As Jake studied val's face, watching her take the slow, deep breaths of sleep, he realized he finally understood what she had meant.
The call came just before bedtime. She had called him from her luxury suite at the Grand Regency...said she had a few ideas for other magazines, and wanted to run them past a consultant. Helen had already dozed off, so Jake quickly dug his suit out of the hamper and drove on over to the hotel. He had thought it was a little weird that she needed to talk to him right away, but...business is business, after all.
She answered the door wearing nothing but a smile, and Jake realized he was a giant sucker.
The first two hours were mind-blowing. Jake had no idea it could go on for two solid hours.
He spent the night.
His cell phone the next morning showed a missed call from Helen; no big deal. val had called up the principal at Lawndale High and told her that she'd have to postpone the school visit until the next day. Then they'd gone on for three hours. Jake's cell phone rang sometime in the third hour; once they had finished, he checked, and saw it was another call from Helen.
They made their way throughout the entire suite, even spending a memorable half-hour putting on a show for anybody who cared to look up at their balcony. Jake's cell phone rang three more times: the first two was Helen, and the last was the home phone (which meant it was either Helen or Daria). Val's phone had rung once, after which she removed the battery.
"You know, Jakey," she said to him just before sunset, nibbling on his ear. "I'm not on the pill."
"What?!"
"I could be pregnant right now. How does that make you feel?"
To Jake's immense surprise (and just a little discomfort), it made him feel very aroused. That session lasted almost until 11 PM.
Jake's cell phone rang once every five or ten minutes now. Helen was either furious, worried out of her mind, or both. After midnight, val took the battery out of Jake's phone so they could finally get some sleep.
Jake was the first one to wake up the next morning, and he used the time to study Val's face and wonder what was going to happen in the future.
Helen would have some very uncomfortable questions about where he had been. Daria might not even bother with questions; she might connect the dots from Val's absense at her school to Jake's absense from the house and his business. Even if he made it out of this with his family intact, there was the potential of a ticking time bomb in Val's uterus, waiting to go off and blow it all to hell anyway.
He awoke val with a kiss, and as he stared into her eyes, he noted that they looked an awful lot like a cliff.
Jake danced anyway.
XXXXXXXXXX
I originally conceived this as a comedy drabble, in which Jake and Val have had a quick screw after having snuck off to Daria's room mid-dinner. However, as I wrote, it became more clear that it worked better as a somewhat more serious piece. (A shame, as if it had remained a comedy, I would have used the title 'Jakedancing').