The Love Hotel

He was stirring. This made Rochelle even more nervous. What was he going to say when he woke up? Was he going to be angry with her? Was he going to say something mean or make her feel like she had done the wrong thing by sleeping with him? She sincerely hoped that this would not be the case. She sincerely hoped that he would think about last night with the same fondness that she was thinking about it with.

Rochelle then started to wonder why she was getting so worried. She had no reason to, after all. They were two adults that had had s*x with each other, there was absolutely no reason for either of them to feel like they had done anything remotely wrong. Rochelle had not taken advantage of him in any way, and he had not done anything like this for her. She was not going to ask him for anything now, either, she was not going to ask him for special treatment just because they had had s*x with each other.

She just hoped that he would see it that way. She hoped that he would be smart enough to realize that he had no reason to worry about the reasons that she had had s*x with him. Rochelle realized that she was so afraid of how he was going to react because she was used to Seth. She was used to being with a man that made everything that happened somehow her fault. She was used to a man who only knew how to get out of situations by putting all of the blame on her.

Rochelle looked at Bradley. He stirred and slowly opened his eyes. “Hi,” said Rochelle.

“Hey,” said Bradley.

He got up and looked around. “I… I am sorry. I did not mean to… I mean… I hope you don’t think that I have taken advantage of you in some way,” he said.

Rochelle was surprised. He wasn’t mad at her at all. Far from it. He was worried that he had somehow done something to offend her, that he had somehow ruined his chance to actually be with her properly. It flattered her a little. It made her feel like she was special in some way, special enough that a man would want the first time he experienced her body to be something special, something else.

“Not at all,” said Rochelle, “why would you say that?”

“Well… because I am a prospective employer,” said Bradley. “And I am going to be paying you a lot of money. I… I hope you don’t think that I’m going to be expecting things like this because I won’t, I swear. This was… something else. It was not motivated by any of that, I swear.”

“Bradley,” said Rochelle, “I was honestly afraid that you were going to think that I took advantage of the situation. I was afraid that you might think that I was trying to seduce you so that I might get more payment or that you would be more inclined to be lenient towards me while I am in your employ.”

“Well,” said Bradley. “This is quite the mix up, wouldn’t you agree?”

“I would,” said Rochelle, “it certainly is an extremely awkward situation to be in.”

They were both silent for a moment. Neither of them really knew what to say, and there were a number of reasons for this. One reason was that they both were about to become professionally involved, and it was very wrong for two people that were professionally involved to be sleeping with each other. It was not the kind of thing that you were supposed to do because it could end up causing a great deal of problems when the actual professional aspect of the relationship had come into play, when it was time to divorce your feelings from the task at hand.

The other reason that they were so reluctant to feel what they were feeling, why they were so confused about the deluge of emotions that they were being assaulted with, was that they really enjoyed last night. They had enjoyed it more than the primal lust, the primal s*xual enjoyment that comes from entering one another in such a way. It had been a supremely emotional moment, a moment in which both of them had been naked in front of each other, and in which each of them had allowed the other to be completely and utterly vulnerable and had accepted each other in these moments of intimacy and vulnerability.

It was all about what they wanted and what they needed to do. These two aspects of themselves at war with each other. Which was right, which was wrong? Would they ever even know?

Rochelle decided that she was going to have to take charge here. This job was a way for her to get on her feet. This job was a way for her to start depending on herself for once, something that she had not been able to do for a very long time. She had been looking forward to the independence that came with being single and she did not think that she was ready to put herself in that level of vulnerability again. She didn’t think that anything she had ever done had been important, and she had wanted to start doing things that would at the very least seem important to her. It seemed important to feel this way. It seemed important to be able to look at herself and see what she truly was, not what somebody else wanted or expected her to be.

She did not know how to feel, but she did know what to do. In order to feel the way that she truly wanted to feel, she was going to have to make a sacrifice. She was going to have to sacrifice this love that she was feeling, this utter sensation of connectedness that she was feeling with another human being, in order to maintain her sense of agency, in order to preserve the feeling of independence and power that she had gotten after dumping Seth.

In short, she was simply not ready to trust again, and so she did what she had to do. She told Bradley what she had to say and what he needed to hear so that neither of them would end up getting hurt. It was a sad thing to have to do but the inertia of history was far too great. It was the sort of inertia that pushed you past the point of no return, or rather it would if you were not wary of it, and did not actively try to make it so that you did not get pulled into it in any way. Rochelle was taking matters into her own hands, because she was a new person now. She was no longer the person that failed to feel what she had to feel or do what she had to do. She was the type of person that lived the life that she wanted to live now andshe was proud of this fact, and absolutely nothing was going to make her let it go no matter how sweet the alternative seemed. She was going to be the new Rochelle in this situation much like every other. And she was going to be happy. This was, above all, what she was determined to do. She was determined to be as happy as she could possibly be.

“Bradley,” said Rochelle, “last night was incredible. It really was. It… I don’t think I have ever felt that way before. I don’t think I have ever felt that much… attraction. There are so many words that might end up describing how I felt with you but none of them seem adequate right now so suffice it to say that last night was incredibly special to me. But I don’t think it should happen again. I just got out of a relationship in which I got my heart broken into a million pieces. I just got out of something that was very bad for me, something that ended up causing me a great deal of grief. And I am just not ready to put myself in that position again, do you know what I mean?