Clearing my throat to suppress a growl, I squeezed Andy’s hand. “I have it on good authority that your boss wants to take you to lunch tomorrow, and you should come home with me tonight. I might have an inside track on those pop quiz questions.”
“Say no more,” she laughed, a bright, uninhibited smile breaking across her face.
*
I was blamingit on being past my friends-with-benefits phase. There was also the whole issue of her showing up all sweet, babbling, and sloppy drunk on Saturday. And she read my thesis. Repeatedly and for comfort, though it certainly called her idea of comfort into question.
I wanted her body, but I also wanted her conversation, her bent eyebrows worth a million words, her sharp, dry humor. It was gradually ripping me apart, and it was all foreign to me.
Somewhere between the creepy staring and finally tying her to my bed, I developed an affection for Andy that made every minute she wasn’t in my arms feel wasted. Saturday night wasn’t ‘just sex’ with every word of her inner monologue on display and quiet mentions of wanting to see me, or waiting for me to invite her over, or me being made for her. It was no more ‘just sex’ than her uncharacteristically shy description of her boss, and how much she liked lunch with him. Or with me. Or whatever.
I was done with ‘just sex.’ It was never just anything. I knew that when I agreed to it, and I knew it when Andy thought I was breaking our treaty by touching her in the office. I wanted to respect her parameters, but I also wanted so much more of Andy.
My fingers skimmed over the curved characters of the tattoo clinging to her ribs. The sight of Andy’s exposed skin lit only by moonlight while she was tucked against my chest was staggering, and part of me recognized that she would always affect me this way.
“Andy,” I murmured. She hummed in response, and pulled my arm under her breasts. The simple gesture was a giant billboard reminding me I passed the exit for ‘just sex’ many miles back. “Tell me something about you. Something I don’t know.”
Her nails scratched up and down my forearm for a few minutes, and I figured she was tuning out my request until she replied, “My father died when I was seven.”
I tightened the arm around her torso while I kissed her shoulder and rummaged around my memory for mention of Andy’s family. I only knew she was from a town far up north Maine’s coast.
The cold, heavy ache of understanding landed in my gut, and I pulled the blankets up. My mother’s death ended childhood for me and my siblings. When it broke us, it wasn’t the kind of break that healed neatly. It was the quiet shattering of a frozen-over pond protesting too much weight, all tiny fissures racing out from the impact site until the ice dropped out and chilled emptiness rushed in.
Some of the broken places made us stronger, and some healed over time, but not all.
Andy glanced over her shoulder. “You’re not going to ask what happened?”
“No.” My mouth continued mapping the sharp jut of her collarbone. “My mother died when I was ten and I hate when people ask. If you want me to know, you’ll tell me.”
Minutes slipped by, and the rasp of her fingers against my arm combined with city noises to occupy the quiet.
“He was shot, in South Africa. Some militant group wanted him dead. His family was exiled during the Iranian Revolution, and he ended up in Egypt, and then London. That’s where my mom met him. I was born in Istanbul, and we lived between there and London until he died.” She released a long sigh. “I never talk about that. Ever. People know he died, but they don’t know why, or that I didn’t always live in Maine, or that I’m even Persian. They just think I tan easily.”
Holding her closely, I searched for the right words but I knew all too well nothing eased the loss. It shrouded even the best memories in sorrow. “After my sister Erin was born—you haven’t met her—my mother was pregnant again, and there was a complication and she bled to death. She and the baby died in that big room on the second floor at Wellesley, with the six of us there. We never really talk about it, and like you said, people know, but they have no idea.”
The blueprint of that bedroom appeared in my mind, and within white space bound by thin black lines, I saw my mother crumpled on the hardwood floor, and the puddle of blood around her. I saw the paramedics working on her while Sam refused to let go of her hand. I saw the ambulance spitting gravel as it skidded down the driveway, leaving us and our blood-stained hands behind.
Andy rolled over, her brown eyes boring into mine before she wrapped an arm around my neck and pulled me in for a kiss. Her lips soothed, and communicated that she understood, and knew the limitations of words. She pressed her forehead against mine with a smile.
“Tell me something. Something else. Something that’s really off-limits.”
“‘Really off-limits?’ I don’t even know what that includes. Hell, Andy, I’ve never seen what’s hiding under your socks.”
“Not hiding anything. My toes just get really cold.” She laughed, though her expression rapidly sobered. “Something that scares the shit out of you to say.”
Unless I was completely misreading her signals and she was expecting me to ask for a threesome, she wanted me talking about this. It wouldn’t be the first time I completely misread Andy, but something she let slip on Saturday night told me to push forward.
“I have a crazy idea.” I gazed into her eyes, and she nodded in encouragement. Her eyes dropped to my chest and she studied my freckles, her teeth clamping the edge of her lip. “I want…I want to stop pretending this is ‘just sex.’ This isn’t ‘just sex’ for me, Andy, and I don’t think it is for you either.”
After a long, painful pause during which I invented at least nine ways to play off my comment if her response wasn’t the one I needed, she shook her head. It was always her little gestures. The eyebrows, the tiny smiles, the ‘hm,’ and now her slight head shake.
“I like you,” I confessed. “A lot. As in, miss you when I don’t see you, need to talk about your Facebook privacy settings, want to find out how you found my thesis, rearrange my schedule to eat lunch with you, ready to see what’s under your knee socks, like you.”
“Hm.” Andy nestled her head against my chest, and I inhaled the rich lavender scent of her hair. “I like you, too. Even if you’re a growly, bitey stalker, and always rolling up your sleeves and stretching so I have to—” Her nails scraped low over my stomach and I was ready for her again. My hand rubbing deep circles on her hip, I urged her body closer to mine. “—look at this.”
I used to think hearts only skipped beats in near-death experiences, but often enough, Andy’s words had that effect on me. “Sounds like we have a lot to talk about.”
Andy’s leg hooked over my hip, and our bodies were flush together with her breasts pressed against my chest, my erection digging into her stomach, and our hands gliding over warm skin. “Maybe I should stay over.”
