Before I could check out her backside or respond, the doors opened.
“On my count, dive through the opening. Don’t think, just do it,” the firefighter ordered.
“Put this in your body right now.”
Tiel handed me a drink, and considering we were in a grad-student-infested part of Cambridge, I didn’t bother asking about the brand of gin.
“Okay, but I’m warning you,” I said with a smirk. “I will get ruder and pervier.”
“Good,” she yelled over the thumping music, and held up her vodka martini in salute. “I was beginning to think you were a nice boy.”
Tiel pointed to the black eye I earned when shielding her from the impact of our elevator escape. It wasn’t entirely chivalrous. I had been headed straight for that marble column regardless, and I happened to break her collision with it.
“Shit,” she hissed after her first sip. “This drink is brinier than a ball sack!”
I leaned close, my lips hovering over her ear. “Normal people don’t say things like that.”
She looked up, her eyes locked on me while she drained her drink. “Okay, Freckle Twin, so we’re not normal. There’s no fun in normal anyway.”
“Right,” I laughed. Her sarcasm curled around me, shrouding us in a quiet world of our inside jokes bred from heat and apprehension, and the unexpected thrill of finding ourselves alive in the end. “Of course not.”
She elbowed her way to the end of the bar and propped herself on a stool while I ordered another round. I opted to open a tab and handed my credit card to the busty bartender sporting a trio of lip rings. This wasn’t a quick drink followed by bidding my partner in elevator captivity goodbye. Evidently, we weren’t finished with our codependency yet.
I spent only a moment stressing over the objectively gross condition of this establishment. On a different night, I would have required a cocktail of pharmaceuticals to even walk through the doors of this joint without flying into obsessive-compulsive fits and there was no way I could have managed the wall-to-wall bodies. But tonight, something else was occupying my brain to the extent that I wasn’t subject to all of my crazy.
I didn’t know what it was, and thinking about my anxiety was also a fantastic way to invite it to return. Save for some bumps and bruises, we were alive, and I wanted to enjoy that.
With fresh drinks in hand, I settled beside Tiel.
“Can we just acknowledge that we survived some crazy shit today? I mean,weare the people who survived eight hours in a freaking elevator!”
“We are,” I said, lifting my glass to hers. “We’re the people who lived.”
“That is perhaps the best reason to play Never Have I Ever.”
“Oh God help me, you want to go there?” Tiel was random like that, and though I’d left the drinking games at the frat house, I was down for whatever she threw at me. “Is your objective to drink me under the table?”
“I’m sure you’d have plenty of fun under that table.” She pressed her knee into my thigh, and it was like she was beating me at the game I’d invented. This was bold-faced flirting, and she was ready to outpace me. “You first.”
I rubbed my brow with a chuckle. “Never had sex in an elevator.”
Her eyes twinkled and she glanced around with a tight grin. “Somehow that surprises me,” she murmured. “Never had sex in public.”
She wanted my best offense, and I was giving it to her. Even if it ended with her slapping me and storming off. “But you’d like to.”
We stared at each other for a minute until she offered a wiggle-shake-shrug.
“And you have?” Tiel asked.
I thought about shocking her, telling her that my hook-ups existed only in VIP lounge bathrooms, coatrooms, and the occasional private booth. But I held that card, sipped my drink without comment instead. I had a better play up my sleeve. “Never have I ever had sex in a bed.”
“Oh come on! That’s bullshit, everyone’s had sex in abed,Sam. Not even once? I don’t believe you.” I held up my hands, shrugging, and she shook her head. Shit, it was fun to see her stunned. “Explain that to me.”
“Not much to explain. I don’t date and I’ve never run out of women interested in blowing me. Beds are superfluous when there are private booths.”
“So . . . what?” She gestured, trying to generate some meaning from the air between us. “You don’t have regular, normal sex?”
I had an abundance of “normal” sex. I just hadn’t bothered with any of it this summer. There was something pleasant and utterly detached about some good head, and the idea of much more didn’t appeal to me. These days, I couldn’t generate any excitement for getting out of my little bubble and touching people more than necessary, and fucking counted as more than necessary.
