Chapter 16 – Just Another Average Morning
She didn't know what time it was when she realized how cold she felt. She opened her eyes, and all she could see was the subtle silhouette of his body, lying as far away from her as possible. She couldn't stand this, just lying here, naked and exposed, with slight symptoms of a hangover just beginning to make themselves known. She crawled out of the bed, and made up her side of it, and slipped on her clothes from last night. She would change them as soon as he woke up and could turn on a light to find her other clothes. Shannon tiptoed into the bathroom, turned on the fluorescent lights, which distorted her view even further, and before she could even tell herself not to, there were tears in her eyes, running down her face, choking her up, until she was sobbing again, just like last night. She didn't know how much she had cried, but she could feel her face wet and slimy, her hands moist, and her clothes contained the light odor of his Dove soap, and she wanted it to just go away. Afraid she was being too loud, Shannon willed herself to stop crying, and wiped her eyes, looking at the mirror, thinking, this will be our little secret, and forced an indifferent expression on her face.
As she walked back into the room, the lights were still off, and she could barely see a thing, except his outline, sitting on one of the random sitting places in the affected hotel room, and she noticed that he hadn't had the sense to put his shirt back on. He moved his head slightly to acknowledge her presence, and she hoped that he hadn't heard her crying. He had though. She could tell by the look on his face. She sunk into the chair next to the bed, and even though the chair was quite soft, she felt extremely uncomfortable in it. The morning after had never been so bad. Now that he knew that she had taken advantage of him. But it hadn't even been the money thing – it had started long before that, in their earlier years, the first time she had dared him to kiss her in 9th grade, she had been tempting him and tricking him ever since. She couldn't take the pain anymore, and he had long ago reached breaking point. Oh, they were seriously going to need to stop this time… once they got back to LA.
"Boone?" She said quietly, surprised at how much his name cut into the silent air.
"What?" He said resentfully. He didn't want to talk to her; he didn't want to have anything to do with her.
"When we get back to LA," she said, and turned on the light. The sound of the switch seemed to echo in the room. It was just a light switch, why did it insist on being so damn dramatic? The brightness of the light seemed to make it all more obvious. Even the bed, made messily between them, seemed to just scream guilt. The way it sat there, innocently, made Shannon want to kick it until feathers started to come out of the pillows.
She was all over him. His hair was messed up from where she had ran her fingers through it anxiously, and she could see scrapes on his lower back from where she had dug her fingernails into his back, and there was a hickey on his neck from where she had kissed him too hard. And that wasn't even his face. His face, the expression, made Shannon feel, if it was possible, even guiltier that she had before. I am so fucking sorry, she longed to say. But she didn't. "You should just tell your mom that," She started out gently, but then somehow her tone became snobby and bitchy again, even though she had no right to be mad at him, "you rescued me again, just like you always do, and… then we can just go back."
"To what?" he said, echoing what Shannon had been thinking. Yeah, to what? To what it was like before Sydney, or to what it was like before everything, before the late night rendezvous?
"To what it was," she said in a patient voice, like she was talking to a kindergartener about what to bring to school. She was being purposely vague, because honestly, she didn't really know what it was going to go back to either.
"Like it's all up to you," he said listlessly. What did that mean? What was he going to change?
She looked at him for a second, and noted a tiny bit of dried blood on his back where her fingernails had dug into him. Yet another mark that she had been there, and she hadn't quite realized how… rough they had been. "Get dressed." She said in the bitchiest tone she could muster. She closed her eyes, and heard him rustling around in the room, then the sound of the shower running…
"Good morning, Sydney! Today we'll be having sunny skies – " The clock radio thing blasted in Shannon's ear, and she looked up to see Boone, fully clothed and with wet hair, holding the thing up to her head. She slapped him across the face.
"What the FUCK?" She screamed, shutting off the radio. "What the hell is your problem?"
"You fell asleep," he said.
"Clearly, dumbass!" Back to the way it was. "You could have, like, tapped me on the shoulder or something!"
"I – " he put down the radio and looked down. " I didn't want to touch you." There was something so vulnerable, so sweet, about the way he said this. But it had to go back.
And just like that she was back to her old bitchy self. "I'm going to take a shower," she said, and stalked off after rummaging quickly through her bags and locating some clothes.
As she showered, she tried to scrub herself of last night – maybe if she used enough soap, repeated her shampoo enough times, it would just disappear. This time hadn't been pleasurable, but it had been painful. But, like everything surrounding their relationship, there was a catch – it had felt really, really good. But even in those last moments when she had wanted him so badly, there had been those lingering thoughts of, "We shouldn't be doing this" itching at the back of their minds. And no matter how hard she scrubbed herself, those lingering thoughts just wouldn't go away.
But God, how she longed for some proof. Proof that he really felt like she said he did, proof that it had really happened, and that it was real. It was like cleaning – things always get messier before they clean themselves up. And if they wanted to really erase everything that had happened between them, she needed to prove something to herself. They weren't back in LA yet.
She opened the door a crack, where she could see him holding her asthma inhalers and putting them in her bag. She always forgot about her inhalers, so he carried them for her on planes. "Boone," she said, in a tone that somehow managed to be cautious, vulnerable, and suggestive at the same time.
"What?" He said in a voice that managed to be… confused.
"Can you come here for a sec?"
"What do you want?"
"Just come here, okay?" She said impatiently. He walked into the bathroom and sat on the closed toilet seat. He shrugged, as if to ask, "What's going on?" Before she could think about what she was doing, she plopped down in his lap, facing him, and let her towel slip down a bit to reveal more leg and more cleavage, and hissed into his ear, "Kiss me."
"What's wrong with you, Shannon?" He practically whispered.
"We're not in LA yet," she whispered, quieter, right into his ear, and shifted herself, still wrapped in only a towel, closer to him so that her stomach was right up against his. Now she was in full-on slut mode, and nothing could stop her now. She placed her lips on his, wiggling a little bit in his lap just to tempt him. She just stayed there, waiting for him to respond. Much to her surprise, he didn't. "Are you mad at me?" She asked, not moving her lips from where they were and scooting forward in his lap so that her hips were against his lower stomach. "You mad at me, Boone?" She pulled back a little bit, and ran her fingers through his wet hair. She put a hand on each side of his neck and slid them under his shirt and over his shoulders, and then back up again. "Hmmm?" she teased, squirming even deeper in his lap.
Maybe she had been wrong all along. She was looking for proof, and maybe she wasn't going to get any this time! She decided to try one more thing. "You hate me," she sighed, pretending like she had given up, making a motion to get out of his lap.
"N-no," he choked out.
"No?" she smiled spitefully, teasingly. "Why don't you prove it to me then?" She shifted once again, rubbing herself deeper into his lap, getting ready for the kiss she knew was about to happen. She waited one second, two seconds, and then her hopes started to go down. That's why she was so taken aback when his lips crushed into hers on the fourth second, and got so into it that he opened his mouth almost immediately and then they were kissing with more tongues that lips, and she unzipped his jeans and slipped her hand between his boxers and his skin as he made no effort to stop her, but then as she was getting closer, she moved her hand back up to around his neck, wiggled some more, and moaned, tantalizingly and exaggeratedly. Right as he started to massage her thighs, she suddenly pulled away, gasping in faux exhaustion. She brought her lips right to his ear again, and whispered so quietly she could barely hear herself, "Boone…" She stuck her tongue out and ran it across the hickey that she had made the previous night. "Tell me you…" she breathed, "Tell me you love me."
"I – " She put her hands around his neck and pulled back a little, swinging herself towards his other ear and also taking this opportunity to squirm in his lap more. "...I... l- love you."
"Who do you love?" She murmured into his ear.
"You." He stuttered, looking confused about what she was trying to do.
"My name…" she hissed.
"I love you, Shannon." He whispered.
"Say my name again," she moaned, grinding up against him. She needed more proof; she needed to get everything out of him while she could.
"Shannon," he said, looking even more perplexed (and a little turned on at the same time).
She smirked. "No Boone, I want you to moan my name," she said, like the insipid heroine of a trashy romance novel. Sometimes she felt like her whole life was just a trashy romance novel.
"You're such a bitch," he said under his breath. She tucked a stray piece of hair behind his ear slowly. "Shannon," he moaned, just like she had told him to. She licked the hickey again, leisurely and enticing.
"Not good enough." Fine. She felt underneath his boxers again, but this time she touched him, and then pressed down harder, and then slid her hand right back up again. She made the first effort to start undoing his shirt. Not that she was going to actually have sex with him again; she was just going to get him really, really fucking horny.
"Shannon… oh god, Shan, stop that," He sighed, as she rubbed her fingers down his pants again. She squeezed down and breathed right into the crook of his neck. "Oh god, I love you," She sucked at his neck eagerly, running her hands up and down his body. "Oh god, Shannon, don't stop…" She took this as a perfect opportunity to do just so. In one quick motion, she leapt off of him. Then, just for effect, she made a motion that made it look like she was getting ready to kneel next to him, and just as he started to look at her in anticipation, she stood up again. Ha.
"Good," she smirked, and pushed him back into the hotel room, slamming the door behind her as he stumbled out, not worrying about the fact that he sort of couldn't walk. Sometimes being a bitch… kicked ass. And now she had proof.
A half an hour later, Boone and Shannon were sitting in the rental car, bickering as usual, and occasionally taking breaks to change the radio station.
"Oh Boone," She said in a singsong, annoying voice. "I bet you're pretty upset you left your Mariah Carey CD at home!"
"I do NOT listen to Mariah Carey!" He argued.
"Then what do you listen to?" She asked, putting her feet up on the dashboard of the car. "Classical or Traditional Indian music or something?" She laughed to herself.
"Shannon, get your feet off the car," he said, annoyed, and tried to push her smooth, long legs off the dashboard. She resisted, which resulted in an extremely compromising weird touchy thing that resembled an incredibly odd massage.
"What the hell?" She shook her head, "What are you going to do to me if I don't?"
"I'm trying to drive here," he said.
"You keep avoiding my questions, Boone. Kind of like last night." He looked at her seriously. An awkward silence pervaded the car, so Shannon took her feet off of the dashboard and decided to preoccupy herself with the radio. She turned it up.
"And now, we'll be playing 'Closer' by the Nine Inch Nails…" said the guy on the radio. Shannon smirked at how friggin' appropriate the song was, and decided to see how long it would take for him to realize the rather obscene lyrics of the song.
"I want to fuck you like an ani – " Screeched the singer. Boone didn't even change his expression; he just turned the dial and kept his eyes on the road. Crap. No explosive reactions! Or that's what she thought, until she noticed that he was driving on the American side of the road.
"Boone!" She yelled. "You're on the wrong side of the street, you idiot!"
"Oh!" He said, "Oh, shit!" He turned around, and luckily there weren't any other cars on the road.
"You're such an –" Then she noticed what song was playing. "Hey, it's that song from Moulin Rouge that you told me you secretly liked, Boone!"
"I never said th – wait, what song?" He said suspiciously. Shannon didn't answer, and instead opened the windows and belted out the lyrics as loud as she could.
"Shannon, stop that!" He said.
"Voulez vous coucher avec moi ce soir!" She screamed, louder. And then of course he ruined all the fun by shutting off the radio. Shannon stopped mid 'Voulez vous' and pouted in her seat. "I hate you."
"Well haven't you made that clear?" He said sarcastically. "You made me voulez vous coucher avec moi whatever with you last night, then you gave me a lap dance in the bathroom, yeah, you hate me a lot."
"It wasn't a lap dance," she thought out loud.
"What else would you call grinding your ass in my lap?" He asked sarcastically, making it sound extremely uncouth. (Well, it sort of was, but…)
"Screw you, Boone." She said quietly.
"So you can make fun of me, but I can't make fun of you?"
"Pretty much."
"You're pathetic."
"But you love me, remember?" He rolled his eyes and let the sounds of Christina Aguilera pervade throughout the car. This time she didn't tease him about it.