Chapter Twelve
Kelli
I’m not sure when I first realized what we were going to do. I guess there had been warning signs throughout the day. The way he glowed when I asked him to tell me about himself, like he wasn’t used to girls asking about him; the way he looked at me with a mixture of tenderness and pity when I told him about my broken engagement. Unless I had profoundly misread his intentions, which I grant was possible, it seemed like he was beginning to reassess how he felt about me.
“You still haven’t told me very much about yourself,” I said as we sat together in my bedroom with the windows drawn. I had just finished checking my work email and was now absently scrolling through Facebook. He was sitting on the edge of the bed watching me with a look of tireless curiosity.
“Not much to tell,” he said.
“You sure? I feel like you’ve told me more about your brothers than you have about yourself. I know all about Marshall’s gambling addiction and Curtis’s new girlfriend, but I couldn’t tell you what your hobbies are, or what you like to read, or who you voted for…”
“I never tell who I voted for,” said Zack. “Especially not when I first meet a girl. Nothing kills the mood in a room faster than finding out you have completely different political views.”
I smiled, which probably seemed like a weird response. “So I’m a girl to you now?”
He seemed perplexed by the question. “Aren’t you?”
“I mean, not just a girl. I’m obviously that. I figured you just saw me as that annoying reporter from Manhattan who kept following you around asking questions you didn’t want to answer.”
I felt like I was just rambling now, but Zack saw what I was getting at. “You mean would I bang you?”
The question surprised me, and I surprised myself by laughing at it. “I mean, yeah. I wasn’t going to put it so bluntly, but sure! Would you bang me?”
Zack smiled, a shrewd look forming in his dark eyes. “I guess we’ll just have to see.”
In the silence that followed, the room around us came into sharp focus. I could hear the faint buzzing of a refrigerator or air-conditioning unit on the other side of the wall. My eyes caught sight of the cockatoo flowers wilting in a vase full of stagnant water on the windowsill that had been sitting there since my arrival three weeks before. I wondered when was the last time room service had come in and cleaned this room. At the same moment I realized, with an unshakeable sense of certainty, that Zack and I were about to make love.
Zack rose from the bed and came toward me. Although not by any means a large man, he was impressively sculpted, and I might have been frightened if I hadn’t already granted him a degree of trust. Taking me gently by the shoulders, he lifted my chin and kissed me, repeatedly, on the face and lips.
After this had been going on for some time, he broke away slightly and looked me deep in the eyes. His own eyes were lit with a strange light.
“Before we go any further,” he said, “I just need to know one thing: are you willing?”
I nodded, feeling apprehensive but eager. It had been a long time since I’d done anything like this, and I could feel a thrill of nerves in my stomach. I had half a mind to pinch myself hard and make sure I wasn’t dreaming, but if it was a dream, I wasn’t sure I wanted to wake up. It hardly seemed real, what we were doing. Here I was, alone in a room with a SEAL. My SEAL.
Zack paused, as if thinking carefully over how he wanted to word his next statement. “Do I—” he mumbled, looking embarrassed.
“Pardon?”
A pained look came into his face, as though it hurt him to have to say this. “Do I have your full consent and permission to do what I want to do to you?”
I shuddered, but not from fear. “I guess it depends on what you want to do to me.”
There was a fierce look in Zack’s eyes as he said, “Oh, I think you know, sweetie.”
The intensity of his gaze was so strong I could hardly bring myself to look him in the face. “You have my consent,” I said finally. “If I should start to feel queasy or uncomfortable, I’ll let you know. I’ll say no. But if we’re being fully honest with each other, I’ve wanted this. I’ve wanted it since that day on the tower.”
Surprise shone in Zack’s face. “You did a good job of hiding it,” he said. “I’d never have guessed even for a minute.”
I shrugged. “I had a job to do, and you didn’t seem all that interested. I was just gonna let it go.”
I set my computer on the floor so it wouldn’t get knocked off the bed, then searched through my Spotify playlists for an appropriate artist. He objected to Coldplay and Taylor Swift, thought Radiohead was too depressing, and thought Travis sounded too much like Coldplay. “How about some Bastille?” he said finally, so I put on “Snakes,” which I had been playing almost nonstop since my arrival in the Congo. It seemed fitting, somehow, and I really tracked with the vibe of the song: pretty much no one in the world can be trusted, but for now, babe, we’ve got each other, so let’s hold onto this moment while it lasts.
“About time,” said Zack with a sardonic smile as I returned to the bed. “I was beginning to think we would never agree on a song.”
“Didn’t you grow up in Texas?” I asked him as I lifted my shirt over my head and threw it on the floor, exposing my blue bra. “I bet you listen to a lot of country music.”
“You would think, but that’s more my brothers’ territory,” Zack replied. “I’ve always been more of an indie guy. Elliot Smith, Fleet Foxes, Vampire Weekend…”
“Oh, I love all those bands.” I sounded more surprised than I’d intended; I guess up until now I had still harbored a vague notion that Zack was some kind of uneducated rube from the sticks. In the three weeks I’d been in the Congo, it never failed to amaze me how cultured and intelligent some of these SEALS were.
“Put on some Vampire Weekend,” said Zack. I got up out of bed, clutching both arms to my chest as though trying to hide it—which was ridiculous, number one, because I was still wearing a bra; and number two, because he would be seeing more than that in a minute.
I put on Modern Vampires of the City and returned to the bed. “I have to say, this beats the heck out of—”
“Out of what?” Zack grinned. “Doing your job?”
“I mean, yeah.” I couldn’t help laughing, a little. “Brunch at a decent restaurant, some great songs, not having to worry about this stupid assignment. You must be relieved to have gotten out of exercises.”
“Yeah.” Smiling, he leaned over and kissed me on the neck. “But I’m finding ways to stay active.” And over the next couple of hours, he proved it.