I think, This is a moment I will remember for the entire rest of my life. No matter what happens after this, I will file tonight under Happiness.
We go hunting for more beverages in the kitchen. Eden digs cookie dough out of the fridge and Alec leans back against the counter, pulling my back to his chest before reaching over and stealing a mound of cookie dough from her spoon. He takes a bite and feeds me some and then presses his cookie lips to my neck.
“Still weird,” Eden says as she spoons more out onto a baking sheet. But she doesn’t seem to be standing on shaky ground anymore. In fact, she says this teasingly, like it’s settled and sorted: Alec-and-Gigi is no longer weird.
But aren’t we? Isn’t this? We are count-on-one-hand days into this whatever-it-is-we’re-doing and not once have I felt like I’ve had to put on an act to impress him. Maybe that’s because I expect it to end, because we stated clearly today that it would—and cleanly. So why pretend? If he doesn’t like what he sees, then the worst thing that happens is it ends a little sooner than it would have otherwise. It’s not like I won’t be devastated either way—I will. I know that now.
We return to the living room with a plate of warm cookies and tea, and Eden turns on John Oliver. I sit on the couch, and before I can pull my legs up crisscrossed on the cushion, Alec sweetly invades my space, lying down with his head in my lap. He takes a bite from his cookie, chewing as he studies where he might take his next one, and on instinct my hand goes to his hair, combing it off his forehead. It feels like silk between my fingers, and I remember touching it when he made love to me in Seattle, when he kissed me between my legs only yesterday, when I swept it off his forehead today in the water.
He hums quietly, taking that second bite, and our eyes meet. “Want one?” he asks, even though I am perfectly capable of reaching the plate myself.
I shake my head. It’s a struggle to push away the world outside of this apartment, where the reality of him and our circumstances and the impossibility of an Us feels like a weight on my chest. Instead, I try to remember what it is that he wants, why he’s here. He’s here to just be a guy with his head in a girl’s lap.
Eden’s voice rises from where she’s lying on the floor. “Frank, how does someone like you get an entire day off on a trip like this? If something’s canceled, don’t they have a million other things waiting to take up your time?”
I can feel his nod on my lap. “I asked them not to reschedule me,” he says. “I really needed a day off. I haven’t had one in…” He pauses, thinking. “I don’t even remember the last time I didn’t have something scheduled.”
His first day off in who knows how long and he spent it with me. My heart feels too big for my body.
“Do your people know you’re with her?” she asks, tilting her head to me.
“No,” he says. “But they know I grew up around here. So they probably assume I’m seeing old friends.”
“Which you are,” I say.
He stares up at me, and another vine grows up inside me, wrapping around my wildly beating heart. “Which I am.”
Ten
I dig under the sink for a toothbrush for him, coming up to find him standing directly behind me. His smiling eyes meet mine in the mirror, and like this we brush our teeth, mouths foamy and grinning. Does he feel it, too? This anticipatory giddiness? It’s a little like being ten and handed a crisp twenty-dollar bill outside a candy store. There’s something delicious in my future and I don’t even know where to sink my teeth first.
When I bend to spit and rinse, his hand comes over my waist, beneath my shirt, fingers seeking skin. When we switch positions and he bends, spits, rinses, I wrap my arms around his middle and let myself go blank inside, just holding him and feeling the hard planes of his back pressed flat against my cheek.
In the bedroom, he peels away my clothes without hurry. A gift teasingly unwrapped. It isn’t the first time we’re touching and looking, but it’s the first time there’s no ticking clock in my ear.
Though there may be one in his.
I pull his shirt up his torso. “What time do you have to leave in the morning?”
He pauses his exploration of my chest to look at his watch. “Around six.”
I glance at the clock on the nightstand. It’s a few minutes before eleven. I can work with this.
He moves to taste my neck, hands sliding up over my breasts.
“What are you doing tomorrow?” I ask.