"You taste good," she said, tiptoeing her fingers up the back of my neck.
I kissed her forehead. "You taste better."
She closed her eyes and smiled like the first light of dawn. Those fingers curled around my hair. She gave a slight tug, just hard enough to send a snap of heat through my entire body. "Sometimes you're nice to me."
"Sometimes." I stared at her lips for far too long. "More, if you'd let me."
Audrey shook her head, her eyes still shut. Somewhere deep in the recesses of my mind I found a memory of her like this—happy, free, completely uncalloused by years of doing what she was told and never what she chose. I couldn't place the time or the circumstances but I remembered the way she smiled and how it dug into my muscles, under my ribs, until it wrapped around my heart. Seeing it again made it hard to breathe.
"You don't want that," she said, the words satin soft.
"If you knew all the things I wanted," I whispered, "you wouldn't worry about me being nice."
She traced along my collar and down the line of my jaw. She tapped at my bottom lip like she was calling for an elevatoruntil I scraped my teeth over that fingertip. "What would I worry about?"
I didn't know if she'd remember this. If she was in there now, conscious of everything but too stoned to stop it. I didn't know which way I wanted that to shake out.
But before I could answer, she wiggled in my arms like a damn puppy, all loose limbs and long hair and elbows slamming in my soft tissue. "Jude. Listen, listen, listen. Something has happened. Gravity has stopped and I'm floating."
"That's—that's not how gravity works, baby." I knew this wasn't the moment to explain physics but I couldn't help myself. "If there was even a momentary loss of gravity, the planet would no longer be intact."
"But—no! I'm drifting off into space. I can't feel the ground anymore."
"No, baby, look. I'm just holding you."
At last, she opened her eyes and blinked up at me like a slightly possessed attic doll. "Why are you holding me?"
"Because the floor is hard and you were a little wobbly when you came back from lunch."
"It's nice," she said, smashing her face into my neck again. "It's fun to be small and precious sometimes."
I ran my lips over her hair and let myself breathe her in while I could. "You should be precious all the time."
She scoffed at that and went on burrowing into me. "No one wants me enough to care like that."
"I find that hard to?—"
"I need to feel gravity again," she said with a violent jolt. I didn't want to draw comparisons between High Audrey and Overtired Percy but the parallels existed. "It isn't real until I feel it."
I set her on her feet but kept my arms around her. For safety reasons. Obviously. "Better? Or would you like to argue with me about the fundamentals of physics some more?"
She went up on her toes and then bent into a plié, sweeping an arm out at her side. I held her waist, feeling the pull and shift of her muscles. "I feel it again," she said, dropping deep into another plié.
My fingers flexed. "It never went away. I promise."
"How do you know?"
"Because things like that never change."
The door opened behind us and Mom rushed in. "We cleared out Gary's drink fridge." She motioned to him and the party-sized ice chest he rolled behind him. He swung the ice chest around and popped the top like he was selling bootleg iPhones. "He stocks all different flavors."
"I have raspberry tangerine," he said, holding up a can.
"Yeah, that's fantastic," I said to them as Audrey extended backward into a dramatic dip. "I'm taking her back to the hotel to sleep this off."
"Blood orange limeade," Gary went on.
"Oh, no, you can't go," Mom said. "Gary was going to cook for us tonight and we were going to show you some of the wedding plans."
