“You’re welcome,” he says. Then he leans in a little closer and whispers into my ear, “It was worth it to hear that moan again. I like that. Very much.”
I look over to him and swallow, because I don’t want to say what I’m about to say with sauerkraut hanging out of my mouth. “I guess you have lots of ways to make me moan.”
He is so fucking confident. He is so fucking handsome. He just holds my gaze and winks at me.
“You’re forgetting something, Weaver,” he says, and I really don’t want to be reminded of anything, especially the elephant in the room, his secret identity.
“What?” I ask hesitantly.
“Halvsies means you give me half of your burger. Share,” he says, and leans over me to cut my burger in half and place it on his own plate.
That breaks the ice, and we fall into easy conversation from there. The conversation comes easily, although the words are pretty muffled because we’re both ravenous and can’t eat fast enough.
“Really you can’t get a Rueben like this anywhere else but the city,” he tells me. “I come into the city a few times a month, and when I’m lucky to have a break, get away from stuffy business meetings at restaurants like Cipriani, I sneak away to greasy spoons like this.”
“Oh,” I ask, between bites. “What kind of work do you do? I know you travel a lot, but you’ve never actually told me why.”
There’s that elephant again. I only know he travels a lot because of our cam sessions, and we haven’t talked about that, not yet.
“It’s a family business,” he says vaguely. “I don’t want to bore you with the details. We have offices all across the United States and Europe. I have two brothers. Once my older brother got married and had kids, I took on a lot of his travel obligations. It seemed like the brotherly thing to do.”
“So tell me, how did Le Bain stack up against the trendy clubs in Europe?”
He laughs. “Beats me,” he says. “That place isn’t exactly my scene. I prefer to spend time outdoors. Or at home.”
I’m finding myself filing away every little fact about him. Turning them over in my head like tasty little morsels. Whenever WildCaptain and I chatted, I always imagined where he was, what he was doing, and now, I can get some of those mysteries resolved. Although the biggest mystery of all, I haven’t touched yet. Kate will be here, soon. If I want answers from Chris, I better screw up my courage and start asking.
“But you came out to Le Bain, tonight,” I say, looking him in the eye.
“I did,” he says. “Special circumstance.”
I look at my phone and figure I have maybe five minutes until Kate arrives. If I want to know how Chris found me, if I want to know why he found me, this is the opportunity. I put down my burger and wipe my mouth, trying to inject a bit of formality, a serious tone, into what I’m about to ask.
“How’d you know?” I ask.
“I got lucky,” he says, taking my hand. My greasy hand. Shoot. I should have bothered to wipe my them. “After we…well, after, when I came back to bed, I saw you looking at your laptop. The Sugar Girl website isn’t really subtle. The Sugar Girl logo was flashing at the top of your browser page. So that was very lucky for me.”
He reaches out and strokes my cheek, just once, as if reassuring himself that I’m actually sitting across from him, in person.
“When we fell asleep that night, I knew I wanted to see you again, but the next morning I woke up and you were gone. I couldn’t get you out of my head. That morning, after you left, I checked the website. And I kept checking. And one early morning, in my office in London, there you were.”
“But why didn’t you…” I start, but Kate’s sudden appearance interrupts me.
“What the actual fuck?” Kate says. She is clearly a little drunk.
“Kate,” I say, in my most patronizing tone, “is that anyway to say hello to our old friend? You remember Chris, don’t you?”
Chris is ever cool. He just smiles at Kate and pushes over the plate of onion rings in her direction. “Hello Kate. It’s a surprise to see you again. Look at us! The old Paris gang back together again.”
Kate’s making squinty eyes at Chris, clearly a little confused. I can’t tell if she’s disarmed by his dazzling smile and calm, or his immediate offering of greasy diner food, but she takes an onion ring and nods to him.
“Quite a surprise,” she says, looking down her nose in her best Inspector Clouseau impression. “What brings you to New York?”
“Business,” Chris answers. I realize I don’t know if this is true. Was he in New York and finally took the opportunity to see me, or did he make this trip especially for me? “I’m actually in the city for an entire week, which is a rarity for me.”