Objectify Me: A Fireworks Novella (The Fireworks Novellas) (11 page)

Levi seems oddly untroubled by my tears. He doesn’t desperately ask me what’s wrong or cling to me as though it’s him that’s crying. He just strokes my hair and brushes away the tears as they come.

“You’re not trying to fix it,” I say.

“What?”

“The tears. When girls cry, guys always try to fix it.”

He kisses me sweetly. “You can’t fix a rainstorm,” he says. “You just wait it out.”

I do one of those half-sobs, half-laughs that sounds like a pig snorting. Levi doesn’t mind.

“That’s very sage,” I say.

“I’m from Seattle. I know rain.”

“Does it rain there a lot?”

“Pretty much every day.”

“But no hurricanes, right?”

He starts to smile, because I think he knows he has me. He’s reeling me in like a catfish – a real one, not the Internet kind. “No hurricanes. And we’re so earthquake-ready that Los Angeles asks
us
for advice. Also, our murder rate is a quarter what it is here.”

“A
quarter
? Jeezus.”

“Yep. And the Canadian border is right there, two hours away, if you ever want poutine.”

“What the hell is poutine?”

“Seriously, I can’t even explain. You just have to try it.”

I look down and see that our clothes are still sex-mangled. My boobs are hanging out of my bra, panties all bunched up to one side. Levi’s pants and boxers are around his knees. I can’t quite believe we’ve just had such a potentially life altering conversation in such a state of undress. But even so disheveled, Levi is hard to resist. Or maybe it’s because of his dishevelment?

“I guess I could try it,” I say.

“Do you mean the poutine? Or Seattle?”

I smile at him, and just for effect, I curl my fingers around his cock. “Both,” I say.

We squeeze in a bit more sex
before
the shower, too.

Chapter Fifteen – Levi

Charlotte stares out the plane window, though there’s nothing to see but other planes waiting for clearance to take-off.

“Have you been on a plane before?” I ask.

“Yes,” she says. “I mean, it didn’t go anywhere. We came here on a field trip when I was in fourth grade. They gave us a tour.” She checks the seat’s back pocket, glancing at the magazine before rejecting it. “You fly a lot?”

“My mom owns a travel agency, so yes. Plus, we’re one of those families that have to travel to another time zone if we actually want to talk to each other.”

She finds the menu card. “The food is free? I thought you had to buy airplane food now.”

“Not in business class,” I say. “Mom got the upgrades for me. It’s not like I paid for it.”

She just shrugs.

“I don’t want to give you a bossy billionaire vibe,” I say. “I think that’s kind of gross.”

“
Are
you a billionaire?”

“Ha! No. I drive an eight-year-old Matrix and work night shifts.”

“Well, thank God, because as you know, I’m allergic to money.”

I lean forward and whisper in her ear. “Except when it’s being stuffed into your bra.”

“Only
you’ll
be doing that from now on.”

The thought of that gives me a semi, which is amazing considering the amount of sex I’ve had in the last twenty-four hours. I cross my legs, grateful that the leg room in business class allows it.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We’ve been assured by the tower that the back-up is being cleared, so we should be in the air in about ten minutes. I’m sorry for the delay, and thank you for your patience.”

Charlotte catches me staring at her. “What?”

“Now would be the time to make a run for it, if you’ve changed your mind.”

She slides her hands into my lap and grabs my miraculous hard-on. I guess crossing my legs wasn’t all that subtle. “If I ran, would you come after me so we could have one of those running-through-the-airport scenes?”

“I would, but then we’d miss this flight.”

She pouts. “I’ve always wanted someone to run through the airport for me.”

“Tell you what. When we get to Seattle, I’ll race you to the baggage carousel.”

She leans forward and whispers. “When we get in the air, I’ll suck you off in the bathroom.”

I let out a hoot of laughter. One of the flight attendants scowls at me like it’s against the rules to laugh in business class. We’re the youngest people in here by about twenty years. I take Charlotte’s hand and move it off my crotch. I don’t think we should be too obvious.

“I should tell you something before we take off,” I say. With all the sex and pitiful begging her to come with me, I forgot one thing I needed to say.

“You’re married?” she says, with mock seriousness. “You’re gay? You’re actually Jesus?”

“Shh,” I say, though I’m the one who’s laughing too loud for the rest of the passengers. “I’m not Jesus or gay or married.” I take a breath. “I’m going to the Police Academy in the fall.”

Charlotte frowns and leans back. “What?”

“Do you hate cops? Because I totally understand if you do. And obviously, I’m going to try to be one of the good ones. But when I was researching that article, I interviewed this guy who was doing undercover work in sex trafficking, and the academy has a special program for undercover training. So I applied and got offered a spot, and I have to decide whether to take it. And I’ve decided. This has been bothering me for a long time, I realize now, even before everything that happened that night. But I just never knew what I could do about it. Now I know. I realize it seems like something a six-year-old would think of, but that’s what I want to do.”

She stares at me, and I start to wonder if she might really just run off. Maybe she thought she was hooking up with a cushy lawyer-to-be, and a hard-nosed, underpaid, undercover detective is not really her scene.

“Like the levies,” she says.

“What?”

“I remember Hurricane Katrina like it was yesterday. The storm was bad enough, and the chaos afterwards, but
after
that? All those people drowned. All those homes lost. Because the levies broke. And I wanted to fix them. That’s all I ever wanted to do, because I see bad things and I want to fix them.”

“Me, too.” I press my nose to hers, sliding my hands into her hair.

“But not tears?”

“No. Tears don’t need fixing. Tears are good.”

The plane starts to move. And most of the economy class behind us applauds. It seems like they are applauding for us. Charlotte pulls my hands out of her hair and holds them in her lap.

“Will you hold my hand until we get to Seattle?”

“Uh, it’s an eight-hour journey. We change planes in Houston.”

“Too bad. I’m not letting you go.”

“I’m not letting you go either.”

A sudden lightness comes over me, and I look out the window expecting to see us taking off, but we’re still just trundling along the runway, waiting our turn behind two other planes. And when we land in Houston, we’ll wait for another flight. In Seattle, we’ll wait for our bags, and wait for a taxi. I have to wait for the Academy semester to start. Charlotte will have to wait to find a job or an apartment. And maybe she’ll go back and finish her degree. There’s a whole world of waiting in lines involved there. Meanwhile I’ll be waiting for the inevitable screaming fight with my parents when they find out I’ve quit school.

I’m not worried about that one, though. It’s about time I started making decisions for myself.

The end.

If you enjoyed this book please consider taking the time to leave a review. You can also keep up to date with Bibi Rizer’s latest publications at her website
BibiRizer.com
.
Join
Bibi’s Street Team
!

Don’t miss the first Fireworks Novella,
Electrify Me
.

Also by Bibi  Rizer,
The Obsdian Stairway
, the first novella in the City of Dark Pleasures serial.

If you’re curious how the sexual slavery motherfuckers depicted in this book finally get what’s coming to them, watch out for
Cutter's Hope
:
Book I of the Virtues trilogy,
a novel of The Kraken MC by A J Downey. It drops Christmas 2015. Get to know AJ at
www.authorajdowney.blogspot.ca