Don't Get It Twisted, page 13
The alarm sounded again while they were in the shower, but Claire didn’t seem rushed as they toweled off, only occasionally glancing at the time on her phone as she wiped droplets of water away from Haley’s back and between her legs. She led Haley back into the bedroom and gathered their clothes.
Haley had been undressed before, but no one had ever re-dressed her, and the familiar intimacy of the gesture made Haley melt more than the three orgasms Claire had already teased from her. Black lace sliding back up her legs, Claire’s fingers deftly smoothing the waistband flat over Haley’s hips before following with the jean shorts. Re-buttoning her button, re-clasping her bra, offering a sense of closure to the sacred carnal ritual.
“My ride is almost here,” Claire said sadly, looking at her phone again. The words felt like a punch to Haley’s gut.
“I thought I was driving you back,” she said, hurt that Claire didn’t want to spend more time with her and confused at where she had gone wrong.
“If you drive me to the airport, then I’ll have to kiss you goodbye,” Claire said, pushing Haley’s hair out of her face and cradling her cheek. “If I kiss you goodbye, I won’t be able to stop, and then I’ll miss my flight. So we need to do it now, and then I have to go.”
“When will I see you again?” Haley was afraid to hear the answer, because if it was never she wouldn’t be able to let Claire go.
“Soon.” Claire brushed a finger over Haley’s swollen lips. “We’ll figure it out.” And then she was gone, swept away in an Uber with nothing but vague promises of an undetermined future.
Haley walked back into the bedroom to pick up her belt—the one piece of clothing Claire hadn’t returned to her body—from the floor.
Chapter Nineteen
Have a safe flight, let me know when you get home.
The text from Haley came in right as the plane doors were closing. Claire smiled to herself. Even if Sacramento hadn’t gone exactly as planned, it had all been worth it for the time she’d gotten to spend with Haley.
Her hair was still slightly damp and smelled like Haley’s shampoo, a coconut and rain reminder of a whirlwind afternoon she would never forget. Everything about Haley was intoxicating—her scent, her taste, the way she moaned Claire’s name and clung to her as she came, making Claire feel like the winner of a prize she didn’t quite deserve. Leaving Tulsa was harder than Claire had expected, and even the five hour flight felt like too long to go without talking to her.
Guilt still nibbled away somewhere deep beneath the warmth of satisfied bliss. She had crossed a professional line with no return for a potential relationship that had very little chance of working out. No matter how deeply she cared about Haley, she had to be realistic. Their lives were too different, and the hurt on Haley’s face when Claire had to leave again was just more proof she should have never let it go that far to begin with.
Haley deserved better than a hurried hookup. She deserved dinners and long walks, art museums and late nights wrapped in each other’s arms staring up at the stars. As painful as it was to let go of the most interesting, beautiful woman Claire had met, she knew she needed to end it. Even if her career wasn’t at stake, she couldn’t afford to regularly fly halfway across the country on the short notice Haley’s schedule demanded. The flight to Sacramento had already eaten more of her savings than she cared to admit.
But when she landed in Boston and the captain gave the okay to turn cellphones off airplane mode, another text from Haley was waiting.
Miss you already. I’m so glad you came.
Claire hit call without thinking.
“Are you home already?” Haley answered on the first ring.
“Not yet, I just landed.”
“I wish you could have stayed longer.”
“Next time,” Claire said, completely forgetting that she had already decided there couldn’t be a next time. “I feel awful for leaving like that, that isn’t normally my style.”
“I know.” Haley still sounded sad.
Claire hated herself for being the cause of that sadness. She wanted to get on the next flight back to Tulsa to comfort Haley, hold her and promise her all of her dreams. Instead, Claire was being shuffled off the plane and into the wide halls of Logan International, back towards her apartment and Tobey and work and all the things keeping her from Haley. But that conversation could wait for another day when their emotions weren’t fucked raw.
“Did you get dinner yet?” That was a safe topic.
“Yeah, I stopped at the barbecue place on the way to the office.”
Claire’s stomach clenched. “You’re working?” She asked. Was Noah there? She didn’t want to know.
“I needed to refilm the intro of a video on examples of velocity couplets on radar and what they look like in person. It’s supposed to come out tomorrow.”
God, she was sexy. Claire glanced up at the departures board to see if there was anything heading back to Tulsa that night, indulging in her irresponsible daydream for a second. “I can’t wait to watch it.”
“It might not be tomorrow. Something’s not right and I need Noah to look at it before I upload, but he’s still driving back from Missouri.”
“I can take a look if you send it to me,” Claire offered. “Maybe I can help.”
“I doubt it, I think the dates are mixed up on some of the footage and I want to cross-check with his. But I appreciate the offer.”
It already felt like Haley was pushing her away, and maybe Claire should have just told her then it wasn’t going to work between them. That Claire had nothing to offer her except a clean break and an apology for getting carried away in the passion of it all. But then Haley spoke before Claire could formulate the right sentences to soften the blow and found herself swept away again.
“Call me tomorrow?” She asked, with the pleading tone that melted all of Claire’s inhibition.
“Of course,” Claire promised, her heart already fluttering in anticipation of getting to talk to Haley again.
***
My office. Now.
Whitney’s email was a curt demand that sank Claire’s heart into the pit of her stomach. Even in text, there was no mistaking the tone. She was in trouble.
Carl was sitting in one of the expensive chairs in Whitney’s office, wearing the smug expression of a winner as Claire walked in. Whitney motioned for Claire to take the other, then rolled her office chair around from behind the desk. This time, there was no offer of refreshment or welcoming smile.
“I’ll cut right to the chase,” Whitney said, crossing her arms. “Carl has brought some new information to light. You’re off the storm chaser story.”
“What?” Claire asked, shocked. “Why?”
“We have strict standards of impartiality here,” Whitney said while Carl smirked. She turned her laptop screen, open to a screenshot of the Reddit post from weeks earlier when Claire and Haley had gone dancing in Tulsa. “I’m afraid we made a mistake in allowing this assignment to go to you. It’s clear you aren’t ready for investigative work at this magnitude, and I think you have a significant conflict of interest. So, Carl will be taking over from here. I’m sorry, Claire,” Whitney said, closing the laptop.
“That isn’t… It’s not what it looks like,” Claire protested, even though it was. “It was just to see what she does when she isn’t storm chasing, to tell a more complete story…”
“I might believe that if all your drafts didn’t sound head over heels in love.” Whitney raised an eyebrow as if she was daring Claire to challenge that. “Send your notes and tapes to Carl.”
Claire felt like her world was falling in, and the only thing she cared about was protecting Haley. “No,” she protested, not caring if it got her fired. She wasn’t giving him her notes. “I can be unbiased. Please, give me another chance.”
“You had your chance, Claire. You’re lucky you still have a job at the sports desk.”
Claire took a slow breath, trying to control her anger at the weasel of a man sitting next to her. It didn’t work. “He’s not impartial either. He hates her!”
“Carl is a senior reporter and has been with the Times for fourteen years. He’s proven he can handle himself with the professionalism required in this field. If you won’t send him your material, then I need you to hand over all your company equipment and passwords immediately and leave the premises.”
The final ultimatum hung in the stuffy office air as Claire frantically considered her options. Giving her notes to Carl felt like abandoning Haley to a rabid wolf, but she had rent to pay and Tobey to think about. She’d never expected journalism to be a lucrative career, but as long as she lived modestly she never had to worry about which bill to pay or whether she would have food for the rest of the month. Maybe she did care if she got fired.
“I’ll send it,” she whispered, unable to even look at Carl as she gave in. Betraying Haley hurt, but she couldn’t forget the promises she had made to herself when she left Pennsylvania with nothing but a scholarship and sheer determination to get her through. She had to put her own future first.
Figuring out how to tell Haley that Carl was taking over the article was a problem that Claire didn’t know how to confront. She was able to put it off the first night by missing Haley’s calls while she was at volleyball and pretending not to see her goodnight texts until the next morning. She avoided her the next day by working late on a story about a local senior bowling team that was competing in an international tournament, then called when she knew Haley would be at the boxing gym. The three days after that, Haley was on the road, and Claire didn’t want to tell her and distract her from chasing.
By the time a full week had passed, Claire had started to convince herself that maybe she had overreacted to everything and it wasn’t as big of a deal as she was making it. Whitney was right, Carl was a seasoned journalist. Surely he would do the story justice, and once it was published, Haley wouldn’t care who had written it at all. Besides, Claire was pretty sure there was nothing bad to say about Haley Hunter, even if Carl wanted to. When he read her notes and listened to the tapes, he would be as impressed as she was. He had to be.
Chapter Twenty
“Nine. Nice.” Noah said from his workstation across the office.
“What?” Haley asked. She was staring down at her phone. The last message she’d gotten from Claire was two days ago. That wasn’t like her.
“You just hit nine hundred thousand. And thirty-five thousand watching at peak on Thursday? Better than my stream.” He sounded equal parts annoyed and impressed.
“Get out of my analytics, Noah.”
“One of us has to care about your channel while you’re busy making sad faces at your phone.”
She rolled her eyes. “I am not. I was posting clips from yesterday.”
“Liar.”
“I just don’t understand why she’s avoiding me. Everything was great while she was here, and then she just stopped talking to me.”
“Some people do that once they get what they want.” Noah shrugged. “Or maybe she’s just working. I wouldn’t read too much into it.”
“Of course you wouldn’t,” Haley said. “By ‘some people’ you mean you. But Claire isn’t like that.”
“If you say so,” Noah grumbled, clearly disagreeing as he turned back to his desk.
Haley cracked a Red Bull as she tried to shake the doubts from her mind. Noah wasn’t helping. Maybe she really had misread everything and Claire wasn’t as interested as she thought. But it had all felt so real, so promising when they were together, and the near silence while they were apart was deafening.
I miss you, she typed, then erased. She didn’t want to seem too desperate, even though it was the truth.
I think you owe me some answers. She erased that, too. Too accusatory.
Haley set her phone down.
“Do you want to go for a run?”
“Not really,” Noah replied without turning around. “It’s about a hundred degrees out there and I’m trying to figure something out.”
“Figure what out?”
“How I can make this collaboration with Fi work next week and still make it to the lake Sunday for Ash’s grad party.”
“They finished med school?”
“Yeah, and you know I can’t miss it. Dad’s hauling out the pontoon, I’m supposed to bring thirty pounds of brisket to smoke.”
“So tell Fi you can’t do the collab.”
“It’s a charity stream for a STEM camp and I’ll look like a dick if I cancel now. It’s been scheduled for months.”
“I’ll go,” Haley offered. Fiona Does Physics was one of the biggest science channels out there, and the exposure would benefit her more than Noah, anyway. Which was probably why she hadn’t been invited. “When is it?”
“Next Saturday. So as long as I got to the lake by midnight, the brisket could get eighteen hours before the party Sunday night. But I can’t find a flight that works.”
“Send me,” Haley pleaded. “At least find out if it’s an option.”
“Fine, I’ll call Fiona. But you just want a write-off reason to go to Boston.”
“Or maybe it was meant to be,” she said flippantly.
“You’re a scientist, I know you don’t believe in ‘meant to be,’” Noah scoffed, but then his tone turned serious. “Promise me something, though?”
“What?”
“If things aren’t working out with Claire, if it’s making you more unhappy than happy—let it go. Don’t let it get messy like it was with Ash or you’re just going to end up hurting yourself again.”
“I’ve grown up a lot since Ash.”
“I know you have. But I also know that when you love, you fight for it. And she’s not worth it.”
“I’m not in love. This is just casual.” Lies, lies, lies. Haley just wasn’t wired for casual, but anything else was too scary to consider.
She knew Noah could see right through her, but he didn’t push it anymore. “I’ll call Fi, then.”
***
“Hello?” Claire sounded tired and wary, but at least she had answered the phone.
“Are you okay?” Haley asked, concerned.
“Super busy, but I don’t want to talk about work,” Claire said quickly. “I just got home.”
There were a million questions Haley could think of to fill the awkward silence, but she was too afraid of the answers to voice them.
“I feel like it’s been forever since we talked,” she finally said, choosing the art of Midwestern subtlety to open the door for Claire to ease into the conversation about her sudden distance.
“I know, I’m sorry. Like I said, I’ve been busy.”
Haley still couldn’t shake the feeling Claire was being cagey about something. “Did you meet someone?” Or worse, what if Claire had been dating someone all along? Haley had never explicitly confirmed she was single, she’d just assumed. Oh, God. Was she the other woman?
Claire laughed, but it lacked the warmth of her usual chuckle. “No. Definitely not.”
“Did I do something wrong?”
“No!” Claire sounded confused, and her tone changed. “No, Haley, you could never. I’ve just been really stressed with deadlines and shit lately, but not because of anything you did. I swear.”
Haley felt a downdraft of relief, and the storm of doubt and self-consciousness built up over the past days began to dissipate and Haley’s reassurances sunk it. She was overthinking things, as usual.
“Well, if you think you’re going to be less busy next weekend, I’m going to be near Boston for a couple of days for a charity thing.” Haley held her breath as she waited for Claire’s response, steeling herself for the possibility that Claire already had plans.
“I think I’m free next weekend.” Claire laughed again in disbelief. “What are the chances?”
“I might have pulled some strings to be there.” Haley took a deep breath and swallowed her fear. “I like you a lot and I want to see you again. I want to see where this goes.”
“Haley, I…” Claire trailed off with a sigh. “Same. All of it, same.”
Then why did she sound so sad about it? Sure, there were obstacles like the distance that even Haley couldn’t deny, but obstacles were made to be overcome. It might take a little more effort, effort Claire was more than worth it.
“But tell me more about this charity thing, what strings you pulled, all of it.”
Haley smiled, still proud of herself for how she’d manipulated her way in. “Well, there’s this physicist with like ten million followers who does a big fundraiser stream with a bunch of different STEM creators and all the donations raised over twelve hours go to give kids scholarships to summer camp.”
“That’s actually pretty cool.” Claire sounded impressed. “Using your fame for good.”
“Oh, I’m like, the least famous person there,” Haley said, cringing internally. She was trying not to think about how out of her league she was going to be, and if she’d seen the roster before volunteering, she might have just stayed in Tulsa. But Fiona seemed welcoming enough in the three minute chat they’d had before making the swap for Noah official, and it was definitely too late to back out.
“So it’s next Saturday?”
“Yeah, eleven to eleven, but my part should be done by three. I’m just doing a live Q&A about severe weather and then some sort of creator competition that she said I’d find out more about the day of, so we could meet up Saturday night?”
“I can’t wait,” Claire said, finally without the waver of hesitation that had been present since she picked up the phone.
After that, things seemed more normal, and they talked about the charity stream and Claire’s trivia team before Haley’s dinner delivery arrived and Claire excused herself to go watch—as she called them—her junk food shows.
Haley ate egg rolls and fried rice standing by the windows looking west over the river and Tulsa suburbs. She wished Claire was there to take in the view with her as lightning flashed in the distance. But they would be together again soon enough, and for the first time, it would be in Claire’s world. The thought of getting to see into her life more intimately for once sent a tingle of anticipation down Haley’s spine.
