Page 133 of Hard Count
He handed Piper a strip of dark fabric. A blindfold.
Piper gave him a look.
“I want to surprise you. Put it on,” Noah smiled.
“Okay, just be gentle, I’ve been through a lot recently.”
Piper put on the blindfold.
Noah came around the car and opened Piper’s door.
He took Piper’s hand and guided him forward. A faint smell of sulfur drifted through the air. Steam brushed against his skin.
Noah stopped.
Piper could hear the sound of water moving over rocks below him and his own breathing.
“I’m going to take off your clothes, is that okay?” Noah whispered in Piper's ear.
“Why not,” Piper answered as Noah carefully removed each piece of his clothing, making sure to leave the blindfold on, until Piper was completely naked.
Noah slipped off his clothes, and eased Piper into the hot spring.
“Shit, it’s hot, I like it,” Piper said as his body was being immersed in the warm water.
Noah reached up and took off the blindfold.
They were both in a natural hot spring, completely naked, steam surrounding them in a white cloud.
Noah said, quietly, “Kristín knew a guy. We have it for as long as we want it. Fully private, so whatever we want to do.”
“This is the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me and you barely planned it.” Piper smiled.
Piper went quiet for a moment and grabbed his phone.
“I think we need a soundtrack.”
The first shimmering notes of Sia’sChandelierdrifted through the mineral steam.
“Figured it was appropriate.”
They both laughed.
The water was hot, not a hotel spa hot, not a sauna hot, but the thick mineral hot that felt like the earth was heating them from below rather than around, and Piper let out a long breath and Noah made a similar sound a second later, and they sank into the water to their shoulders.
The water moved around them. The steam came off and coated their bodies. The sky was a pale silver color. Noah was about a foot away, half-submerged, his hair wet, his eyes closed. Piper watched him.
He watched him for a while, and then the sky changed.
It was not sudden. It was the way a light came up in a theater, except the theater was the whole sky. A pale green ribbon moved across the black where the silver had been. It thickened. It shifted. A second ribbon joined it, lower, and the green deepened into a color Piper didn’t have a word for.
“Noah. Fuck, you know what that is?!”
Noah opened his eyes.
He looked up. The aurora borealis moved overhead in slow pulses, green and then a thread of pink, purple, green and blue at the edge, and the steam from the spring rose up into it and through it, and Piper exhaled.
Piper’s mind released all of it, Jayson, Riley Dane, Atlanta, Seattle rain, and Donna Ashton.
