Great Big Beautiful Life(89)

I seriously doubt I’m making it another full week without having him. Something possesses me to blurt out as much, and his hand tenses on my thigh, his eyes darkening. I shift forward to the very edge of the bench, his hand crawling higher along my skin, heat pulsing through me to the rhythm of the crickets’ song.

Around the corner from us, the screen door bangs open, and Hayden’s fingers retreat abruptly, right in time for a cute twenty-something server with a topknot and Converse tennis shoes to bound out.

“Hey, y’all!” she says brightly, pulling her notepad from her black half apron. “My name’s Tru. What can I get started for ya?”

Hayden clears his throat. “Ice water.”

“I might need something a little stiffer,” I say, genuinely not aiming for a euphemism, but by his sudden cough, I know that’s how it’s received.

I turn a guileless smile up to Tru. “Actually, we might need a minute,” I say, because clearly neither of us is quite fit for public consumption just yet.

“Sure thing,” she says. “I’ll be back in five.”

Five minutes, I tell myself, should be enough to make my body stop throbbing.



* * *



? ? ?

After dinner, we don’t even make it inside the rental before we’re kissing, slipping hands beneath each other’s shirts, whispering into each other’s skin and mouths and hair. We pause long enough to fumble the lock open and stumble inside.

“We’re not going to have sex,” he tells me while his tongue is in the notch above my collarbone.

“We’re not?” I say, somewhere between alarm and complete disbelief.

He shakes his head and pushes me toward the surface nearest the front door—the kitchen counter. “Not tonight.” He scrapes my shirt up over me and tosses it aside before lifting me onto the counter.

“If you change your mind,” I say, reaching for him now, “let me know.” I throw his shirt over his shoulder, and then, as he’s moving in between my thighs, I set a hand to the middle of his warm chest, holding him off. “Let me see you first.”

His face screws up, and my heart clenches with the realization that he’s shy about his body. “You’re beautiful,” I tell him earnestly.

His gaze lifts, the hard lines of his face cast in sharp relief. This time when he steps in close, I reach for his waist and pull him nearer, our stomachs kissing as he eases me to the edge of the counter. His hands trail up the sides of my neck, then back down my chest, cupping me through my bra as our lips melt together and draw apart, our breath mingling.

I slip one hand into his waistband, and he groans as my fingers curl around him. The sound drags down my spine like a fingernail, and I arch into him. One of his hands smooths around my back, makes its way up to the clasp of my bra while the other brushes my skirt up my thighs and gently slides under me, the heel of his palm pressing into me.

I cry out, my free hand gripping the back of his neck, seeking something firm and steadying as I move myself against him.

My bra vanishes. His mouth connects with skin. Our breathing frays, our pulses racing as we chase the sensations mounting everywhere we’re connected. My chest aches with the need for more pressure, and I pitch myself forward, his mouth drawing me deeper. I gasp his name.

He pushes me back, the same way I did, one hand in the center of my chest, his splayed fingers nearly spanning the width of my rib cage.

He looks at me hungrily, eyes dark as the Atlantic beneath a new moon.

“Have you changed your mind yet?” I ask between breaths.

In answer, he pulls me by the hips off the counter, turns me so that my back presses into the cold steel of the refrigerator, and thrusts his knee between my thighs, his mouth descending on my throat and his palms raking up my body.

“Is that a yes?” I whisper. His hands pin themselves against my hips as he kneels on the tile in front of me, one hand bunching my skirt as the other tugs my underwear down.

He leans in, his breath warm and eyes tilted up to watch my reaction as he presses his mouth to me.

I forget all about the question. I forget all about every question that’s been haunting me. I forget my name. I forget how to control my body or the words rasping from my throat.

I forget everything that isn’t Hayden, isn’t this moment.



* * *



? ? ?

We drink decaf. We eat the chess pie I got from the grocery store’s bakery the other day. (Okay, mostly I eat it, but he has a couple of bites.) We try to work on our separate book proposals from our separate couches, and when that fails, try to play a game of Scrabble, and when that fails, we end up making out on the couch. And though mentally I really am trying to stop at making out, I find myself climbing down him, undoing his fly, drawing him into my mouth. His hand is gentle against the back of my head, the sounds emanating from him making my toes curl and thighs twinge all over again.

“God, Alice,” he gravels out. “I love this.”

I pull back. “Me too.”

His eyes flick down to me, heavy lidded, lust drunk. “You don’t have to say that.”

“I mean it,” I insist.

Even through the haze over his face, I catch a glimmer of skepticism.

It occurs to me then that in my effort to be positive, optimistic, and understanding, I might’ve made myself into an unreliable narrator of sorts, someone who can’t easily be trusted not to sugarcoat things.