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“Hell no. Much as I love you, Rie, I did it for me. You just gave me the boot up the backside I needed to get on with it.”
“But you never said anything. You never told me,” she grimaced, “and I should’ve noticed. You were fine on the flight to Melbourne. That day with the shirts in the Hand and on the balcony at the hotel and still I didn’t get it.” She frowned at him, annoyed with herself for missing the clues.
Jake shrugged. “Some things you have to do by yourself.” He pulled Rielle close, and moved his lips against hers. “And some things you really should do with someone else.” When he felt her shiver, he kissed her deeply in the noisy corridor among the crew and the partying entourage, and neither of them cared they weren’t alone.
After Rielle changed, they rode Bonne back into the city and went to the party. Rielle because it was the job, and Jake because he needed Ron for his next salary cheque. They stayed only as long as it took to be noticed—not hard in Rielle’s case—and then slipped away quickly before anyone would miss them.
After the haste came the oddness of hesitancy. Jake felt its weight like slow suffocation. Some of the early tentativeness they’d had with each other returned. Back at the hotel, they were suddenly awkward with each other, the silences too dead quiet, their laughter too bright, too loud. They were both discomforted by the realisation they were pressed hard against the barrier of the last few hours they had together—that whatever happened next would be a new, unknown, uncharted territory.
Sitting cuddled on the balcony with the dark harbour spread out before them, Jake felt heavy with all that’d remained unsaid, by all they’d avoided, skirted around, left vague and open-ended. He wasn’t coping well with the uncertainty. It wrecked his concentration, it made him twitchy with the knowledge his supply of Rielle was about to get cut off.
He didn’t need solid gold guarantees, but he needed something from her to hold him through the time they’d have to be apart.
“So, what next?”
Rielle lifted her face to his. “Who knows?”
He shifted with discomfort. “You freak me out when you say stuff like that.” Her eyes looked black in the filtered light from the room behind them, black with ideas too dark for him to want to see.
“I thought you’d had therapy for that.”
He sighed. “They haven’t invented therapy for dealing with you yet. I’m being serious. Don’t dodge me.”
In her slow silence, Jake heard the sound of absence. He waited while bats wheeled and screeched at the city lights. Their chattering calls, fast and agitated, echoed the anxiety he was feeling.
“Rie, tell me what happens next?” He was unable to leave it unsaid, prickly about her being in control of the pace of their relationship.
She moved to sit across his lap, a knee on either side of his hips. She took his face in her hands and kissed him gently and infinitely tenderly. “I have a week in LA. Then we start Europe. After that, it’s the US. I don’t know when I can see you again. I don’t know how this is going to work.”
Jake felt like the rope used in a game of tug-of-war. Her words stretched him one way into an endless empty anticipation of being with her, but her touch dragged him the other. He was pulled taut with longing and immediate desire for her.
“I can come to you,” he murmured. He felt her smile form under his lips.
“You have a life too.”
He laughed softly. “Not that you’d notice.” His life had collapsed around her. He should’ve gone home, back to his flat. He should’ve found a new job to go to by now. He’d kept away from Ron at the party, because he didn’t want to miss a second of being with Rie. He knew he should’ve spent more time with his parents and found out what their argument was about too. It was unlike them to shout at each other. So many parts of his life seemed redundant, now Rielle was at its centre. He wondered briefly if that was a good thing, and rationalised it was the only thing.
“We’ll work it out.” She stood, stretching her hand for his, taking him inside to her bed where words were simple and effortless, and the truth in their coming together was a better solution to not knowing what came next.
He hated having to leave her, curled asleep, but he was still on the job and there were things that needed his attention besides the woman he’d happily let invade his every waking thought and half his unconscious dreams. He hurried through the work required, avoided getting tangled in side conversations, and got back to the hotel as soon as possible.
A housekeeping trolley was parked across the entrance to their suite. He pushed past it, calling Rielle’s name. Odd that she’d let housekeeping have access now instead of waiting til after checkout later in the afternoon.
“Can I help you, sir?” The housekeeper gave him a shy smile and watched him with wary eyes.
Jake gave her a curt nod. She aggravated him. He wanted her gone, so his last few hours with Rielle would be without interruption. He called her, his time with more urgency. The suite wasn’t that big and she’d hardly be hiding, unless this was a game. That idea made him smile.
“Sir, can I help you?” said the housekeeper, again.
He eyed the closed bedroom door. “Can you come back later?”
“No sir. I cannot. I need you to please leave.”
“This is my room.” He smiled at the notion of how much of Rielle’s life he’d appropriated as he strode across the lounge and dining rooms, flinging open the bedroom door. No Rie, and a perfectly made up bed, the bathroom empty.
“No sir, this room is unoccupied.”
Jake turned back to her. “What?” Then it hit him like an icepick to the back of the head. Rielle wasn’t here. He went across to the wardrobe and flung open the door. Padded hangers danced in the empty space; drawers were naked. In the bathroom cabinet, blank shelves stared back at him. On the floor by the bed, his bag was packed and zipped.
