“What are the rules?” he says, his voice rough.
I undo the button on my jeans. “Sit,” I say, nodding toward the carpeted floor.
He stands first, pulling off his shirt. I see the bulge in his jeans, and I wonder if he’s not going to play by the rules. I wonder if he’s going to walk forward, if he’s going to press me against the door at my back. Honestly, that would be fine, too—I’ve already learned, in the shower last week, that Reid does good work standing up—but I want to be in charge of this game.
After a beat, he follows my directions.
I slide my jeans and underwear down my legs.
“The game is we stay quiet,” I whisper, stepping in the space between his stretched-out legs. “We don’t make a sound. We don’t say anything.”
Anything likeI love you.
Anything likeStay.
I lower myself onto him, straddling his lap, reaching between us to unbutton his jeans, to slide down his zipper. I watch him the whole time, and he’s clenched his mouth shut, the muscles on either side of his jaw ticking in concentration. He’s already playing.
He won’t say a word.
He lifts his hips and I lean forward, my hands going to the edge of the bed to steady myself while he shoves down his jeans, pulls a condom from his wallet. I take it from him, tearing it open and fitting it over his length, and he tips his head back, closing his eyes and clenching his fists when I stroke him once. When I release him, he moves his hands, one settling at my waist to keep me raised above him, one moving between my thighs to touch me in the way that gets me wet, that gets me close.
But I stop him, pulling his hand away, keeping it locked with mine. I look down at him and shake my head. Then I move my other hand and stroke him again, once, before lowering myself onto him, a slow stretch that would’ve gone easier had I let him keep touching me. But I want it, this stretch, this patient accommodation my body has to make to his. I like how much work it takes to stay quiet; I like the silent signs we have to send each other—a hand I rest on his shoulder to tell him I need to go slow, a hand he moves to my lower back, urging me to tip forward for a better angle.
When he’s fully inside of me, we breathe in sync, a warm relief between us, but at the first move of our bodies the bed protests again, this time a quietthunkagainst the wall it’s pushed up against, and both of us still, our eyes locked. This time, we’re not stopping; I can tell by the way Reid looks at me, hot and focused and determined. His arm tightens low around my back, and he shifts us forward so his back isn’t against the bed.
And with that move, everything is different, the first time we’ve ever had sex this way—no leverage at his back or mine, nothing to hold on to but each other. It’s an effort, more so because we’re playing by the rules, staying silent. We go slow—so, so slow—small pulses of his hips up to thrust into me, measured rocking of my hips in his lap to get the friction I need. I don’t know how long it takes, because neither of us is marking the time, keeping track. It feels like floating, like being untethered.
Like writing without letters.
Like counting without numbers.
It feels like love.
And even when it reaches its peak—when I breathe through my slow, shuddering climax against his neck, when he grips me tighter and stiffens through his, when we clutch at each other in the aftermath with some new, shocked awareness between us . . .
Even then, neither of us breaks the rules.
Chapter 17
Lark is speechless.
In the back of the shop, Lark sits with the planner I’ve finished for her open on the table, her eyes tracking over the pages she turns slowly, carefully. I’ve looked at what’s in those pages dozens of times myself over the last few days, so mostly I watch her face as she experiences it—the pastels I’ve chosen, mostly pinks and greens, the occasional rose gold accents. The small, wide-set, lowercase scripts that unfurl across the headers, and the narrow, close-set, all-caps sans serif that marks out the days. The delicate illustrations that dot the corners of some of the pages—a tiny splash of starbursts here, a single flower in a simple bud vase there. All of it is quiet, understated. Sweet and soft but also sturdy and sophisticated.
“This is very . . .” she begins finally, touching her finger to the corner of one page. “This is so . . . me,” she finishes, a note of wonder in her voice.
I smile, relieved. “I’m so glad. That’s what I was going for.”
A few weeks ago, I might not have been able to design a planner that was this right for Lark. But since that day at my apartment, a lot has changed between us. Sure, she’s not yet up for coffee shop visits, but she will go on the occasional walk—half-planned tours through parts of Brooklyn that even I don’t get to all that often. Sometimes I tell her things about the neighborhoods, about clients I have in various spots around town; sometimes she tells me things about LA or about the actors she’s known and worked with. We talk occasionally about the job—the walls that she’sstillnot ready for me to start on—but mostly we simply get to know each other in the kind of tentative, non-heavy-topics way of a new friendship. For the most part, she avoids bringing up the living land mine that is Cameron, who’s been in and out of town on location shoots, but I notice the way her mood fluctuates according to his movements—she’s lighter, more talkative, more adventurous when he’s gone.
It’s been good to have the company, because the relationship between me and Lark isn’t the only thing that’s changed since I got back from Maryland with Reid. First of all, Sibby’s gone, moved in to her new apartment with Elijah, her last day at home over a week ago now. When I’d come back that Sunday, flushed with all the feelings for Reid I was no longer ignoring, Sibby was home, waiting for me. And I could tell that she’d practiced, the same way I had. “Meggie,” she’d said, using her long-dormant nickname for me, “I didn’t mean what I said, bringing up your family that way.”
“I know you didn’t,” I’d answered, and I’d meant it. I’d forgiven Sibby even before I’d gotten all the way across the Bridge that night we’d fought, but forgiveness didn’t really fix what was wrong between us. She may not have meant it, about my family, but shehadmeant everything else. And that meant the only kind of fighting I could do, the only kind of practice that would help her, was the kind where I gave her the time and space away from me that she’d wanted, until she was ready—reallyready—to talk again. She’d seemed relieved, for those last few days of being my roommate, that we could play polite for the time being, that I was willing not to press it. On move-out day, I’d helped her carry the last few boxes down to the rental truck Elijah had waiting at the curb, and we’d hugged each other tight, both of us holding back tears.
“It’ll be better, Meggie,” she’d said, and I’d nodded my chin against her shoulder, hoping she was right.
I’d gone back upstairs to my echoing apartment, but only briefly. Maybe it would’ve been the braver thing, to stay there alone that first night, but instead I’d packed a bag and gone to Reid’s, using the key he’d given me. I’d stayed up late, working on my final Make It Happyn sketches while sitting on his terrible couch, hoping he might get home before eleven.
Because that—Reid working with this fixed, flared intensity—that is the other thing that’s changed since Maryland. In some ways, it’s as if he and I are still playing by the rules I set that night in the basement. We don’t say anything about New York, about him staying. We don’t wonder aloud about whether it’s too soon, whether it’s even possible. But clearly, something has shifted for Reid, and it doesn’t matter that I see him less lately while he keeps these long hours.
