“Hey, hey, be nice now.” He presses a kiss to my earlobe.
“I’m always nice.” I turn my cheek to his lips, and he kisses it straight away. His lips are like hot fire and ash on my cool skin.
I bring my arms up to his neck, and I’m almost standing on his toes, but I reach up and brush my lips against his.It’s fucking delicious.He tastes like fresh lemon, a fresh start, and like everything I’d been missing the last three years. I can’t get enough.
We probably look like two horny teenagers making out in the restaurant, but I feel rejuvenated. He’s awakened something in me I didn’t know I had left. He wraps his hands around the curve of my ass and picks me up to set me on the table in front of the mural. Jae leans forward over me, sliding his tongue over mine in a way that saysyou’re wanted; you’re home; you’re safe.
I am terrified by what this kiss means to me, but I can’t help but mirror his strength and return his desire back equally, if not fiercer. He’s the opposite of Grant in every way, but I can’t help but need him. My mind snaps. Don’t compare him to Grant. He’s amazing in his own right.
He towers over me. His hands rest on my thighs, the table now bearing the brunt of my weight, while his tongue does things to me that make me want to unravel completely.
Before I can let my anxiety stop me, I start fumbling with the buttons on his chef’s jacket. His hands are caressing my sides in a way that makes me want to be undressed again. He’s unzipping the front of my coveralls, and I’m desperate to get hands on skin whether it’s his on mine, or mine on his. Are we going to do this in a restaurant?
I hear the bells on the front of the restaurant door jingle lightly. I’m the one who jumps.
Busted. We are not going to do this in a restaurant.
“Christ, you two.” I can hear the eye roll in Murphy’s voice. “I’ll be damned, the one day I come to work early, I catch my boss acting like he’s in a porno.”
Jae’s lips are bright pink and swollen from my hungry kisses, his hair mildly tousled, his collar lopsided, and I bet I look worse than him.
“What kind of softcore porn are you watching?” Jae fires back, doing up the four buttons I managed to undo. All I can manage to do is blink and try to retie my hair. Murphy makes his way back to the kitchen, not even bothering to answer Jae.
“I have work to do, darling.” Jae kisses the top of my head. I’m still sitting on the table mildly stunned. “But I’ll check on you in a bit.” Before I can say anything, he too disappears into the kitchen.
I press the back of my hand to my lips, as if I can’t believe I just did that.
I really can’t believe I just did that.
Jae brings out something totally different in me that I never saw when I was with Grant. Has this part of me been here the whole time? I don’t know. I guess dry humping in a restaurant gets a girl to reflect.
Even though she’s a nameless, unidentified figure, I add flecks of red to the woman’s hair and flecks of golden yellow to the man’s eyes. It isn’t until I’m painting the curls of her hair, and the curve of a tattoo that I realize I’m painting Jae and me.
I’ve been painting us this whole time.
Us sitting on the banks of the East River. But instead of New York City as the backdrop, it’s an unknown mountain range. Somewhere else is the only place I imagine really being with Jae. New York City had always been Grant’s.
But maybe it could belong to both of them.
It has to.
I am in love with him.
With who? I ask myself. With who?
I picture them side by side.
Jae gets old and wrinkled. Grant stays twenty-three. Jae holds me and caresses me. Grant is in pixels on a screen. Jae is a real man who moves and talks and is animated. Grant is an old home movie, a memory that skips and has repeated tics. Jae is undeniably bright, and bursting at the seams with love and devotion. Grant is a rock in a pile of dirt, perpetually six feet of distance between us.
You can’t be in love with a dead man.
In the past, I would have said: If I love anything as much as I love you, let my head be cleaved from my neck.
But now, there’s Jae. He’s here. He’s alive. He’s warm and impassioned and ardent. I’d keep him and throw myself away for him. He would do the same for me.
I love him.
I would be beside myself if I couldn’t have him.
