Love and Gravity (5 page)

She looked for a moment longer,
trying to match the person she saw in the mirror to a name other than Margot.
She wondered if she’d be allowed to choose her own name. The lack of certainty
and control over her own destiny was frustrating and all too familiar. She
sighed, tired of thought, and turned towards the shower, twirling the knob over
to hot, drawing a sputtering rainfall from the showerhead.

When she stepped into the shower
the heat from the water struck her body wonderfully, her pale skin quickly
turning a vibrant rose color beneath the steam. Margot opened the small bottle
of shampoo from the shelf inside the shower and let the water run over her
head. She felt the beads of water diving beneath the thickness of her golden
strands, running along her scalp, cupping her head in their warmth before
falling down her forehead to run off her nose and lips and chin.

Once her hair was fully wet,
Margot squeezed some of the shimmering pink shampoo from the tube into a puddle
on her palm. It smelled flowery, like lilacs. She rubbed her hands together and
watched a thick bubbling foam emerge. She ran her hands through her hair and
massaged her scalp, encouraging the foamy shampoo to cover every follicle. She
let the water from the showerhead hit her face while she did this, closing her
eyes tightly, occasionally pulling her head out for a quick burst of breath.
She could feel the satiny foam streaming down her face and body, over her chest
and stomach, down her back and in between her buttocks before rinsing her hair
out.              

Then she took the small white disk
of soap out of its paper wrapping on the shower shelf. She rubbed it between
her hands, put down the bar and rubbed the soap suds on her hands all over her
face, neck, and arms. She soaped her breasts, rubbing underneath them and
around and over them. She rubbed down her stomach, over the tiny dip of her
belly button, until she felt the coarseness of her pubic hair. She put both
palms on her inner thigh and moved them up into her crotch. She used two
fingers and rubbed between all the intricate folds of her labia. She felt a
warm, tingling surge of electricity flow down to meet her hands as she rubbed
the space directly above her clit.

She lingered there longer than the
rest of her body before realizing what she was starting to do and thinking
again of how close Jack was. She hadn’t even locked the bathroom door. She
imagined him walking in, seeing her like this, all soapy and aroused, imagined
he could somehow know what she was doing from his position in the other room.

She was tired of thinking and
being afraid. She just wanted to be a physical being for a while, outside the
realm of consequences and work and fear and boredom. She wanted to explore her
physicality.

She began rubbing her clit more
intentionally and to feel increasingly swollen and tender. She imagined Jack
walking in and finding her playing with herself. He would be turned on by it,
feel compelled to join her in the shower, and kiss her passionately. She began
pulsing with her arousal and it was hypnotic. She felt full and sexy and
powerful. She had to focus to stifle the small moans that were struggling to
escape from her throat.

She imagined him pressing her
warm, naked body against the shower wall and feeling his erection against her
thighs, imagined him forcing his way into her. It was too much to resist. She
started cumming.

She could feel the hard
uncontrollable contractions inside her and a glorious heat fizzling from her
pussy out to the rest of her body. A single small yelping sound made its way
past her lips. In that single moment she didn’t care if Jack heard.

She hadn’t expected to play with herself;
it had been a need she felt come on by surprise. Now that she felt sated she
was a little embarrassed at having used Jack in her fantasies. After all, she
barely knew the man. The last two days had been so overwhelming; she didn’t
know what had overcome her. She decided it was probably just a necessary
distraction, and promised herself to try being a little less free-spirited regarding
this man who was really a stranger to her.

The mirror was fogged over when
Margot stepped in front of it again so she wiped it down with the towel she had
dried off with. She was beginning to feel so much better. The last two days
were beginning to seem like they were merely a horrible dream. The face she saw
now looked years younger than the face she’d seen only twenty minutes before.
She bent down took her new clothes and toothbrush out of the bag she’d brought
in with her. She put on the black leggings and the grey sweatshirt and brushed
her teeth with some peppermint toothpaste. She took down her hair from the
towel and squeezed it dry. She felt tingly all over.

Being that she was clean, her mind
turned to the pizza Jack had ordered. She couldn’t wait to eat. Before she left
the bathroom she collected her dirty cocktail dress and the rest of her old
outfit from the floor. She threw it all in the small trashcan beside the
toilet. She never wanted to look at those clothes again.

She opened the door to the
bathroom and saw Jack sitting on the bed. He was shirtless and tanned. All her
thoughts about modesty and decency fell away. He was trying to clean the bullet
wound on his arm with some cotton pads he’d wet with whiskey. The grimace on
his face said it was painful.

Margot was taken aback seeing him
this way, especially after what she’d just done in the shower. The wound itself
was shocking, but so was his body. There was a trail of dark, dried blood down
his right arm from a cut straight across his triceps. It didn’t look too deep,
but it looked deep enough. Beyond that, she couldn’t help notice that he was
more muscular than she’d suspected. The suit he wore had spoken little of what
lay beneath it. His chest was smooth and tan, his abs were chiseled, and he had
a thin trail of hair on his stomach that dove suggestively beneath his belt.

Margot took in this wonderful view
for a few seconds before clearing her throat.

“How is your arm feeling,” she
asked?

Jack looked up from the bed and
met Margot’s eyes. He smiled.

“It’s manageable. I need to wrap
it in a bandage though. Could you help? It’s impossible to do with just one
hand.”

“Of course,” Margot said.

She was relieved by the chance to
help him with it after all he’d done to help her. She walked over to him on the
bed and sat beside him. He had an elastic bandage lying out on the duvet that
she picked up.

He looked at her eyes. All of her
makeup was gone now, and her slightly damp hair was draped over her shoulders
on top of her grey sweater. She looked comfortable and clean and charming. She
smiled like flowers and mint. She looked much happier than he’d seen her
before.

When she lifted his arm up to
begin wrapping it he noticed how warm her hands were against his skin. It felt
really good when she touched him. He looked down to the floor, a little
embarrassed that he was thinking about it. He’d had a couple of slugs from the
whiskey bottle while she was in the shower to help with the pain in his arm and
he was feeling the effects of the alcohol settling in on him.

Margot began wrapping the bandage
around his arm. She could feel how strong he was as she lifted his arm, how
thick his muscles were. She wrapped his arm firmly and hooked two small silver
clasps into the bandage to keep it together. As he lowered his arm down she
noticed a long scar just above his wrist.

“What’s that from,” she asked?

“Oh that.” His eyes warmed as he
looked at the old scar.

“When I was a kid, maybe eight or
nine, I was riding my bike through the neighborhood with my sister, Chelsea. We
reached the top of the biggest hill around. I wanted to show off so I told
Chelsea to watch me and I started flying down it. But the hill ended in a
cul-de-sac and I was going so fast I couldn’t stop in time. The next thing I
know I’m flying over the handlebars into a big bush that was in someone’s front
yard. I cut my arm. It was gushing blood everywhere. I was terrified. Chelsea
took me home on her bike and wrapped it up for me.”

“Sounds like you have a good
sister,” Margot said, smiling.

“Yeah, she was,” Jack said. His
face darkened. “I lost her years ago, though. She was murdered.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know,”
Margot said.

“It’s why I’m a detective in
Gravity. It’s why I want to get Pop. She was killed in the crossfire of a
shooting he ordered. She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. One day
she’s riding bikes with me, eating ice cream and being a kid, and the next day
she’s just...gone.

“My father was on the force then,
and he knew Pop was behind the shooting, but they couldn’t prove it in court so
Pop walked away. My father died a few years later from a heart attack. The
stress of it was too much for him. He never got to see justice for Chelsea.”

Margot thought about her own
father. She knew what it was like to have someone you cared about suddenly and
unexpectedly ripped from your life. She knew how the emptiness they left behind
could be filled with an immense and omnipresent sadness. She could see it
killing someone. She suddenly felt overwhelmed by grief and fear.

“Jack, I’m so afraid.”

She wanted to bury her head in his
chest and sob. She wanted to let him comfort her. She was afraid that she would
burden him unduly with her sadness. She wanted to offer him something better
than that.

“I know Margot, it makes sense.
But it’s going to be okay. Frankie’s a really good guy and the Feds have a lot
of fire-power behind them. Pop is strong in Gravity, but he’s not as strong as
the Feds. Once they get to us they’re going to protect you. And in the
meantime,” he paused, becoming quieter, “in the meantime, I’m going to protect
you.”

Margot looked at Jack. His eyes
were searching hers for her reaction to his affirmation.

“Do you trust me,” he asked her?

“Yes,” Margot said meaningfully.
It would have seemed impossible to her to imagine feeling such an allegiance
and gratitude to someone on Gravity’s police force not even 48 hours ago. But
now it seemed impossible to feel anything less to him. He’d already saved her
life and forsaken everything to keep her safe. His willingness to sacrifice so
much for someone he didn’t even know was deeply endearing to her.

They looked at each other silently
for a moment, each lost in their own thoughts. Margot suddenly became very
aware of sitting on the bed together. She thought she noticed Jack lean towards
her slightly.

Just then they heard a hard knock
at the door.

Chapter 6
-

The pizza had arrived in the
middle of what felt like a very intimate moment to Margot. A part of her was
disappointed, but another part felt relieved. Fantasizing about Jack in the
shower was one thing, but taking it from fantasy to reality right now seemed
like it might be a bad idea. So much was happening, and she couldn’t let
herself forget that they were still in danger. With Jack it was difficult not
to feel safer than she really was.

She felt more grounded after they
started eating. The pizza was probably about as high quality as the hotel room,
but she hadn’t eaten anything substantial in days and Margot wanted to inhale
the whole thing by herself. They were sitting together, cross legged on the bed
with the open pizza box sprawled out between them. Jack was fully dressed now,
since they had finished bandaging his arm.

“I hope you like pepperoni,” Jack
said.

“Actually, I’m a vegetarian. But
it’s okay, I’ll just give my pepperoni to you.”

“Oh I’m sorry, I should have
asked.”

“Don’t worry about it. It’s not
that I’m grossed out by it, it’s just an ideological thing. I don’t like to
kill things to live when I don’t need to. I would probably kill an animal to
live if I needed to, but when I have the luxury of making a different choice,”
Margot shrugged, “I do.”

Jack looked at her again. She was
continually surprising him. He’d never met an addict or dealer that cared about
the people around them, let alone the animals. He felt like he couldn’t stop
himself from asking her about her past anymore. It had been eating at him the
whole day.

“So Margot, I hope you don’t mind
my asking,” Jack paused hesitantly, “and you don’t have to answer if you do,
but…”

“It’s okay, you can ask. What?”

“Why did you have all that cocaine
with you 5 years ago?”

Margot stopped eating. She should
have seen this question coming. A part of her really was angry that he was
asking. She was angry at Jack the cop, not Jack the man. But she’d already
begun to trust Jack more than she’d trusted anyone in a very long time. Who can
you trust, she thought, if not a man who risks his life for you when he doesn’t
even know who you are? He was risking his life to save her and she thought that
gave him the right to know her.

“I’m sorry, I’ve offended you
haven’t I?” Jack looked at her abashedly.

“No, it’s okay. I’ll tell you.”
Margot braced herself to go back to an old place she didn’t like going.