I lean into him across the center console and lay my head against his shoulder. It is in this comfortable quiet when we make the most sense to me. This beautiful guy, gifted and brilliant, too often lost inside himself. Just like me, his not so beautiful, gifted or brilliant girlfriend. Too often lost inside myself. Simultaneously opposite from and totally right with one another.

It can be a hopeful thing to find the other perfect half of yourself, someone who gets you, someone to love and be loved by. I never expected the other perfect half of me to be Alan Manzone. He’s such a weirdo, but then I’m strange too.

Alan stops singing in mid-verse and looks at me. “Why are you laughing?”

I make a face. “Sometimes I just think funny thoughts. Where are we going?”

“To use a phone.”

“But this doesn’t look like the same way we went to the redneck bar.”

“Back roads, Chrissie. Less traffic. Less people.”

His eyes flash a smile toward me, but his mouth has a slightly apparent grim line. Oh, Alan, what is worrying you today?

I sigh. Do I even want to know what is worrying him today? Nope, I don’t want to know. We feel good today. Really good.

He pulls into a motel parking lot. The Seven Dwarfs Motel and Cabins. I start to laugh.

“You did say you wanted to bounce a bed in a hotel named after a Disney movie,” he murmurs, his voice very sexy.

“How did you remember that bit of stupidity, with everything that’s gone on since we got here?”

“I remember everything you say. Always.”

The look in his eyes makes me shiver. I smile and hug him, trying to contain my dopey happiness over this.

I watch him climb from the Jeep and go into the lobby. In a moment he’s back, room key in hand, grinning.

He drives around to a cabin on the far side of the facility.

“Quite an adventure to use a phone,” I whisper.

The cabins look lovely, utterly tranquil, but really tacky. Alan lifts me from the Jeep to carry me, and we are kissing all the way down the short tree-lined path to our door. It is almost like a meadow here, with fresh spring grass and newly blooming wildflowers. Suddenly I imagine lying with Alan in the grass and gazing up at the trees, and seeing the deep, black sky full of stars at night. I wonder what it would be like to make love outdoors. The thought of running away with Alan and getting lost in some rural idyll is very tantalizing, yet it makes me feel sad and a touch homesick, and even a touch lost again.

“Hey, what’s wrong?”

I look up to find Alan studying me, key in hand, almost into the lock.

I shake my head. I smile. “Not a thing.”

“Good. I have plans for you.” He opens the door and points at the bed. “But now you have to sit. Behave. I’ve got to make my calls first.”

I nod, flush, feeling his touch without contact, as I drop in a heavy bounce on the bed. Alan reaches for the phone. He really is going to make the calls first. He sinks on the edge of the bed, takes a slip of paper from his pocket, and begins to dial away, as I try to focus on the room.

The lamp makes me laugh. A Snow White figurine base. I wouldn’t be surprised to find Wicked Witch sheets beneath the heavy burgundy bedspread.

The first call is to Rene. His tone is surprisingly cordial as he explains in that imperative guy way that she needs to pack and be ready when Colin arrives to collect her. He hangs up.

I expected the call to be longer. I expected the Spanish Inquisition of questions out of Rene. But for some reason, the questions didn’t come, and for some indefinable reason Rene is just rolling with this when Rene never just rolls with anything.

Second call is to Colin. I watch Alan’s hand move up and down his thigh as he barks rapid orders to Colin. My breathing spikes as I try to catch the words and ignore my spiking body. He touches himself and I want him to touch me. I stare at those long, tanned fingers. Now would be a really good time, Alan. Touch me. Please touch me now.

Another call. I lie back on the bed and stare at the ceiling. It’s so frustrating how quickly he can make me hot without trying. So frustrating that he can concentrate on his conversation when I can hardly concentrate on anything but him when he’s near.

I glance at him and then I roll on my side until my face is near his back. I’m done behaving. I pull up his shirt. I make small kisses up his spine until I reach that tattoo across his shoulder blade. I use it as a road map for my traveling lips and tongue. I let my fingers dance from his side to his stomach and then lower, lower—ah, sharp inhale of breath. He stops my hand and looks over his shoulder. He gazes at me darkly. It makes me feel so hot when he looks at me like that.

He continues talking as I ease up on my knees to kiss the pulse in his neck. I kiss his shoulder, then the other shoulder. I can hear the voice on the other end of the phone. It sounds male and professional. His lawyers perhaps. I should stop this. This is an important call.

I lie back on the pillows, finding it nearly impossible to behave. What’s up with that? There is something carefree and wild in me today that is new. Perhaps it is the calm after the storm of last night and the silliness of where we are. I’m probably the first girl ever to have dragged Alan someplace like The Seven Dwarfs Motel and Cabins.

I make a face, Alan catches it, and I cover it quickly with a smile. I fiddle with my shoelaces and then pull them off. My toes begin to poke at his ear. His warm fingers wrap around my ankle and I make a pout, thinking he’s about to push my foot away, but he starts to kiss each toe, a gentle touch of lips, a tantalizing suck. Oh my. Desire, thick and pulsing, dances through my flesh. Jeez, he’s only kissing my feet. I close my eyes and surrender to the feeling, the touch of his lips on my arch, the feel of his tongue on my ankle.

“Get your clothes off now,” he breathes and abruptly lifts me off the bed.

Oh shit, the call ended. I’m not exactly sure where he’s going with this, but I undress anyway because Alan is naked and completely hard, and I am totally hot for whatever.

“Don’t play with me, Chrissie, unless you are ready to play.” He hoists me up and turns me on the bed pulling me back until my knees are on the edge.

He kisses my back and then that “wrong” spot, before he hovers at the right spot and then moves to kiss the back of my thighs.

He grabs my hips and fills me so quickly. He is touching me and the feeling of being completely filled makes my body burn and swallow him greedily. I groan and invert my back. The tilt allows him to penetrate more deeply. Slowly, he withdraws and then sinks into me. The tempo builds, harder and faster.

I see the mirror above the desk. He is watching us in it. I watch him watching us and it makes my blood scorch through my veins. The rhythm is quick and intense, and I revel in it, watching him, watching us, watching him watch me watch. And it is all there, in his face, in the reflecting mirror—his passion, his love, his pain and his beauty—and it is us I see, very right even in everything so very messed up about us both.

Quick, rough, and right. We come apart, together, and I explode around him in a chorus of squeaks and high-pitched whimpers.

Alan collapses on the bed, taking me with him until my head is cradled against his chest and we are both struggling to breathe.

He turns his head to look at me. “I’m not finished with you yet.”

I smile. “How long do we have the room?”

“Until tomorrow.”

“I didn’t think they would rent rooms by the hour at a motel named after a Disney movie.”

“Actually, they do.”

I lift up my face to look at him. “Really?”

He nods. I laugh.

“They couldn’t break a hundred and that’s all Linda had,” Alan says, lightly tracing my arm with his fingertips.