“I’m sorry you were miserable,” Laurie said.
He nodded. “It sucked, but it ended. I told you it was kind of amicable, and that’s about as amicable as it gets.”
“And now you’re single again.”
“It seems so, yeah. Unless I want to hunt for a new dentist, I guess.”
“Poor you.”
“Yeah. Poor me.”
Pizza and beer turned out to be exactly what Laurie wanted as a celebratory dinner on the day she had pulled off what she hoped would be the most daring caper of her life. There were two pizza joints in Calcasset, and Laurie and Nick both preferred Olive & Mario’s, which had been downtown since 1980 and made a slightly spicier sauce than the newer and slicker Three Brothers, which had sixteen locations and was thus slightly less trustworthy. The only locations Olive & Mario’s had were the counter, the tables, the restroom, and the kitchen—and maybe the spot out front on the sidewalk where Mario and his brother sometimes sat in lawn chairs.
They handed the roll of paper towels back and forth, cleaning their hands and smacking grease onto the necks of their beers. And when they were full and a little buzzed, they decided to watch Ryan’s arc on Halls of Power. In only two episodes, his congressional aide had stolen a congressman’s documents, sold them to an opposing political operative, attended a state dinner, attempted to seduce the first woman president （President Hall, of course）， and died in a yacht explosion. Ryan was good; he had a curled lip and he looked sharp in a suit, and even Laurie wanted to throttle him after about ten minutes.
She put her hand on Nick’s knee when the first title sequence hit. He put his hand over hers. When a senator was stabbed in the leg during a failed coup attempt, she hid her face in Nick’s neck, and he wrapped his arm around her shoulders. By the end of the first of the two episodes, she was turned toward him with her knees pulled up and her head resting in the hollow under his jaw. By the time the state dinner rolled around, they were tangling and untangling their fingers, tracing each other’s palms. She was holding his hand and looking at the inside of his wrist, how pale and soft the skin was, and she kissed it and looked up into his eyes.
They did not see the yacht explode, because by then, they were stretched out on the couch, and she was on top of him, kissing him like he was exactly what he was: just the most delicious thing. His hand slid up her back under her shirt, and she muttered “mm-hmm” without meaning to, like she was appreciating a cupcake.
“Do you feel okay about this?” she asked as he traced her ear with his tongue.
“Very okay, do you feel okay?” he asked as she pressed herself closer.
“Yeah, I feel okay. Nothing we haven’t done before, right?”
He pulled back from her a couple of inches. “I’m a lot better at this than I was in high school, I promise.”
She nodded. “I know. Me too.” She kissed his jaw. “There’s just one thing, though.”
He froze. “What?”
“This couch isn’t mine. It’s part of the estate. It technically belongs to my mother and—”
“Oh, don’t tell me that,” he said, burying his forehead in her shoulder, and she laughed.
“No, no, I won’t say the m-word, but…I’m just saying, not on my aunt’s couch.”
He made a wary face. “Not in your aunt’s bed either, though. That’s a lot of years of…I mean, it’s a lot of years.”
“No, no. I’m not sleeping in there anyway. I’m sleeping in one of the guest rooms.” She pointed. “It’s that way.”
“So we’re going that way,” he said.
“We are,” she answered, and climbed off him.
She took his hand and they started toward the stairs. “Should we bring the duck?” he said.
“I don’t like it that much,” she said.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“I don’t believe in undressing other people,” Laurie said into Nick’s shoulder as he kissed her neck up against the inside of the bedroom door.
He stopped and pulled back. “Why not?”
“I believe in them being naked, don’t misunderstand me, I just think undressing other people is inefficient,” she said, digging her fingers into his hair. “I’ve spent twenty years trying to figure out how to smoothly take somebody else’s pants off, and I always wind up feeling like it would be easier without me.” She kissed his jaw. Then she stepped away and pulled her shirt over her head in one rapid motion, tossing it onto the chair in the corner of the room. “See? Easy peasy. Would that really be any better if you did it?”