Chapter 3: No hope
The steam from Kevin’s shower lingered in the bathroom, hazing the mirrors and clinging to the cool marble surfaces. He stood on the plush mat, a towel draped low around his hips, water beading along the tense lines of his shoulders. The confrontation in the bedroom, the slammed door, the silence—it all felt like a physical pressure in his skull. He’d scrubbed his skin raw, as if he could scour the memory of her mouth from his nerves.
He pushed the fogged glass door open and stepped out, the air cooler on his damp skin. The sight that greeted him froze the breath in his lungs.
Ashlee was at the double sink, her back to him. She wore only one of his old, grey cotton t-shirts. It hit her mid-thigh, but she was bent forward at the waist, both hands braced on the quartz countertop, peering into her own reflected eyes in the mirror she’d wiped clear. The position hiked the shirt up, revealing the full, perfect curve of her bare ass, the dimples at the base of her spine, the shadowed cleft between her cheeks. She was brushing her teeth with a slow, deliberate rhythm.
His body reacted before his mind could censure it. The towel tented, a stark, undeniable announcement. He watched, transfixed, as she slowly straightened. Her eyes in the mirror found his reflection behind her. She didn’t startle. She didn’t cover herself. She simply finished brushing, spat a stream of white foam into the sink, and ran the tap.
Her gaze, through the glass, dropped down to the obvious bulge in his towel. Then it traveled back up to meet his. A challenge. An admission. Her tongue snaked out, licking a stray bit of mint from the corner of her lips.
“Morning,” she said, her voice still raspy from sleep, and from him. “Good shower?”
“Ashlee.” Her name was a warning he didn’t have the strength to enforce.
“What?” She turned then, leaning back against the sink, the edge biting into the backs of her thighs. The thin cotton of the shirt pulled taut across her breasts, her nipples visible and hard. Her expression was a mask of false innocence. “You’re the one standing there with a full-scale architectural event under your terrycloth. I’m just practicing dental hygiene.” Her eyes glittered with a reckless light. “Though, given last night’s activities, maybe I should be using antiseptic.”
A flush of heat, equal parts shame and desire, swept through him. The towel was painfully restrictive. He could see the ghost of her lips around him, feel the phantom tug of her suction. He reached down, not to adjust the towel, but to unwind it. He let it fall to the floor. His cock sprang free, fully erect, thick and heavy, the head flushed a deep ruddy purple.
Ashlee’s breath hitched. Her casual pose faltered. She stared, her bravado dissolving into pure, hungry fixation. “Well,” she whispered. “There it is. In the unforgiving light of day.”
“There it is,” he echoed, his voice low. He took a step toward her. The air between them crackled, humid and charged. He stopped an arm’s length away. Close enough for her to feel the heat radiating from his skin, to smell his clean, soap-scented body. Her eyes were level with his sternum. He watched her swallow. “See something you want?”
Her gaze flicked up, meeting his. The vulnerability he saw there, mixed with the want, shattered the last of his resistance. This was the precipice. Again. He was about to fall. Again.
A sharp, cheerful electronic trill sliced through the silence. The specific, custom ringtone—a few bars of “California Girls”—was a bucket of ice water.
Hope.
Kevin flinched as if struck. Ashlee’s eyes went wide with a kind of panic he’d never seen in her before. The video call tone continued, insistently bright.
“Fuck,” Kevin breathed, the word stripped of all heat, leaving only cold dread. He spun, snatching the towel from the floor and clumsily wrapping it around his waist as he bolted for the bedroom, leaving a trail of damp footprints on the tile.
Ashlee sagged against the sink, her heart hammering against her ribs so violently she felt sick. She heard his voice from the other room, artificially warm, projecting normalcy. “Hey, you! I was just… getting out of the shower.”
She couldn’t make out Hope’s words, just the bright, tinny cadence of her voice through the phone. Ashlee looked down at herself, at her bare legs, at the thin shirt. She looked at her own reflection, her face pale, her lips still looking bruised and used. She looked like exactly what she was: a guilty secret, still warm from the crime scene.
She forced herself to move. She padded quietly into the bedroom. Kevin was sitting on the edge of the bed, the phone propped up on his knees. He was angled away from the bathroom door, the towel securely in place, a strained smile on his face. On the screen, Hope’s familiar, pretty face smiled back, a hotel headboard behind her.
“...so the presentation got moved to Monday, which is a pain, but it means I can probably catch the red-eye Tuesday night instead of Wednesday morning!” Hope was saying, her voice chirpy. “Get home to my hubby a few hours sooner. You’ll just have to survive one less night of bachelor depravity.”
Kevin’s laugh was too loud. “Yeah. Depravity. You know me. Wild nights of… extra spreadsheets.”
Ashlee hovered in the bathroom doorway, unseen by the camera. She watched the muscles in Kevin’s back, rigid with tension.
“Is Ashlee still there?” Hope asked. “I wanted to say thanks again for letting her crash. Her landlord is such a tool.”
Kevin’s shoulders tightened imperceptibly. “Uh, yeah. She’s around. In the guest room, probably. Still asleep.”
“Well, tell her I said hi! And be nice to her, Kevin. She’s family.”
“I’m always nice,” he said, his eyes flicking, for a split second, toward the bathroom doorway where Ashlee stood. The glance was a lightning strike of shared complicity. “The nicest.”
They talked for another minute about mundane things—the weather in San Francisco, a problem with their mutual fund statement. Each second was an eternity. Ashlee stood frozen, the image of Kevin naked and hard before her seared onto the back of her eyelids, superimposed over the image of his wife’s trusting face on the screen.
Finally, the call ended. Kevin set the phone down slowly on the nightstand. He didn’t move. He just sat there, his head bowed, the towel around his waist seeming like the most fragile of barriers.
Ashlee walked into the room. She stopped a few feet from him. “Tuesday night,” she said, her voice flat.
“Tuesday night,” he confirmed, not looking up.
The silence stretched, thick and toxic. The unspoken hung between them: they had four days. Four days before the world reasserted itself. Four days of this penthouse limbo.
“So,” Ashlee said, forcing a lightness into her tone that felt like broken glass in her throat. “We have a deadline.”
Kevin finally looked at her. The conflict in his eyes was a raging storm. “Ashlee…”
“No, it’s fine,” she interrupted, holding up a hand. She started pacing, the hem of his t-shirt swishing around her thighs. “We just need a plan. A strategic cooling-off period. A de-escalation of… oral hostilities.” The whimsy was armor, and she clung to it desperately. “We went to Defcon 1 this morning. We need to walk it back to, like, a firm handshake by Tuesday. Maybe a brisk, fully-clothed side-hug.”
A faint, stunned smile touched his lips. It was awful and wonderful. “A side-hug.”
“Yeah. With back-pats. The kind you’d give a distant cousin at a funeral.” She stopped pacing and faced him, crossing her arms over her chest. “We got carried away. It was a perfect storm of whiskey, existential dread, and premium linens. We acknowledge the event, we learn from it, and we institute a strict no-cock-in-mouth policy moving forward.”
He stood up, the towel loosening. He didn’t retighten it. “A policy.”
“Written policy. We’ll get it notarized. Frame it.” Her words were tumbling out faster, a manic energy taking hold. “Section 1: No more surprise dick appearances before noon. Section 2: All nakedness must be preceded by a formal request submitted in triplicate. Section 3: The term ‘best friend’ shall not be used as a prefix to any graphic sexual act description.”
He was smiling fully now, a real smile, tired and wrecked and hopelessly fond. He took a step toward her. “What’s the penalty for violating the policy?”
“Oh, severe,” she said, her breath catching as he neared. “The offending party has to… I don’t know… watch a marathon of Hope’s favorite reality dating shows. Without commentary.”
“Cruel and unusual.” He was right in front of her now. He reached out, not touching her, just tracing a slow, phantom line from her temple down to her jaw with his gaze. “And what if compliance is impossible? What if there’s a… a supply chain issue? A sudden, urgent need for a specific skill set?”
Her playful facade trembled. Her heart was a trapped bird. “Then… then we enact the emergency clause.”
“Which is?”
She met his eyes, all pretense of silliness melting away, leaving only raw, honest want. “We finish what we start. We use the time we have. And then we stop.” She said it like a vow she knew she’d break. “Tuesday night, it’s over. We become side-hug people.”
He studied her face, his own expression unreadable. The towel finally slipped, pooling at his feet. He was hard again, a testament to the futility of their proposed policy. “So,” he said, his voice a gravelly whisper. “From now until Tuesday… we cool off.”
“We cool off,” she whispered back, her eyes dropping to his cock, then back to his. “Starting… when?”
He didn’t answer with words. His hand came up, his fingers tangling in her red hair, not gently. He guided her down, his intention clear and brutal. She went willingly, sinking to her knees on the plush carpet, her hands coming to rest on his firm thighs.
The view from here was devastating. He was magnificent. She could see every pulsing vein, the taut skin, the bead of moisture already welling at the tip. She felt dizzy with the rightness and the wrongness of it.
“Cool off,” he repeated, a dark promise.
She leaned forward, her breath ghosting over him. Then she looked up at him, a final, wicked spark in her eyes. “Just so we’re clear,” she said, her lips a hair’s breadth from his skin. “This is the last one. The farewell tour.”
“Make it count,” he groaned.
She opened her mouth and took him in, not slowly, but with a hungry, engulfing urgency that made his knees buckle. She used her tongue, her lips, the back of her throat, every skill and whim she possessed. She sucked him with a fierce, claiming passion that was the absolute opposite of cooling off. It was a conflagration.
His hands fisted in her hair, holding her in place as he began to move his hips, fucking her mouth in a steady, deep rhythm. The sounds were obscene, wet and gasping. “Yeah, just like that,” he choked out, his head thrown back. “My best fucking friend. Sucking my dick like it’s her job.”
She hummed around him, the vibration pulling a ragged curse from him. She was mapping him with her mouth, memorizing the taste, the weight, the feel of him hitting the back of her throat. This was the last time. This was the goodbye.
The thought made her take him deeper, her nose pressing into the rough hair at his base. She gagged, swallowed, and took him deeper still.