My other hand, the one not braced against the wall, grasps his neck lightly, using it to keep him from taking me over in a place where we can easily be seen.
He pushes me away, and I see his eyes filled with hard need.
There’s a vibration, a ringing phone. His, not mine.
He shakes his head and I step back, giving him space as he takes his call.
I don’t wait for a dismissal. I leave him with his conversation and head away to a room corridors away where Blair lies on her bed, her legs spread, pussy glistening.
She’s who I think about while I make her come on my mouth. Her and Isaac. And I wonder whether he thinks about what I’m doing to her for the rest of the night.
I wonder if it makes him come.
The bed we share is large, big enough for us to both sleep here without touching, but that’s never been an option. She spends the night curled round me, her ass tucked into my crotch, meaning I wake up hard.
Some mornings, even after Lennox’s death, we fuck first. I learned that if I woke before she did, I could get her wet without waking her; gently stroking her breasts, sucking softly on her tits or moving last night’s wetness over her clit would wake her up on the verge of coming and I could turn her over and wake her properly.
This morning the tide had changed. She’s still asleep when I wake, the soft light from the window washing her face that looks more relaxed than it has done for days, since before the killing. I move her into my arms, lying her against my chest and watch her breathing, deep and easy, her blonde hair fanned out in a halo around her head.
Isaac isn’t on my mind. Now is for her, the girl I knew, the centre of the maze I never left. Blair’s eyes flutter open and she smiles, her hand moving to the scruff that’s now long enough to be called a beard.
“I like this.” She strokes it languidly.
“Then I’ll keep it.”
She smiles and my world stills. Right now, here, I’d give everything up.
“How do you feel today?” It’s a strange question; one I don’t remember asking before. I can tell how someone is doing; my job needs me to be able to interpret changes of expression or body language and I’ve never given enough of a shit before to actually ask how someone is, especially a girl or a lover.
She kisses my chin then nuzzles it. This is different. Whatever Blair feels is usually communicated with touching or a kiss, something physical. Something that will lead in one of us getting off.
“Better. It still feels odd that Lennox isn’t blustering about somewhere or coming up with some mad idea. There’s this huge hole that I don’t think I can ever see being smaller, but I feel better.”
I spread the palms of my hands wide enough to be able to cover as much of her skin as I can.
“Every day will be different. Don’t expect tomorrow to feel the same as today or the day after.” The words come from a place I rarely think about.
“How are you now? So many years after?”
Her soft weight is pressed against me, the light from the uncovered window speckling the room.
“It depends. It changes. Some days I hate her for being dead; some days I miss what she was and what she should’ve been. Some days I don’t think about her at all.” Those were the best days, the ones where life just continued. I was a bastard for saying so, but it was that long ago now, my memories of her were fragments of a photograph.
“What was she like?”
Blair doesn’t look at me. Instead she trails light fingertips across my chest, over the scars that I’ve picked up over the years.
“To look at or as a person?”
“Both.”
“She was fair. Her hair was almost white but she tanned easily and her skin went golden in the summer. Her eyes were blue.”
“Like yours. You tan like that too.”
“My hair’s a darker blonde though.”
She looks up at me from eyes that contain no hurt or anger or anything that worries me.
