Chapter Twenty-Four

Grayson

 

Since I am almost a gentleman, I offered Harper the passenger seat, and settled for folding myself nearly in half to fit in the back of Cal's pick up. I hated that I had to sit back here, like some kind of fucking third wheel in all of this, but once I realized that I could brush Harper's hair back from her neck, and kiss her shoulder as she talked, I felt much better.

"It's just, I have to get back," she said, and I couldn't help but hate the way her hands fluttered in her lap. I hadn't seen that nervous tic of hers the whole time she'd been home, but now that we were on our way to the airport, she was back at it again, that same folding and twisting and turning of her fingers that she did whenever she fretted about something. Back, before...all this, I used to wish that I could grab her hand and kiss them still, and even though I knew I could now, I just couldn't quite reach from back here. Goddammit.

"I have to get back, it was actually a really big risk coming here in the first place."

"How the hell was it a risk?" Cal said angrily. Harper and I both turned to stare at him. "What?" he fumed, glancing at us.  "You came home for the holidays. How the hell is that a risk?"

"Well," Harper said, lifting her chin a little bit. "Literally the second I was about to leave, my agent came up to me and informed me that we were entering talks. My book is being optioned by the Children's Television Network."

"Hey..." Cal said, sort of trailing off at the end.

"You watch the Children's Television Network?" I teased. "You sound impressed"

"Don't be an ass. My sister's school kids are like, addicted to that channel."

Harper nodded. "Right. They're a big fucking deal. And they are in talks not only for a ten show season to start, but also to work with a toy company on licensing the characters from my book."

"Wow," I heard myself say. There was this weird, sort of gliding sensation, where two realities existed simultaneously. Harper, the girl next door, the girl I'd always love to tease, the one I’d pined for. And Harper, this confident woman in front of me, who, unbeknownst to me, was rising to the very top of her career, very, very fast. I shook my head as if to resolve the sudden double vision.

But she was still the same woman. A very, very impressive woman.

"So that's cool," Cal said. He still sounded pissed off though.

"I know," Harper said. "I should've stayed. I should have been on the phone, marketing, making contacts and charming them with my winning personality and all that..." She trailed off into a hysterical laugh. "But I really wanted to come home and just take a break from it all for one second and now I'm afraid that I torpedoed my chances of achieving all the stuff I've been working toward."

"I'm sure you didn't," I said reassuringly.

She twisted in her seat to look back at me. "You say that, but my agent is saying something different. I sort of went a little the dark over the holidays, radio silence is really bad in this industry. You have to keep engagement up, always new content, all this crap that I just feel so bogged down by." She looked at me imploringly. "It was really nice to kind of escape from all that, but I need to stop hiding. If I'm going to achieve any of these goals, I need to be there. In New York City. I need to be there in the meetings, letting people meet me, shaking hands and smiling and all that shit."

I sat back, not knowing what to say. My knee was jammed into the back of her seat, my other braced against the back of Cal's seat, and a little tiny nudge of claustrophobia was starting to close in. She was right. All the stuff she'd been working for was finally happening. All the stuff I hadn't realized she'd been doing behind the scenes to achieve the success she had was finally coming to fruition. It would be pretty freaking terrible to keep her at home. As appealing as it was to think of her forever chained to my bed — or... our bed... or whatever the hell was going on — I couldn't do that.

I looked out the window.

Whatever this thing was — strange as it was — it wasn't wrong. That was pretty clear. In fact, I sort of even liked the idea of having a second pair of hands that let me do to her all the things I wanted to. I could do even more with her body this way. Back on New Year's, it had actually turned me on once or twice to see what Cal was doing to her. And — God strike me down on the spot if I ever admitted it — I'd even learned a few tricks that my best friend had up his sleeve, that I planned on making my own. Cal was a smart dude, methodical as hell and it didn't surprise me that a bossy motherfucker like him would be more into a little bit of the kinky shit. Spanking her...I would have never thought to do that, but goddamn was I grateful to have seen it.

I wanted to see him do it again.

But it wasn't going to happen.

We were shooting up the expressway now, only five minutes away from the airport, our time together coming rapidly to an end. Harper leaned forward craning her neck to look out the front windshield. "I always like this, right here," she said pointing. I could hear the desperate note in her voice to try to keep things light, easy. Keep the conversation from going into some serious place.

So I indulged her by leaning forward. "What, the lights?"

"Yeah, see how they're all short right here? So they don't get hit by the incoming planes?"

I nodded. "They look silly," I observed.

She twisted to smile at me. "I don't think they look silly at all. When I was a kid we used to fly out of this airport, I always thought of it as such a hallmark of the big city. Now I really am off to one." Her voice trailed off wistfully.

Cal took the ramp around the airport to the passenger drop-off then pulled over to the side. Cal and I stumbled and scrambled over each other to pull her suitcase from the back of the truck, even though giving it to her meant she was really leaving us.

Harper stood on the sidewalk, bundled into her coat, her hair swinging in the sharp, biting wind. It was freezing out here, but we all stood in place like statues, staring. I felt like I needed to memorize her, but it wasn't this memory that I wanted to keep. I wanted to remember her naked body and the way her cries sounded as she tried to keep quiet. I wanted to remember her waking up next to me and smiling before she kissed me. I'd been waiting for that moment my whole goddamned life.

Harper looked from Cal, to me, then back to Cal again. Then she leaned forward and pressed a long kiss to Cal's lips, I waited, drumming on my thighs. My fear from that morning was coming true. We'd left the room and the spell was broken, and now we'd never get it back.

Then she twisted. I leaned forward and her lips caught mine. I took her chin in my hands to tilt her mouth up so that I could take as much of that sweetness against me as I could.

I kissed her as long as I possibly could, for as long as she could stand to stay there in the cold.

Then she pulled away. "Bye," she breathed.

Then she grabbed her suitcase and turned to the revolving door and walked out of our lives again.