“I can’t, because, like I said, I don’t do them.” Edie went up on her tiptoes and got her hand around Cosima’s nape. She kissed her, and their mouths were soft already, their tongues rubbing together slowly. Edie could’ve actually died from it. She could feel herself dying from it. Her pulse was externalizing into her wrists and the insides of her elbows, between her legs,and it was too loud with the train pulling away to hear it, but she couldfeelCosima’s moan.
“What are we going to do?” Cosima bit Edie’s bottom lip.
“You tell me. You’re the one who came here to grovel.”
“I only have one idea.” Cosima’s hands found their way into both of Edie’s back jeans pockets. It was a tight fit, but she managed to get in a good squeeze.
“Does your idea involve a guest book and a medieval numbering system? Because, if so, I refuse to wait fifty years for you.” The wind was whipping long, curly pieces of hair from Cosima’s bun into her face. Her eyes were the same color as the gray-blue Lincolnshire sky.
“My idea is that we go to Gregory Place right this minute, I fuck you with a pink strap-on, and then I never, ever leave.” Cosima gave Edie an imperious look to see where that landed.
It landed where Cosima meant for it to land. Edie had to squeeze her thighs together to survive the impact, then take Cosima’s hand to drag her off the pedestrian bridge.
“Fair warning,” she gasped. “So many folks are here who are going to want to involve themselves in this reunion. We’ve accidentally been taken into a family of English villagers. I didn’t see it coming, but it’s good on the whole. Not so much right this second. Follow my lead.”
They made it down to the platform filled with old people who Edie and Cosima would have to deal with for the rest of their lives, none of whom called her Frog. Really living the dream. “Morag, give me the keys to your van. Stay at the Gregory Arms tonight. None of you are permitted to do anything more than wave at Cosima. No chitchat. No stories. Morag”—Edie held out her palm—“the keys.”
Morag huffed, and it took her long enough to extract thekeys from her coat pocket that Tam managed to side-hug Cosima while Killian beamed and Bert elbowed him in the side. “Harlaxton Pride is going to be lit this year, eh?”
Then Morag gave over the keys with a secret smile, and as they ran to the car park, all of Edie’s new old people clapped and cheered, and she and Cosima laughed as Cosima attempted to jog in stilettos. Edie ground the gears of Morag’s van getting out of the car park. She pushed its limits through the roundabout and down the road to Harlaxton to the front door of the inn, which barely got closed before Cosima was pulling at Edie’s jacket and kissing her.
“Take off all your clothes,” Cosima demanded between kisses.
“I’m not taking off my clothes in the lounge.” Edie grabbed Cosima by the waist to pull her toward the stairs. “I don’t want to scandalize the ghosts.”
They tripped their way up, Cosima disregarding the prudish feelings of the ghosts by stripping her clothes off as she went and dropping them on the stairs.
“I sanded these down,” Edie pointed out. “Took the runner up to do it.”
“You’re a marvel. The wood is glowing. Take off your jacket.”
Edie did, but she carried it with her, her eyes on Cosima’s delicate blouse as it dropped to the floor, followed by her shoes on the landing. Edie hung her jacket over the railing, memorizing the shape of Cosima’s back, her waist, her silken shoulder, the slight flare of her hips as she smoothed her tweedy trousers down her legs. She wore a phantasm of a bra, panties that barely deserved the name. Nothing else.
“Where are my things?” Cosima asked, turning to look at Edie over her shoulder. “Why are you still wearing that?” She gestured at Edie’s apparently offensive clothes.
Edie began unbuttoning her mouse shirt from the bottom. “In your room. I didn’t touch anything.”
“You didn’t. That’s interesting.” She lifted her arms and began pulling the pins out of her hair, letting them fall to the carpet as she ambled down the hallway. “Considering how confident you were in my return, and the security of our love, I might have thought you would have packed the room up. Put it to service, since I would be sleeping with you when I returned.”
Edie had considered moving her own things to Cosima’s room so she could sleep among the shades of her lost love, but she’d thought better of it. “No, lucky for you, I didn’t doubt you in any way, and I haven’t had time to start ripping out the pink wallpaper yet. Morag doesn’t have another guest booked until May.”
Cosima flung the door open and sat on the edge of the bed, smoothly crossing her legs. Edie picked up the last of the hairpins from the carpet and fanned them out between her fingers. “You dropped these,” she said.
“And you picked them up.” Cosima held out her palm.
She settled the hairpins into Cosima’s hand. “Now what?”
“Now we settle out the game. I tallied up our points on the plane. We have an equal number.” She put the hairpins down on the table beside the bed.
Edie smiled. “What a twist of fate. Do we do a tiebreaker round now?”
“We do not. I’ve decided to divest myself of my points and whatever glory I could potentially lay claim to. Even if my life were worse than yours, everything I won a point for was an experience that led me to you.”
“That’s unbearably romantic.” She meant it. Her heart ached. “I divest, too. Consider the game renounced.”
“I will.” Cosima smiled. “Take off your shirt.”
Edie shrugged out of the shirt she had unbuttoned. Because she’d been in the middle of racing halfway across the globe in a romantic gesture, she had her best bra on, a black, strappy number that visibly strained against the weight of her breasts, but in a sexy way.
