I pulled him inside.
We tore at each other. Clothes, running shoes, the rest of the robe. I sat back in bed, and he leaned over me, breathing hard.
“You are so sexy,” he said. He didn’t let the words run.So. Sexy. “Tell me what you want.” His voice was ragged, hazy, like the morning around us.
“I want you.”
He leaned down and put his lips on mine. He held his body against me so there was no space between us. I felt the weight of him—his significance—all six feet two inches. “I’m right here,” he said.
And then he was pressing into me. I closed my eyes and then opened them, and saw him looking back at me. There were beads of sweat on his forehead, his shoulders worked in tandem, rolling toward me, I reached up and grabbed onto his biceps.
I was, all at once, struck by two opposing feelings. The desire to stay that way forever, to never break apart, to spend my whole life in that state of intimate ecstasy. And then: to experience that release. The pleasure of certainty, of knowing that what was coming, had.
I felt that fire building in me. It started in my belly and radiated out to my limbs, fingers, feet, and toes, until I was engulfed in flames.
“Hugo,” I said. He moved in answer—under me, over me, inside me. Everywhere, all at once.
“Tell me,” he said, right into my ear.Tell me tell me tell me.
Chapter Twenty
Sorry,” Jake says. “The breaker on the hall light is out. Here.” I feel Jake’s hand grab mine as we walk in darkness through his front door and then the click of a switch, and light.
His apartment is the same as it was the other night—but a little bit tidier—the blanket on the couch is folded with no corners showing, there are no errant glasses on the table.
“Can I get you something to drink?” Jake asks.
“Just water,” I say.
“Coming right up.”
He disappears into the kitchen, and I sit down on the couch. The night is foggy, and the darkness outside feels blanketing, heavy. Or maybe it’s just that I’ve finally stopped moving.
Jake hands me a glass and settles down next to me. “It’s tap,” he says. “My Brita broke.”
“I don’t believe in Britas,” I tell him. “I think they are a scam.”
He squints. “You’re probably right.”
I take a sip and set it down on the coffee table. Jake puts a hand on my knee and then threads his fingers through mine. I feel the warmth of his hand, the warmth of him. And then I feel something else—some other force creep in between us. Expectation, maybe. The knowledge that what happens now matters in a way it never has before. All the things I know that he doesn’t.
“Jake,” I say.
“Yeah.”
“There’s something I have to tell you.”
He sits back until he’s looking at me, but he doesn’t release my hand. I feel his thumb run over my knuckles.
“What’s up?”
“I’m not—” I say. “I’m not exactly like other women.”
Jake laughs. “I’m well aware of that,” he says. “And I very much like it.”
I shake my head. “The thing is—” I take a breath, figuring out what to say. How do I tell him that I know something that will change his life irrevocably? How do I share something this unbelievable?
“It’s OK,” Jake says. “You don’t have to do anything you’re not ready to do.”
