THE SHOWER MUST HAVE BEEN loud, because she hadn’t heard him come in, not the opening and closing of the stall door, nor the steps he took toward her before he wrapped strong arms around her waist. He was hard. Morning wood, most likely, though he could have been watching her through the clear glass doors as she washed herself slowly, absently, thinking of him and the night before.
He said nothing, only held onto her, their bodies pressed together. Michael had a way of holding her more tightly, more impossibly close than anyone had ever held her. Moments before the warm water had her body feeling soft and pliant, but now she felt a familiar tightening, her nipples puckering and beginning to ache. Michael ran his nose down her cheek, and his mouth down her jaw, so slowly, until his teeth softly bit that magical spot on her neck.
Feeling faint, she raised a hand to steady herself, touching the tile wall, her mouth slacking as she felt Michael’s tongue on her shoulder. He snaked a hand down between her legs, the slick wetness he found there entirely different from the water that fell around them. His whimpers made it seem as if it was he, and not she, who had been touched in the most sensitive of places.
He bit her ear as his other hand found her nipple, deft fingers tugging at it in a firm pinch. She gasped, throwing her other hand in front of herself for balance. With her facing the wall, he positioned himself to slip into her. She waited for it, yearned for it—but before she could process what was happening, he was turning her around. In a fluid motion, he hoisted her legs up with ease, had her back against the wall, and pushed inside her. Forearm to forearm, he laced his fingers in hers and breathed heavily as he began to move.
His motions were small, less like the acrobatic fucking she knew that his strong back was capable of. Instead, he ground into her in a way that kept him in constant contact with her clit. His motions were slow, and hard, and oh so deep. She loved it best like this, when she felt he was trying to climb inside her. It was this version of him that owned her fantasies.
His mouth found hers and somehow he kept perfect rhythm below as he kissed her from above. Though he had her pinned in a way that made it nearly impossible to move on her own, the intensity compelled her to pull her lips away to take a much-needed breath. Her heart pounded as if she were running a marathon and she drank in the humid air greedily. Her senses were overloaded. He took that opportunity to bend his mouth and suck her nipple, grinding into her all the while.
“God, you fuck me so good,” she nearly moaned, not loudly and certainly not intentionally, but in moments like this she had no filter. Her words must have sparked something in him because he bit down on her nipple and seconds later, she felt him pulsing inside her, a needful moan escaping him as they both came.
He lowered her gently to her feet, pressing their foreheads together for a long moment before he captured her mouth in another long, deep kiss.
“You’re killing me, Darby…” he said, and she didn’t dare to think about what it meant.
Twenty minutes later, he was kissing her again in the morning light as they walked through the front door together. He was off to Sydney again and she was headed to the hospital. Thoughts of what they had just done would keep her warm.
Darby was late for work. It rarely happened, but she had overslept and she was rushing to get dressed, get something in her stomach, and get to work on time. In her fatigue the night before, she’d left her phone in her coat pocket and hadn’t heard the daily alarm.
Her mouth was full of a bite of sausage and an Eggo waffle as she flipped through news channels, catching up on whatever had happened overnight. Finding her father’s face on each one, Darby gave up altogether and clicked off the TV.
The doorbell ringing gave her a start. She peeped through the keyhole, praying she wouldn’t see paparazzi outside. The media frenzy had already started, and was already becoming difficult to avoid. She’d taken to driving to work every day—sneaking out her back door and escaping through her garage. When she saw that it was Andrew, she relaxed, and opened the door find him looking more hurried and disorganized than she felt.
“Thank God you’re still here. I thought I wouldn’t catch you,” he said, breathing a dramatic sigh of relief. Everything about Andrew was dramatic.
“Michael wanted me to deliver this to you,” he explained, thrusting a small bag into her hands.
The keys. She’d completely forgotten.
“There’s been so much to do,” Andrew rambled, “with Michael’s move and all. I had planned on being here much earlier but I lost track of time,” he continued to explain.
Michael’s move?
“I’m going to miss him. He’s the best boss I’ve ever had, to tell you the truth. They’re going to let me keep managing his Chicago business, but it won’t be the same…”
“No…it won’t,” Darby agreed dumbly, as if she had known.
“Sorry to have to run, honey…” Andrew waved sadly. “My list is a mile long. Take care of yourself, okay? I’m sure we’ll see each other again.” He retreated down the steps. It took a full minute for Darby to close the door.
Michael’s move?
She was an hour late to work. Had she been able to maintain any sense of time, she’d have known that beyond the fifteen minutes she would have been late anyway, she’d spent another twenty minutes standing dumbly in her rotunda, ten minutes backtracking after making wrong turns in her car on the way to work, ten minutes in the parking lot trying not to cry in her car and five minutes touching up her makeup given that her attempts not to shed tears had failed.
Whereas she had been looking forward to their plans that weekend—it had been nearly three weeks since they had seen each other—she now dreaded what he would tell her at their rendezvous.
The meaning behind random details she hadn’t thought much about as they had happened snapped into focus and she wondered why she hadn’t suspected anything before.
The frequent trips to Sydney that got longer every time. The heightened intensity of his touch, and the sadness in his eyes. The way he wanted to see her at every opportunity when he was in town. This weekend wasn’t about releasing their bodies’ tension after having been apart for so long, or about giving themselves respite from their crazy jobs. This was it. He was being transferred. He’d planned something different because these may be the last days they spent together. And, unbeknownst to Darby, he’d been slowly saying goodbye.
Every hour brought a new realization as she replayed recent conversations. She now saw them—and their overnight retreat, through a new lens. She’d figured he’d booked them a suite at the Drake so that they could pamper themselves at the spa in between lounging—or doing other things—in bed. But she’d only ever heard Michael talk about liking the spa at the Peninsula, and she knew that his favorite hotel brunch was at the St. Regis. The Drake had a different significance—it was the place where they’d gone on their first date.
She’d never called it that before, even in her own mind, when she thought back to the Frigg Foundation Gala. It was hard to believe that nearly a year had passed; she never thought of it in those terms. As she did, she admitted to herself that it had been one of the best times in her life. She had refused to let herself dwell on what had blossomed between them. Whatever it was, it had thrived in a delicate ecosystem. As long as everything between them was good, that had been good enough for her.
But she didn’t know what would be good enough for her now. More intense than the knowledge that she would miss him was the desperation to believe that this wouldn’t be the end. She didn’t want to believe that a single word they’d agreed upon nearly a year before could so thoroughly eliminate the thing they’d built. But she had no idea how closely he would stick to the plan.
She wasn’t stupid. She knew that he cared for her in ways that had nothing to do with sex. Friendship was a concept Michael didn’t take lightly, and no matter how it ended, she would still have some place in his life. She knew that he wouldn’t be ending this if he wasn’t being transferred. She knew he would miss her. What she needed to know now was what it cost him to let her go.
It doesn’t matter, she kept repeating to herself as she slogged through her shift. He’s leaving and finding out the truth would achieve nothing. There’s no point in fucking things up now when we’ve got a shot at ending up as good friends.
That was what she told herself as she got dressed that night in a pretty black maxi dress Michael liked and a pair of sandals. That’s what she replayed, on a loop in her head, as she packed a small bag. That’s what told herself as she slid her room key into a special elevator slot that would take her to one of the hotel’s private floors. She almost had herself convinced. Then she opened the hotel suite door.
The room was bursting with color, so much so that it took her a long moment to make sense of what she was seeing. Yellows and oranges, purples and whites, and every color on the spectrum of red to pink covered every surface. Hundreds of blooms that grew like wisteria turned upright sprang out from dozens of vases. They adorned the large suite's every surface, and their fragrance, a bit reminiscent of bubble gum, permeated the large living room. A lump formed in her throat, not only at the fact Michael had done all this for her, had made her the object of such a grand gesture. But at the unmistakable meaning of the flowers themselves.
“Snapdragons.” She closed her eyes as she said the word quietly to herself. Her bags slipped from her fingers and a tear slipped from her eyes. It was tragedy and perfection, all at the same time.
She opened her eyes when she sensed him. He had appeared from deeper within the suite, had possibly emerged from the master bedroom. He walked toward her slowly, appraising her reaction, a storm of emotions rolling across his eyes.
“When do you leave?” she asked.
“Tomorrow,” he replied roughly approaching her with a bit of caution. “How did you find out?”
“Andrew…he didn’t mean to tell me. He thought I knew.”
At that, he looked remorseful, but she shook her head, sniffling.
“It’s better like this,” and she knew he’d know what she meant. “So we have tonight?” she asked softly, as he finally reached her, nodding as he took her hands, intertwining their fingers.
“I missed you when I was gone.”
He had never before spoken those words to her.
“I missed you too.”
“I miss you every time I go.”
“So do I.”
They slept an hour past dawn, having spent the better part of the night intertwined with one another in bed. Darby hadn’t spoken much, and neither had he. As they made love, so slowly, so desperately, she was sure that her body told him what she wouldn’t dare to say out loud. As intense as it had felt in the moment, she still doubted what it was to him, not completely sure whether he had given her what she needed simply because she needed it, or because he needed it too.
She awoke to the sensation of him kissing her hair, and snuggled more deeply into him, her nose burying into the light tuft of hair on his chest to better-inhale his scent. She wondered how long he’d been up. They lay like that for a long time, each knowing the other was awake, neither of them speaking. As she had done the day before, she debated how to say to him the things she wanted—maybe needed—him to know. Things that could only be said before everything changed.
“Nobody has ever stood up for me to my father like you did,” she whispered finally. “I never thanked you for that.”
Michael kissed her forehead again and stroked her hair for a languid moment.
“Like I said, he had it coming.”
“Huck, too,” she continued, on a roll, as if Michael hadn’t spoken. “You ruined a man’s career for me.”
He stopped stroking her hair then and tipped her chin up to force her to look at him.
“You’re worth sticking up for, Darby,” he said with a bit of fire. “How does somebody as smart as you not know that?”
She lowered her eyes but he tipped her chin up again.
“I told you. My inner circle is small but there’s not much I wouldn’t do for the people in it. You’re in my inner circle. You have been for a long time. Me moving to Sydney isn’t going to change that, so you can stop saying your goodbyes, Darby. This isn’t goodbye. You’re stuck with me.”
His voice was firm, but his hands and eyes were soft, and by the time he finished, his palm was cupping her cheek.
“I guess there are worse people to be stuck with,” she conceded, her voice tearing up a bit at his declaration.
Too soon, they were sharing a silent cab ride back to her house. There had been more love making back at the hotel. In the shower, back in bed, after breakfast, after lunch. Every part of her was sore, but she didn’t care. She’d taken everything he’d been willing to give, and maybe a little bit more.
He got out of the car with her, helped her inside her house, and took her hand as he led her to her sofa. He kissed her again, until the last minute he could. By the time she had to be ready for work, he’d be at O’Hare, passing through security. She had realized at some point that the two short days he’d come back to Chicago had been only for her.
And then the moment came, both of them standing by her front door, he with his leather jacket and the same small duffel she’d seen him with two dozen times before. He couldn't stop kissing her. She couldn't stop letting him. He might miss his plane. She wished he would.
“You don’t have to wait until January to visit,” he said finally. At some point that day, they’d talked about her coming then. “You’re welcome in my house whenever you want. Show up on my doorstep any time. And I don’t care about the time difference, Darby. I want to hear your voice. If you need me, call.”
“Of course I’ll call,” she sniffled. “You’re my best friend, Michael. Who else would even listen to all my shit?”
He hugged her fiercely, whispered something she couldn't hear at the very same moment that he pressed something small into her hand. She didn't know how long she stood alone in her rotunda, didn't make a conscious decision to blow off work, didn't hear the loud sounds of her wracking sobs after she’d crawled into bed. She was sure that he had seen tears shining in her eyes as they had stood at her door, but she saved the real tears for after he left.
She didn't remember sleeping or waking up, only startling to realize that the butterfly that had entered her consciousness was neither a memory nor a dream. It was the drawing from Michael's apartment—the stunning teal and chartreuse-winged creature she had admired a hundred times. And it was hanging over her mantel.
The rendering was exquisite. The wings seemed to shimmer, as if diamond dust and silver had been infused into the paint. It made the room feel complete. The gesture would have been perfect if it hadn't felt so much like goodbye.