“I suppose you did begin to wear me down with the Glen Miller. That got me.” I sunk into my chair as his hands did delicious things to the bottoms of my socked feet. Socks I had also appropriated from his side of the room.

“I got you, huh?” He smirked, leaning closer.

“Oh, shut it, you.” I pushed his face away, smiling big as I contemplated what he said. Did he have me? Yeah. He totally had me. And would have me, sometime later that night.

At that thought, a whoosh of nerves hit my tummy, and I felt my smile falter a bit. Nerves had set up shop big time, and no matter where Brain went, eventually Nerves invaded every thought, every idea I had about where the night would go. I was ready, Lord knows I was ready, but I was damn nervous. O would come back, right? I knew she would. Did I mention I was nervous?

“So, are you almost done with your work? Do you still have a lot to do tomorrow?” I asked, changing the subject once again. As was always the case when he talked about his work, Simon’s eyes lit up. He described the shots he still needed of the Roman-style aqueduct in town.

“I wish we had time to go scuba diving. I hate that we ran out of time.” I frowned.

“Again, something that would be solved if you stayed here with me.” He frowned back, making a big deal of mimicking my eyebrows.

“Again, some of us have nine-to-five jobs. I have to get home!”

“Home, right. You know there’s gonna be a firing squad to face when we get home. Everyone is going to want to know what happened here between us,” he said seriously.

“I know. We’ll handle it.” I cringed at the grilling I’d receive from the girls, to say nothing of Jillian. I wonder if a kitchen blowjob was what she had in mind when she said take care of him in Spain.

“We?”

“What? We what?” I asked.

“I could we with you.” He smiled.

“Aren’t we already we-ing?”

“Yeah, we’re we-ing on vacation. It’s quite a different thing to be we-ing back home, in the real world. I travel all the time, and that takes its toll on the we unit,” he said, his brow knit together.

It took all my power, all of it, not to make a joke about the we(e) unit.

“Simon, chill. I know you travel. I’m well aware. Keep bringing me pretty things from faraway places, and this girl has no problem with your we, okay?” I patted his hand.

“Pretty things I can do. Guaranteed.”

“Speaking of, where are you off to next?”

“I’ll be home for a few weeks, and then I’m headed down south for a bit.”

“Down south? As in LA?”

“No, a bit more south.”

“San Diego?”

“Souther.”

“Stanford educated, right? Where are you going?”

“Promise you won’t be mad?”

“Spit it out, Simon.”

“Peru. The Andes. More specifically, Machu Picchu.”

“What? Oh, man, that’s it. I officially hate you. I’ll be in San Francisco, planning rich people’s Christmas trees, and you get to go there?”

“I’ll send you a postcard?” He looked like a kid trying to get out of trouble. “Besides, I don’t know what you’re so pissy about. You love your job, Caroline. Don’t even try to tell me you don’t.”

“Yeah, I love my job, but right now I wish I was headed south.” I huffed, snatching my feet away.

“Well, if you want to head south, I can think of something—”

I placed my hand in front of his mouth. “No way, buddy. I’m not machuuing your pichu now. Huh-uh,” I stated firmly, not wavering one bit when he began pressing open mouth kisses against my palm. Not one little bit…

“Caroline,” he whispered against my hand.

“Yes?”

“One day,” he began, removing my hand and leaving tiny kisses up the inside of my arm. “One day…” Kiss. “I promise…” Kiss kiss. “To bring you…” Kiss. “And my woo…” Kiss kiss. “To Peru,” he finished, now kneeling in front of me and dragging his mouth across my shoulder, peeling the fabric away to linger along my collarbone, his lips making me hot and shivery.

“You wanna woo me in Peru?” I asked, my voice high and stupid and not fooling him for a second. He knew exactly how he was affecting me.

“True.” His fingers tangled in my hair and brought my mouth to his. I tried for a second to come up with something that rhymed with true, but I gave up and kissed him back with all I had. And so, I let him make out with me on the terrace, overlooking the ocean. Which was…blue. Ahem.

All week long, we’d been seeing signs of a festival coming together around town. It started tonight, as if celebrating my departure, and we were headed out to dinner, to somewhere considerably more fancy than the places we’d been eating all week. I’d discovered Simon and I were very similar in many of our tastes. I was all for getting dressed up from time to time, but I much preferred smaller, casual places, as did he. So tonight, getting dressed up and going out someplace a little fancy, and then maybe hitting the festival, had a special feel to it. I was definitely looking forward to this evening, in more ways than one.

They say when a soldier loses a leg in battle, sometimes, late at night, he can still feel twinges of that leg—phantom pain, they call it. I lost my O in battle, the battle of Cory Weinstein—that machine-gun f**ker—and I was still feeling the aftershocks. And by aftershocks I mean nothing at all. But there was an end in sight. I’d been feeling twinges of the phantom O all week long, and I was very much looking forward to her return later this evening. The Return of the O. Of course I would see it as a title of some kind of action film in my head—but truly, if she was returning, I would capitalize anything. Any Thing.

Because tonight, sports fans, I was gonna get me some. Not to put too fine a point on it, I was ready for some serious Simon Wang.

I ran my fingers through my hair once more, noticing how the strong sun had brought out the natural honey tones. I smoothed the front of my dress, white linen with a little swing to the skirt. I paired it with some turquoise jewelry I’d bought in town and little snakeskin sandals. I was the most dressed up I’d been all week, and—undercurrent of nerves aside—feeling pretty good. I took one last look at myself in the mirror, noticing that my cheeks were pretty pink, and I hadn’t even added blush tonight.