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I fuck everything up in the end.
I can't fuck this up too.
"Damon?" She glances in my direction. "If you don't start talking, I will start shaming you for hanging out some place so uncool with aughts gossip."
"How do you know I hang out here?"
"The way you move around the space. You know where everything is. You're not usually so spatially talented."
Shit, she's right. I get lost all the time. And she's right about this too. I spent more than a few nights in suites with other wannabe Hollywood bad boys. Not that I remember most of them. "That's a terrible threat," I tease her. "I want the gossip."
She shoots me a please stare and turns her attention back to the water.
It's picture-perfect. Cassie, in her plum dress, her wavy hair pulled into a low bun, her makeup glam in a way that still screams badass artist.
Her long legs dipping into the long, rectangular pool.
The soft lanterns. The bamboo shielding us from prying eyes.
We're both where we belong. In a million ways.
"A lot of nights are blurry," I say. "A flash of sensations. The taste of whiskey. A warm hand on my skin. A cool cotton t-shirt. I drank too much to remember." I expect her to issue a judgment.
She doesn't. She listens closely, with that Cassie Steele intensity. All her attention on me. All of it, mine.
"I don't usually go to memories when I enjoy myself," I say.
"Only the videos of yourself?" She refers to my joke. Only it doesn't feel like a joke. Something about it feels honest.
I don't watch videos of myself, but I do think of myself when it's time to fly. Not in a voyeuristic way. More that, I rarely add anyone I know to the occasion. Only people I really shouldn't picture. "Sometimes, yeah. Mostly, I imagine different scenarios with anonymous women." Not so much lately. Lately, my sexual thoughts go straight to Cassie.
"What sort of scenarios?"
"The usual."
She shoots me a do you really think you're getting away with that answer face. "For example?"
For example, my sister's best friend marches into my room as I undress and demands the rest of the show.
For example, I pull my collaborator into the pool in her clothes and kiss her until we're both too tired to move.
For example, I drag my fake girlfriend to the party where her dickhead ex is hanging, and I make her come in front of everyone.
We're not doing examples.
But I can offer her a memory. "I think about my first time a lot."
"Really?" Surprise fills her expression. "My first time was not even a little sexy."
"Mine wasn't either. Not by any woman's definition." A laugh spills from my lips. "I was with an older friend." I wasn't drinking all the time. Just sometimes. I wasn't wasted. Only tipsy. "A few years older. We'd played truth or dare the last time we were out, and I'd admitted I hadn't had sex. That night, she came up to me, and she asked if I wanted to have a good introduction."
"Where were you?" Cassie asks.
"We were at a house party," I say. "A friend of a friend." Of course, I don't remember the friend anymore. Not his name. Not his job. Nothing. "It was someone's grandparents' house, way out in the suburbs. They were house sitting and they were excited to break into the wine collection."
"You drink wine?"
I shake my head. When I was in desperate need of a fix, I'd drink anything. Otherwise, it's strictly spirits. "Cheap vodka and orange juice. I still remember that. The taste of citrus on her lips." People say vodka doesn't have a taste, but that shit was pure rubbing alcohol. I can still feel the sting in my throat.
"What happened?" Cassie asks. "After the discount screwdrivers."
"We went upstairs. She closed the door and took off her top—she wasn't wearing anything under it." It went like that. Not robotic, exactly, but routine. She had done this before. She knew the steps.
Maybe that should have bothered me, but it didn't. I wanted to learn the routine. I wanted to know what to do.
I never really considered the idea of slowing down, enjoying myself, losing myself in the moment.
Staying in the moment isn't exactly my strong suit.
"I'd kissed other women. Touched other women. But never with this sort of intent. She took off my shirt next. She pushed me onto the bed. She took my hands and showed me how to touch her. Here first." I motion to my chest. "Then between her legs. By the time she came, I was revved up. I came in about thirty seconds, but she didn't make me feel bad. She just told me we'd go a little longer next time."
"Did you?"
"Yeah." A laugh spills from my lips. "Forty-five seconds."
"Really?"
"I didn't time it, but probably." Again, I laugh. "The third time, she gave me head first, so we'd have more time for foreplay, for her."
