CHERRY BLOSSOMS // Revisited // Montréal // 3.10

Hotel Sanguinet

Friday, July 14th

The last two weeks with Rocco had been a simmering pot Nia had struggled to keep from boiling over. She had it in her mind how she wanted this to work with Rocco and she knew, was completely sure, that she wasn’t just going to spread her legs for him one day in the pickup truck. Not the first time. She wanted a carefully cultivated experience, and while a dirty part of her wanted to get spread hard and urgent right fucking now, another part of her enjoyed the exquisite torture she was tickling herself with as she dragged this out. Rocco damn well knew what was going to happen in Montréal and Nia had been playing the part of a loving wife who was struggling with her attraction to her masculine boss. She did not let him know she was definitely going to fuck him this weekend.

She lay now, fully dressed and showered, on top of Geoff. He had his loving and soft hands on her back, still in his pyjamas in bed. She was up early and ready for travel. Flight to Montréal left in two hours, she and Rocco would check in, they’d spend the afternoon at the Expo. They’d return to the hotel, and then . . .

She pressed her face to Geoff’s chest, her ear a flat seal against his warm T-shirt. She listened to the squish-squish of his gentle heart, listened to him breathe.

“I want you dying for me to get back. Promise me you won’t touch it while I’m gone.”

“Not at all?”

“Just to pee.”

“Oh, Nia. I’m going to explode.”

“Promise me, Geoff.”

She heard his loud sigh rushing under his ribs, felt her head heave with his breath. He hugged her tight.

“Okay.”

“I want to see it explode. But this weekend, right now, is about me. I’m going to get the fucking of a lifetime. Can you picture me?”

“I can, Nia. Are you excited?”

She closed her eyes and nodded. “What are you going to do when I get home?”

“I’m going to take care of you, rub your back, clean you up. Then I’m going to make love to you.”

“I want that, Geoff. I can’t wait.”

“You’re going to tell me everything that happened.”

She sighed now. The slightest smile touched the corner of her tense mouth. “You’re not going to like it.”

“I’m not?”

She whispered, “It’s going to be so bad. So dirty.”

“Are you going to think of me?”

“Not even a little. Not until I’m done.” Her nails scratched his chest.

“That’s so hot, Nia.”

“I know. It is, isn’t it?”

* * *

“Odie, come on, go say goodbye. Go hug your mom.”

Nia was squatting in the kitchen. Down with her forearms draped over her knees, waiting for a goodbye hug from her daughter. Her thick black hair was styled, brushed, thrown over one shoulder. She was dressed all in black—lightweight black short-sleeve top, black pencil skirt, bare legs and black heels. So out of place in this quiet hazy morning pyjamas and OJ family kitchen.

Odie was clinging to him, and he ran his fingers through her sleepy hair. She had both arms wrapped around his thigh and she was red-faced and crying. And she was not talking to mom.

No, Nia had betrayed her. Told her—promised her—she’d be coming to the Book Expo with them. But, alas, plans had changed and Odie was trying to make a point here. Punishing poor Nia. Nia was no pushover though, and she didn’t succumb to her little-girl woes, not like he would. So they had a stubborn Mediterranean Standoff in the kitchen. Geoff cooked bacon, sizzling in the pan behind him, the sound of a kettle boiling underneath that.

Nia’s face was firm, unimpressed. She didn’t coo and bubble and encourage her daughter to come to her. She held her gaze sternly. Odie hugged Geoff and she would never go to Nia. Not this morning.

Nia said, “Hey—this is life, Odele. Get used to it. It’s not all things, all your way, all the time. Get it? I know I said what I said, but life sucks sometimes. So give me a break.” She shrugged, shook her head, frowning.

Odie turned her head away, hugged Geoff tighter.

“Odie, baby”—he ruffled her hair again—“Mom’s going on a plane, be nice.”

Odie barged off, not crying, but tears streaming. Her feet stomped on the floor, pumped up the stairs, and she ran to her room.

Geoff raised his eyebrows as Nia stood. She hugged him and couldn’t look him in the eye, let her head fall in the crook of his neck. He soothed her back, let his hands go in big circles over her.

He sighed. “She just wants us to be together as a family. She wants the three of us to spend the day together.”

“We do that, Geoff.”

“Yeah,” he agreed.

“She’s punishing me.”

“I’ll talk to her.”

“Make sure you tell her about life and responsibilities, Geoff.”

“She’s seven, but yes, Nia, I will.”

Her hands slipped in the waistband of his PJ pants and she grabbed his bare butt and squeezed it. He lightly pulled her hair so her face turned to him. He kissed her, and she closed her eyes.

This was it. Her suitcase was packed, zipped right around on three sides, five feet behind her at the door leading out of the house. Sitting on its wheels, the travel handle extended. She was leaving. She was going to be hundreds of miles away. All this fantasy and dirty talk had reached the pinch point. When she left through that door, it was done. This Nia in his arms, weirdly, would not be the same Nia who returned to him. She was already changing. Had been for a while. His house-Nia, the one he had before she started working, had been gradually oh-so-slightly becoming a kind of ghostly memory. It was being replaced by this tangible, self-realized woman he was holding now. When she came back, who would she be? A woman who fucked another man. It was sexy. Oh, so sexy. But was she going to continue to be herself, or would this change transform her into someone he didn’t even recognize? That was the thrill, though, wasn’t it? That’s what tickled his belly. There was something else under that sexual sizzle that came from her being with another man—it was that strange challenge to their relationship, too. That was just as exciting. He couldn’t wait to clamor for her affection again.

This game seemed safe. But maybe it was dangerous. He loved her completely, and she loved him just the same. They’d survive it. She was going to fuck Rocco. That was going to happen. Come Sunday night they could hug and kiss and be sweet husband and wife again and he would tell her and she would listen—they’d know how much more the game would go and they’d decide together.

He breathed her Nia smell in, her Chanel, her shampoo, her skin. Breathed it till he almost burst. They held their kiss for a long time. When they broke, he said nothing. What would he say? Have fun? There was nothing to say. Even goodbye felt wrong. So he walked her to the door, and he took her bag and carried it down the steps. Walked with her to the alley and out to Garden Street where there was a taxi waiting for her.

As the driver took her bag and put it in the trunk, he stood toe-to-toe with her. He looked deep in her eyes and told her a million things and her eyes said, I fuckin’ love you, Geoff. He kissed her again and then they both smiled. They never said a word. She got in the cab and her fingers gave a slight nervous wave as it drove off. He stood on the edge of the road until he couldn’t see the taxi any more, stood as long as he could, watching his wife go away from him, off to meet Rocco, get on a plane and get far, far away.

* * *

She and Rocco flew out of Pearson on a WestJet and they were in Montréal in an hour and forty minutes. They flew Premium Economy together, buying the expensive seats entirely because Rocco needed the extra leg room. She was squashed next to him the entire flight, used to sitting side by side five days a week but not so close. Their elbows pressed and his bulk spread to her side.

The flight had been uncomfortably quiet. Some idle talk, small talk—they’d developed a bond spending so much time in the truck together, a sort of shorthand way of communicating, not finishing sentences, a lot of nodding and smirking, a shared unspoken amusement in the misfortune of others. There wasn’t much they talked about on the flight. And there was something obviously missing—to her—from their conversations when they talked. Something neither of them often mentioned at all any more since Canada Day. Maria, Geoff, Rocco Jr., Odie, Paolo, Peter, and Marco were never mentioned. It was obvious. They used to talk about them.

They went to their hotel first before going to the Expo. Once they landed, Rocco was all business again, and she wondered if he was nervous about flying. He didn’t seem like the type. As soon as they were in the taxi together, though, he was old Rocco, telling her what to do and encouraging her to move fast and think fast. She had the laptop open and he would have an idea and need her to generate a report. He wanted to be prepared for the show. Aimed to be there by 2 P.M.

Their hotel was in the Quartier des Spectacles, a short walking distance to the Palais des congrès de Montréal where the Expo was being held. The cab dropped them off on the street out front. The Hotel Sanguinet was a monolithic grey-block boutique hotel, a faceless but grand four-story historic building with a raised doorway set on the corner facing a busy intersection. The lobby was small but very modern, with a highly polished maple floor, low ceiling, stone fireplace and one complete wall in the exposed grey stone of the structure—HOTEL SANGUINET spelled out against it in narrow back-lit aluminum letters behind the reception desk.

The manicured concierge checked them in, gave them their keycards, and they rode in silence up the brassy, comically small ancient elevator to the top floor. At the ending of the hall, heading left out of the elevator cab, there were two black-painted doors with key-card access brushed-aluminum levers. Two rooms, adjoining doors between them to turn it into a suite if they wished.

* * *

Nia would be in Montréal now, he thought, looking at the floating clock idly drifting across the big screen of one of his sleeping iMacs. She’d told him nothing of her plans. She kept her cards very close to her pretty chest. She could be doing it right now. Right this very second. Five hundred kilometres to the east, the woman he loved might, just might, have her pretty mouth on another man’s cock. Or he could be fucking her. Rough, like she likes it. Like her sweet husband wasn’t able to do it. That three-hundred-pound gorilla with a big dick could have his slender wife’s legs over his shoulders, giving her an absolute pounding, her wild screams bringing the management. Beating their fists on the door in vain as Nia’s nails raked Rocco’s muscular back.

He stacked another box of rolled Cheeky Monkey prints on his leather couch next to a box with various unsold extras Odie had found around the studio. Winslow was coming first thing in the morning tomorrow; they had a big and busy day ahead and he did not know how he was going to manage with all this sexual tension squeezing and wringing his heart, turning it to Silly Putty.

Was this a big mistake? Could he really trust her? That was crazy—of course he could. If there was anyone he could trust, it would be his best friend, the woman he married.

But what about her job? What about being with Rocco five days a week once this escapade was over? Could he stand it? And what if Nia couldn’t? She could lose this job and she loved it—loved the money, the independence, the prospect of a cottage . . .

Fuck, why couldn’t she just have fucked that stripper? That would have been so much cleaner.