Page 95 of Dirty Ink

“What? No,” she said, shaking her head. “I mean, what we had in Vegas was just a drunken couple nights. That wasn’t— I wasn’t—”

“That wasn’t you?” I asked.

Rachel’s fingers fidgeted on the top button of her sweater. She licked her lips. Hesitated.

“No,” she finally said.

I stared at her in the silence. There was the noise of shoppers passing by out in the mall. There was the steady scratch of the security guard’s pen in between his bored sighs.

And there were Rachel and me, breathing together.

“I think that’s a lie too,” I said.

“Mason,” Rachel tried.

“Then why this?” I asked, throwing my hands up. “Why this?”

Rachel laughed, but it wasn’t a laugh like before. It was uncomfortable. Nervous. Dismissive.

“I’m playing a role!” she said, trying to sound casual. Failing. Her fingers were moving quickly now, fixing her buttons. I caught a glimpse of the swell of her breast. She caught me looking and blushed. “A role, Mason. I mean, you know that. We’re playing at husband and wife, right? I mean, come on.”

Rachel’s eyes darted to mine. There was something more there. There was fear now. She was begging me to sweep it all back under the rug. To let it go. To avoid it all, all the inconvenient truths, all the inescapable feelings, like we always did.

I didn’t want to this time. I couldn’t this time.

“Bullshite,” I said.

Rachel’s face clouded with anger.

“That’s right,” I said, leaning in closer to her face. “I said, bullshite.”

Before she could say anything, I kissed her. Dragged her toward me. Pressed my lips to hers. Slipped my tongue against hers.

Rachel shoved against me, but I held her close. My fingers tangled in her hair, caught on her tangles. She hissed when I tugged, when I claimed more of her mouth.

She relented with a sigh. Her body melted against mine. Her tongue twisted around mine. She lifted her thigh across my legs. She started to pull herself up onto my lap when a loud pounding came from the glass window of the security office.

“Hey!” the security guard shouted, baton smacking once more on the glass. “Don’t make me cuff you to opposite sides of the room, you eejits!”

Rachel slipped back into her own seat and wiped at her mouth, concealing her laughter again. The good kind. The happy kind. When the security guard returned to his paperwork, Rachel elbowed me.

“Asshole,” she grumbled.

I grinned.

“And that doesn’t prove anything,” she said, keeping her eyes forward, arms crossed stiffly over her chest. “Except that you’re hot and fuck well.”

“Which we already knew.”

Rachel rolled her eyes. I smiled when she laughed again. Hid it behind her hand. Masked it with a cough as the security guard looked up irritably.

We sat in silence after that.

I thought I’d won. I’d forced the two of us to face the truth, to not hide from it or run away from it. But as I sat there the smile on my lips sank. The happiness in my heart dimmed. I glanced over at Rachel, who gave me a small smile. Simple. Easy. Noncommittal.

Had I won? Or had Rachel just allowed me to believe I had?

I stared back at the security office in front of me. I called Rachel out on her bullshite, but had she really relented? Agreed? Admitted the truth? The truth that when we were in Vegas we were more ourselves than any other time in our lives? That the beauty of us, the rarity of us was that we didn’t have to play roles with one another? That whoever I was here and whoever she was there, there in New York, was the fake us, was the actors on the stage?

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