Anna

“Have you forgotten anything?” Ethan bellowed from upstairs. He’d asked me about three times already. I didn’t forget things. That was not the type of thing I did. I was perched on my suitcase at the front door waiting for him.

“I’m all set, as you say in this country.”

“You don’t say that in England?”

I shook my head. “Nope.”

“Who knew?”

“Everyone in England?”

“You’re hilarious. Have you thought about taking your act on tour?”

He made me laugh aloud. Only a very few people could make me laugh like that. “You’ve guessed my secret. I’m a closet stand-up comedian.”

“Come on, crazy. Let’s get you back to the city.”

I opened the front door and went to grab my suitcase, but Ethan beat me to it. He took his bag and my case out to the car.

As Rory pulled out and I clicked on my seatbelt, I turned to him. “Thank you for a lovely weekend.”

He looked at me, as if he was trying to uncover more meaning behind what I was saying. “Thank you. You’re great to hang out with.” He pulled my legs to his lap and stroked up and down as he watched me, watching him.

“Are we going to go out tonight?” I asked him.

He shook his head. I grinned. I guessed he’d want to make the most of the time we had left by keeping me naked.

“Are you going to be busy this week at work?” I asked. We never talked about his work. I liked that about him. So many of the people I hung out with in London spent their free time talking about their jobs. I didn’t really ever notice it until I spent time with Ethan. We had everything else to talk about.

“I’ll make sure I’m busy. I’ll need a distraction with you gone.”

I knew how he felt. I was pleased that I was leaving the city, where reminders of him would be all around me. It would make it easier.

I squeezed his hand.

***

“Hey, sleepyhead.” I felt Ethan brushing my cheek and my eyes opened. How long had I slept? I had my head on his lap. I didn’t remember dozing off.

“Hey, are we back?”

“Almost,” he said. I looked out the window but didn’t recognize where we were. We turned and went into an underground parking lot. Rory pulled up and I heard the trunk pop. “We’re home. Come on.”

I clamored out of the car, still a bit dazed from my nap. Why hadn’t he dropped us at the entrance? I said goodbye to Rory and caught up with Ethan, who was holding the door open for me. Through the door was a small elevator lobby.

“I’m sleepy,” I said.

“You can sleep when we get upstairs, beautiful.”

“No, I need to wake up. I want to enjoy our last night together.”

We stepped into the elevator when it arrived. It didn’t feel as if we’d gone many floors up when the doors opened and Ethan gestured for me to step out. This didn’t feel like the hotel.

“Where are we?”

“Home,” he said setting our bags down in the entrance lobby.

“Home?”

He nodded. “Come on, I’ll show you around.”

“Your home?”

“Come on.” He took my hand in his as he opened the door into a huge white living space with dark wood floors. Two walls were just complete glass and you could hardly tell what belonged inside and what belonged outside.

“This is where you live?” I asked. Mandy had told me that he didn’t bring women back to his place. Maybe he’d rented it.

“Yes, crazyhead. I don’t live in the hotel.”

“Oh,” I said.

“Are you disappointed? The view isn’t as good.”

 “No, I just…” I wandered over to the window. How could he think I would be disappointed? “I didn’t know, you know. And are you kidding me? It looks like we’re floating on the water. Is that the Hudson?”

I looked back to him and he was grinning. “Yeah, it’s great isn’t it?”

“You’re just trying to impress me, hoping I will give up my virtue. It’s very manipulative, Mr. Scott.”

As I stood looking out he came to stand behind me and wrapped his arms around my waist. I rested my arms on his. “I would never make you do anything you didn’t want to do. I told you that the first night we met,” he said softly.

I leaned my head back to rest on his chest. “You did, and you’ve kept your word. I’ve had an incredible week with you, Mr. Scott. I’ll remember it forever.”

He squeezed me tighter. “Follow me. I want to see you come in my bed.”

Immediately I felt heat between my legs at his words and I grabbed his hand as he led me through a door at the far end of the room. We went down a long, windowless corridor and then into a dark room. It was a complete contrast to the airiness of the living space. He switched the lights on low and closed the door behind me. I watched him as I shifted from one foot to the other, his blue eyes burning with desire just as they always did before he had me. He stepped forward as I stepped back. And then my ass hit the wall and he kept coming toward me. He placed his hands either side of my head and then bent toward my lips.

“Kiss me,” he said.

I trailed my fingers up his chest. And then up his neck, I brushed my thumbs across his lips. His eyes closed and I knew I had to remember his face just like that. My hands reached around his neck and I pulled him toward me. I took his bottom lip between his teeth, like I knew he liked, and then sucked and bit. I pushed my tongue against his and he reached around me and cupped my ass. I loved his obsession with it and I grinned against his lips. Kissing him was not like kissing anyone I’d kissed before. I realized that, from now on, there would be a Before Ethan and an After Ethan divide in my life. Before Ethan, kissing was always a prelude to the real stuff, but I could kiss Ethan forever. I was sure that he could make me come just by kissing me, with no other part of his body touching me. I sighed. And he pulled me away from the wall and walked me over to the bed. I held my hands up above my head and, breaking our kiss for just a second, he stripped my shirt from me in one quick movement.

***

“Give me your phone,” I said to Ethan. He had ordered Chinese and we were sitting on his sofa picking at the 187 dishes he’d had delivered. I was wearing a Columbia University T-shirt I’d found on a chair. He was in his boxers. It might have been the best evening this week, and that was saying something.

Ethan got up, walked to the console table on the other side of the room where his phone was, and came back and handed it to me.

I tapped and scrolled, trying to find my name in his contacts. “I can’t find me,” I said, looking up at him. He took the phone from my hands pressed some buttons and then handed it back. I was under Beautiful Anna. Oh, sweet mother of god, why couldn’t I find a man like this in London?

I brought up the menu and hit delete and then tried to find our text messages.

“What are you doing?” he asked me gently.

“Deleting me from your phone,” I replied, while scrolling through his messages. He didn’t respond.

“This is going to be harder than it should be for me, and I need to make sure there’s no ambiguity left behind. No promises to break, no room for disappointment.” I knew that if I left him a way to contact me, I would spend my days back in London wishing and hoping. When I wasn’t looking, Ethan had gone from Uncomplicated Fun to something else. I didn’t want to think what. I deleted our message thread. Done. We were done after tonight. My stomach churned and I felt something in the back of my throat.

He reached for me and dragged me on to his lap, my phone still in my hands as he pushed my hair off my shoulder and kissed my neck. He wasn’t making this easier.

“Sometimes I forget that I didn’t know you my whole life,” I said.

“Anna,” he replied and kissed my neck again. “My beautiful Anna, I’d never break a promise to you.”

I turned and held his face in my hands. “I know you think you wouldn’t, but it’s inevitable. And I can’t do it again,” I said, dropping my hands to my lap. “I can’t hope or wish for anything but a perfect evening this evening, which is what this is. Thank you, Ethan. You put my heart back together and made me believe there could be something better out there.”

He didn’t say anything. Part of me was relieved—but there was something, a voice right at the back of my head, that was urging him to ask me to stay, to tell me we could be together, we could make it work between us, that it wasn’t just a fling for him, that he felt something. Something more, something different. I wanted him to tell me that he felt for me what I felt for him. But I got silence.

No promises, no ambiguity, no bullshit.