An ache blooms in my chest for her. I know exactly what that feels like. It feels like being cracked open, having all of your most vulnerable pieces turned out. It feels like living your life as an exposed nerve.
“I’m sorry. You probably don’t want to talk about this.”
I shake my head. “Sometimes it feels like nobody wants to talk about my mom, about her death, or how I felt—feel—about it.”
Sometimes that’s the only thing in the world I want to do, talk about it. Keeping it inside me these past few months has felt like holding poison in my mouth, trying not to swallow it. I never really planned on saying all this but I feel like I might choke on the words if I don’t keep going.
“But I wish...” I stop. She’s so quiet and I’m not sure if I should be talking about this right now. “I want to talk about her, alive, maybe even more. I wish people would ask me about her, you know?”
Speaking my memories out loud feels like the only way I’ll be able to keep them. I glance over at her quickly and she smiles. I realize she may think I’m fishing but I can’t tell if I wish she would ask me or not.
“You might not have to find out,” I say. “What it’s like to exist in the world without the one person who knows you better than anyone else. Not yet.”
I curl my fingers through her high-pile rug while I wait for the blood to drain from my face. What kind of person brings up their dead mom with their wicked-hot-boss booty call? A guy who apparently doesn’t want to have sex tonight. Also known as myself.
“My mom is...proper,” Corrine whispers. “She could barely tell me about her symptoms since they had do to with...” She gestures to her abdominal region and I smile.
“Yeah, my mom was kind of the same. She said she’d tell us but only if we really wanted to know... In the end, it didn’t really matter, though. I had to help bathe her and dress her when she got really sick. She’d always get so flustered...” I smile in Corrine’s direction but I don’t actually make eye contact. I can’t believe I am blowing this so epically.
“What else?” Corrine asks, her hand sliding over the top of mine on the carpet, stilling my fingers where they tap a fast rhythm. “What was she like?”
I can’t believe I ever thought this woman cruel or sadistic. In this moment, she’s the kindest person I know.
I smile in a way that, I hope, conveys my gratitude. “She was a total lady,” I say. “She had this really expensive perfume that she’d only wear on special occasions. Someone in our office building wears it. Every time I’ve gotten a whiff it’s likewhoa. Mom. And looking back I think she was one of those annoyingly perfect moms. She always dropped us off and picked us up on time and she always had food for us when we got home from school. She came to every recital and play and tournament. She missed nothing, right? But she also swore like a hardened criminal. The words that woman could string together when she stubbed her toe would bring tears tomyeyes.”
Corrine makes an indulgent sound. I feel a little bit lighter on this carpet. Like there was a weight pressing me into it before that’s been lifted. Like if I stood up right now, I might not be able to see the imprint of my butt in the carpet fibers.
I clench and unclench my fist and lift my hand, brushing her hair back from her face. “I don’t mind if you want to talk about it, though. You can ask me anything. If you’re feeling...” I shrug. “You know.”
“I do know,” she says. Her eyes are bright and her cheeks are pink from the warmth of the fireplace. Tonight feels like the first truly autumn night of the season.
“If you do have to find out, though, what that feels like, you’ll get through it. You can get through it.”
If I can do it, then she can, too.
“You think?”
I smile and kiss her neck because it’s what I’ve wanted to do all day. “I know.”
“What did you do this evening?” she asks.
I press another kiss to her collarbone. “Just went home, had dinner. Amy is opening a new restaurant so she wasn’t home. I came here.”
She runs her fingers through my hair and my eyes roll back in my head. “You?” I ask, remembering to be polite.
“Same,” she says as I kiss down her neck. “Worked a bit.” Only Corrine could look so blissful talking about working from home.
She tilts her head back, sighing, as I place more open-mouth kisses down the column of her throat and more across her collarbone.
“Sorry.” I pull away, clear my throat so that the next time I speak I won’t sound like I’ve swallowed gravel. “We were talking about important stuff.”
She nods but pushes me down on the floor. She throws her leg over my hip, hovering over my tented fly. “Is this okay instead?” she asks. Her gaze follows her fingers as she undoes one button after another out of its hole.
“Definitely.”
She pushes the two halves of my shirt aside, curling her fingers until each blunt half-moon marks my skin. She scratches not enough to hurt, just enough to make every nerve ending in my body pay attention. I fist my hands in her shirt and pull it toward me until she has to follow. Her hair makes a dark tent around us.
Her skin is warm and so fucking soft I want to rub my face all over her. My palms slide up her rib cage and cup her naked breasts. I love the weight of them in my hands, how her nipples peek out between my fingers and pebble beneath my palms. The feeling creates a powder keg of lust, igniting in my hands, traveling straight into my dick.
