This is where you fail, whispers the voice I’ve been carrying since childhood.This is where she finds out you’re exactly as broken as you always suspected.
She must read the panic on my face, because she immediately starts backpedaling.
“Only if you’re OK with that,” she says quickly. “We don’t have to do anything. We can just kiss. Or watch a movie. Or I have that documentary about octopus intelligence you said you wanted to see, and there’s ice cream in the freezer, and?—”
I kiss her.
It’s the only way I know how to say what I’m feeling—this overwhelming rush of want and fear and desperate, achingtenderness. She gasps against my mouth, and before I can second-guess myself, I’m sliding my hands under her thighs and lifting her up.
She wraps her legs around my waist instinctively, her keys clattering to the floor.
“Door,” I manage against her lips.
“Right. Door. Keys.” She’s laughing and kissing me at the same time, reaching down. “I dropped them.”
I crouch down, keeping Audrey balanced against the door, and reach blindly until my fingertips brush the keys and grab hold. She laughs, her breath hot against my ear as she leans down to help, and together we manage to retrieve them without falling over or dropping each other. I can barely see straight with her pressed to me like this, her hair tumbling into my face, her hands never quite letting go.
Audrey fumbles with the lock, her arm still tight around my neck. “This would be easier if you put me down,” she says, but she doesn’t sound like she means it.
“I like the view from here,” I say, and it comes out a little raw, a little shaky. She grins, popping the lock open, and I stumble us both inside, kicking the door closed behind us.
Then we’re on each other again, keys abandoned, shoes kicked off wherever they land. Our hands are everywhere, greedy—her fingers skate under the hem of my sweater, my palms slide under her hair, tunnel to the nape of her neck. She is gasping into my mouth, her laugh half-wild when I stumble us into the wall, nearly knocking a framed print of an MRI scan askew in the process. The only thing that keeps it upright is my hand, barely steady, and then I don’t care because her lips are on my neck, just below my jaw, and I have to bite my tongue not to groan in a way that would embarrass both of us.
We’re moving, in jerky increments, down the short hallway to her living room. At some point, I get her sweater over herhead. The static makes her hair explode around her face, and she swears, laughing, the sound threading through my chest in a way that feels like nothing has ever mattered more. Her arms are locked around me and she’s pulling off my sweater—no, yanking is more accurate—and then I’m shirtless in her living room, somehow, and she’s in her bra, warm skin and freckles and every atom of me tuned to the way she tastes, the sound she makes when I run my hand up her side.
“Jesus Christ,” she whispers, pausing, both hands splayed on my chest. “You never said you were ripped.”
I’m so dizzy with her that her words take a second to process. “I—what?”
She gives a helpless, snorting laugh, running her hands over my torso as though she’s verifying experimental results. “How? You work as much as I do. I’ve seen your Google calendar. Where does this happen?”
“Would you believe I do Tae Bo videos on YouTube?”
She stares at me, eyebrows tilted. “Not for a second.” She laughs, her head tipped back, curls bouncing everywhere. “Absolutely not.”
She’s still smoothing her hands down the planes of my chest, like she doesn’t quite believe her own senses. I’m still holding her, arms anchored under her thighs, hoisting her up so our faces are lined up. It’s new for me, this feeling—this physical confidence—but she seems to find it hilarious, and I find myself wanting to be hilarious for her forever.
“Fine.” My voice comes out hoarse. “I converted my second bedroom into a gym. Free weights, rings, the whole setup.”
“The whole setup,” she repeats, savoring it like a secret. Then her legs flex tighter around my waist, and she’s looking at me like I’m a particularly complex puzzle she’d really like to take apart and put back together again.
“Whatever it is, it’s working,” she says, and then she’s kissing me again.
Somewhere in my brain, a whole committee of internal safety officers are shouting about pace, about not screwing this up, about how there’s no controlling whatever happens next. But the rest of me—the animal part, the part that has lived on nothing but caffeine, ambition, and longing for as long as I’ve known her—wants this so fiercely it almost hurts.
“Take off your pants,” Audrey says, as if it’s a perfectly reasonable request in the middle of her living room, and for a second I think I’ve misheard her.
I hesitate, because the logistics are not trivial. She’s still perched on my hips, and my jeans are not exactly designed for fast removal while supporting another full-grown adult. “I don’t think I can manage it unless I put you down,” I admit, my voice embarrassingly breathless.
“Then put me down,” she says, her mouth a bare inch from my ear.
My fingers flex against her thighs. “I don’t want to.”
She gives me a look, all mischief and intention, the calculation visible in the set of her jaw. “Then carry me to my bed and I’ll handle the pants situation.”
I laugh—loud, giddy, disbelieving—and adjust my grip so she won’t slip as I maneuver us down the narrow hallway. She’s not heavy, but I’m shaking with adrenaline, my heart thundering so loud it could be a third participant in this scenario. Her lips are on my neck, little bites and kisses, until we barrel through the doorway and tumble onto the edge of her unmade bed.
The mattress springs creak under our combined weight. Audrey wriggles onto her back, hair fanned and wild in a halo. She’s grinning at me, saying nothing, just waiting to see what I do next, and it’s the most terrifyingly alluring thing I’ve ever seen.
