was fine, terrific. Glorious even. Fucking rare. As long as it was only hyped-up endorphins, jacked to party all night and day before they gave out and forgot what all the fuss was about.
Teela drifted off to sleep, snuggled into his side, her breathing deepening, tension leaving her face. Sleep was on some other continent for him. His jet lag this time was more the effect of emotional whiplash. He’d let his detachment slip and Teela had crawled in under his guard with her easy-to-please, independent-minded, straight-talking ways.
It wasn’t the first time he’d liked a woman more than it was sensible to. When it happened, he made an arrangement. Mutual benefit until the mutual ran out, and it always did. He’d go off to make a movie. She’d get bored waiting, or she’d want more of a commitment than he wanted to give. He couldn’t do that with Teela, not only because it made no sense distance-wise. Hook-up culture or not, she would kick his ass if he even suggested a deal on his terms. She was as clear-eyed as he was about what they were to each other and it wasn’t lovemaking and cosmic brain-melding and getting entangled in the details of each other’s lives.
He’d play it cooler from here. No all-out assault on her senses, or his, for that matter. Just a measured return to the real world where they both had lives to get on with and nothing in common. That didn’t mean they couldn’t have fun still, but fun shouldn’t leave him sleepless, worried he’d broken some time-honored and battle-tested practice that kept him safe. Worried he really had permanently bruised his knees or worse, gotten his heart stung, given himself a wasting disease that was unrecoverable.
Pranked himself.
Christ.
Around 4 a.m., he gave up the idea of sleeping and got up, careful not to wake Teela. He needed air. He didn’t bother to wake Rick. He threw a pair of sweats and a hoodie on and took the elevator to the ground floor and walked the short distance to the harbor foreshore.
There were still a few people about, cars, but with his hood up and his head down, no one took any notice of him. It was too early for sunrise and too late for anything to be open, a blue-gray twilight that suited his mood. He walked a while, across Circular Quay, which was square, but whatever, stared at the white sails of the Opera House, listened to bats and gulls own the night.
He’d never had a viable plan B in his life, like Teela did for her business. If he hadn’t made it as an actor he might still be fitting shoes, or bartending, or toting a massage table around town. He’d be a disappointed drunk or a bitter part-time stagehand. A bad husband or a drifter, a man who never seemed to settle into a decent life. It wasn’t that he never thought about failure back then. It’d terrified him. It was that he didn’t know how else to be in the world if he couldn’t tell stories, act them out.
Now he didn’t know how to be in the world with everything he’d gained and not use that privilege to benefit people who couldn’t speak and act for themselves. He’d thought he needed a new strategy for the anti-piracy project, a plan B. What he needed was to be as unreasonable, as stubborn an asshole as he’d ever been to make it in the entertainment business. He needed to tell a better story, tell it louder, and to more people, and keep telling it until he got what he needed.
Plan Bs were what sensible, reasonable people like Teela did to protect themselves against failure. Failure hadn’t been an option when he was seventeen and wasn’t now.
By the time he got back to the hotel it was 5.30 and time to get moving.
Teela looked so comfortable curled in his bed, it was tempting not to wake her. That would be the cooler thing to do. Let her sleep, hit the beach, join her later. He sat on the bed and took her in, dark hair in a terrible tangle, her face smooshed in the pillow, one arm, the swell of her breast and one lovely long leg stretched outside the sheet, the other hooked up as if she’d fallen asleep mid hop.
People could look vulnerable in their sleep. Dad looked lonely, weary. Missing Mom written on his face. Rum looked younger, uncertain. He was a terrible grump first thing in the morning, as if he resented being awake. Rick looked hassled, like he was running schedules in his dreams.
Teela looked careless, strong, calm. As if sleep really did restore her instead of simply lowering her resistance to life and letting her insecurities surface.
He ran a finger down her arm and she twitched. He did it again and she grumbled, words he couldn’t make out. He kicked his shoes off, climbed over her and snugged up behind her, his face in her hair, his arm around her waist.
“If I was a good man, I’d let you sleep. I’d go have that ocean swim alone.” She sighed, but otherwise appeared to sleep on. “But I’m goddamn selfish. I only have you for today, so you don’t get to sleep in.” No movement. He shifted her hair and kissed the back of her neck. Nothing. “Impressive.” He skated his hand up her body to cup her breast over the sheet. She sighed and pushed into his hand. “Teela?”
Not even an eyelash flutter. But her breathing had changed.
He’d made her nipple harden by thumbing over it before she stirred. He got his lips to her neck as her lashes fluttered. “Good morning,” he said.
“Hmmm.”
“Time to wake up. We have an appointment with the beach.”
“Hmmm. What time is it? Why are you already dressed?”
