Page 53 of Torn
Was this trip really worth it?
As I grabbed my suitcase and headed out the door, making sure it was locked behind me, I thought that the question was moot because this trip was already set in motion. No turning back now.
And I argued with myself as I stepped from the vestibule out onto the street, headed toward my waiting taxi. The driver flipped the trunk open when he saw me approach.You know, I told myself,you can do anything you want.You can tell the cabbie to cancel this trip. You can turn around, go back upstairs, and unpack. You can give Tom a call on his morning break at ten and apologize and hope that he’d like to get together tonight.A pang of longing went through me at the thought, and an image of his smile seized up my heart.
I could do all of these things. The worst that would happen is I’d be out of a great deal of money that I didn’t have because my airfare was nonrefundable.
And I’d miss out on seeing Boston.
And Walt. He’d be so disappointed. And so would I.
I got in the cab and told the driver I was headed to O’Hare and flying out on American. I needed to see.
I just needed to see.
WALT HADemailed me earlier in the week with specific directions on how to get to him at his friend’s place in New Hampshire. I was to take the subway, which he called the T, to an area a little north of downtown Boston, where I would pick up a local commuter bus that would take me to within five miles of him.
He’d made arrangements with a friend to pick me up at a general store in the middle of nowhere.
I was nervous because I wasn’t accustomed to much travel at all (I’d grown up poor; the only vacations I could recall my family taking were to visit relatives in Michigan), and I sure as hell wasn’t accustomed to traveling alone.
But fate or God or good fortune or whatever you want to call it had been with me all morning, starting when I got in the cab. The ride to the airport had the usual delays at busy intersections, but no real traffic snarls. I got to O’Hare with time to spare. The flight was on time and arrived at Logan just when it was supposed to.
The T was easy, thanks to Walt’s very specific instructions regarding where to catch it and how to pay for travel on it.
And the bus ride north into New Hampshire was pleasant. It was a perfect sunny day, not a cloud in the sky, the temperature hovering around eighty with no humidity. It calmed me. The gorgeous day, along with the anticipation of seeing Walt again, made the difficult talk I’d had with Tom that morning fade into the background. I smiled, looking forward to things.
As I came up the road to the house, my suitcase rolling along obediently behind, Walt stood in the distance at the screened front door. My heart gave a little leap. Even obscured by the dark mesh, his handsome face, with its sharp planes and bushy mustache, still called to me. I think I’d forgotten how fine it was and how it had an effortless ability to stir both my soul and my loins.
A smile lit up his face as I drew closer.
He opened the door and stepped back a little to admit me.
There were no words. We fell into each other’s arms like two long-term lovers, reunited after years apart, which was the story I had playing in my head. When he kissed me deeply, it was magical and electric all at the same time. I tingled everywhere. It was as though I’d been a man dying of thirst in the desert and his kiss was my oasis.
It was definitely not a mirage.
Wordlessly, I followed him inside, our fingers intertwined as we headed up the stairs. He only paused once to say, “I’m so glad you’re here. I’ll give you the tour later, okay? Right now, there’s just one room I want to show you.” His voice was husky with desire, and his eyes were alight with lust. I felt a chill. And a tightening in my shorts.
He’d mentioned the room earlier, and I hadn’t given it much thought, but now he led me up a narrow set of stairs to a small third floor that was all one room. There was a rough-hewn hardwood plank floor, bare white walls that slanted inward, a couple of nightstands with Tiffany style cut-glass lamps, and a big brass bed with a white comforter and a mountain of white pillows. A huge skylight illuminated the entire room, flooding it with yellow light. The other two windows faced out toward tree-covered mountains. Here and there were spots of orange, red, and yellow, but not many. Fall was still just an idea so far, a what-if. But the harbingers were out there, biding their time.
We undressed quickly. Walt flung a few pillows to the floor, threw back the comforter and the sheets, and before I knew it, we were on the bed and he was inside me. I’d been playing the top role for so many weeks, I’d almost forgotten the joy of bottoming, especially for a top who knew exactly what he was doing. It didn’t take long before, gasping, I witnessed white arcs of come jetting out of me into the buttery light to land on my tanned stomach.
I watched Walt’s face, upon seeing this, morph into something that looked like a cross between agony and ecstasy, but I’d lay odds that it was the latter.
After we’d regained our regular respiration and our heartbeats returned to normal, I nudged him.
“What? Ready for round two?”
“Oh, honey, I’m always ready for round two. You should know that by now. But right this moment, I need a couple other things. One, I want a tour of the house, like you promised. It looked amazing in the little glimpse that I got.” And it had. From the road, it hadn’t looked like much—a white brick ranch house at the top of a hill. But once inside, I realized it was huge and opulent, built into the side of a hill so its grandeur was not immediately apparent. Hidden, really, from casual passersby. “I also need to eat.”
Walt hopped off the bed and struggled into his clothes.
“I think we can make both of those things happen. Get dressed. Or not. There’s no one to see us out here, so you don’t have to get dressed again until, oh, maybe Sunday afternoon, when I have a couple of friends I want you to meet coming over for dinner.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah, a brand-new couple. One’s a performance artist from New York, the Lower East Side. Maureen. Her latest love is Joanne, who, believe it or not, is an attorney.”
