The shower was still running, the door to the bathroom closed.
Don’t do it.
I didn’t listen. It was a shitty justification, but after everything we’d done together, she still hadn’t told me about the blindfold club. We were both keeping secrets from each other. This was small. What was one more?
I grabbed the book, shut the drawer, and swung my legs over the side of the bed so my back was to the bathroom door. I juggled the phone in my hands as I searched for the right page.
Her script handwriting reminded me of the way she danced. It was delicate and feminine. It flowed across the pages, and I imagined her writing it with the same energy she had when she performed.
My heart thundered as I flipped through the pages, finally landing on the one I wanted.
It was three paragraphs long.
She’d written the negotiated price of fifteen hundred, and below that the deal had been canceled and I’d been escorted from the club. They hadn’t told her who I was, but I assumed either this, or that she hadn’t connected on my name.
To her, I’d come off as unsure in the beginning. Either shy or nervous, she couldn’t tell. But then I’d been sweet, using the ice cube against her mosquito bite, which she’d liked. And what she’d really liked, was when the ice unexpectedly turned into sensory play, and I put my mouth on her.
As I’d suspected, I’d brought her to the edge of an orgasm. If I’d been pulled from the room just a minute later—
“Grant?”
Instinct forced me to drop the journal. It fell and landed noiselessly on top of my open overnight bag.
“Shower’s ready.” Tara’s voice was curious. “What are you doing?”
I bent over and grabbed my toiletry kit out of the bag, covering the journal with a sweater. “Nothing, just getting my things together.”
“You can turn on the lights, you know,” she teased. There was a snap of a light switch and I blinked at the brightness.
“Right.” I turned off the flashlight and stood to face her.
She wore the blue robe, her hair wrapped up turban-style in a gray towel. She looked at me expectantly, and when I didn’t move, she glanced at the alarm clock. “Are you going to be ready to go in twenty minutes?”
This was her way of telling me to get my ass in the shower and not make her late. I nodded and grabbed my bag, trudging toward the bathroom.
I was fucking stupid. Now I’d have to find a way to get the journal back in the drawer while she wasn’t nearby, and preferably before she noticed it was missing.
We ate a breakfast of Clif bars while we stood outside the Auditorium Theatre, and as she’d predicted, the line went on for blocks behind us. Before the sun had risen, I left her sitting on the chilly concrete beside my cello case and grabbed us coffee. It was cold outside, and when I returned from Starbucks, she’d pulled the blanket from her bag and wrapped it around herself to combat the wind.
She was nervous. Tara was normally cheerful, but this morning she was a thousand-watt lightbulb of energy. I probably should have gotten her decaf. While we spent the hours camped out and waiting for the doors to open, we talked about random things. Movies we liked. Favorite songs to perform. Places we wanted to visit on our bucket list.
“Do you miss it?” she asked. “South Africa? I bet it’s beautiful.”
“Parts of it, yes.”
“Elephants and zebras and giraffes, just wandering around.” She got a dreamy look in her eyes. “I can’t even. I’d love to go someday.”
I grinned. The South Africa she imagined was the tourist version, and very different from my time growing up. “The elephants and giraffes and zebras,” I pronounced it the correct way, which was zehbra, “mostly wander around in the protected parks. Johannesburg isn’t all that different than any other urban city.”
“Zehbra,” she repeated, tickled.
She made me teach her a few dirty phrases in Afrikaans, which had us both laughing by the end. Her accent was horrible, and I loved it.
Twenty minutes before the doors were set to open, she left me to hold her spot while she found a restroom in one of the open shops nearby. As she came back, a girl stepped out of line and waved. “Ms. Tara,” she called.
Tara stopped and gave the girl a bright smile. “Kelsey. How are you?”
“Oh my God, I’m so nervous.” Kelsey was cocooned in a puffy coat and stood beside an older couple. She was so young, they had to be her parents. In fact, most of the people in this line were either five years younger or fifteen years older than Tara. The girl shoved her hands in her coat pockets, and her tone was polite and friendly. “Who are you here for? I thought Ms. Elena said I was the only student going out for this.”