As I walk back to the hotel, I recognize the Sauvage's car parked outside. I can see him in our room from the street. For the first time this vacation, HE is waiting for ME. I open the door to find him sitting on the bed dressed all in black. I'm wearing a black shirt and jeans, with my black cat rhinestone panties underneath. The ones that lined dried in his parents backyard.

He can’t get my clothes off quickly enough. The door is barely closed, and he has pulled me to the bed, burying his face in my chest. “I left Nana home” he manages to say between desperate kisses. This is what it is to be a parent, I think. Passionate embraces stolen during the afternoon. I should feel honored I suppose that he took this much time off, and yet I think we should have had every afternoon together. She’ll have him for the rest of vacation and, most likely, for the rest of his life. I had 13 days. Now down to one. In fact, by this time the following day I’ll be at the airport. My trip will soon enough be counted in hours and then minutes.

My mind keeps straying to my departure, even as he takes off my clothes. He has returned to being the lover he was in the beginning, more concerned with my pleasure than with his own. His attention to my body is slow and teasing. He kisses the sensitive points of hips and stomach. And now time is at a stand still, there is no vacation, no return trip, no suspicion about his sudden attention to my desire, there is just this suspended instance-my head thrown back feeling how slow time can become as his hand leisurely separates my legs and moves up my inner thigh. There's no one on the floor of the hotel now, so there is no need to be quite, no need to stifle a gasp or the cry of my orgasm.

We fall asleep entwined-him still in his black shirt and me in my black bra and black satin panties. Black on Black.