The kiss is not performed. There is no Janet Lundy. There is no leather portfolio. There is no custody case providing an alibi for what’s happening.
This kiss is just us.
His mouth meets mine and it’s slow. Deliberate. The kind of kiss that asks a question and waits for the answer. His hand comes to my jaw—not grabbing, guiding. Tilting my face toward his with a gentleness that makes my chest ache in a way I didn’t know chests could ache. It’s nothing like the sofa kiss, which was performance and adrenaline and the blur of a plan being executed. This is specific and calculated and the kiss of a man who doesn’t want to stop at kissing.
He pulls back. An inch. His forehead rests against mine.
“How did that feel?” he asks.
“Awkward,” I lie.
“Damn, let me try again.” He smiles against my mouth. Kisses me again. Deeper this time. His hand slides from my jaw to the back of my neck and something inside me—the mechanism that keeps me upright, that keeps me composed, that has been running on autopilot since my first executive meeting—shuts off. I am not thinking about the fall or spring line. I am not thinking about Greg or Eleanor or the caseworker. I am not thinking about anything except the pressure of his mouth and the warmth of his hand and the fact that my body is doing things it hasn’t done in so long I’d forgotten it was capable.
I give in and kiss him back. Not carefully. Not the measured, two-second response I gave him on the burgundy sofa. I kisshim the way fabric falls when you stop fighting it—completely, without reservation, surrendering to the drape.
He pulls me across his lap and I go. I go because his hands are on my hips and his mouth is on my neck and I am thirty-eight years old and I have never in my life been kissed like I am something precious and urgent at the same time. His fingers find the hem of my sweater. Slip beneath it. His palm is warm and rough against my waist, against my ribs, moving upward with a patience that feels like torture and a confidence that feels like permission.
I am on his lap in a bubblegum-pink room surrounded by boy band posters and somehow at thirty-eight I’m living out a teenage dream. It took me two extra decades to get here, but sixteen-year-old Celeste would be thrilled. There is a guy,a hot guy, who wants me in that real way. Kissing me in my bedroom, after dark, while all the parents sleep. This place really is a time capsule. And yet this moment feels…timeless. Gliding between past and present, like it doesn’t know whether it’s a moment or a memory.
His hand cups my breast over the fabric of my bra and I make a sound that I will deny making later under oath. He grins against my mouth—I can feel it, the shape of his smile pressed to my lips—and the grin makes me want to either kill him or climb deeper into his lap. I choose the latter, locking my hips into his, feeling his growing hard-on through his jeans, between my thighs.
I push him backward so he’s lying flat on my pink duvet. My hand drops to his waist. Finds the button of his jeans. My fingers graze the hard length of him through the denim and his breath hitches—a sharp, involuntary intake that tells me self-control is a thing of the past. He’s said it over and over, time and time again. He wants me. Right now, I’m going to choose to believe it. If he really does want me, tonight, he can have me.
I free his pants button, fingers clamped around his zipper pull when?—
A shriek from the main house. Glass shattering. A thud.
We both freeze. The sound cuts through the pink room like a fire alarm in the silent dead of night—the kind of interruption that evacuates a moment and leaves nothing behind.
Saylor is off the bed before I’ve processed what I heard. He’s out the door, crossing the yard in the dark at a dead sprint, and I’m behind him—sweater twisted, hair disheveled, moving on instinct and adrenaline toward the main house where every light is still on and something has gone terribly wrong.
He’s through the patio doors first. I’m three steps behind.
Ada is on the kitchen floor. She’s on her side, one hand pressed to the ground, the other clutching her hip. A shattered glass is beside her—water, just water—the shards scattered across the hardwood in a constellation of broken crystal. Her face is white. Not pale—ghost white. The color of pain that has passed through severity and arrived at something beyond it.
“Mum.” Saylor is on his knees beside her, his hands hovering, afraid to touch the wrong place. “Mum, I’m here. What happened?”
“I’m so sorry.” Ada’s voice is small and tight, the voice of a woman who is in agony and is apologizing for it. “I forgot my medicine. The one in the fridge. I thought I could get it myself. Didn’t want to bother you two. And I just—the floor was slippery, and I?—”
“It’s okay. You’re okay. Can you sit up?”
She nods. He helps her slowly, carefully, his hands under her arms, lifting with the careful precision of someone who has done this before, in other kitchens, at other hours, hundreds of times. The repetition is in his body. The grief is in his eyes.
And I see it. The thing he carries. The weight that bends him even when he’s standing straight. His mother is on the floor, inpain, because she didn’t want to interrupt his evening, and now he’s kneeling in broken glass with guilt flooding his face like water filling a room.
I move.
I don’t think about it. I don’t weigh options or calculate appearances or design my response. I move the way you move when someone needs you—immediately, completely, without the luxury of self-consciousness.
“Ada.” I’m beside them on the floor. “Let’s get you to the couch. Saylor, help me.”
We lift her together. Guide her to the living room. I arrange the throw pillows Saylor bought, the ones that made me laugh during the caseworker visit—and help her settle. Ada grips my forearm during the transfer. Her fingers are ice cold and stronger than they should be. I hold on until she lets go.
“Which medicine?” I ask. “It’s in the fridge? What does it look like?”
“The small red vial. Second shelf. It should have a yellow label.”
I’m in the kitchen. Second shelf, red vial, yellow label. I find it, check the dosage on the label, grab a glass—a plastic one, not crystal—and fill it with water. I bring both to Ada and watch her take the medicine with shaking hands.
