Revolutions Per Minute

The National Seating & Ergonomics Expo had sold out every hotel room in Reno, which was how Nora Castellanos, 31, top regional account manager at Lumbar Logic Office Furniture, ended up standing at the front desk of the Silver Spur Casino & Resort beside the one man she'd sworn to outsell until one of them died.

"There's been a little mix-up," said the clerk, whose name tag read BRANDY and whose smile was doing heroic work. "Corporate booked one room under Pike-Castellanos. The system read it as a married couple."

Owen Pike, 33, second-best regional account manager at Lumbar Logic and owner of an infuriating jaw, leaned on the counter. "Second-best" was Nora's phrase, not the company's. The company said "co-leads." Nora said a lot of things in her head.

"So put us in two rooms," Owen said.

"We have zero rooms." Brandy slid over two key cards. "Except this one. The Eternal Flame Honeymoon Suite. Complimentary upgrade. Congratulations."

"We're not—" Nora started.

"Thank you so much," Owen said, and took the keys.

---

The Eternal Flame Honeymoon Suite was red. Red carpet, red velvet drapes, a red Jacuzzi tub in the middle of the room like a crime scene with jets. Mirrored ceiling. And in the center, on a carpeted platform, a heart-shaped bed the size of a small boat.

It was turning.

Slowly. Majestically. About one full revolution every four minutes, like a rotisserie chicken that had made it big in Vegas and then moved to Reno for the lower cost of living.

"No," Nora said.

Owen found a laminated card on the nightstand, which was also rotating, since it was bolted to the bed. "'The Eternal Flame Rotating Love Bed,'" he read, walking alongside it to keep up. "'For couples who want their passion to never stop.' There's a switch."

He flipped it. A cheerful chime. The bed kept turning.

He called the front desk on speaker. Brandy said maintenance knew the switch was "a little stuck" and someone could look at it Tuesday.

"It's Thursday," Nora said.

"Love doesn't keep a calendar, ma'am," Brandy said, and hung up.

---

They lasted until eleven p.m. on professional hostility.

Nora built a pillow wall down the middle of the heart. Owen claimed the pillow wall violated the spirit of the bed. Nora said the bed had no spirit, only a motor. Owen said that was what people said about her, and she threw a decorative throw pillow shaped like a pair of lips at his head, and he caught it, and he grinned, and something low in her stomach did a slow, traitorous revolution of its own.

That was the problem with Owen. For three years he'd been the guy who took the last parking spot, who quoted her own pitch back to her in meetings, who once beat her to the Henderson Dental account by bringing the receptionist a lemon loaf. He was smug and quick and he smelled like cedar and he looked at her across conference tables like he was reading the fine print.

She hated him. Mostly. In a way that had started to feel like a full-time job.

They lay down on opposite sides of the pillow wall in the dark. The motor hummed. Neon from the Strip—Reno's modest, slightly tired Strip—slid across the mirrored ceiling, and in the mirror she could see both of them: her in a faded Lumbar Logic softball T-shirt, him on his back in a gray tee with one arm behind his head, both staring up, pretending not to stare at each other.

"I'm getting seasick," Owen said.

"It's four minutes per rotation. A toddler could handle it."

"A toddler would be crying. A toddler would be right."

She laughed. She didn't mean to. It came out of her like a hiccup and then it kept going, and he started laughing too, the real kind, the kind she'd never heard from him in a meeting, and somewhere in there the pillow wall slumped over like it had given up.

When she stopped laughing, his face was right there. Close enough that she could see a small scar on his chin.

"Can I tell you something?" he said quietly. "And you can never use it in a quarterly review."

"No promises."

"The lemon loaf was your idea. You mentioned it at the holiday party, how Henderson's receptionist loved baked goods. I stole it because I wanted you to notice me." He swallowed. "Which is a deranged strategy. I'm aware."

Nora stared at him. The bed carried them past the window, then past the Jacuzzi, then past the window again.

"I noticed you," she said. "I've been noticing you for three years. It's exhausting."

"Yeah?"

"You have a very irritating mouth."

"Irritating how?"

She answered by kissing it.

---

It started careful, a question more than an answer. His hand came up to her jaw, light, like he was giving her room to pull back. She didn't. She pressed closer, and he made a sound against her lips, low and surprised, and the kiss went from question to argument—the good kind, the kind where both of them were winning.

"Is this okay?" he murmured, his fingers at the hem of her shirt.

"If you stop now, I'm reporting you to HR for false advertising."

"That's a yes?"

"That's a yes, Owen."

He pulled the shirt over her head. She tugged at his, and he laughed into her neck when it got stuck on his ears, and then there was nothing between them but warm skin and the slow, ridiculous turning of the room. In the mirror above, she watched his mouth travel down her collarbone, her sternum, lower, and then she stopped watching and just felt—his hands sure on her hips, his breath hot against the inside of her thigh, the way he paid attention, the way he listened to every hitch in her breathing like it was the most important pitch meeting of his life.

When she came apart, it was with her fingers in his hair and his name in her mouth, and she was fairly certain the bed had completed a full revolution during the process.

"Four minutes," she gasped. "That was four minutes."

"Do you time everything?"

"Come here."

He did. She rolled him onto his back and straddled him, plucking a condom from the nightstand basket helpfully labeled ETERNAL FLAME AMENITIES, and when she sank down onto him, slowly, they both went quiet. No banter. Just his hands on her waist and her palms flat on his chest and his eyes locked on hers like he was afraid she'd vanish if he blinked.

They found a rhythm. Then the bed found its own rhythm, completely unrelated to theirs, and every time the window came around the neon washed over his face, and she started laughing again, breathless, and he laughed too, pulling her down to kiss him, and it was the least dignified and most honest sex of her life.

Afterward they lay tangled in the middle of the heart, the lip pillow somewhere on the floor, the room still turning.

"So," Owen said. "Co-leads?"

"Don't push it."

---

At 7:40 the next morning, Brandy knocked to deliver the complimentary Honeymoon Breakfast, which turned out to be two mimosas and a heart-shaped waffle. Owen answered the door in a hotel robe. Nora was already at her laptop, typing.

"What are you doing?" he asked.

"Leaving a review."

He read over her shoulder.

Eternal Flame Honeymoon Suite — ★★★★★. The bed does not stop. You will not want it to. Arrived as rivals, leaving as a problem for HR. Would spin again.

Under "Traveled with," she'd selected: Coworker (it's complicated).

Owen kissed the top of her head. "You realize maintenance doesn't come until Tuesday."

Nora hit submit. "Then I guess we're extending."