Dave and I spend the next day and night together. I’m well aware that he’s leaving, that this non-romanticthingis ending soon.
On the last morning, after I devour another full room-service breakfast and am called back into bed to work off that great meal, I pull up the sheets and throw a leg over his. “Okay, new nickname idea. Best-Ever Dave?” I suggest.
“That sounds like I’m the bestDaveyou’ve slept with. As though you’ve had sex with a lot of Daves.” Yet he snuggles me in.
“Oh, not what I meant.” I giggle and offer an alternative. One that’s very truthful. “How about just the simple The Best I’ve Ever Had?”
His hold, the loving snuggle he has me in, tightens.
Another day together confirms that I don’t want to go home. I don’t want to go back home to my work, and the demands, and the bullshit. It’s impossible to figure out how to get out of it, even though Dave got me thinking about it.
Yet I know this trip was a fantasy come to life and not one that can be anything enduring. Because all fantasies are temporary. Built to fade.
His gentle, secure embrace that night is almost too much. I have never been held like this, and I’m torn between staying awake in his hold and falling back asleep and getting a real, restorative rest.
But instead, we are soon impossibly entwined again, rhythmically together until dawn peeks through the curtains.
When Dave lifts up my shirt on that final morning and kisses and breathes against my stomach, “Armand Assante,” I roll back and pull the comforter over my head, laughing as he pulls away.
SVUexpert and beautiful bastard.
Before he leaves, he has a cute ask. To take a bath together. “Not even a sexy one,” he says. “Just a bath.”
I’m not about to refuse a soak with this guy. So, we sit together on the bathroom floor as the tub fills, the sound of the water hitting so loudly that we fortunately don’t have to talk. We strip and step in.
I have flashbacks now that I can’t mention, but ones that make me smile. Baths that aren’t sexy, but still intimate.
“I really loved meeting you,” he whispers.
“And I really loved meeting you. Thanks for scooping me.” I smile as I move through the hot water and lean back against his chest. “If I ever see you again, will you make me a lobster roll from your food truck? The kind with butter? I’ve never had that. Only ones with mayonnaise.”
He strokes my hair. “You mentioned that.”
“Oh, right.” I vaguely remember.
“It’d be my pleasure. It’d also be thebest ever.”
But we both know we’ll probably never see each other again.
This was just vacation fun. Escapism at its best.
And this how we leave. With everything just as it was. Ideal and impossible to find again.
Just before the door closes behind him, I call out our lastSpecial Victims Unitguest star. “Bradley Whitford.”
“I heard that,” he replies, his voice fading as he slowly walks away.
Then I get a text.
Dave:He was on twice as different characters.
Me:Yes. The dementia episode was both beautiful and painful.
Dave:It was.
Goddammit. Dave reallywas.
When I’m Thirty
