His hands go to the waistband of my skirt. “Is this okay?” he asks, featherlight touches skimming across my stomach, the promise of more making heat pool to my center.
“Yes,” I hiss, taking over and pulling my skirt down before he can ask again.
He sits up, drinking me in, watching me breathe, tracing the line from my bra to my underwear and hesitating, like he’s about to open a shaken-up soda can.
But I can’t think any more about whatever will come next. I can’t question whether this is a huge mistake or an inevitability we’ve been careening toward ever since I first knocked on his door. I can’t wonder about J or my feelings or what it allmeans.
I just need him. He’s heart pounding, warm skin, tousled hair, hazy eyes, and tangible touch in front of me, and I don’t want to think about anything else but me and him and the way our bodies fit together.
So for the rest of the night that’s what we do. He holds me and whispers in my ear, and we move together like we were always meant to be doing this.
I’m not going to pretend like I haven’t had a lot of great sex in my life—I’m not the kind of person who goes back twice for mediocrity. But there’s an irrefutable ease with Eli that I’ve never experienced before, and I find myself surprised by the emotion coursing through me because of it; surprised by how I’m able to let go in ways I never really knew I could before; surprised by how much he reflects me back—tender in all the places I want him to be, rough when I need it, playful instead of guarded. Point to counterpoint. Give and take.
The closer we are, the more it feels inescapable, undeniable. Like we’ve finally allowed our minds to catch up to what our bodies knewfrom the moment we saw each other: that it was always going to be this good and in sync andhot. It’s so damn hot.
And when we’re sweaty and spent and knotted up in each other and the twist of bedsheets, when his arm comes around me and pulls my body flush against his, I know I’m going to let sleep overtake me.
Chapter 24
I wake up with sunlight in my face and a cat hoarding most of my pillow. It only takes me a moment to realize where I am, and then the whole night comes flooding back. My lips are raw and my body aches, but I stretch in contentment. My mind isn’t yet up to speed, although I’m awake enough to know that I probably should relish thenotthinking yet.
I look over at Eli sleeping. It’s adorable seeing him so peaceful instead of in his normal whirl. And he’s got one arm lazily lying on me, and the other is ... oh my god, he’s actually holding hands (paws?) with one of the cats. I don’t know whether to giggle or melt. It might be the cutest, most wholesome way I’ve ever woken up with a man. How does that even happen? Adorable.
But I feel creepy staring and watching him while he sleeps, so I turn to look around the room. I saw it when he was sick, but obviously not from this vantage point. His bed is pretty low, so it’s like getting an inside view of the feet of his dresser or the bottom of his bookshelf. He has two little ships in bottles sitting on the bottom shelf.
Huh. I’ve never seen that before. Some déjà vu tingles, and I try to remember where I heard about someone making those.
And then I remember. J.
J told me he’d taken it up as a hobby.
Thinking about J propels me with nervous energy, and I don’t like it, so I carefully extricate myself from bed, find my underwear fromwhere it was unceremoniously tossed onto the floor, and pad over to the bathroom to pee. I just need to ignore this sensation. Whatever feeling is niggling is irrational. And I need to get up anyway. I can’t leave George for this long.
But I don’t want Eli to think I ran away. Maybe I’ll leave him a note about George, and then I can always come back when I’m done. Does hewantme to come back?
I wander into the kitchen to grab my shirt, crumpled like a material remnant of the previous night. I hear a phone beep twice and go to the counter to grab it.
It takes me a minute to realize, in my still-sleepy mental state, that it isn’t my phone. But by then I’ve already seen the message that popped up.
Celia: Looking forward to our Monday chat later today—do you mind if we push by an hour? Also—remind me that I have a couple notes on Ask Eleonora as well as the Sanders OpEd.
I nimbly put the phone down onto the counter, like it’s scorching and it’s burned me. I sit on the stool, pull my shirt on, and start numbly buttoning it up.
I look again just to make sure I haven’t misread.
What the hell? What would Eli have to do with Ask Eleonora? Is that Celia like ... my Celia? What does Eli ... do?
I know Eli is a writer or journalist of some kind. But since that first walk, where we agreed not to talk about work, we’ve just had so much else to discuss. It never seemed odd that we didn’t talk about our jobs with each other. It didn’t seem relevant. Obviously he knows I’m a therapist, since Iwashis sort-of-therapist for a brief moment.
But I never told him about my column—and why would I have? No one in my life really knows about it except for Celia, Ari, and Dane. I’m used to not talking about it.
Why haven’t I asked him more about his work? We’ve talked about the day-to-day of working from home, the unease of sitting in front of a screen alone. But I never really bothered to say,Hey, Eli, who do you actually write for?
Is it possible that Eli writes for theSunday Tribune? Is it possible ... is it possible he does something with Celia? Is it possible he has some oversight over Ask Eleonora? Is it possible ...
Is itpossible?
What the actual hell.
