Or at the very least, fucking one three or four times.
It’s wild, the way that she or I pulled towards one another throughout the night, drawn together like magnets, mouths and hands searching and learning, slow, languorous, dreamlike fucking with whispered laughs and gasps under the covers, under the blanket of night. Falling asleep right after, only to wake up a few hours later to do it again.
When I wake up, she’s in my arms, her head buried in my chest, arm and thigh thrown around my waist like an adorable little koala. Everything below our waist is sticky. Normally I’d be horrified, but I feel nothing but proud and really fuckin’ pleased. I should probably digest this myself before we digest it all together. Because now we’re running out of time.
It’s Wednesday, and there’s one more stretch ’til we arrive in Miami tonight. Tomorrow is the welcome party. When real life will burst through this little bubble of daggers that Annie’s only just let me into.
Which side of the bubble will I be on tomorrow? Which side do Iwantto be on? Is My Annie Li only Road Trip Annie Li? Will she be different when she’s around her sister, parents, family, friends? Will I?
As if she can hear me thinking, she snuggles deeper into my torso with a contented sigh. From here I can see the freshest mark I’ve left on her body, on the side of her neck from just a few hours ago.
I’m so fucked.
I clear my throat. “Babe.”
Nothing.
I peel myself away the slightest bit. “Sweetheart.”
“No.”
“Honey.”
“I’m not your honey.”
Lie, but I’ll take it easy on her this morning. I chuckle and lift some hair out of her face. “We’ve gotta hit the road soon.”
One eye opens. “How soon?”
I lean back and check my phone. “Two hours.”
Silence, then, “Are you fucking kidding me, Nico?” She wrenches herself around, buries her head under a pillow, and throws the covers over for good measure. “Wake me up ten minutes before we have to leave,” a muffled grumble says.
I am so very tickled. I leap out of bed and round it to her side. I bunch everything in my hands—covers, sheets, pillow—wrench it all off onto the floor, and smack her ass.
Annie screams.
I admire the pink of my handprint in the morning light, relishing, yet again, in the shock of power that explodes through my body, before scooping up her thrashing body and hauling her over my shoulder. “We gotta get in the shower. I need to wash myself off of you,”regrettably, “and I need to get some food inyou. And I gotta do this laundry ‘cause no one should have to touch it.”
I deposit her in the en-suite walk-in shower and turn it on. It happens to be one of those dual showerhead systems, so she’s blasted on both sides. As Annie glares at me through the wet hair in her face, like she wants to gut me from stomach to neck, she resembles a bedraggled, angry kitten who’s just slipped into the bathtub.
I’m gonna marry this girl one day.
I step into the shower and get down on one knee in a twisted foreshadowing, dazed by the promise I’ve just made myself. “Let me make it up to you,” I tell her, and I have my breakfast.
“Get naked and do the voice,” a much more chipper Annie tells me over the sound of bacon sizzling.
I’m unable to respond because I’m currently speechless at the image of Annie kicking her bare feet while perched on the counter next to the stove, wearing nothing else but my hoodie, reinforcing all these ridiculous notions I’m having of “forever” and “permanence” and “mine.”
How did this happen? In six days? Or maybe it’s been months in the making, considering the Ali/Chef correspondence. Regardless, this can’t be real, can it? But it certainly seems real, especially when I suddenly feel Annie’s arms wrap around me from behind, when her face snuggles into my back between my shoulder blades. “Nico.” I realize I’ve been wordlessly staring at the bacon as if it held all the answers. It usually does, but not right now.
“Yes, honey.”
“Take your pants off and do the sexy professor voice and talk to me about the science of eggs.”
“Hmm…” Something about this makes me feel wary.
“What?”
