The problem with maintaining plausibility was that my face was a traitor. Every time Jonah said something funny, which was constantly, I smiled. Not the careful, measured smile of a colleague. The specific, involuntary, face-altering smile of a person who was in love and whose facial muscles had not received the memo about discretion.
Luca, who was sitting next to Wes at the end of the table, caught my eye. His expression was knowing and warm and contained the particular Italian wisdom of a man who had personally navigated a secret locker room romance and recognized the symptoms.
He mouthed: Careful.
I adjusted my face. The adjustment lasted approximately forty-five seconds before Jonah made a joke about the waiter's pronunciation of "bruschetta" and my face betrayed me again.
After dinner, the team dispersed. Jonah and I walked to the elevator in a group of six, the proximity required by logistics and the distance required by secrecy creating a tension that I felt in every muscle. His hand brushed mine in the elevator. Thecontact lasted a fraction of a second. My entire nervous system registered it like a seismic event.
He got off on twelve. I got off on fourteen. The doors closed between us and the separation was physical and absurd and I went to my single room and sat on the single bed and texted him.
This is stupid.
His response: Which part?
The part where you're two floors away and I can't touch you.
Three dots. Then: Eriksson is asleep. Snoring. The man sounds like a diesel engine.
Is that an invitation?
A pause. Then: Room 1208. Don't get caught.
I got caught by no one. The hallway was empty. The elevator was empty. The twelfth floor was quiet with the particular post-midnight quiet of a hotel full of exhausted athletes. I knocked on 1208 with a single knuckle, the softest knock I had ever produced.
Jonah opened the door in a t-shirt and boxers and the sight of him, domestic and rumpled and close, produced a physiological response that was immediate and comprehensive.
"Eriksson?" I whispered.
"Dead to the world. Nuclear bomb wouldn't wake him."
I stepped inside. The room was dim. Eriksson was indeed unconscious, a mound of blankets producing a sustained, rhythmic snore that would have been annoying in any other context and was, in this context, the most beautiful sound in the world because it meant we were effectively alone.
Jonah pulled me into the bathroom. Closed the door. Turned on the exhaust fan for noise cover. The bathroom was small and bright and the fluorescent light was unflattering and none of this mattered because his mouth was on mine before the door fully closed and the kiss was hungry in a way that three hoursof enforced distance had amplified beyond what either of us anticipated.
"We have to be quiet," he whispered against my mouth.
"I'm not the loud one."
"You are absolutely the loud one. Last Thursday you made a sound that I'm fairly certain the neighbors heard."
"That was involuntary."
"Then you'd better practice voluntary."
His hands were under my shirt. The touch was different in a hotel bathroom. More urgent. The scarcity of privacy created an intensity that our apartment, with its unlimited access, did not produce. We were stealing this. The stolen quality made it electric.
He lifted me onto the bathroom counter. The counter was cold against the backs of my thighs and his body between my legs was warm and the temperature differential was doing things to my sensory system that I had no interest in analyzing. His mouth was on my neck and his hands were on my belt and the exhaust fan was humming and Eriksson was snoring and the whole thing was ridiculous and desperate and the most alive I had ever felt.
"Tell me what you want," he said. His voice was barely audible. A breath shaped into words.
"You. Quiet. Fast."
"I can do two of those three."
"Which two?"
"You'll find out."