I've been in plenty of airplanes in my life, but I hadn't set foot in a helicopter before tonight and didn't expect to. Helicopters in my Los Angeles life are associated with the LAPD airship buzzing my neighborhood from time to time, and news choppers circling when there's a major event somewhere in the vicinity. It wouldn't have occurred to me to book a city tour in one, nor was I aware night time views of Las Vegas from one were a thing until Phoenix filled me in on the reservation he made and drove us the short distance up the Strip to where the helicopter and its pilot awaited us.
While I'm a pro at airplane take-offs, the straight vertical climb of the helicopter is a new experience for me. The feeling of being pushed down into my seat causes a twirling in my stomach, and I close my eyes until it subsides. When I open them again, my breath catches at the sparkling sea of lights below me that stretch on for miles. The view of Las Vegas from a helicopter is infinitely more dazzling and panoramic than it is from a tiny airplane window, and I understand now how the city's lights are visible from space.
"That's the Sphere," I say, when I spy the enormous orb that's currently projecting images of glowing flames. Close by, an array of color-shifting lights illuminate the High Roller Ferris wheel. "Everything is so beautiful."
I turn my head to glance at Phoenix. He must have heard me through his headset, because he also shifts his gaze from the scene outside of the helicopter to me.
"Everything really is," he agrees. Especially you, he mouths, silent this time so only I catch the words. The same adoring look I saw in his eyes earlier this evening makes another appearance now.
Pure happiness melts away any remaining thoughts I had about what happened at Nebula tonight. Forget about Torin's irritation, and forget about whatever is going on between Ava and Nash. All that exists for me right now are the mesmerizing city panoramas, the almost weightless sensation I have as we soar over the Strip, my joy at being able to do this, and Phoenix.
"Look at the Strat tower from here," I marvel. It's the tallest observation tower in the United States, and the top of it is right outside the window. Off in the distance, I also glimpse the much shorter Eiffel Tower half-scale replica at Paris Hotel and point at it. "Look how it almost seems to shimmer. Can you imagine what the real one must look like from a helicopter?"
"We'll find out one day," Phoenix vows. "We'll go there and to the canals in Venice."
Our pilot probably thinks we're bantering about future plans, but the reminder of the canals brings me back to our conversation about Venice last weekend, and what Phoenix said about wishing he'd taken me. He sounds equally serious about a trip for him and me that also includes Paris. It isn't his vision of us traveling together in Europe on a romantic getaway that has me suddenly fumbling for words. It's the repeated promise within it that he's here for the long term this time and sees this as possible for us.
By the time we're back on the ground and on our way to where we parked, I'm enamored with life again. And when we're on the road and an ethereal song with a hypnotic beat plays through the speakers after Phoenix taps the center console a few times, I find myself sinking into my seat, relaxing as I listen. The music is a beat-driven dreamscape, but the lyrics are what capture my attention. It's as though the female vocalist has plucked some of the words she sings from my heart and mind. The others seem like they could be Phoenix speaking, based on things we've talked about since reconciling.
"What song is this?" I ask after several verses.
"'Move into Me' by Bad Sounds and Broods."
The immediate answer and his familiarity with it give me pause. Is the song a coincidence, or is it something he's given thought to and intentionally played for me? I study him in my peripheral vision.
"Is this also on the new playlist?" I inquire after a moment.
"If it passed the test run and you like it."
"It did."
I'm still mulling over the lyrics when the melody fades out and "Lovesong" by The Cure begins to play. The flip-flop in my stomach this time isn't from ascending high up in the air, like it was at the start of the helicopter ride, but at the memory the song evokes of a cozy weekend morning, years ago, cooking breakfast together in the kitchen of my old apartment. The same song came on the radio then as I set up the coffee maker. Phoenix put his arms around me and murmured the lyrics in my ear. Neither of us heard the toaster pop or ate the slices of bread that sat there long after the song was over, and the coffee maker remained off for another couple of hours as we lost ourselves in one another.
Did he remember that? Is that why he chose this song? We were so in love then, and recalling it now floods me with emotion. I swallow hard, attempting to clear the thickness in my throat, and am finally composed enough to use my voice again when he eases the vehicle to a stop at a red light.
"Nix?" I wait until he looks at me.
"Yeah?" The tenderness in his voice and in his eyes tells me he has the same memory, and that I'm interpreting this song the way he meant for me to.
"Same."
I will always love you.
Neither of us has uttered the words we used to speak all the time, but I don't think I could feel more open-hearted and vulnerable even if that's what I had said. The light turns green, but the road is empty and Phoenix doesn't start driving again until after he's reached for my hand and held it in his for a few seconds.
I realize then that there are no guardrails left standing around my heart. Maybe there never were. I'm in this with all of me, a trust fall that will either end in happily ever after or devastation, with no option in between. I want to believe he feels this at the same depth I do. The lengths he's gone to with traveling to see me, paying for my flight here, the flowers, the birthday dinner cruise, the candlelight concert, the helicopter ride, the new playlist, his attentive and sweet phone calls and texts, and putting things out in the open with Torin, give me every reason to think he's also all in. It's only a matter of us definitively saying it, but a conversation about our relationship status isn't something I'm going to start while we're driving.
We'll be home soon, though. Then it will just be him and me, with no focus on navigating a vehicle or on anything else but each other.
I don't mention what's on my mind when we park in the driveway about ten minutes later. The words are still stuck inside of me when we're in the house and he asks me if I'm tired at all, or if I'm hungry, or if there's anything I need. But everything I want to say still lingers at the forefront of my mind after we've gone upstairs and I've exchanged my night-out-in-Vegas clothes for a silky sleep camisole and shorts, and as I sit upright in bed, waiting for Phoenix to join me there.
I'm keyed up about something that's nothing more than a formality—it's only words and a relationship label, really—but try telling that to a heart that's partly terrified about being wide open again after hiding behind fortress walls for so many years. Logically, I know it doesn't change much beyond what the two of us have already said with actions, and I need to relax. So I roll my shoulders backwards a couple of times, and then I tilt my head forward and slowly move it from side to side in a semicircle, trying to stretch out some of the taut muscles in my shoulders and neck.
I stop when the mattress shifts and Phoenix's fingertips graze my neck. It's a familiar action, one that he used to do to silently ask if I wanted a neck or shoulder rub after I spent long hours hunched over a keyboard at the job I had in those days, and during the evening and weekend hours when I worked on a manuscript. My way of answering was always to straighten my head up and lean into his hand, like I do now.
"Neck and shoulders only, or your back, too?" he asks.
"All of those, if you're willing. Thank you."
The choreography of how we do this is still nearly perfect. I change my position to sit cross-legged and turn so my back faces him, and he positions himself at the same time so he's behind me and able to use both of his hands to work on the knots in my muscles.
"Let me know if there are places you don't want to be touched."
He might mean this in the context of the back rub, but I hear it as a request for consent. Perhaps that's because this sometimes used to lead to something more, or because we're about to spend the first of three nights together, and this time is an entirely different situation than when I stayed over in Laguna Beach.
"You're good. I'm trusting you with all of me." My heart pounds as I say this, and it continues when the kneading motion of fingers pauses for a moment. Does he understand just how much I mean what I said? Part of me wants to spill my guts now and put everything out there, but I again hold back, focusing instead on the brush of his hands over my skin.
His fingers find the spot on my shoulder that always gives me the most trouble, as if he's magnetized to it or somehow remembers. I don't know how he could after all this time, but he also seems to recall exactly what to do to get it to uncoil and release.
"Remind me why you didn't go pro with this?" I keep my tone light and joking. The question is as much to pull myself out of my head as it is to break the silence that's settled over us.
"It was some pipe dream I had about an acting career," he says, his tone matching mine. "That, and you're the only one I ever want to do this with." His last sentence sounds more solemn.
"Sounds like a pretty exclusive client list."
"It is." His breath tickles the back of my neck, and then his lips are light as a feather against my skin. At the same time, his hands slide forward over the top of my ribcage, and his fingers brush ever-so-softly along the underside of my breasts.
It's innocent, but it's also sensual enough for my pulse to pick up the tempo. Awareness stirs in certain places deep inside of me when his thumbs trace the outer curves of my chest, and when his mouth works its way up the side of my neck, and then to my earlobe. He knows exactly what he's doing, but I don't mind.
No matter what he alleged last weekend about not wanting to have the geographic distance between us if or when touches and making out go past that to steamier foreplay, and then to us making love, we've been here before. It's his enticing game of catch and release; an intentional slow burn where he brings me to the edges of arousal and then retreats. It's a caress here, but not there, as his mouth lingers on my skin. It starts with my neck, just as it has now. In a different phase of our lives, after the declarations of commitment and the boyfriend-and-girlfriend labels on what we were, it continued north of there, with him purposely skirting around the sensitive places until the ache of anticipation threatened to overpower us both.
Will it go that far tonight? If I know him, and I think I do, he won't make a move on me beyond the fleeting touches and more surface levels of making out until we've defined our relationship, even though I'm staying here with him all weekend and sleeping in his bed. He didn't the last time around.
Almost as soon as I have this thought, his hands return to my shoulders and there's space between us again, as if the interlude was only a figment of my imagination. On impulse, I reach for his hands, covering them with mine.
"Is it too soon to talk about what we are?" For the nerves I battled ahead of voicing this question, I sound astonishingly calm asking it.
"It's not too soon if you're ready to. I didn't want to rush you." He doesn't seem caught off guard. If anything, he sounds like he's thought about this, knows what he wants to say, and has been holding back until the time was right.
I nod, then let go of his hands so I can reposition myself. Once I'm facing him, I speak again. "I don't want to assume anything, but I get the sense you aren't seeing anyone else right now?"
"I'm not." His hand settles on my knee, and he gazes into my eyes. "And so there aren't any questions about how I feel, I don't want to see anybody else but you."
"I don't want to, either, and I haven't been. It's only you." I touch the side of his face, then run my fingers along his jaw. He takes a page from my book, turning his head to kiss my palm.
"It's always been you," he says, looking directly into my eyes again. "Maybe I don't have the right to say that given what I did, but it's true. It will always be you."
As I lean forward into his waiting arms, and as he holds me close to him, I no longer care about what was. From this point forward, it's only about what is and what will be.
"I believe you," I whisper to him. And I do.
༺☆༻ ༺☆༻ ༺☆༻
🥹🤧 Night one in Vegas has been pretty-action packed and significant for these two, wouldn't you say? I wonder what nights two and three will have in store?🤔
If you aren't familiar with the songs mentioned in the chapter, it helps to listen to them or to read the lyrics. I'm including links to the songs on Spotify and to the lyrics for each here.
For those who have been waiting for this chapter, thank you so much for your patience! I tried to write it on flights to and from Romania a couple of weeks ago, but something about it wasn't coming together the way I wanted it to. After I got back to LA, I was in my car and "Lovesong" by The Cure came on the radio. It immediately gave me the missing pieces I needed. I hope you've enjoyed the result of that inspiration.