CHAPTER 24
JOE
“Our flight leaves in one hour,” I told Lana. “We’d better hurry.” After the most torturous night of my life—sleeping in the same bed as Lana and not getting to touch her—we’d separated, each driving our own cars back to Portland. Then, a couple of hours later, we’d met at the Portland Airport, in the parking garage.
I tossed a small duffle bag I’d packed over my shoulder, slamming the trunk of my car shut. “You didn’t pack a bag?”
She was dressed in another one of her white suits, looking rejuvenated somehow, and ready to take on the world. Me—I was barely functioning today. But seeing her again gave me a much-needed boost of energy.
“It’s one night.” She shrugged. “I have my makeup, my toothpaste, and toothbrush in my purse.”
Yeah, and no pajamas. Our return flight wasn’t until tomorrow.
I raised my eye brows. “What do you plan to wear to bed tonight?”
“Maybe your shirt again.”
Damn. I stared at her, trying to decide if she was serious or joking, the temperature in the parking lot raising a couple of degrees.
“Let’s just go,” she urged. “I want to get this over with.”
We started walking toward the terminal. It didn’t take long to check-in for our flight to New York City or to get through security. Before I knew it, we were boarding the plane, almost on our way.
A last-minute flight was expensive enough, so our seats were in coach. Not that I couldn’t have afforded anything else. We each bought our own. “I’ve only ever sat in first class,” I confessed. “This should be fun.”
“Really?”
“The perks of being born with a silver spoon in my mouth. Mind if I take the window?” I could already feel the jitteriness of having to sit still for the next five hours starting to creep over me. This wasn’t good.
“Go ahead.”
I sat down, buckling in, kicking my duffle bag under the seat in front of my legs. Lana sat to my right. As much as I tried to control it, my damn knee began to bounce incessantly. I drummed my thumb against the armrest, trying to relax.
A minute later the flight attendant came through checking that seatbelts were buckled. Then the captain announced there was a queue in the takeoff line, so we’d be waiting at the gate for a few minutes.
I groaned and ran my hands through my hair.
Lana placed her hand on my bouncing knee. “Are you okay?”
Still it bounced. “Fine.”
“You don’t seem fine.”
“Remember how I suck at sitting still for long car rides? Well, it’s times ten for flights. Not sure I’ve ever even been on one sober before.”
She started digging in her oversized purse, and after a moment, pulled something out. “Here.”
I glanced down at a crossword puzzle book. “That’s nice, woman, but I can’t focus enough for that. Remember, it took heavy medication and alcohol to get me through school.”
“What if I read the questions out loud?”
“Okay. Maybe. That’s a good idea.”
She started asking me questions and filling in the boxes as I answered.
This was working, she was distracting me.
Finally, the plane left the gate, taxied, and took off. We continued to do the crossword puzzle for a little while longer until I started to lose focus. The temperature on this damn plane was set to Satan’s hellfire.
“Want to listen to music now?”
She didn’t wait for me to answer. She took out her phone, plugged in her ear buds, and handed them over.
I willingly took them.
Hell yes. They were noise cancelling. And I found I desperately wanted to know what kind of music Lana liked.
A Kings of Leon Album played.
I knew it. I liked it.
Then she surprised me when she lifted the armrest between us, unbuckled, and rested her head against my chest.
I sucked in a breath at her contact. My heart thumped like a wild animal under her ear. She had to feel it. The plane still felt like a sauna, more so with her on my chest, but having her close was what I needed to calm down. I wrapped my arms around her shoulders, adjusting, savoring the hell out of this. I didn’t know where we stood, but I took this small moment and held onto it—onto her—as tightly as I could.
We sat like this for a very long time.
My heart rate eventually slowed and even, but my thoughts wandered to Kitty and Zane. I’d known all along that Zane was an asshole. But realizing yesterday, what I should have realized from the start, that what he’d done to my sister was just another form of sexual abuse, brought my own issues with sex to the surface all over again. And I couldn’t shake this feeling that I was wrong for letting everything that happened between me and Lana happen.
“I feel guilty,” I admitted to her. “I shouldn’t have touched you like I did when we first kissed. I shouldn’t have taken things so far in the garage. You trusted me, and I was deceiving you. I lost control—in every moment with you. But especially that moment in the garage. There were so many mixed emotions running through me after seeing Doug in the coffee shop and rather than talking to you about it, confessing it all to you, I . . ..” I couldn’t bring myself to say it, she knew the rest.
She sat up, moving off me, the air between us instantly changing. “After seeing that woman, too?” she added.
“What woman?”
“The woman with Doug, the brunette. Your ex or whoever she was. Now that I know you know Doug too, that must have been especially weird seeing the two of them together. I guess she was part of your mixed emotions.”
Nausea hit my stomach. I’d forgotten about the woman with Doug, and about how I’d told Lana we ‘used to fuck.’
“Shit, no.” I pulled the ear buds from my ears. “I’m sorry. I never clarified that. I didn’t know the woman Doug was with that day. I lied because seeing Doug while you were holding my hand rattled me. I was afraid you’d notice something was wrong with me, and the woman with him seemed like a good enough excuse at the moment. I shouldn’t have said it either way.”
Fuck. I tugged at my hair.
I felt even worse now. “I was just . . ..” I leaned forward, putting my head in my hands. “I was freaked out thinking that because Doug caught us together, that this thing between us would have to end. I lost control in our next moment alone together. And now, thinking about Zane and Kitty, and how he was a dick for abusing her the way he did, and then thinking about what happened to me, I know I should have slowed down. I like you too much to have treated you like an overeager jackass. It all happened so fast.”
She leaned forward, closer to me. “But everything was consensual. I wanted it as much as you wanted it. I lost control the same as you. If you were an overeager jackass, then so was I. Do you regret everything that happened between us?”
“No. But I regret not being honest with you first. And I regret not letting you lead things. I should have only kissed you against your food truck. I should have only kissed you in your office. In my bed. In the garage.” I slapped my hand to my head.
“Joe,” she said softly, “what are you really getting at? Because I kind of love the way everything happened in those moments together. The speed, the timing, it all seemed perfect to me. It seemed like you felt the same way, too. Now you’re taking it all back? Where is the doubt coming from? What is it you aren’t saying? What happened two years ago that made you give up sex?”
My jaw tightened. I didn’t realize that was what I was actually trying to tell her. That that was the real issue behind my words. Once again, that fucking woman was still in my head. And once again, Lana had this way of getting me to talk about all the hard stuff. “It’s so stupid,” I said to Lana.
“No, whatever it is, it’s not.”
“You won’t believe me.”
“Yes, I will.”
“I was raped.”
There, I said it.
Out loud.
She was the first person I’d ever told.