You, Again(71)

They’re reflected in the windowpane, juxtaposed against the snowy scene outside. They could be a picture of any kind of couple: a one-night stand, friends with benefits, newlyweds, exes about to backslide. A dozen emotionally devastating scenarios unfurl in her mind.

“Is this okay?” he asks, grazing her arm with his knuckles so lightly, it raises goosebumps on her skin. Is it? What purpose is it serving besides digging this confusing hole even deeper?

Elsewhere in Manhattan, thousands of people are lying in bed with their partners, switching off lights, reading, cuddling, ignoring each other, having sex. Their hearts aren’t racing. Their mouths aren’t dry. They’re taking comfort in sharing a bed, not stacking up layers of anxiety like people playing a game of Speed.

A little montage of their friendship plays out in her mind’s eye, like an “In Memoriam” segment at an awards show. Is she really going to call him up on Wednesday night to watch a Kevin James movie after this? No. Half the city will be tainted with “walking around with Josh memories” when this goes awry.

“You don’t have to do all that. We’re just”—she glances down at her arm, swallowing hard—“getting it out of our systems.”

Josh stills his hand. “Are we?” He stares at their reflection, finding a way to indirectly look in her eyes even though she’s not facing him.

Ari can hear the thumping of her heartbeat over the muted ambient noise. Shoes scraping the pavement. Distant horns. The sound of breathing—either hers or Josh’s, she can’t really tell at this point.

Josh’s mouth brushes against her neck. She feels his left hand beneath the hem of her dress, drifting up between her thighs. Gentle. Deliberate. Practiced.

Ari turns to face him—to make a joke or play it off. But there’s no clever line at the ready. She has nothing to say. Because some random Hinge match will never look at her in this specific way that breaks her heart and melts it back together in the space of one breath.

He touches her face and she can see his eyes moving across everything—like he’s taking it all in again from this closer angle. There’s a little burst of tenderness, warming her chest, smoothing over sharp, painful edges. There aren’t any more layers to strip away. Just the slightest push and she’ll bruise.

The rattle of the furnace punctuates the quiet.

The kiss doesn’t come the way she’s expecting—just the soft, lingering press of his lips against her cheek.

She lets a tiny pleasurable prickle unfurl at the back of her neck. It feels like an admission. More, please.

Their lips touch once and part. And no, that’s clearly not enough because they meet again. And again. A little deeper, a little bolder every time, until they don’t separate at all and his hands tangle in her hair and they breathe each other in and—

Aside from the Ramble Incident, Ari hasn’t Kissed in a while. She’s lowercase kissed, the way you do when your date isn’t terrible and you feel like it would be rude not to. Usually, making out is mostly a box to be checked en route to some other activity.

But this feels urgent—like they wasted the last hour by not kissing on the train, on the walk, waiting for the elevator. His mouth meets the hollow of her throat and Ari tips her head back, hungry and dizzy with his tongue in her mouth and his fingers sliding over the flowery fabric of her dress, bunching it up in his fists.

Her heavy exhales sound inordinately loud in the quiet room.

“Can I take your dress off?” he mutters into her neck.

Ari nods, letting out some feral noise of assent, needing the last scrap of a barrier to fall away. Right now.

Out of the corner of her eye she can still see them reflected in the windowpane. It’s a nice picture. Now it doesn’t look like two depressives bonding over shared loneliness and coping mechanisms. They could be any normal Sunday couple. They could take trips to Bed, Bath, and Beyond and walk around the city holding hands and share boozy brunches and spend all afternoon in bed, checking items off their fuck-it lists.

You never know.

This goes wrong one hundred percent of the time—until the one time it doesn’t.



* * *





THE WALK TO the bedroom only takes about ten seconds, but it gives Josh a moment to turn over the Rubik’s Cube of the whole encounter and look at it from a new angle. To push aside the vague, formless dread that she might get up, run out of the room, and send a text from the elevator: Thanks for the sex.

It means something—crossing the mystical threshold into his space. Every step and gesture and piece of removed clothing and point of contact feels like moving deeper into the unknown.

Josh lowers her down onto his bed—it’s not the most fluid transition, but at the moment, it’s not like his body is capable of nuance.

Ari rolls over onto her stomach and he immediately misses seeing her face, getting that crucial bit of visual feedback. But it’s better to follow her lead and the caution tempers his desire to go fucking nuts. He drags his fingers down her back, over the delicate curve of her spine, observing every tiny manifestation of her nervous energy, examining tattoos he’d never realized she had.

He tries to quiet his brain, which is racing two or three minutes ahead, visualizing all the possibilities laid out in front of them: flashes of the most tantalizing mental porn he’s ever concocted.