Chapter 12
The Future Perfect
“So this is your apartment,” said William.
He and Sam were lying naked on the floor of Sam’s library, Sam’s head pillowed on William’s chest. All around them their clothes lay where they’d been shucked, peeled, and ripped off in great haste, as if the people in them had exploded, then been raptured.
“I’m a little disappointed,” William said. “I thought there’d be more books.”
Sam laughed. William gently dislodged her and stood to prowl her shelves. Sam watched happily. He had a few days’ worth of scruff now, glinting with silver and long enough to be soft. And she really enjoyed observing him stroll around naked. Aside from liking big guys, Sam didn’t care much about the nude male form—she’d never oohed and aahed over six-pack abs or bulging pecs or tight ends in sport uniforms. To Sam, it was a man’s mouth, the way he smelled, the intersection between his mind and sensuality that mattered. His attentiveness. His sense of naughtiness and play. She was thrilled to find that she and William were pitched in exactly the same key this way, more than anyone Sam had ever met, so she knew almost before she did it that if she touched himthisway, he’d groan;thatand he’d get a devilishly intent look that meantWatch out, girl, I’m about to throw you down. It was uncanny how well they fit.
William wasn’t thirty; he had the usual scrapes and dings from the decades, maybe more because he’d used his body hard and well. Watermelon-pit scars around his right knee from surgery. A translucent circle the size of a peach pit on one hip, a toe banged permanently crooked. Scratches and bruises of indeterminate origin. He had a slight paunch that he hated and slapped with a scowl, and the hair on his chest was silver—but the erectile matter Tabby had mentioned and Sam had wondered about after the fort? A nonissue. William had popped a pill with dinner, and Sam had said,All the better to ravish me with?He’d looked confused, then smiled.Oh, this isn’t Viagra, honey, it’s for my ticker. I take these for arrhythmia.He’d slid his hand up Sam’s thigh under the table.I don’t need pharmaceutical help to do this, he’d said, thumbing her thong aside.I can take care of you all on my own.
“Impressive collection,” William said now of Sam’s books. He held out a hand to help Sam up. “Show me the rest of the place? And don’t you dare put any clothes on.”
Sam walked him through the apartment. “Kitchen. Bathroom. Sleeping loft, which maybe you’ll see if you play your cards right—though so far you seem to be a man allergic to beds. And this is my study.” She hugged herself, feeling almost more naked than she had when William had first hoisted her against her foyer wall and yanked up her skirt.
William explored this room, too, squinting without his glasses. “Nice ego shelf,” he said of the display of Sam’s first and foreign editions, the covers with women in red. “Pretty maids all in a row.” He bent to peer at Ole Nielsen. “Is this your stubborn protagonist? Handsome.” He straightened. “But where’s the rest of it?”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s immaculate in here,” he said. “The walls should look like a crime scene breakdown. Please tell me you’re the neatest writer who ever lived. Because otherwise you’re more blocked than I thought.”
“I’m completely blocked,” Sam admitted.
“Oh, sugarplum.” William pulled out her desk chair, sat, and patted his thigh. “Come.”
Sam went, leaning into his reassuring solidity. William combed his fingers through the remains of Sam’s braid, untangling the snarl their energetic lovemaking had made of her hair.
“I know you said you don’t discuss your work in progress,” he said, “but if there’s one thing I’ve learned from the Darlings, it’s that talking it through might help.”
“I’m good, thanks.”
“Are you, though? When’s your delivery date?”
“Five months—no, four,” Sam said, her stomach sinking.
“That’s a minute from now. Please let me help you. What if we just brainstormed? Not about your current book. But other ideas. What if you think laterally: Do you have other books you might want to write?”
“I havenobooks I want to write,” Sam said, and laughed. “That’s the problem. I think I might be done.”
William skimmed his fingers up Sam’s obliques in a way that made her squirm and swat his hands. “I’m going to keep doing this until you take it back. You are not allowed to be done.”
“Okay, fine. I’m not done. I’m just fucked.”
“Yes, you are,” he said, his voice dropping into the low growling register Sam was becoming familiar with and to which she had an instant, happy anatomical response. “And you will be again. Soon. Meanwhile, I’m serious. Do you have other concepts in the bullpen?”
Sam sighed. “Just wisps,” she said. “But before Ole, I thought I might write about... a rumrunner. Dual timeline, the woman who runs a boardinghouse now and her great-grandmother. Both of them married to alcoholics. The great-grandmother’s husband is the rumrunner...”
“Nowthat,” said William, “is pure historical fiction gold. Why didn’t you pitch it?”
Sam shrugged. “It didn’t feel ready yet.”
William drew Sam’s detangled hair to one side, exposing her neck. “What if,” he murmured against her nape, “you set Ole aside and we work on this rumrunner idea?”
“I can’t,” said Sam. “I’m under contract forGold Digger.”
“That’s horseshit. It means nothing. They don’t care what you hand in, as long as you hand insomethingthat’s the same genre.”
