At the end of the day, two people are still two people, right?
The door opens and Emma walks out, saying, “I realized that without you knowing when I was going to be ready to go, it didn’t make much sense for you to come to the door. Either you’d be early, in which case making you wait at all becomes a useless exercise, or you’re late, and I’m stuck waiting there when you’re right on the other side of the door. All of that being the case,” she says, “I am ready to go to dinner.”
With all the uncertainty, the awkwardness, and the general reign of miscommunication, yeah: this is starting to feel like a relationship.
Chapter Seven
Backyard Carnivals
Emma
Dinner last night was all right, but we were both still very much in ourselves. What was better was brunch this morning. That’s when I really got Damian to stop being the cardboard cutout of himself and start actually being himself.
He seemed pretty uncomfortable doing it.
Right now, I’m standing in the locker room of the hotel spa. Damian and I are getting a couple’s massage.
I don’t know exactly how far down to strip in these places.
I’ve always heard that the general rule is that you don’t need anything but the towel, but having never actually been to a spa, it feels a little weird.
Just to be on the safe side, I leave my bra and panties on before I wrap the towel around my body
and make my way to the next room.
Damian is already facedown on one of two massage tables.
He turns his head far enough to glance at me, and then puts his face back in the little hole. He doesn’t say anything, but his hands are moving down his body, and—yep, he’s mooning me.
Well, I guess that answers the question I had in the locker room.
“Will you put that away?” I ask, pretending like I’m not sneaking a peek when in reality, I’m a little turned on by getting such an up close and personal look at such a famous, and if I may, well-formed, ass.
“This is exactly the kind of thing I would be doing to you if we were in a new relationship,” he says. “We’re still doing new relationship, right? When do we move on to the petting and necking portion of the weekend?” he asks, and then makes some kind of noise that I can only equate to a cat growling.
“We’re moving from new to established relationship,” I tell him, “and there’s not going to be a petting portion of the weekend. We will be practicing our kissing, but only after you prove to me that you can handle it like an adult.”
“But Mom,” the still bare-assed, world-renowned actor whines through the hole in his massage table.
I approach the side of my table and just stand there for a moment.
Apparently, I don’t need the underwear, but I’m not so sure about dropping my panties when Damian can see through his hole.
I’m really not a prude, I swear. This is a unique situation.
I finally decide to go back to the locker room, but of course, that’s when the masseurs come in the room.
“Everything okay?” the short one with the bald head asks.
“Did you forget something?” the taller one with the hideous man bun asks.
“I just need to go back for something,” I stammer.
“We can have someone bring it in here to you,” Man Bun says.
“Please, lie down,” Bald Guy says in a soothing, almost cult-inspiring voice.
“Really, I should grab it myself,” I tell them. Now, even if I succeed in leaving the room unescorted, I’m going to have to pick something I brought with me to be that thing I couldn’t possibly get massaged without. This is some killer planning. “I’ll just be a second,” I tell them.