Chapter Twenty-Five
Bethany
We didn’t end up talking about Ransom’s idea at all the rest of the night. At first it was because his suggestion had overwhelmed me, and all I wanted to do was keep the night and all the pleasure I was getting out of it going, without thinking about the future. We took a shower together, and finished up the bottle we’d ordered, and ordered midnight room service: grilled cheese sandwiches made with a blend of “gourmet” cheeses, tomato bisque, and french fries. And as soon as we’d eaten, we made love again.
But the next morning, I knew I had to make a decision. It wasn’t that I doubted Ransom--it was that I wasn’t sure if I could actually manage a relationship, even with someone like him. Even if he had managed to give me what I’d been missing for so long.
“How serious are you about wanting to be with me?”
Ransom pulled me close to him in the bed and kissed my forehead. “If you want it, I will go get my car from my parents’ place, and drive back to the city with you today,” he said. “I can stay in a hotel if you want your own space. Or get an apartment of my own.”
“You’d do that just to give us a chance?”
“I don’t have anywhere in particular that I need to be,” he said, nodding. “My money is good anywhere in the world.”
“I mean more the getting an apartment in a new city, or a hotel room,” I said.
“Oh--that. It’s no big deal,” he said, shrugging. “I like new cities. And I like sex with you. Seems like a no-brainer.”
We lay in bed for about an hour, talking about it, and finally I decided. I wasn’t about to just give up on the orgasms I’d suddenly started having. If Ransom was able to get me off, and if he liked me--and I knew I liked him, above and beyond the sex--then it would be crazy not to see if we could really be together.
“Why did you say you’d go get your car?” I asked.
Ransom started pulling on a pair of pajama pants and I was almost disappointed; I’d half-hoped we were going to have sex again, or at least fool around a little more intensely.
“I figure it would make more sense for us to drive up together, and I can get someone to transport your car back to your place. I’ve got a great, comfortable car we can take back to the city,” he said.
“Now you’re just showing off how much money you have,” I half-protested.
Ransom laughed. “You’re the one who offered me twenty thousand dollars to be your fake boyfriend for a weekend,” he pointed out.
“That took me a good couple of years of saving,” I countered.
“You’ve been saving for years for a fake boyfriend?”
I rolled my eyes. “I’ve been saving for years, and when I figured out I wanted a fake boyfriend, I decided to use the money for that.”
Ransom threw himself down on the bed next to me and kissed me lightly on the lips.
“Well, now you won’t have to pay someone to be your boyfriend,” he said. “You can just have me. And I’m going to warn you--I fully intend to spend most of our time alone together trying to make up for all the orgasms you should have had by now.”
“That is kind of a big challenge,” I told him.
Ransom grinned. “Good. I like challenges. Especially ambitious ones.”
We made our plan and then it was checkout time, and I kept the sapphire ring on as we headed down to the lobby to turn in our key-cards, since I thought there would be more than a few stragglers other than us, and I wanted to keep up the story Ransom and I had come up with. Of course, it had become truer than anyone other than us knew, but I wasn’t planning on getting actually engaged to Ransom anytime soon.
We took my car to Ransom’s parents’ place, and I teased him about his comments to me about how he’d need to get a hotel anyway. “I try not to stay here too much,” he explained. “Nothing against this place--it just feels cold without my parents living here.”
“Maybe we can stay here the next time we’re in town,” I suggested.
“Maybe,” Ransom agreed. He grinned at me and opened the huge garage door, where I saw a good four or five cars, all of them under dust cloths. “I like that you’re thinking ahead to that.”
“I like it too,” I admitted. As Ransom chose the car he wanted to drive us back to the city in--an SUV with all the luxuries, as it turned out--I thought about the weekend. By the time we had our suitcases loaded up, and had seen my Prius off on its trip on a transporter truck, back to the city, I’d made up my mind.
I took a picture of Ransom and me together in his car, and opened up Instagram. Back to reality with my boo, I wrote in the spot for the caption. It would be a perfectly normal thing for my former classmates who followed me to see, but I would probably need to text Jess and let her know the details of what had happened. I actually had a boyfriend, and I had actually figured out how to achieve an orgasm--as long as Ransom was there to make it happen to me. I was pretty sure that he was going to teach me plenty more about what I’d been missing out on, and I could use my position at the agency to help him get in touch with his birth father, and help him get the details he wanted to know about his early life. It was definitely a fair exchange, and I couldn’t think of anything more that I could have possibly wanted from the reunion. It had all gone so much better than I even could have imagined, and I was definitely ready for more.