Sexual Strain

Ryan

The drive to the airport is a silent one.

Tiara is unbelievably quiet, staring out the window of the passenger seat as the city of New York whips by, with her hair slightly billowing around her. She turns to my direction once and goes back to staring.

“Music?” I ask her after twenty minutes of silence.

She blinks, focusing on me as if surprised I’m in the car. “Music.Yeah.”

“What do you like?”

She gives me a rueful smile and shrugs lightly, using her index fingers to shift the hair from her face. “Same old.”

Eyes on the road, I reach out to the infotainment system with my right hand and scroll through a list of songs settling on Alina Baraz’s ‘Electric’.

She sends me a grin and I return it. “You still listen to this?”

“Not everyone changes, Ryan.”

I give her a shrug. “You did.”

She bites her lips softly and automatically my gaze is drawn to its lusciousness, my mind replaying the way it felt, plump and willing under mine a few minutes ago.

Color creeps up to her cheeks and she drops her gaze abruptly. “Well, my taste in music didn’t change.”

The rest of the ride continues in silence that drags on and on till we get to the airport. At some point I wonder if she is upset. Maybe I shouldn’t have kissed her? Or I should’ve asked for her consent? I’ve never asked a girl before kissing her before, but then, it has always been pretty obvious that Tiara is like every other girl I’ve met. She is different. Different in a way that intrigued me when we first met, that made me want to be her friend during the first year of college, in a way that makes me want to kiss her again.

It’s difficult, looking at those lips, knowing how they taste, and pretending I don’t want to do it again. She had kissed me back, to my surprise, giving me back the same energy I gave her and I had had to put an end to it before it got out of my control.

Wanting to do something doesn’t mean having to do it.

The only way we can keep to this agreement and not screw it over, is to maintain an official relationship, at least behind closed doors. It is the only way we can come out of this unscathed. I know deep down that things can get messy between the three of us and keeping my hands to myself can prove to be a way that things might work out.

At least that’s what my mind believes.

Try telling that to the rest of my body.

***

Tiara

As the plane takes off from New York’s JFK Airport, I unknot the fingers on my lap and sneak a peek at Ryan. He has his usual self-confident expression on as he stares straight ahead listening attentively as the pilot’s voice boomed over the intercom.

After the music chat in the car, I could see the shift in his demeanor. The resolve in his features. Or has it always been there? I thought his countenance from the car to the first class lounge seemed kinda off, but thinking back, it just might’ve been there the whole time and I missed it.

He had remembered my favorite music and that was almost as much of a turn on as the kiss was. Almost.

Did that kiss affect him as much as it did me? Did it leave him weak-kneed, his heartbeat accelerating, like it had done to me? I shake my head internally. Surely not. Ryan Shelby has kissed over ten to twenty different girls if not more and one kiss shared with me surely wouldn’t affect him in any way.

I sigh and take a peek at him again.

And he is staring down at me.

Dang! The intensity of his dark green eyes pierces through mine and my heart does a stupid back flip.

“Penny for your thoughts?” his hand reaches out to smoothen the frown on my brows.

I’m sure my voice sounds squeaky when I say. “Just a penny?”

He smirks. “I’m not sure that’s how the follow-up goes.”

Just then the pilot’s voice booms through the intercom again and to my disappointment, he takes his hand off my face.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we are experiencing some bad weather ahead. We’ll need to reroute to avoid the storm.”

I gasp. “Storm?”

I peer out from the window and surely enough, I see some dark clouds gathering.  The plane begins to shake slightly, and the seatbelt sign flickers on.

The pilot continues, “We’ll be making an unscheduled layover in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The plane will land in about ten minutes. We deeply apologize for the inconvenience.”

“Oh no,” I look up at Ryan, “the activities starts tomorrow, we can’t be late.”

He shrugs. “I can.”

I glare at him. “Ryan!”

“It doesn’t matter anyway. Most layout only causes delays for about two to three hours. We’ll be there by tomorrow morning surely.” His voice is a drone of certainty.

“Yes but we’re supposed to be there today.”

“Okay,” he says calmly as though speaking to a child, “but we can’t. There’s absolutely nothing we can do. And it’s not like they’re doing anything today anyway. At least according to the event memo.”

He is right. But still, I am scheduled to meet with my mom today, we talked on phone yesterday and she sounded kind of excited even though I couldn’t tell if it was because of the wedding or the fact that she was hearing from me for the first time in weeks. And my dad. I’m supposed to see him today too. I haven’t seen my old man in like two years.

After about ten to twenty minutes, the plane lands safely in Pittsburgh, and the passengers are instructed to disembark while the crew refuels and prepares for the next flight.

The beauty of first class is that they let you off the plane first, and grudgingly, I admit it is really nice traveling by first class after flying economical for years.

According to the airport screens, our next flight to Baltimore-Washington International Airport in Maryland would depart in –

“Eight hours?” I gasp, as Ryan fumbles with the handle on his short suitcase.

He looks at me, distracted. “What?”

“The next flight is in eight hours?”

“Okay, so I was wrong,” he finally presses the button that stretches the handle to arm’s length, “Come on lets grab a bite. I’m starving.”

“Oh my goodness, Ryan, we are going to be so late.” The time on my watch shows it’s currently 2pm and seven hours from now is approximately… ten pm.

“We’re going to be flying in the middle of the night. Think about how fun it can get. We’ll arrive by morning and if we’re lucky, before the activities begin.”

Frustrated, I grab my suitcase and start walking ahead of him. “How can you be so… unworried?”

“How can you be so worried? It’s not even your wedding. Besides,” he takes my suitcase from me, relieving me of the weight, “its better late than never.”

“Where are you going to?” he is leading us to the entrance of the airport.

“You really didn’t think I’d spend seven hours in an Airport did you?”

I did. I totally did. I forgot for a while there that he is basically a celebrity.

“Where do you have in mind?”

“There’s a motel two blocks away from here, it isn’t much when it comes to taste, but it is close enough to the airport so you don’t have to worry about missing our flight.”

Oh kill me! Me. A bed. And Ryan fucking Shelby.

***

Ryan

Being two blocks away from an airport that was just on the receiving end of a rerouted flight is quite a great means for business income apparently, because by the time we’ve taken a slight detour to grab lunch and finally got to the motel, it is almost filled up by distraught passengers from our flight.

In the end, I was able to place a deposit for the last room, bagging it only because I was the only one with cash present. The scowling receptionist grunts and hands me the keys.

“Have a nice stay,” he grumbles, and goes back to staring angrily at the wall.

Now in the room with its second-hand quilts and curtains, I drop Tiara’s suitcase carefully in a corner and watch as her eyes roam around the room, wary.

“It isn’t much, but hopefully it’s enough.” I assure her.

She gives me a half smile. “Not much better than my apartment to be honest.”

She stands awkwardly in the middle of the room, her eyes looking everywhere but directly at me. Because I can’t help it, I use the opportunity to scan her body, taking in the dip of her waist that curves so sensually to her hips. Won’t it be nice to –

Mentally slapping myself, I turn away from her to a door that leads to the bathroom. “I’ll take a shower first.”

“Okay,” she says and turns away from me.

Walking back to her, I spin her to face me. “This is awkward, Tee, it doesn’t have to be.”

She stares up at me, her eyes wide and innocent. “You’re right. It is awkward.”

“It shouldn’t be. We’re friends. We’ve known each other for six years.”

“Friends don’t… kiss like that,” she flushes crimson.

I step back from her. “Are you upset that I kissed you?”

“I’m…”

“Tee, that was nothing,” that was NOT nothing, “seriously, you don’t have to dwell on that and listen, if it makes you feel better, it’s never going to happen again.”

Her eyes flash. “Well I’m glad you clarified that, Ryan. Next time when you kiss a girl, just tell her it was nothing. It’ll definitely do the trick,” she fires back.

Oh crap!

Before I can speak, my phone buzzes and I pull it out, staring at the screen for longer than a second. I hit the ignore button and turn back to her. “What are you talking about, Tee?”

There is still tat fierceness in her voice when she says, “You don’t have to ignore Ciara’s calls when you’re with me, Ryan.”

“I’ve been ignoring her calls for months. It has nothing to do with you.”

She sits on the bed, tugging the band on her hair to set it loose. “Okay.”

Confused, I retrace my steps back to the bathroom door. “We’ve got six hours before the flight so you should rest up. You take the bed. I can crash on the couch.”

She looks uncertain. “The bed is big enough for both of us.”

“No,” too dangerous, “I’ll be comfortable on the couch.”

A brief look of disappointment crosses her face for a second, then she smiles sweetly at me. “Sure then.”

I groan. I just might have made the biggest mistake of the century.

The cold shower is exactly what I needed. With Ciara, I was always able to predict her moods and in some ways divert it, but with Tiara – not like I’m comparing the sisters – but I never even know when she is in a mood. Or why. Like at the airport. Like now. Where had it gone wrong? If she had been upset by the kiss, then she wouldn’t have flared when I talked about it.

Or maybe she flared because she was upset.

Some people never change, she has said, but the images and memory I had of Tiara in freshman college, the calm, skinny, extremely shy Tiara I knew back then, well, its hard to place her side by side to this Tiara. The calmness is still there, but with it a certain fierceness I can’t place.

And somehow, against all my better judgments, I am attracted to her in ways that even I can’t explain.

And that realization is killing me.