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Sorry! Just landed. You still in the city?
He put the book and jacket in his backpack and ducked out of his row and toward the nearest exit. The phone buzzed in his shirt pocket while he was walking down the jet bridge to the terminal, and he quickly fished it out.
Website says flight is in. Usual meeting place.
Reliable Gil—he was a great guy. But unfortunately, not Quinn.
The ribbons of red and white lights looked a lot less pretty and twinkly from down here when you were stuck in the middle of them.
Almost an hour of stop-and-go traffic later and no incoming texts, he dragged his small, rolling carry-on into the empty apartment. At least there was some light and—he quickly pressed the remote—sound from the TV. He sat on the couch for a few minutes and set his phone on the coffee table.
He should take a shower, wash the stink of stale plane air off himself in case she was, by some miracle, still in the city. Put clean sheets on the bed. Chill a bottle of wine. Maybe she would accept a glass, although he doubted it.
He checked the phone again. The screen was dark. He leaned his head back against the cool leather.
A distant siren roused him from the sleep he had not intended. He picked up the phone from the coffee table. It was four in the morning. Maybe she hadn’t gotten his text. Or maybe she was pissed he had been late.
He composed a new one.
Very sorry about ruined plans. Make it up to you tomorrow (tonight)? Sleep well. -J.
On second thought, he added “xo” before his name. More intimate, but still fairly noncommittal.
On third thought, he deleted it. “Sleep well” was intimate enough for her. He pictured her soft skin and dark eyelashes beneath her closed lids and his dick half-heartedly stirred as he stretched out on the couch and fell back asleep.
She didn’t text until sometime after lunch. He had been so obsessively checking his phone at the office all morning that Rich took it from him as they went into an eleven o’clock meeting.
“Chill, dude,” he’d whispered, lifting it from Jonathan’s hands. “Whoever she is, she’ll have to wait.”
Yes, tonight.
* * *
Wide beamsof morning sun streamed in the bathroom window and ricocheted off the white tiles as Quinn twisted to see her back in the mirror. No evidence of the wax. Of course not; Octavia was a pro.
At the club last night, she had pulled a heavy velvet curtain that Quinn hadn’t noticed across the nook with the massage table, giving her privacy. “If you’re comfortable, you can take off your shirt and unhook your bra and lie on your stomach.”
Octavia talked through everything she was doing in her soft, assured voice—spreading the fire-retardant blanket, putting an extinguisher next to the table just in case, making sure their hair was out of the way of the candle’s dancing flame.
As Octavia massaged a thin layer of warm oil into Quinn’s back so the wax would peel off easily, tears welled in her chest. Octavia’s expert hands had felt so good, reminding her how deeply she had missed being touched.
Basic, human touch.
Not Jonathan’s searing sexual touch that came at such a high price—a mountain of guilt and fear.
Although, the fear she could let go because a relationship with him was simply a non-starter. She would never again open herself to love like she had with Harris; she would never again let herself be cleaved in two.
The heat on her back and Octavia’s occasional soothing words dulled the feelings she didn’t want to have. She could focus intensely on each drop of wax, the sound it made as it landed on her skin, how it rolled and slowed and hardened.
Sometimes a droplet would catch a fine hair and she would concentrate on the delicate tug. All of it—the sound of Octavia’s voice, her words, the safety measures, the sensations—reduced to essentials.
When she was done, Octavia asked if she wanted to see it. At her yes, Octavia used the camera on her phone to show her the droplets and their trails, hardened on her body like armor.
Octavia had stayed with her in their alcove, asking how she felt and if she needed anything, and then she sat on a stool in the corner and busied herself on her phone while Quinn rested and drifted, not really asleep, not really awake.
After some time, of which Quinn lost track, Octavia touched her shoulder and asked in a whisper if it was okay to peel the wax off her back.
She could still feel it there in her imagination, the protective layer, the second harder skin.
