I walked down the hall, the floorboards cool under my bare feet. The plug shifted with every step, a constant, rubbing friction inside that made my breath hitch. I had to walk carefully, trying to keep my hips steady, which only made the sensation more intense. When I stopped in the living room, I froze.
Cal was standing to the side, looking at the wall that sat in between the entryway to the kitchen and the laundry room, specifically staring at a frame that definitely hadn’t been there when I got into the shower.
He turned when he heard me. His eyes were wide, glassy, and he looked like he’d been caught in the middle of a thought he wasn’t quite ready to share.
“The twins,” he said, gesturing vaguely toward the front door. “They did a ding dong ditch. Left a package on the porch.”
I walked closer, my eyes adjusting to the dim light. It was one of the photos the girls had taken when we did the bonfire. The two of us, bathed in firelight, swaying to music we both hated, smiling, laughing, looking so sickeningly in love it almost hurt to look at.
It was hanging in a silver frame. It was perfect.
“I had no idea they did this,” I whispered, reaching out to graze the cold metal edges of the frame.
“It looks good there,” Cal said, his voice quiet.
“It does.” I swallowed hard, fighting the emotion rising in my throat. “It looks like home.”
Cal wrapped an arm around my waist as he pulled me toward himself, planting a gentle kiss to my temple. It made my skin prickle, the intensity of it all at once nearly feeling as if it was too much to bear. The pressure inside me pulsed in time with my heartbeat.
We decided to sit in the living room instead of on the porch like we had been doing before bed. We curled up on the couch together, the TV on something random that I was hardly paying attention to. We were draped with old fuzzy blankets from my life growing up. Cal was stretched out across the couch, and my body was nestled between his legs. I lay on my stomach, my arms around his torso, head on his abs, as he ran his fingers through my hair. Periodically, I pressed kisses across the tattoos on his stomach, tasting the salt of his skin.
Every time I shifted, the plug rubbed inside me, sending a jolt of pleasure up my spine that made it hard to focus on the conversation. I had to bite the inside of my cheek to keep from moaning. I wondered if he could feel the tension in my body, the way I was vibrating.
“We leave in the morning,” he said. The reminder hung in the air like smoke. “The madness. Then who knows when we’ll get a break again.”
I nodded, lifting my head to look at him. “I’m sure we’ll get some kind of break beforeHeatwavein August.”
“I was thinking,” Cal started, his eyes flickering down to me, then away, and then back to me. “I should probably go see my family in Philly the next break we get. But if you’re cool with it, maybe I could pack a few things and send them down here. That way when we come back, I’m not just living out of a suitcase.”
He tried to play it off as practical, but I saw the way his fingers tapped nervously against the couch cushions.
“You want to leave stuff here?” I asked.
He shrugged, a lopsided grin tugging at his mouth. “Yeah, unless that’s too fast? Fuck, I feel like a woman asking for the girlfriend privilege of having a drawer.”
Thejoke fell flat in the best way. He was trying to protect himself, I knew he was, while also giving me an out in case I freaked out about the question.
But this wasn’t just my space. It never had been.
“Cal,” I said, my voice dropping with a faint smile. “You don’t get a drawer.”
His face fell instantly. “Right. I was just—”
“Baby, you get the closet,” I interrupted, pulling myself to be face to face with him, our noses nearly touching. “You get the whole side of the bedroom if you want it.”
He blinked, stunned. “What?”
“Why do you think I worked on that damn porch for so long?” I asked, the confession tumbling out of me before I could really stop it. “Why do you think I put in a double vanity when I redid the bathroom? Or why I knocked out the wall that made the kitchen feel so small?”
I gestured around the living room, the space I had agonized over for months.
“I remodeled this place because of a dream you and I shared,” I admitted, my voice cracking under the weight of it. “Maybe I’m insane, but even then, when I was convinced you hated me, I was doing this all with that memory in the back of my mind. This whole house… It’s always been for you, even if you never stepped foot in it.”
Cal looked like I had just punched him in the chest. He looked around the room, really seeing it all for the first time, not as the house I grew up in and inherited, but as a shrine to a life I didn’t think I’d ever get to have.
“You really didn’t stop loving me,” he whispered.
“Never,” I said as I kissed his lips. “It was always going to be you. It’s only ever been you,” I confessed as I kissed the side of his neck.
