"Yes." She pulls her bottom lip between her teeth and a groan vibrates from my throat.
I roll her so she is on top of me.
She makes a small surprised sound and then she laughs, a real laugh, the first one I have ever heard out of her, and it's a sound I am going to hear in my head for the rest of my life. She looks at me like she's the one doing the memorizing this time.
"Your turn," she says.
I frown, my question clear.
"To let me look."
She traces the line of my jaw with one finger. She follows it down to my throat, to my collarbone, to the scar over my ribs that's older than she is. Her finger stops there. She looks up at me with a question in her eyes and I shake my head once, because tonight isn't the night for the story of that scar. She nods once back, because she understands every language I speak without needing any of them explained.
She keeps tracing.
The ink on my left pec. The ink over my ribs. The line of hair down the center of my stomach. Her finger is cool and steady and she's not rushing, and I understand that Sadie Jenkins is a woman who needs to put her hands on a thing to know it's real.
That’s when the biggest realization of them all hits me. I want her to know me. Every real part of me.
My phone rings.
The ringtone is the one I've assigned to Dmitri, and Dmitri doesn’t ring unless something is on fire. She feels me freeze and she goes still too, her eyes on my face.
"Nick."
"I’m sorry,” I say. “I have to answer this."
"I know."
I kiss her forehead and she lifts herself from me. The ring stops as I reach into my back pocket for the phone, then immediatelystarts again. Dmitri calling twice in thirty seconds. I thumb the phone open and put it to my ear as I say his name. He speaks three sentences in Russian in the voice he uses when there is no other voice left, and every part of me that was warm thirty seconds ago goes cold.
I listen.
I ask two questions. I get two answers. I tell him I'm twenty minutes out and hang up.
I sit on the edge of the bed with my back to her and put both my hands over my face for one breath, because she deserves to not see what my face is doing right now, and then I drop my hands and I turn to look at her.
She's sitting up. She's pulled the blanket to her chest. Her face is carefully neutral.
"I have to go," I say.
"Okay." She smiles with it, and it looks genuine. But I hate that I’m leaving her now.
"Sadie—” I try to think of what to say, how to explain, while I’m grabbing my sweater and pulling it over my head.
"It’s okay, Nick. You have to go."
"It isn't what you think it is. It’s my father, he is sick."
"I'm not thinking anything. Go to him." Her voice is very even.
Her hair is falling over one shoulder and there's a pink mark on her collarbone where my mouth was ten minutes ago, and she's the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.
I lean on the edge of the bed and I take her face in both hands.
"This is something I have to go deal with right now, and if I could stay I would, but I can't. Do you understand me?"
"Yes,” she says it emphatically, as though I’m the one not understanding, then she covers my hands with hers. “HonestlyNick, I know there’s more to you than you’ve told me tonight, I’m not offended or upset that you have to leave, especially if it’s for family. Please just go and do what you’ve got to do.”
I kiss her hard, once, because I don't trust myself to kiss her soft right now, and I feel her hand slide to my wrist and hold it there for one second before she lets me go.
I stand and walk to where I left my shoes earlier. I turn back to look at her one more time, and she's exactly where I left her, on the bed with the blanket to her chest, and she lifts the corner of her mouth in a small smile.
