“Yes. I will let you do this.”
Tallie was on the verge of tears, unbuttoning one of his buttons and then another as he stood there quietly, not moving, his back now against the wall. Her cats were in the hallway with them, squinty and blinking in the light.
“You’re so fucking stubborn,” she said. Hungry, exhausted, worried. It felt good to curse at him, to let it out.
“I know I am,” he said, nodding.
“It’s fucking annoying.”
“I know it is, but I like when you boss me around.”
She was careful pulling the sleeve off his left arm, careful turning him and pulling the entire shirt off his right. And when he was facing her, standing there in his white T-shirt, she reached for the hem and pulled it over his head. Slowly. His skin blushed like a mild sunburn. Once he was shirtless—nothing but his gold cross around his neck—she gently pressed herself to his bare chest and kissed him, breathing in deeply. He shared her breath. His bandaged hands went to the sides of her face, the gauze like feathers.
“We didn’t get to talk about the kissing,” she said, kissing and pulling away. Emmett was quiet, kissing her neck. “And it’s confusing, I know, because it’s Sunday. It’s officially Sunday now, and you’re leaving today. And something’s up with you, I know it. Everything you won’t tell me…you close up and I can’t get it out of you and we barely know each other. You didn’t even flinch when my brother caught fire!” she said, eyes closed, head turned to the ceiling, Emmett still kissing her neck, her earlobe.
“Is this okay?” he asked before kissing her mouth more aggressively. She nodded.
“Is this okay?” he asked, unzipping her skirt. She said yes.
“Is this okay?” he asked, getting on his knees in front of her, pulling her skirt down. One black-stockinged foot stepping out of the circle it made was her yes.
“Is this okay?” he asked, looking up at her. “Tell me this is okay.”
“I like when you boss me around, too.”
“Good girl.”
He tugged at the strip of lace between her legs, moving it aside. The black lace she hadn’t worn since Joel left; the lace that matched the top of the thigh-highs clipped to her garter belt. Tallie heard lieve schat and Nico, Nico, Nico in her head, telling her Joel didn’t have the only cock in the world when she said yes to Emmett. Emmett had one, too; of course he did. This Emmett Aaron Baker—genuflecting before her as if she were a goddess—hooked her knee over his shoulder.
EMMETT
（Two fluffy decorative pillows on Tallie’s bed, one long king-size pillow, a knitted blanket on top of a butter-colored comforter. Nightstand: her glasses, a squat lamp, two bobby pins, a black elastic hair band, a flat tube of hand lotion, an empty glass, Mythology: Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes by Edith Hamilton. The top of her dresser: two candles, a small tube of lip balm, dried roses poking from a slim bottle, a pale green milk-glass dish covered in earrings, airy necklaces hanging from the long neck of the lamp, a black-and-white photo-booth strip of her and Nico Tate, glass bottles of perfume—circle, rectangle, square.）
Tallie sat on the bed in her black lace, unbuttoning, unzipping his pants. The intimacy of being in her bedroom rushing, flooding his veins. A riotous, overwhelming shrine to femininity, as if a pink puff of powder would smack him from overhead and knock him out. Above her nightstand lamp: Courbet’s L’Origine du monde, Klimt’s Frau bei der Selbstbefriedigung.
“Is that you?” Emmett said, looking at the erotic postcards, then at her, lifting an eyebrow.
“It was last night…and…I thought about you,” she said, falling back, her hands covering her face. The end of the sentence almost lost to the muffle.
“While I…was on the couch?” he asked, having stepped out of his pants. Emmett had held his thoughts captive, never allowing himself to imagine Tallie fantasizing about him, slamming the door on his own fantasies about her before too much could tumble out. Her telling him she’d touched herself thinking of him was a fat, blinding rip in the space-time continuum. The wind howled deep inside him, the icy black. Lightning flashed the shadows. He lay next to her in his underwear, every cell throbbing.
“Oof, I can’t believe I told you,” she said from behind her hands. “I’m not being myself. I’m acting like someone else. It’s tonight…this weekend…everything’s making me feel crazy.”
“Now you’re depersonalizing. You’re not crazy.” His hands ached as he placed them on his bare stomach.