Chrysalis, p.8
Chrysalis, page 8
“I’ve got a meeting,” I apologize. “But I’ll call you soon, okay?”
“I’m on doubles for the next two days,” she complains.
“Just text me when you’re around.”
“I will,” she confirms. “And, Michael? Don’t back off.”
I yawn as I stand in the high-speed elevator, hearing the whoosh of vertical gain as I rocket to the forty-fifth floor. It was an early morning. I toured a job site for the first Kensington hotel, which was far enough on the outskirts of the city that my driver had to pick me up at five in the morning. Australia’s topography is more diverse than Chicago’s, and beachfront property often comes with complexities given its potential to be on unstable ground. Projects like this have to be planned in ways that withstand winds and take other circumstances like storms, erosion, and salt air into account. I like thinking through these kinds of issues and feel that I’m already learning a lot in the two months since I’ve been in place.
I smile at Kat as I approach her desk. I’m in a better mood since I started the relaxation therapy. She didn’t call or text this morning, which means that nothing is on fire, but I figure I’ll check in anyway.
“Anything good?”
“Nothing work-related,” she says somewhat excitedly and I wonder why she’s smiling so widely. “But something came for you. It’s on your desk. And, Michael—Happy Birthday.”
My eyes widen in embarrassment as I realize that it is, indeed, my thirty-second birthday. “Thank you.” I muster an appreciative smile before I proceed to my office.
My birthday means it’s also Bex’s birthday and I’m grateful for the flower delivery I scheduled a month ago. I wonder what Bex has sent me now.
When I see the pink pastry box, I try not to hope. A white card sits on top, and as I approach, I recognize Darby’s elegant scrawl. I can’t stop myself from smiling and staring for a moment before opening the envelope, the contents of which I care about far more than whatever is in the box.
It’s one of the gaudiest greeting cards I’ve ever seen, and I laugh suspecting from the abundance of glittery cupcakes that completely covers the front that it’s been designed for a six-year-old girl. I admire it for a long moment before opening the card to see the note she’s written within.
When you’re home, I’ll make you my red velvet. In the meantime, these will have to do. Happy Birthday, babe. XOXO, Darby
My face hurts from smiling so hard. Finally, I open the box. The smell makes me weak in the knees and I sit down then, dipping a shameless finger into the delectable pile of cream cheese icing on the cupcake closest to me.
A moan spills out of me, but I don’t care. I snatch an entire cupcake from the box and remove the paper as quickly as possible while giving the cupcake its proper respect. It’s not a tiny cupcake, but I eat the whole thing in three bites.
“Holy fuck,” I mutter, smiling again.
This feels better than anything—literally, anything—I’ve felt since I left home. Moments later, one hand is holding a second unwrapped cupcake, my mouth is chewing a bite, and my right hand is on my phone, finding her number.
“I fucking love you,” I say around a mouthful of cupcake as soon as she picks up, too far gone to realize what I’ve said.
She laughs in response, harder and more genuine than I’m used to hearing lately.
“I’m fucking awesome,” she replies. “I take it they meet your standards?”
“You don’t even know…” I mutter, not bothering to mind my manners as I continue eating. I put Darby on speaker. “Hang on…” I said abruptly, then dial my intercom.
“Kat, would you please bring me some whole milk?”
Darby laughs again. She’s really enjoying this.
“Whatever. It’s my birthday. I can have whatever I want.”
“So what are you up to tonight?” Darby asks, clearly wondering whether I have anything special planned.
“Something amazing,” I lie in a way that isn’t meant to be convincing.
“Uh-huh,” she replies in a way that shows she doesn’t believe me.
“Alright, you caught me. I forgot it it was my birthday.”
“I didn’t,” she sing-songs, a smile in her voice.
“No, you didn’t, cupcake. You did good. I didn’t know how much I needed this.”
Kathy slips in with a quart of milk, and I thank her before turning my attention back to Darby.
“What are you up to?”
“I’m at work. Busy night, so I’ve actually gotta hop.”
“Alright, sweetie. Thank you so, so much.”
“Happy birthday, baby. And don’t eat them all. Kathy helped, so give her one, okay?”
“I will.”
For real?
Her text comes in right after she sends me a picture of the small movie popcorn machine I sent. It’s amazing how much can be achieved with 1-day shipping and Amazon Prime.
You love movie popcorn. It was supposed to come with the butter.
“Butter” may be a stretch. The label says “buttery-flavored topping”
Whatever. You love that shit.
It’s sweet.
You have no time to go to the movies, so I’m bringing the movies to you.
Her reply is an emoji that is blowing a kiss. It emboldens me to move to phase two of the plan.
I thought maybe we’d watch a movie together.
I’ve thought through the logistics. We can queue up the same movie and press play at the same time. When it’s over, we can drink a bottle of wine and talk like we used to.
When?
Friday night. You pick something, I say.
I’ve been wanting to watch Kill Bill again…
I’ll get it on my DVR. Bring wine, okay?
I’m grinning when I see what she returns.
It’s a date.
Mission accomplished.
I return from my morning run to the news that I have a package. Andrew’s been forwarding my mail from Chicago, but it comes weekly through inter-office post. The only mail I’ve been getting through my apartment building here is the occasional drawing from Ella. The box that the doorman hands me is small and light. It’s from Amazon so there’s no telling yet who sent it. The impulse to shake it to guess what’s inside makes me feel like a kid on Christmas morning. I wonder who’s sent me this.
I’m sweaty as hell and I don’t want to be late for my movie with Darby, so I prioritize taking a shower, queuing up the movie and getting everything ready. I’ve got four minutes to spare before I return to where I’ve deposited my box on the kitchen counter. Slicing open the seams with a steak knife, I pull open the flaps. Five King Size packs of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups lie loosely among the padding. A typewritten gift note reads “Don’t eat them all before the movie.”
I’m still grinning a minute later when our Skype call connects and I’ve already on my second pack of the candies. I know she can see me eating and she laughs the minute she sees the peanut butter cup in my hand.
“How many are left?”
I shrug. “Three-and-a-half.”
She’s still smiling when she brings the wine glass to her lips.
“What’d you pick?” I ask. I left a few nice bottles of red in her wine refrigerator, but I’m not sure whether she’s noticed them yet.
“A really nice Amarone that I don’t remember buying.”
“I hear they pair nicely with popcorn.”
Watching the movie together is nowhere near as awkward as it had the potential to be. I’m lying on my side on my sofa with my laptop on the coffee table and the camera on me. She’s mirrored the same posture on her side—half-sitting-up, half-lying as she munches through her small snack and drinks her wine. Her eyes are on the movie, but my eyes are on her. I’ve muted my TV because we’re a few seconds out of sync.
The lights are low, so I can’t see her as well as I’m used to, but the blue light from her television reflects in a way that illuminates her face. I drink in her every expression—her subtle smiles at the clever parts, and her cringes when it gets too violent. As the movie nears its end, I know that if I don’t want to get caught staring, I need to tear my eyes away.
“Did I ever tell you I saw it three times when it came out?” she asks after she puts down her remote.
I smile as I pour myself another glass of wine. I don’t care that it’s barely noon here. I’ve taken the day off of work and I’m determined to enjoy my time with my girl.
“I used to play hooky from work…go to the Loew’s on water to take a long lunch for an afternoon movie.”
“Ballsy for any Tarantino flick,” I point out. “That’s a pretty long lunch.”
“I used to go shopping, too…why do you think I picked a hospital on the Magnificent Mile?”
“Cushy lifestyle,” I murmur.
“Yeah, well, it used to be.” She smiles sadly.
“Don’t worry, baby. It will be again.”
“Morning, baby.”
I know the second she sees my image appear from the way her lips melt into a lazy smile, and from the pillow at her back, I can see she’s Skyping me from bed. It’s Sunday morning for her, Saturday night for me—it’s become our usual time—though it’s clear she’ just woken up. Her hair is slightly wild, her eyes are still sleepy, and I can see the hint of her nipples through her sheer camisole.
“Go back to sleep, sweetie.”
My cock has already sprung to life. He remembers this look. He also remembers the dozens of times he’d fucked her from having the nerve to look so delicious the first thing in the morning.
“But I want to talk to you,” she pouts, which only makes me harder.
“I’ll still be here in an hour,” I insist gently, my hand already moving down to adjust myself. “Call me back when you wake up, beautiful. I’ll be here.”
“Alright…”
“And, Darby?”
“Mmm-hmm?” She yawns in that cute way of hers.
“If you don’t put on a robe or a bra or something by the time you call me back…I’m not gonna hear a word you say.”
A second before I end the call, I see her face flush red and watch her look down at what she’s wearing in alarm. I might laugh at her surprise if I weren’t in such a rush to get off the phone. Closing my laptop, I flop back on my sofa, one arm flying up to cover my eyes as the other hand reaches down to my fly.
The way she looks this morning makes me think of the way she used to like to wake me up—with my dick down her throat while her fingers stroked my balls. The sexiest thing about it had always been watching her before she realized I was awake. Whenever I did, her attention shifted away from whatever she was getting out of it to bring me into the mix. She didn’t get that the hottest part was catching her unaware, and getting to see the love affair between she and my cock.
God, she got off on sucking me. I’ve met a fair number of women who like it and do it well, if not from a sense of obligation. But Darby loves it. Before my pants are fully removed, my hands are gripping my dick, and I’m recalling the vision and the feeling of her lips sliding down my shaft.
I groan with the first pump of my fist. My memory greedily holds on to the deftness of her lips and the darkness in her eyes. Soon, my thoughts carry me to the sounds of agonized pleasure she makes when my hand is on the back of her head and I’m driving into her mouth. When she sucks me me so good I can’t stand it, I like to pull her into a sixty-nine. Every time I have, she’s been dripping with wetness. She gets so wet for me.
I cry hoarsely as my orgasm hits, pulling my shirt up just in time for the first ropes of semen to arc over my navel and onto my chest. My hips are off the sofa as I ride the wave of pleasure, panting uncontrollably as I milk my throbbing dick. Eventually, my breathing slows, and I sweep the hand that isn’t covered in come over my face again. Three minutes later, I’m stepping into the shower and waiting for my erection to subside, but it’s still standing proudly, and I’m still horny as hell. I’m thinking about burying my face in her pussy when I jerk off again.
When I call her back half an hour later, I’m feeling more relaxed. She, on the other hand, looks more alert. Her hair is tamed and she is nursing a cup of coffee. She’s put on a robe over her camisole but the front is open and it covers nothing.
“Better?” The flirtation in her voice is unmistakable.
“Much,” I smile as my dick stirs again.
The subtext in our interactions is becoming more frequent, and more intense. It’s thrilling and dangerous all at the same time. It makes me believe that things between us are going in the right direction. But I have to accept that she may not be as ready as me. I don’t want to saddle her with expectations, or have her think that whenever I blow into town, I expect us to fall right back into some version of what we were. That doesn’t mean when I see her two weeks from now it will be easy for me to keep my hands off of her.
Not much is going on so we talk about a little bit of everything—what’s happening on Game of Thrones, what Anne’s new girlfriend is like, and what’s going on with my non-profit. She tells me she’s been to the Art Institute twice since I left and admits to something I’ve suspected: that the large, anonymous donation that was made to my foundation six months ago came from her.
She slips it in casually a moment after I’ve told her that I’m debating over whether to bring in a different Executive Director. It will be difficult for me to implement the new programs we’ll be able to develop given our budget windfall. It’s my baby, but I’m in Sydney and I don’t want it to suffer because I’m gone.
“Back then…I thought you’d be mad. At this point, it’s stupid for me not to tell you.”
“Did you do it because it was me?”
“I did it because I love the work you’re doing,” she says earnestly before her face takes on a playful smile. “But I’d have supported any cause you were involved in—even if it was stupid.”
I chuckle. “Define stupid.”
“You’d be surprised,” she murmurs in that dry way of hers and I don’t care about her answer. I just love that things between us right now are so light. This is the happiest I’ve heard her sound in weeks. “Money makes crackpots come out of the woodwork. Last month, some doomsday preppers tried to get me to fund a non-profit that was trying to build underground colonies in silos. Their mission was to save the human race from the zombie apocalypse. I have no idea how they got their 501(c)(3).”
“So if my next cause is the end of the world, you’ll finance it?”
“Believe it or not, yes.”
I smile at that.
“The for-profit ideas are even worse,” she continues, and regales me with stories about ideas people have pitched to her. Someone wanted five million dollars to finance a glass bottom airplane, another wanted her to invest in toilet paper gloves, and a third was developing a breathalyzer test to keep people from drunk dialing. And I am loving this conversation because it feels good to laugh, and gives me hope that when I see her, we’ll still be us.
“You never talk about your money,” I say. It’s a weighty observation but it flows easily.
“What do you want me to say?”
“Nothing, maybe. But I’ve always wondered whether you had some master plan for how to spend it.” Maybe I’m off base with this. Maybe people who are born rich, and who stay as rich as Darby, don’t bother to think about this. But people who grew up poor like me always know the answer to that question. We’ve fantasized our whole lives about what we would do with a big pile of cash.
“You’re the master planner, Michael.”
“And you’re the one with dreams and big ideas.”
She looks mildly bewildered, as if this indelible fact is foreign to her.
“You’ve really never thought about it?”
She shrugs. “I do a lot of surviving and not a lot of thinking. I’m trying to turn that around.”
I get quiet then, knowing that if there’s ever been a perfect time to say more, it’s now.” I’m trying to turn that around, too,” I say.
“What’s that big brain been thinking about?” she asks with a tentative smile.
“The future, I guess. You know…what the next thing might be for me.”
When she straightens a bit, I know that she’s sensed something serious in my voice.
“I thought you were gonna keep living the dream for a while.”
“I’m working the plan,” I say. “But plans change.”
She knows we’ve entered delicate territory and I wish I knew whether the apprehensive look on her face came from wanting me to say more or wishing I wouldn’t. Sometimes things between us are so easy that bringing up the heavier stuff feels like it would take us back to the awkward place.
“Are you unhappy at D&R?”
“Unhappy, no, but up to my neck in twice as much administrative bullshit than I bargained for.”
“You and me both,” she admits, and the cloud of worry that’s followed her for the past few weeks shadows her face a little. “Nowadays I’m lucky if I see ten patients a week.”
Come on, baby.
I’m leading her, for sure, but I want her to step back and think. To come to some of the same conclusions I have.
“Short term, it’s fine,” I say. “I, mean, you can get through any shitty situation as long as it’s temporary, right? But longer-term…I don’t know. I just think I can figure out a way to focus on the parts of the work I love.”
“What do you think you’ll do?”
“Hire a Chief of Staff at Dewey and Rowe? Go to a smaller firm? I’m not sure. Bex has been suggesting for years that I open my own shop…”
“But?”
“But sometimes I think I’ll get out of architecture altogether…maybe go off somewhere and save the world.”
“Wow.”
“You sound surprised.”
“I guess I am a little. Not at the save the world part. At the others.”
“I got what I thought I wanted, and it wasn’t what I thought it would be.”
