“I’m fine Te…” She stops, puts a palm to her forehead again, closes her eyes, and sighs. “I’m fine. I promise. Please just go. I will meet you there in five minutes.”
“Good. Five minutes or we come back up here. Let’s go. I’m starving.” That familiar male voice again. How do I know that voice? “See you soon Livanator.”
The mumbling behind the closed and locked door diminishes, but Olivia, or Liv as they keep calling her, still looks petrified. I open my mouth to ask why but she rushes to me and slaps her hand over it. I grimace at the unexpected rough contact. “She’s still out there.”
I hear a door close, probably the main one to the suite. Our eyes connect and so do our torsos and… she jumps back and points at my still-hard dick. “I told you. That needs to disappear!”
“It’s not a genie.” I chuckle. “well, maybe it is, come to think of it, because if you rub it the right way…”
“Shush!”
“Livvy, let me in. I’m worried. I haven’t seen you since last night.” The female voice is back. “Everyone else is gone.”
"I told you," Olivia mouths at me, and then she's scurrying around the room, grabbing my shoes, my socks, my underwear, and shorts and before I can do a thing about it, she’s shoving everything, and me, into the closet.
It’s a tight fit and I bang the back of my head on the rack. I hiss and she shushes me again. She pauses as I’m trying to pretzel myself against the back of the closet. “Promise me on all that is holy, on hockey and Wayne Gretzky and the Stanley Cup and all your dad’s trophies and medals and every single one you still have coming to you that no matter what you hear you will not… will not come out of here until exactly five minutes after you hear us leave.”
“Wow. You mean business.”
“I do. I’m all business. I’m more serious than a heart attack,” she whispers and our eyes lock. “Please?”
"I promise, Olivia," I say her full name. She smiles. It's fleeting and soft but my heart thumps harder in my chest. She's something else.
She starts to close the door but pauses. “And thank you. For last night. That was… I’m glad we did that.”
“Me too.” Before I can offer to do it again, if she wants, at a date to be determined later, she shuts me in the closet.
I hear nothing for almost thirty seconds and then there’s another bang on the door and Olivia yells. “I’m coming. Calm your tits!”
There’s a bark of laughter that sounds pretty loud so I think Olivia opened the door and let the relentless female friend into the room. “Oh my god, who are you and what have you done with my demure little cousin?”
“First of all, I’m older than you so I’m not your little cousin,” Olivia reminds the woman as my muscles burn trying to keep myself motionless in this ridiculously small closet. “Second of all, I had too much to drink last night and unlike the rest of you, I’m not a pro at that. I need to sleep it off. But since you won’t let me do that, let’s eat.”
“Yay for drunk Liv! And I promise my dear brother is right. The huevos rancheros here is fire,” the girl says happily.
So this is a family gathering? Interesting. Why did she lie and say it was co-workers? I always wanted a big family but I didn’t get one. It’s just me, my twin, and my parents. No cousins as my aunts and uncles didn’t procreate. I likely won’t either so the Westwood family will grow even tinier.
“Anyway I’m so glad it was just booze,” the cousin says and even in the cramped darkness of the closet I can hear the relief in her voice. “I thought maybe it was a panic attack that had you locked in here. You know, from the?—”
“Let’s go!” Liv cuts her off and I’m left wondering what the end of that sentence would have been.
“Where did you get that shirt?”
“Thrifted it.”
“It’s too big.”
“I like big.”
“That’s what she said.” Giggles and then a thump, like a door closing.
I wait an excruciating five minutes after that, as promised. Eventually, I pull myself out of the closet, tripping on a fallen hanger and landing in a heap at the foot of the bed. I hiss out an expletive and lift myself up off the carpet. I put on the clothes that tumbled out with me, but of course, my shirt walked out the door with Olivia.
I’m standing there, naked from the waist up, when I see her open suitcase. There’s a hoodie in the pile next to it. The kind with a zipper opening, not the over-the-head kind. I walk over and pluck it off the ground. It's charcoal gray and I start to put it on.
To say it doesn’t fit is an understatement. The arms, which I’m sure are full-length on her, are barely past my elbow. And I can’t get it done up at all. But if she can steal my shirt, I can steal her hoodie. Of course not forever, I hope. I am going to leave my phone number for her so she can call to get it back.
I glance around the room. It's still dark in here since she closed the door again when she left, but there's some hotel stationary and a pen on the night table. I walk over and grab it, jot down my number, but I don't leave my name or any other note. She'll know. Olivia is a smart cookie.
