And as she slumped against me in the elevator, I knew I’d do it all again, a thousand times over.
11
Ellie
The foyer of Ringo’s suite had marble floors, fresh flowers, and expensive artwork.To the right, I glimpsed a formal dining room with an overlarge abstract sculpture taking center stage on top of an ebony-stained table.
Heck, maybe it was real ebony?
Ahead was a family room with fireplace, coordinated leather seating, and an entertainment shelf that doubled as a “small” library.That’s if you compared it to the public one downtown on State Street.The room wrapped around a full-sized kitchen that took up the interior corner, and turned into a small dining area flanked on the exterior wall by floor to ceiling windows that framed Lake Michigan in glittery segments.Then the layout dumped into a fancier living space that had almost a two hundred and twenty degree vista of the lakefront starting from the due-north-facing view down to Navy Pier from its windows.The view was spectacular from this rarified strata.
It was like the morning I woke up at his home in Sestri Levante.I walked out of the bedroom onto the terrace and stared at the Mediterranean in awe.In this place, I’d be front row to the sunrise over the lake.
I’d kill for a place like this.Apparently, Ringo already did.That thought got shoved aside for more mundane needs.“Do you have a shower?I smell like beer.”And sweat, but I’d never admit that.
He set my suitcase inside a bathroom more spacious than my condo’s living room.With the attached walk-in closet, it might be bigger than my entire home.The shower was definitely larger than my bathroom.I fiddled with the nobs and such between sorting through Ringo’s rushed attempt to grab my essentials.
He packed worse than I did.My loofa wasn’t in the suitcase, my shampoo leaked onto my jeans, and there wasn’t a piece of underwear in the damn bag anywhere.I could have sworn he picked up at least one from the mess of my room.
Maybe none survived Johnny’s wrath?
I shuddered from the chill that swept over me.He seemed so harmless with that baby face of his.“Ringo?”I called out.
He peeked his head in the door without knocking.
“Yes?”
Mental note:lock the damn doors around him.On the heels of that thought was another,he’d just pick the lock.This time my shudder wasn’t as chilly.
“Did you findanyunderwear that wasn’t ruined?”
His eyes swept down me and back.It wasn’t sexual, more like clinical.“I’ll see if I can find something for you to sleep in.”
He slipped away before I could ask him what he meant.Did this place come stocked with clothing?
Or… did he have a girlfriend, wait, no… a mistress?
My stomach churned.I asked him once if he was dating anyone, and he denied it.But that conversation was before I found out he’d just been using me to get close to Mario during their falling out.“I need my head examined.”I stripped out of my clothes, hung an oversized hotel-style bathrobe on the hook nearest the shower, and scrubbed the smells of the bar from my skin and hair.
I didn’t hear him, but when I was done drying my skin and wrapping my hair with a towel, there was a pair of boxer shorts and a soft T-shirt on the marble counter.
They must be his.I picked up the shirt and inhaled.To my disappointment, it smelled like fresh laundry.
I wasn’t perverted enough to smell his boxers and embraced the assumption they were clean, too.The folds were a little too crisp and the fabric just a little too stiff to indicate otherwise.
Then I wrapped in the monster-sized bathrobe and sighed a little.Its heavy weight felt like a hug.And the dense terrycloth absorbed any lingering dampness from my skin.My muscles were sore, and the day’s rollercoaster that started with being startled out of bed caught up with me.I may have stumbled a little when I finally exited.Luckily, there was a bedroom directly across the hall.It had a king-sized bed and another impressive view of the lake.
Dawn would come too soon.I tugged at the curtains, but they wouldn’t budge.I was just about to give up and find another room to crash in when Ringo entered.
“What are you doing?”
“Trying to close the curtains,” I said.
He touched the panel beside the door, and the curtains slid into place, blocking out the lights of the city, the lake, and the peninsula that peeked up from the very bottom of the view.Now I felt like an idiot.Should I thank him?
“Sleep, Ellie.”
I stared at the bed but didn’t move.
