Fight or Flight(40)
I was there to check up on their work for Patrice’s guesthouse and make some final decisions on the fabric choices for each room in Roxanne’s summer home.
Fred’s shop was fabric heaven, bolts and bolts of expensive, luxurious fabric that often made it difficult for my more involved clients to come to a decision. I was decisive. While designing a room, I knew exactly what kind of fabrics and palettes I wanted to use. Clients like Roxanne, however, who didn’t trust you (and made you wonder why she hired you in the first place), played lovely games of back-and-forth that slowed the project down. And then they complained about how much time it was taking.
I was done waiting. Roxanne’s last okay to fabric choice was now the final decision.
Working with Fred was a wonderful distraction that morning. The entire time I barely thought about the night before, but as soon as I left his shop my mind automatically went there again. After our quick, desperate, but extremely satisfying first round, Caleb and I had taken our time exploring each other. I could still feel his beard scratching and tickling my skin as he discovered every inch of it with his mouth. There were little patches of red skin this morning on the places he’d lingered the longest. But I didn’t mind. I flushed remembering his attentiveness. And he’d let me touch and kiss every inch of him too.
I hadn’t left the hotel room until almost one in the morning, and Caleb had insisted on calling me a cab even though my apartment was walking distance from the hotel.
Despite the chaos of my thoughts, I was so wrung out that I’d fallen asleep as soon as I’d gotten into bed. And this morning when my alarm went off I’d felt surprisingly fresh and awake despite having slept for only four and a half hours. I’d even managed to fit in a run.
But there was something that niggled at me and had been niggling me all morning.
Because last night didn’t feel like a quick, satisfying, casual affair. Come to think of it, our first time together in the hotel at O’Hare hadn’t exactly felt like that either.
The way Caleb overwhelmed me in bed, the way he completely owned me until there was nothing else in the world but him and me, made me feel uneasy. It wouldn’t be difficult to begin to like the man he was when we were together like that. He was an amazing partner. Simultaneously wild and rough and savage, yet sweet, reverent, and generous.
No man should be that good. The truth was, however, that he made me a different kind of lover. Sex with Nick had been great, but we’d always just been satisfied with a bit of foreplay followed by the main event. Once that was done, we were finished for the night. I couldn’t remember rolling around in bed with him for hours or striving to make him groan with pleasure the way I had with Caleb.
So I had to wonder if Caleb had ever been like this with a woman before, or if our sheer need to pleasure each other just made us more exceptional than ever.
The reality was that our physical appetite for each other felt dangerous to me.
I didn’t want to admit out loud that sex with Caleb had confused me, considering the sensible part of my brain knew he was still rude and unappreciative to people. A huge personality no-no for me.
But still, I needed to talk to my best friend before my brain exploded with overthinking. Harper was contracted to work five days a week at Canterbury, but sometimes she worked extra days when she was helping train new apprentices. She worked twelve-hour shifts in the kitchen doing everything from devising dessert menus to developing and testing new pastries and desserts, from overseeing the pastry department budget to procuring ingredients and maintaining the inventory of supplies, as well as overseeing the training of new staff members. I knew all this because I wanted to learn what I could about her job, why she was there for twelve-hour days, and what it was about it that made it worth it to her.
She had a passion for it, but I worried that the sixty-to seventy-two-hour weeks were going to cause her to burn out quickly.
Having such a demanding job meant she and I had to fit in our time together whenever we could. I called her as I was leaving Fred’s and asked if she had a moment to spare.
“I’ll make time,” she said, sounding concerned. “I’ll take a quick lunch break early. You okay to meet me at the restaurant or do you need more privacy?”
“Grab one of the booths in the back and we’ll be good.”
“Okay, babe. See you soon.”
Canterbury was on Pearl Street in the Financial District, and Russo’s was on the corner of Washington and Waltham, so I decided to jump in a cab. Kelly, the daytime hostess at Canterbury, recognized me and led me to Harper.
My friend was dressed in her chef whites and ripped black jeggings with a pair of black and silver sneakers. She loved her biker boots, but running around a kitchen for twelve hours required comfortable footwear. Harper got out of the booth to hug me in greeting and then we settled down.
She gestured to the small samples of the lunch menu sitting on plates that covered our table in the back of the restaurant. Canterbury had a modern rustic design; it was all glass, heavy dark woods, Spanish brick tiling, and copper, wire, and naked lightbulbs. Jason was from Canterbury in England and the style of the food was British gastropub. “Eat,” she said. “And talk.”
So I did, cutting into a miniature gourmet burger. I told her everything that had happened with Caleb yesterday, wondering how only a day had passed from the moment Patrice had “introduced” us to now.