The One That Got Away.

Working On The Plan

Jared stays holed up in the bathroom for what seems like an eternity. Kelly is starting to wonder if he is mad or what is going on when he finally comes out.

"Do you like sushi?" he asks her.

"Yeah." 

Without another word, he goes back into the bathroom and shuts the door.

About 30 minutes later, room service delivers sushi to the room. California rolls, dragon rolls, rainbow rolls, spicy tuna rolls, and a spider roll, with fresh fruit and green tea. She waits for about 10 minutes before she gets impatient and knocks on the bathroom door. He opens it.

"What," he says still holding the phone to his ear.

"Food is here."

"It's for you," he tells her.

"All of that?"

"Yes," he closes the door.

She opens her laptop to check her mail while eating, hoping Josh has emailed her. Nothing. Just her client confirming Wednesday's shoot. She scarfs down every single roll, then feels guilty she has not saved Jared any. He exits the bathroom, without his phone in his hand, finally.

"All gone," she says as she sips her tea.

"That's ok, it was for you. I know you always get hungry about an hour after you smoke. I want to make sure you eat. Forgive me if I lose track and get off schedule. You eat way more than I do," he says gruffly.

"Well, that's a thing to say!"

Jared pulls out his phone again. "Did you know there are 18 sex offenders in your neighborhood, six of them live on your street?"

"Yes, I know, that's why I stay at my studio when Josh is gone."

"There are 30 sex offenders within a mile of your studio."

"Ok?"

"Just wanted you to know." And with that, he disappears into the bathroom again.

Kelly smokes a cone and putzes around on her laptop for a while before she sees Jared again.

"Are you alright? You've been in the bathroom an awfully long time."

"Business," he says.

"Yeah, that's usually what happens in the bathroom."

"Work." 

"You don't have to hide in the bathroom. I'm not gonna eavesdrop."

"Are you hungry?"

"No, Jared, thank you, that was a lot of food. I'm good." She watches him text away on his phone, then she says, "You know if you have work to do maybe it would be better if I left."

He slowly looks up from his phone. He looks at Kelly for a moment and then he throws the phone on the overstuffed chair. In an instant, he grabs her and lifts her off the ground. He places her gently on the bed and lays on top of her with all his weight.

"Jared," she starts to say.

"I don't care that you're married," he says looking her in the eye, "I don't care that you care that you're married. I just don't care."

"Don't you care about Valeriya?"

"She has nothing to do with this."

"I think she does."

"I knew you before Josh," he says.

"Not really."

"Yeah, I did. If I would have approached you then-" he stops. He caresses her face and then very gently, very briefly kisses her neck. "I don't care if you're bored," he says lifting off of her and grabbing his phone again. "You're staying," he says definitively.  Then he starts texting on his phone again. 

Kelly is again dazed and a bit stunned. Every nerve in her body is alive and standing at attention. He hadn't even done anything and it left her in such a state. How could she ever resist him if he took it farther? She picks up her phone and texts Patrick. She asks about his date only to find out he had been stood up. She invites him to the hotel but he says he has to get up early for work. Her plans for a chaperone were not working out. She just hoped that Jared stayed on the phone until she fell asleep. 

Unbeknownst to Kelly, the "work" Jared was doing was his plan to keep her around. There were many details to work out for this to come to fruition. And then he had to factor Josh into it because he knew if he didn't include Josh somehow, Kelly was not going to be amenable to the plan.

He watches her out of the corner of his eye, lounging on the bed, smoking a cone, and doing a crossword puzzle on her phone. Jared had always bragged how he was a pro at delayed gratification but Kelly was making this extremely difficult. It makes him fear that gratification delayed would be gratification missed. He wants her to be as hooked on him as he is on her. She enchants him just by sitting there being herself.

As soon as she snuffs out her cone, he throws his phone down once again and crawls onto the bed. He perches on his knees in front of her. 

"You make me high, Kelly," he says to her.

"A contact buzz is a myth, you aren't getting high from this," she says in an eye-rolling tone of voice. 

He crawls closer to her, "I mean you, you make me high," he says putting his hand under her chin and guiding her towards him. He stops before their lips touch, he just lingers mere centimeters from her lips. He could feel her quiver slightly. He caresses her lips with his thumb. Kelly stiffens up and turns her head away. Jared buries his head between her neck and shoulder. He wraps his arms around her tightly.

"Why do you like me, Jared," she asks him quietly. "You don't even know me."

"I do know you and I love everything about you," he responds, nuzzling deeper into her. 

It was exactly -verbatim- what Josh had said to her when she met him and asked him the same question. What Jared didn't know, and what she wasn't going to tell him, was that she had been seeing someone when she first met Josh. She wasn't married to the guy and they had not even been intimate but Kelly considered it a pretty serious relationship. Josh didn't care. He was convinced he was in love with Kelly. 

"You do realize I love someone else, right?"

"I'm willing to work around that," Jared says, echoing Josh's words from years before. Like Josh then, and like Josh now, Jared was incredibly provocative. While they were both different looking, they were both sexy as fuck. She couldn't let lust ruin her life, however.

"If I had something better to do I wouldn't even be here with you right now. I'm only here because I'm bored," she lies.

"I know. But I'll take it. And I'll do whatever I must to spend time with you."

Kelly struggles out of his embrace so she can sit up, and say something she meant wholeheartedly, "There will be no threesomes. If you're thinking anything along those lines-"

Jared interrupts her with a chuckle, "No way, Kelly, no threesomes. I wouldn't share you if my life depended on it."

"No foursomes, either."

"Oh, now you're just being a prude," he jokes. He brings her back into his embrace and says softly, "When I have you, I'm going to have you all to myself." He means it.

"We'll see about that," she says, skeptical that he was going to 'have her' at all. If she just kept Josh in mind, she wouldn't be tempted to do something she knew she would regret. "You don't care about Josh, but I do. And what about Valeriya? If that's how you treat her, how would you treat me? Get what you want and to hell with everything else? Just gonna kick me to the curb after that, like you're doing to Valeriya?"

Jared doesn't want to let her in on even a hint of his plan to make her a permanent fixture in his life until all the details have been worked out, at least on his end. He was going to solidify this into an offer she couldn't refuse. And if she refused that plan, he would have a backup plan. And if she refused that one, he had Josh, he knew he could make Josh an offer he couldn't refuse. Giving Josh what he wanted would inadvertently get Jared what he wanted.