“If the taxi isn’t here, I’ll wait for it in the lobby so you can go ahead to work,” I tell him.
“I didn’t call a taxi. I’m going to take you.”
“There’s no need.” And I don’t want him to.
“It would take forever to get one in this rain, and it would cost you at least two hundred pounds.”
“Fine,” I relent. We each stare anywhere but at each other, silently trapped in a devastating feeling of surrender. “I’m ready.”
“Okay, let’s go.”
He reaches out to take my suitcase, and our hands touch on the handle, contact that pushes our gazes to meet against our will.
“So, this is how it ends?” he asks me.
The words have the power to send me into a crisis, draining any strength I have left to reply.
Michael lets go of the suitcase, takes my face in his hands, and kisses me, pushing me against the still-closed door.
My lips welcome him, opening with desperation. I’m holding on to him, my fingers tight on his shoulders and my eyes squeezed shut because I’m too afraid to look at him.
He lifts my sweater, revealing my breasts, which he kisses, and I don’t offer the slightest resistance.
If there has to be a last time, let’s give it everything we have.
I unhook his belt and unbutton his trousers, and he lifts me against the door, my arms wrapped around his neck.
His right hand finds its way between my legs, shifting my panties to the side, and a second later I feel him inside of me.
My moan is muffled by his mouth.
It’s a strange kind of pleasure, combined with a pain stirred by each of his thrusts, but I don’t dislike it, so I encourage him by responding to him with the rhythm of my pelvis, telling him to go faster, to go as hard as he can.
“I’m going to hurt you like this,” he whispers in my ear.
“Please don’t stop.” I don’t know what I feel, but I need to find a way to turn it off.
“I don’t want our last time to be like this.” Michael slows down, and the furious sex we were having until a second ago becomes something poignant, rending, as he slowly leads me to the brink of pleasure.
Our bodies say goodbye, uniting in one last, desperate orgasm, which this time pierces us like a blade.
“Loving you is like slow dancing in a room that’s on fire,” he says, his forehead against mine. “You know you should run, but you want to finish the song and wait to find out what the next one will be, even if you’re in flames.”
“We’re already too burned.”
We exchange one last kiss that tastes as salty as my tears, and then we turn and leave.
As I get into the car, a hot, sticky substance moistens my thighs. For the first time, we didn’t use protection—neither of us thought about it. And if ...
“Look, I didn’t use . . .”
“I’ll take the pill,” I interrupt. I’m not sixteen anymore. I’m certainly not used to risky relationships, but at least now I know what to do.
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be; we needed it.” We had to feel each other fully for our last time.
The journey to Stansted is prolonged torture. Each of us in their own head, with their own thoughts, with just the sound of the pouring rain on the roof of the Range Rover to fill the silence between us.
