“I feel the same, and I couldn’t agree more. I think that we were meant to meet.” And there it was, the words I knew that he had already said, but not directly to me.
“I think so too,” I said, my voice now a whisper as I felt the heat in between my legs rise up my spine. I waited for him to lean in and kiss me. But he just lingered.
“Good, I’m glad. I just wanted to check in with how you were feeling with everything and make sure that we were on the same page.”
“We’re good,” I said.
Henry leaned in closer, and I could taste his minty breath, “Oh, Molly, we are so much better than good.”
I closed my eyes, waiting to be intoxicated with him, when I suddenly felt the car stop and Henry pulled away, letting go of my hand as he quickly opened the door.
“We’re here,” he said. Flashing me a wink before disappearing out of the car. I didn’t even have a chance to get a good enough look outside of the car to find out where “here” actually was, before Henry reappeared on my side of the car. He opened the door and took my hand like a gentleman. Aaron grabbed both of our suitcases from the boot. Henry wrapped his arm around me, holding me in close, so that I still couldn’t move to see where we were. Behind his head I could just see alot of industrial buildings. But we looked high up. Were we on a rooftop?
“Ready to see your next ride?” he said and before I could reply he spun me around, revealing a very shiny black helicopter.
“Oh my God!” I screamed. We were on the rooftop or a car park in the middle of the city. And here was Henry’s helicopter. I knew it was his because of the conversive writing that read Bentley on the tail. “I’ve never actually been in a helicopter before,” I said. And Henry smiled, looking pretty proud of himself about the fact he was going to give me a first.
“How do you go flying?” he asked.
“Well, I guess that’s a tough question, somehow I feel like flying in a large plane is a lot different compared to a helicopter.”
“I think you’ll love it, It’s only a very small trip anyway. We will touch down in approximately forty minutes.”
“Wow. That is quick.”
“It’s because I have the best driver,” he said. “And I don’t want to waste any time of this holiday. We get things done efficiently here.”
Aaron loaded our bags into the helicopter as he leaned inside the driver’s seat, beginning the propeller and changing his place driver’s cap into a white pilot’s hat, before walking towards us and gesturing for us to take a seat in the back.
“You drive helicopters as well?” I said,
He nodded, “helicopters are actually my specialty,” he said with a wink. “I promise you that this will be a very smooth and safe ride.”
I took a seat in the back next to Henry as he fitted me with a headset before placing it on his own. He grabbed my hand, interlocking our fingers in the small gap between us just like in the car. Aaron gave us a quick safety demonstration, made sure that our belts were done up tight. Before I knew it, we were flying up in the air and I was looking down at my city below me. At least I was looking down at the better part of the city, the part of the city where I felt like I always belonged. But hadn’t quite made it yet. The conversation with Elyse I had earlier this morning ran through my head. How judgmental she was of Henry before she had even met him. How she thought I was stupid for letting myself fall, for going away with him. Those weren’t the words that she said directly but they were implied. I wished that she could see me now, flying high over the magic of New York, Brooklyn bridge in the background. I couldn’t wait to tell her all about the trip already, before it had even begun.
“How are you feeling?” Henry said through his headset as I turned around towards him. I had never felt more lit up by a moment in my whole entire life. This was more incredible than our first date. If this was just a tiny glimpse of what life was like with Henry--with his openness, his care, the bells and whistles that he came with--this was just the massive cherry on top of the incredible cake that he was. Having to wait a couple of days to make sure that we were officially together before Icould completely open up to him, well, I could play this game a little bit longer.
“Fucking incredible!” I screamed back through the speakers. Both Henry and Aaron laughed at the same time. Aaron took that as a hint to speed up and I squealed out with excitement. Henry wrapped his arm around the back of me. He became my tour guide for the rest of the trip, pointing out buildings that the two of us knew from down below until finally he pointed out his small island in the distance
We soon started our descent, and I took in every detail of his small piece of land off the coast of Manhattan that I didn’t even know existed until two weeks ago. And from what I could see from the sky it looked a lot further than “just off the coast,” I wasn’t the greatest with time or directions, but from a simple guestimate I now understood why we didn’t take a boat to the island. Not that I was complaining, the view was pretty great from up here.
I felt Henry’s eyes on me as I kept mine on the land below us, taking in every aspect of what he had told me before was his favorite place. The island looked mostly full of forestry, covered by beachy coastline, completely isolated with no other surrounding islands in sight. Henry was obviously loaded but as I surveyed this place from the air, knowing that he casually owned all of it, maybe he was a multi-billionaire. I’d seen his car, his building and now his helicopter but the land below us really put his wealth into perspective for me.
As we approached the land, I noticed the large cream roof of a building that took up the whole front of the island, a tennis court out the back, various pools out the front that met the beach face of the island. There was an incredibly long pier that stretched at least a hundred meters off the island with a large boat, no that wasn’t a boat—more like a super yacht. Wow. To the left of the pier was a helicopter pad on which we would soon land.
Henry unwrapped his arm from around me and helped me take off my headset off. The sound from the helicopter’s propeller quieted. Aaron helped us out, grabbing our bags as Henry grabbed my hand and pulled me back from the edge of the water. We went through some perfectly pruned green bushes and back onto a pathed path that curved in either direction. I was both curious and completely speechless. Aaron walked past us with our bags, following the path to the right of us.
Henry spun around, standing in front of me, taking my hands like this was some marriage proposal. Oh God, no. No, no, no. Is that what this was? Is that why he wanted to know if we were moving too fast? No, of course not. It had been two weeks. Why did my mind even run towards that? Is that what I wanted out of this? Had I fallen that deeply in love, I was thinking of rings? I met Henry’s eyes, but he didn’t speak, just stared back at me speechless.
“What?” I said, my voice a little shaky from the shock of the beauty of this place. And then there was the anguish floodingmy body with what he was doing right now. When we landed, I hadn’t seen bluer waters in my entire life. But he had pulled me away from it instantly and now shining like the water surrounding us was the deep green bushland that I had watched from the sky. His island looked exactly like a mini-Hawaii, a place that I had always wanted to visit. But my lack of travel didn’t bother me now that I was on this beautiful island.
Henry kept his smile painted on his face, still not saying a word as he let go of my right hand. He raised his left up in the air and clicked his fingers. My body jumped back, and I was instantly shocked by the woman who appeared from the right side of the curved path. She had long brunette hair, tied in a tight ponytail. She was wearing a white silk suit that could have been mistaken for pajamas. She walked towards us holding a large bouquet of red roses, the same size as our first date. I let go of Henry’s hand, covering my mouth that was now a locked open jaw. I didn’t want Henry to see me gasp. If I wanted this to be my new normal, I needed to act normal. But internally I was a mess, my body in shock and heating up, wondering what the hell this was as the woman finally stopped still to my right. Henry took a long-stemmed rose from the bunch.
“Molly?” he said.
“Yes?” I said, my voice coming out like a little dog’s whimper. I was unsure if I was about to break out in tears from the pure emotion of the situation.
Henry stood tall, holding the rose stem carefully in front of him with both hands. “I hope to give you another rose afterthis trip. Maybe a rose that makes us feel a little more serious, more official. Of course I don’t want to rush it. And I don’t want you to feel pressured. I just want the next four days to be all about you relaxing, taking a holiday, enjoying this whole place and getting the break that you deserve, even if we did only make it a short one… and hopefully throughout that time, we also get to spend some great quality time together. And I get to show you the real me….”
