It’s fast, I know. But I’ve known Blair for nearly a year now, and for a while there I was certain this moment would come a lot sooner. It’s right in every way. The warmth of his touch pushes the horrors of the last year firmly into the past.
When we finally emerge from our consummated bliss, Blair has Thai food sent up to us from a restaurant downstairs somewhere in the building. His eyes follow me wherever I go, his hands reaching for me at every opportunity—holding my hand, resting on my shoulder, playing with my hair. There’s a new look in them, too. His flirty facade has crumbled into something sweet and candid.
I can’t seem to wipe the smile from my face, and I don’t want to.
Blair breaks out some top-shelf liquor from his parent’s bar to celebrate the occasion, and takes the opportunity to show off some top-notch bartending skills. I try my hand at it myself and force him to drink what I dub the “sludge monster” while I finish off a neat cosmopolitan. I’m not going to pretend that I didn’t end up with the better end of the deal there.
Our buzz carries us through a hazy, rose-colored afternoon. Blair stays by my side, orchestrating a series of touching moments that make my heart fit to burst; starting with the delivery of a massive bouquet of flowers mid-afternoon, to embarrassing me by sticking candles in the other ¾ of the cake he brought last night and singing to me until I screech for him to stop and blow out the candles in one breath.
The sun is painting the penthouse in orange and yellow hues when Blair gets up from where we’ve been binge-watching some TV show to make me another drink. He’s significantly more drunk than I am—thanks to that concoction I made him earlier—and it’s showing. His usually graceful movements have turned sloppy, and his words have started slurring together a bit.
“I saw this bartender in Barbados do this drink …” he tells me as he stands at the bar and pours from a few bottles into a crystal tumbler. He spills a decent amount of it on
the counter in the process, and I giggle and spin around to watch him over the back of the couch.
“Oh yeah?” I say, rising up a bit when he starts reaching for a lighter. “What’re you doing with that?”
“Oh, I think you know,” he says, that sneaky smile breaking across his face again as the top of the shot glass erupts in tiny, blue flames.
“Hurry now,” he says, stepping around the bar with a drink in each hand. “Before all the alcohol is burned away.”
Just as he’s taking the first step down from the bar to the main floor, his drunken footing gives way and he stumbles over his own feet. The drinks in his hands go flying to shatter on the ground beside the bar. Fire explodes across half of the living room, spreading all the way to the base of the couch where I sit.
I cry out and fall back as Blair scrambles to grab a blanket from the sofa. He runs to the sink and douses it in cold water before racing back and beating at the flames. He just barely gets the fire out before it spreads up the back of the chair completely. It leaves a dark black smudge across the once-pristine-white fabric.
All the while, I’ve just stayed frozen on the ground, watching. Now, I get carefully up to my feet and move around the examine the damage.
“God, that was close.”
He groans as he slumps down onto the wet floor and lets his head fall back against the bar. Scorch marks surround him on the cement floor and nearby furniture.
“Your parents are going to kill us,” I say, wide-eyed as I stare at the damage. “I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life, but arson was never one of them.”
He cracks one eye up to peek at me. “Nah. They’re just things. They can be replaced. Now that painting,” he points over to a tiny, black-and white abstract canvas hanging on a nearby wall, just barely outside of the flame’s rapid reach, “that’s another story. It’s worth more than both our lives combined, so I guess we just got lucky.”
“Lucky isn’t a word I usually associate with myself,” I say. I reach for him and pull him to his feet. “No more fires. Okay?”
Some combination of the fading sunlight, smoky smell, and the last of the liquor coursing through my blood makes me itch to move. We’ve spent all day here, inside the house; but there’s a whole city out there waiting to explore. If Blair wasn’t so drunk, I’d ask him to take us out on his bike again.
“What do you think about maybe going to a club? We could go dancing or something.” I say, trailing one finger down his chest. I like the idea of being close to him, our bodies pressed together, for all the world to see.
My suggestion does not illicit the response I expected, as panic flood’s Blair’s features for a moment.
“No,” he says. “We can’t do that. We can’t go out.”
I blink in surprise and lower my hand to my side. “Why not?”
“We can’t be seen together,” he says quickly, and then he looks away from me. “I mean … my parents don’t really know you’re here, and … it would just be easier if we hang out here in the condo this weekend. If the neighbors saw us they might talk … and I just …” he trails off, his clouded mind struggling to find the right words. “I don’t want to ruin what we have here. Right now. With you.”
His face softens, and he reaches for me.
I’m disappointed, but I try to understand. There’s a little voice inside of me that tries to rise up, that voice of reason, but I quash it down. For once in my life, I’m not going to let worry and doubt ruin this for me. Just like Blair said.
I nod and take his outstretched hands. “It’s all right. I’m just glad that I get to be here with you.”
“Me too.” Blair sighs with relief and smiles at me. “After all … who needs to leave when we have everything we could ever want, right here?”
He pulls me in for a kiss, and then grins and takes my hand, leading me out to the balcony again. He has me undressed and in the pool before I can protest, and I don’t really want to protest at all.