“I can’t do this weekend. I have a lot of work. I’m really sorry.”
“I’m also here to see you, you know.”
“I know. I just… next time. I promise.”
Jay took his bottom lip into his mouth. “Okay.”
All evening, I was afraid to let Jay out of my sight. This was a foreign fear. In bed, I tangled him in the web of my arms, crushing him against me.
“This isn’t comfortable.” His cheek was smashed to my chest.
“Sorry. I can’t let you go.”
“I can’t even use the bathroom?”
“No.”
“But I have to pee.”
“Pee in the bed.”
He sighed. “I’ll just hold it until you go to sleep.”
Tired, I loosened my grip. “Are you gonna help your mom out?”
He paused. “You knew I was.”
“Don’t sound so disgusted with yourself.”
“I’m not.”
I searched his face. “Did that hurt your feelings earlier?”
“What? Asking about my mom?”
“No. Tristan.”
“It’s okay.” Jay reached for his glasses on the nightstand and pulled out a political thriller. “I know he just started his program.”
I wanted to stick my head in the toilet and flush. He turned his focus to his book, but my guilt grew around me until I broke out: “Maybe he’ll come out.”
Jay didn’t look up. “I doubt it.”
After a while, I turned toward him and lifted my leg onto his hip. Still reading, he ran a finger along the outside of my thigh, tracing a series of loops. When I shivered, his lips parted into a small smirk. Closing his book, he slipped a hand under my shirt, warm against my back. I reached into his sweatpants. He groaned, glasses falling slightly down his nose when the back of his head hit the headboard. We kissed, slowly at first, then deeply. Laughing, a little awkwardly, from the foreignness of it, having survived on phone sex for weeks. I pulled down my shorts, leaving my top on, and turned onto my stomach. He laid flat on top of me, entering me that way. His body was like a weighted blanket pinning me to the mattress. Mouth on my neck, teeth clipping my shoulder, bed rocking beneath us. When his long, gentle fingers found my clit, I sighed loudly into the pillow, shaking before going still. He was the onlyman I let have me in this position, the only one I trusted enough to put all their weight on me like this.
I fell asleep against the heat of his stomach. I dreamed of a child’s hollowed-out eyes, bombs burning up the night sky like stars, bright and illuminating nothing.
Chapter 15
Ryen drove us through the sprawling woods, flashing the brights as we bumped along a poorly paved road. “Who the fuck’s idea was it to come to a haunted forest in Virgina?”
Jay’s face ashened as he looked out the window.
High from the edible we split, Milan cried, “It’s givingGet Out!!!” The back of her head in the passenger’s seat reminded me of a balloon.
We parked in a dirt lot, lights twinkling ahead. Jay stepped out wearing a white button-down. He was Obama for Halloween.
“You just look like a guy who’s going to work,” I said.
