“Zay, I’m close.”
“I know.” He doesn’t slow down. His forehead presses to mine and I come with his name in my mouth and my hand fisted in the sheets. His hand works me through it until I’m shaking and oversensitive and pulling his wrist away.
He buries his face in my neck and his rhythm breaks, hips stuttering, and I tighten my leg around his back and pull him deep and hold him there and he comes with a sound pressed into my skin that I will think about for the rest of my life.
We breathe. His weight settles onto me and I let it, my arms around him, feeling his chest heave against mine and the slowing hammer of his heartbeat. His hand is still on my hip. My fingers are still in his hair. The playlist ended at some point and neither of us noticed.
He lifts his head. Looks at me. His face is wrecked and happy and entirely unguarded. I think if I could keep one single image from this whole messy, secret, impossible thing, it would be this. His face right now, in my bed, in my apartment, with bolognese bowls on the coffee table and a cat in the hallway and no professional distance left between us.
He kisses my forehead. I press my mouth to his jaw, then roll him off me and find a towel from the bathroom. I clean us both up, and he watches me do it with an expression I haven’t seen on him before. I toss the towel toward the hamper, miss by a foot, and his mouth twitches.
“Your aim.”
“I just came. Cut me some slack.”
He lies on his back and I press into his side and his arm settles around my shoulders without negotiation, like his body already knows where mine goes. His fingers move through my hair in slow strokes that don’t have a pattern. My hand rests on his chest. I can feel his heartbeat under my palm, steady now, coming down.
“Can I ask you something?”
“You just did.”
“Funny.” I trace a line down his sternum. “Do you always want it like this? You on top.”
He doesn’t tense. His fingers keep moving in my hair. “I like both. I'm vers.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. I don’t have a default.” His thumb traces behind my ear. “Tonight is what I wanted tonight.”
“Good.” I press my mouth to his collarbone. “Because next time I want to take my time with you.”
His breathing changes for half a second. A barely-there catch. Then his hand tightens in my hair, a small pull that says he heard me. “I want that too.”
I listen to his breathing level out. Tomorrow morning he’ll leave before it’s light, or maybe he won’t, and either way this room will still smell like us and the kitten will still be in her corner and nonna’s recipe will still be taped to the cabinet and the song he sent me at one in the morning last Tuesday will still be on my phone.
Chapter 12 — ZAY
Nan calls while I’m on the hotel bed reviewing treatment notes. The caller ID photo is from two Christmases ago, her kitchen, flour on her apron, one hand on her hip and the other pointing at whoever was behind the camera. Me, probably.
“Zay. Just wanted to check on my baby.”
“I’m fine, Nan. Road trip.”
“Mhmm.” She holds the sound the way she holds everything, warm and patient and leaving room. “You sound tired.”
“It’s late. We got in two hours ago.”
“That’s not the tired I mean.” A pause. Then, gently: “You eating?”
“Yes, Nan.”
“You stretching?”
“I stretch other people for a living.”
“That is not an answer.”
I smile at the ceiling. She’s seventy-three years old and she hears things in my voice that I haven’t said yet, things I’m not sure I’ve admitted to myself. She doesn’t push. She never pushes. She just calls at nine thirty on a Tuesday and waits forme to fill the silence or not, and either way she’s satisfied she’s heard enough.
