Road Trip.

It’s hot, very hot. Inside the car, outside the car and inside her tummy. Syriana has just tried some wine that Remi had encouraged her to have. Remi, she laughs. What a funny sounding name the man she loved had. Remi. It meant something akin to ‘the stubborn one’ where she came from. But he was not headstrong, he was kind and sweet. She laughs again

“Glad to see you are having a good time,” Remi says.

Syriana was indeed enjoying herself. She had taken the afternoon off on a Thursday, the next day was a public holiday and the weekend was going to be heavenly. She was going to be spending it with the man she had been falling for online all those months. At 26, it was also her first road trip and to a popular tourist destination no less.

“Are we almost there?” she asks eagerly for the hundredth time.

He gently squeezes her knee. It is a gesture to assure her. However, thanks to the nerves, the wine and something else deeply animalistic it sends bolts of electricity to the rest of her body. She had scoured the internet endlessly for the right outfits for the trip that said to this man- I have been wanting you and I hope you do not think I am too needy. That is how she had spent her last month’s salary. Her efforts had paid off from the look he had given her when he had picked her up earlier that day.

She must have fallen asleep at some point because when she woke up there was darkness all around and the temperature had dropped. He had thrown on her his coat. It smelled so good, something expensive and foreign. The cologne was probably made from wild shrubs that grew on abandoned fields in the Westford countryside in England where Remi came from. She could only imagine.

“We are here.” And the car came to a halt.

She breathed a heavy sigh and surrendered her phone. As she shut it down, she noticed that she had no reception. It was an easy decision; she did not need to talk to anyone else. He put their two phones together and opened the glove compartment. It was then that she caught a glimpse of a small gun. The cold menacing metal glistened in the car’s yellow driving lamp. Her breath caught. Guns were for bad people right? Had that been there the whole time, resting next to his passports and listening in on their conversations? He must have read her mind and gave her another reassuring squeeze, this time on her shoulder. All that did was send a cold shiver down her spine. When he suggested they go inside she agreed wordlessly, smacking on a smile that did not reach her eyes.

They were checked in pretty fast and their luggage taken up to their room as he had prearranged everything. She wanted to lie down, but he insisted on dinner at the restaurant. She enjoyed the small talk, watching the chef roast the game meat on a naked flame and the danger of lurking elephants and hyenas. She was feeling mellow and had forgotten about the gun when with his firm hand on the small of her back he led her to their room.

He swooped her off her feet as soon as the door was closed. Her mouth on his, his hands in her hair and around her waist all at once. She felt that consuming heat that many women had experienced before her. There was not a tearing or a gush of blood like she had read, only an insistent pressure that almost felt like pain. Sweet pain that went on and on until it stopped. She closes her eyes to savor the moment, and they both doze off.

In a distance she hears the buzzing of a phone in the direction their clothes had left them, then he slides his arm from underneath her neck and leaves the bed. She can make out his silhouetted frame through the translucent pane of the bathroom. He is speaking animatedly. She snickers. She must be dreaming. He couldn’t have broken the no-interruptions rule already, right? She drifts off again.

She had just woken and was standing by the window taking in the lush undisturbed greenery and the gentle way the sun played on the young leaves, thorns and flowers that were still dripping with fresh morning dew. Remi was wearing a fresh white shirt and checked blue shorts that showed off his hairy legs when he came back carrying a breakfast platter. It had everything she had said she loved.

She begged that he bathe with her, instead he offered to wash her. He scrubbed keenly paying attention to all the erogenous zones that made her moan a little. They kissed passionately intermittently. She found the starting and stopping torturous, like he wanted to make her suffer.

She did not know when the words escaped her as she was not aware that amidst everything, the thought still lingered in her mind.

“Who were you talking to last night on a phone you are not supposed to have?’

A backhanded slap landed squarely on her cheek. The force of it caught her off guard and her head hit the side of the ceramic tub. By the time she turned her head to react, the man had vanished. And so had any feelings of safety and love she felt for him.

She got out of the bath, grabbing a towel hanging nearby. She rummaged through her bag for some pills. Not for pain, but the kind that you took in case of an emergency where you felt you could not get pregnant. She had let him pour his seed inside of her last night because she had intended on getting pregnant and trapping him into marrying her. She swallowed that bright yellow pill a friend had insisted that she carry and swore not to breed for Remi the brute. She knew that it had not even been 24 hours so it would be more than effective. There was no way she would be stuck with the kind of man her father had been.